Ensarm Solutions

Web User signup and authorization Series with Java - Part 1 Introduction

chetan@ensarm.com — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 07:57:00 +0000

Web development with Java is a breeze, at least for me :) but no doubt its a challenge for a first timer even if he is an accomplished Java developer. The complexity of a web app is possibly easily highlighted when you try and develop a login and authorization module for a web app.

With this series I intend to highlight and document the intricacies and details involved in designing, developing and testing such a module. I am going to use plain breeze Servlets / JSPs / HTML and my favorite GWT ( Google Web toolkit ) etc. As a first step let us look at the various aspects and needs of such a feature in a modern webapp context. A simple looking feature such as this can turn into a nightmare and finding information on the web about all aspects of coding a login was hard to find, at least for me.

Teams without experience in such areas tend to iterate through the development process again and again fixing and improving the same feature throughout thus wasting considerable efforts , time on the same feature and resulting in significant increase in cost and affecting schedules along with losing motivation.

We use agile extensively so I will attempt to describe the feature using an epic and a set of stories. Lets assume we are going to engineer a startup project and thus the first step is to enable users to signup and than access the app. Silomen is an enterprise grade CRM application to be used by all types of users throughout the world.

As a Silomen product manager and architect I define an epic to start with ... namely - User Signup and Authorization

Story 1 - User should be able to register / sign up on our website using a simple combination of a valid email id, name and a password.

Story 2 - We need a remember me feature along with browser auto save feature

Story 3 - User can reset or recover a lost password or user account

Story 4 - User authorization and access process should be most secured and protect the user and the application from all varieties of known vulnerabilities

Story 5 - We want to allow user to signin using popular OAuth service providers

Story 6 - The user authorization and access mechanism needs to centralized and user can sign in to multiple services to be developed by us after logging in once.

Story 7 - We need statistics of signup and signIn success / failure rates and reasons

Story 8 - Anything missing above / suggestions / corrections ... do post a query in the comments of this blog post.

Thus we are all set to venture into the next phase i.e. to begin with our agile sprint.

A team dinner to remember

chetan@ensarm.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:37:00 +0000

The feeling couldn't be any better. It was an interesting evening full of chaos due to that unbelievable traffic jam that took us about an hour to meet at the restaurant 500 mts away from our office.

Despite the terrible jam and a polluted wait it was nothing but good fun at Shisha cafe all evening to conclude this quarter where we found our focus areas and a promising direction to move towards.

So here are some photos to cherish on....

Observations on current web trends and related futuristic inferences - Part 1

chetan@ensarm.com — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:39:00 +0000

Advertising driven information services
Most products and services related to information, media, publishing are either already freely available or are headed in this direction. Any internet business trying to resist such a model subjects itself to high risk of becoming extinct. Service providers that try to charge end users for customized information are likely to see their margins eroding fast depending on

Awareness or lack of it among its own user base
Barriers other than technology to enter local markets
Ability or lack of it to provide any value added functionality or service compared to the free tools.

Simple reason of such harsh results is free availability of superior tools from larger and more profitable organizations built on top of their superior existing information aggregation, search and analysis platform while leveraging their ever increasing syndicated user base. They survive and profit from advertising in their large network of users and use this money to build smart tools for free which in turn brings in more users.

The time line to extinction for such products is quite unpredictable in my view and can vary between a few weeks / months to at most an year depending mostly on user awareness/local competition.

Recent examples
www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/18/encyclopedia-britannica-now-free-for-bloggers/

blogs.newsgator.com/inbox/2008/01/newsgator-inbox.html

Developing specialized applications and services for the enterprise
Even nice tools and softwares built for this segment of the market are distributed free these days by large software houses to gain internet audience which in turn drives revenues through adverstising and adding more users.

User base is the key asset
Regularly visiting users and thriving user communities can be considered as the key asset of any internet business.

So how can we really make money in this space despite being small and the answer in short is realignment

Its a few billion dollars question and the list of probable answers are in hundreds if not thousands. A few generalized observations on my part are

Better tools / services for the mobile market - A wide range of devices, platforms, user taste make this a open field for anybody with a decent application to gain user acceptance.

Moving from generalized information aggregation space into specialized information management services and developing tools required for it.

Ability to gather offline local market data and providing statistical predictive services.

A lot is moving fast

chetan@ensarm.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:01:00 +0000

Enterprise embraces the cloud
Seems like Cloud computing is catching up with the enterprise market fast. Amazon released enterprise support packs for their web hosting EC2 and storage solutions S3 in response to enterprise customers along with a service health dashboard. This early adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise segment is excellent news for all those cloud computing service providers.

On techcrunch : Red carpet Support

More money from search among fears of recession slowing down google
Google made a neat earning of 1.31 billion $ in net income blowing away all those rumors of a recession hit google slowdown. Hopefully this will accelerate Google App progress. With a deal with Yahoo on the near horizon Google is definitely geared up to strengthen its search earnings for a good time to come. This might mean more money into Google research which in turn brings in fresh products faster from Google on to table.

Sun to close source MySQL
So did you download your copy of MySQL source already? Though this is bad news for all those web app developers looking for a super and free database solution Sun really doesn't have any options after forking out a billion to acquire MySQL. Now it seems its time to jump wagon and hop on to postgres. But how does it effect existing users of MySQL? This is another billion dollar question. Any clues?

Milking Outlook
What is the easiest way to reach enterprise users without wooing the enterprise? Create an Add in to Outlook. And all seem to be hell bent on using this route. NewsGator released inbox 3.0 a feedreader that sits inside Outlook for free. Thank you for your attention !

Yahoo joins the Analytics show
Wrestling out of the big brother's grip is going to take much more than a deal with google and yahoo is busy working on it.

Innovation from the unexpected quarter
I like this idea from Microsoft. ExP Microsoft Experimentation platform.

The cloud is Getting hotter
Zoho releases a CRM product trying to go after SalesForce. May the best win. Definitely a winner addition for Zoho.

Enough for now.
Cheers

IE8 Beta 1- A darth vader in Jedi clothes

chetan@ensarm.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:23:00 +0000

Microsoft launched IE8 in selected locations for developers & partner preview. The key features as highlighted on its own website are

i. Activities

A mechanism to access and update contextual information from any web application. Key features are touted as Lookup and Send. For me its interesting to observe Microsoft follows Google pattern. Its a mix of derivations from GoogleLookup / Friendfeed and other such apis. Though the interesting part is an xml file that gets downloaded and installed on the browser once the user discovers and adds an activity in a true microsoft style. [I am wondering if this is going to result in being a security concern? ]

Microsoft's developer documentation says something about an OpenService Activity format [No options here any more it seems. We all need to unzip and be open and finally the bigbrother is realising that or atleast it would like all we geeks to believe so. How open it is? Only time will tell].

Though in my view by building a IE dependent feature that could be easily implemented with pure AJAX and REST API's its the same old game Microsoft is busy with. This mechanism will not work with any other browser at the moment without extra adoption on behalf of the browser.

I would be surprised if developers are going to fall for that.

Check this post to see how googlelookup feature works. When I used it it was unbelievably effective in looking up micro contextual info from the web since it is directly hooked up to the Google cloud and can work on all browsers.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/googlelookup_wow.php

ii. Web Slices

Again and again creating browser dependent features and calling them open standards is a gimmick that is easily seen. So they do have an open hAtom API that is a direct copy of GData but why they must bind it to IE. This can be easily implemented in AJAX.

I think this strategy of binding stuff to IE and making the implementation mechanism an open standard is prudent and any web developer adopting these need to beware. This simply means that the user must have IE8 to access features that are already there in the market using AJAX and can be accessed on all browsers. So what exactly they mean when they call it open.

And why would I make my webapp so tightly bound to IE.

Relevant links

On Xing

Cheers.

Google App Engine - Repeating history

chetan@ensarm.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:27:00 +0000

20,000 preview accounts signed up within 48 hours. At an average of 3 applications per signup and assuming a minimum of 2 programmers behind each application what we have is 60000 apps in the making with 120000 programmers riding this super power Google App engine. Finally what we have is a monster platform for easy development, deployment, distribution of web platforms that can seamlessly integrate and migrate existing user/enterprise management systems with ease. And its only a preview phase release. Considering a 1 : 10 ratio after it is open to all - Google can easily pile up a million programmers doing clicketi clickety click - coding on its new free to start platform relentlessly -i.e. Google App Engine.

And the obvious next step from Google - A Google App appliance in line with its search appliance where any App engine developer will be able to deploy his/her application without being onsite and with a few clicks on his Google app management console that will be available for a couple of thousand dollars a piece (Most likely) . With the plethora of google products available with free to start Google App there goes MS Office + MS Exchange for a toss and a super competitor to MS Dynamic GP or whatever it is called. Imagine being able to perform a google search to find more information about some subject on your intranet when you are working in a company of 5000 people. I bet you are gonna love it.

This seems like a big brother effect to what Microsoft did in the 80's and the 90's. With its innovative desktop software built on top of windows os it nuked many companies to take a lead that everyone thought was unassailable. And keeping up with the fine tradition of technology surprises here we are, or as it seems we are in for a change that none of us thought would be possible. Microsoft is facing a clear challenge that can see it going extinct or at least pushed over to the sidewalk - and it can do nothing as yet to beat it. Using a few easily available migration tools you can move from your existing MS Exchange + MS Office driven team ( You needed to pay approx. a avg. of 400 - 500 USD per station) to a meager under ( 30 USD a user per year). The appliance cost is easily offset since it will be bundled with its own hardware.

With 67% of search queries going to Google and another 20% to yahoo, what Microsoft will be left with is its flagship Windows platform - With browser becoming a place to access all required applications this too seems to be headed for further complications. Though home users may take a long time to open up to other options enterprises can easily opt for a switch. A business with 100000 users can save on costs ( from 500 * 100000 USD to 30 * 100000 USD) for its team collaboration needs. Now thats a massive gap any CEO / COO will open up to. On top of it will be massive number of 3rd party enterprise apps built with Google App engine that can help run any enterprise smoothly and avail the ease of deployment features. On top of it an option to use Google App free for the standard version if you wish a model most 3rd party app providers are sure to follow.

How easy it is a switch over? Plenty of case studies are popping up every now and than. Try running this search .

What can it do the market - is open to a wide range of speculations and here is a my version.

It can drive Microsoft to its pits of extinction

With 60% of its revenues coming from Windows + Office + MS Exchange its profits are bound to go downhill. Also with Search advertising money totally in Google's yards for a long time to come its a big question where Microsoft will fund itself from.

How do I run my team and business -

i. Few Windows XP workstations on a workgroup
ii. Linux machines for server app deployment + MS SQL
iii. Google App for all my collaboration needs bound to ensarm.com which provides me easy co branding options. Though we still use MS word we are definitely on our way to use Google docs in short span as it matures.
iv. Eclipse and other free tools for most of development efforts in addition to Visual studio for small efforts like Outlook plugins.

Looking back at it the only thing that I need a replacement in future is Windows XP and a C# compiler. Being a development business I don't see this as a major hurdle to move on.

Related links -

Techcrunh - Google - Salesforce tie up

Google Enterprise launches Its Own App Marketplace

On Read Write Web

What do you think? Do post your comments.

Silent progress

chetan@ensarm.com — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:02:00 +0000

Two months have passed by since we opened up this blog and it has been an exciting journey all the way as if these two months never existed. Be it the laughs in the office, or the all the new technologies that we are digging around with or the tools that we have been evaluating or those few super fun ideas that we have been messing around with, its been an wonderful and fulfilling time. Quantifying what have we accomplished in these two months is a task as I figured, since a lot of the results have been intangible as it seems.

In short

i. We have managed to build a code base using GWT and java worth about a few thousand lines. Not bad :). I hope folks at our client end are able to appreciate it too.

ii. We built SawOutlook V0.1 in its beta (more information at http://www.sawoutlook.com) using C# with Outlook and Google Contacts API. Though some kinks are yet to be sorted out it does cool job when it comes to what it is supposed to be doing i.e. Synchronizing Outlook Contacts with your Google account. Currently supported only for Outlook 2003.

iii. We also played with SubVersion and started using our own copy effectively with both Eclipse and Visual Studio and inturn have made some concrete progress in using various tools and processes to fine tune our development process. Eclipse rocks while Visual Studio *****.

iv. A lot of XML script coding has passed under the bridge during these two months and has enriched our understanding of XML, XPath and various tools that can use it.

v. We researched number of various Web 2.0 platforms including Amazon EC2, S3, suite of Google API's among others.

vi. We also mastered at least the documented API's of MS Outlook 2003. I can't thank my friends in Italy enough to initiate me on this.

A long and exciting journey awaits us as we make progress into the world of GWT/AJAX, Hibernate/SQL, Google/Amazon/Facebook/Yahoo/Microsoft web API's along with MS Outlook and application interfaces.

Long live OOPS, REST, AJAX, SVN, VS, Eclipse, XML, SawOutlook... I am horrified thinking we are going to run out of not only domain names but also syllables and words to name our next products. On the other hand never mind if we do since soon we will have softwares to interpret graphic sign languages :)

You may look forward to our various tool evaluation reports and other product releases in next few weeks to come. As they happen we will update you through this blog.

Our new office photos to add on to the introduction

chetan@ensarm.com — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:55:00 +0000

Hurray...

Finally after a month long excruciating effort bearing all that foul smell and pollution of carpentry, painting, veneer polish and so on we are ready with our first formal office space. For a long time we operated in sort of a extremely casual and residential work atmosphere.

Thus a bright new change has arrived and we as a business have made our first move at exploring larger and broader terrains of technology and business.

Alongside I would like to thank our carpentry team lead by Atmaram, painting team lead by Vishal, electricians lead by Guptaji, plumber Raju and finally for bearing with my own design skills for the space. Here are a few photos to look at and comment on...

And the journey begins...

chetan@ensarm.com — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Welcome to ensarm Solutions blog.

This is the first entry thus a short introduction is due.

We at ensarm solutions are focussed on small scale yet critical software application development, support and maintenance as required by external clients. We are located at Pune, India and driven by a well coordinated team of individuals.

This blog is intended to publish articles about news, products, services etc. about us by members of our team. Do keep an eye on us incase you have any connection with the global IT scene.

Cheers,
Deba