Notepad

Timeline

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Thu, 31 May 2012 13:26:00 +0000

This is pretty awesome. If you have not upgraded to timeline and share the fear of being upgraded without your permission, watch this video. You share the same symptoms with this people, suggestion: instead of timeline get reallife. Enjoy!

Canon 60D Video Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

This is one of the best videos I've ever seen presenting Canon 60D features in an interactive mode. I did learn a lot from it, you will too.

Sequence generation in JPA

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:42:00 +0000

@Entity
@Table(name = "Facility")
public class FacilityEntity implements Serializable{

private static final long serialVersionUID = -5193920209461702399L;

@Id
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator = "SEQ_FACILITY_ID")
@SequenceGenerator(name = "SEQ_FACILITY_ID", sequenceName="SEQ_FACILITY_ID")
@Column(name="facilityid")
private Long facilityId;
..

}

It took me some time to figure this out, you have to have sequenceName in your SequenceGenrator annotation. It might work without it, and might as well give you sequence does not exit problem. The later case in which it is hard to trace what happened.

To make sure you have enough privileges on your sequence in oracle, you can test getting next generated value by using the following command in oracle:

SQL> connect shahin/shahin
Connected.
SQL> select shahin.seq_facility_id.nextval from dual;

NEXTVAL
----------
1

if it doesn't show the next available value in the system, you need to login using the sysdba credentials and grant access to that sequence for that user. As follow:

SQL> connect / as sysdba
Connected.
SQL> grant select any sequence to shahin;

Grant succeeded.

Hudson - Continuous Integration

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:46:00 +0000

People (developers) pricier
Computers Cheaper
Why not use more computers than people?

Hudson in many companies used (not in Google?)

community release every week

detects changes
builds
record results
send notifications

cron - before hudson (+some customization using perl)
can send emails only not anymore

hudson - aggregate results, from different platform, different JVMs and so on (great feature)

hudson has plugins -[]-> findBug plugin

keep track of changes

capable of hosting more than one project using in one hudson

JNLP Launch for slaves who can not see master

hudson can install JDK for you! Different versions!

hudson kills processes used for making the builds and won't let them live longer than needed.

hudson on EC2 (Cloud) (best on Amazon)

3 / 4 working full-time on hudson core

VM arguments

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:47:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered where that value came from in a Java program? One place to look for is the VM arguments. They are set in the system and not when you are writing your code.

A code like this will give you some good understanding of VM arguments.

import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory;
import java.lang.management.RuntimeMXBean;

RuntimeMXBean RuntimemxBean = ManagementFactory.getRuntimeMXBean();
List arguments = RuntimemxBean.getInputArguments();
Iterator iterator = arguments.iterator();
System.out.println("VM arguments");
int i=0;
for(;iterator.hasNext();)
{
System.out.println(iterator.next().toString());
}
System.out.println("Number of VM arguments :"+i);

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1490869/how-to-get-vm-arguments-from-inside-of-java-application

Ultimate guide to online social privacy

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:29:00 +0000

With emerge of G+, social life on the web has come to a new era. An era, that you can not ignore it. There are lots of advantages in it. A simple sample is a search result, Google will return results that your circles suggest you, and if you are working on testNG as a newbie, you always would appreciate its creators (Cédric Beust @ http://beust.com/weblog/ & https://plus.google.com/u/0/108840253750748459271/posts) +1 on testNG links. On the other hand, there is always concerns privacy issues. I am going to suggest some steps in order to protect your online social privacy as much as possible. These steps make your life more private to third parties and not the social network (e.g. Google+, twitter or Facebook) you are using. Let me make it more clear by making an example, let's say you comment on an image in Facebook, after a while you decide that you don't want everyone know that you care about that specific photo and delete that comment. However, as all we know this would be a logical delete in Facebook data center, they are just marking your comment as deleted and won't ever showing that to you or anyone else, but they keep that in their data center to make sure they know as much about you as possible. If you try this on Google+, it would be even more transparent, comment on a photo, then delete it, after deletion you would still get notifications on that photo.

These are my ultimate rule to online privacy:

Twitter:

Do not retweet, twitter treat retweet differntly than regular tweets generated by you. Try copying pasting it and give author credit by using @ sing and his/her id
After a while, use tweeterwhipe on your account, http://twitwipe.com/login.php this is the best I have found, you will give it access to your tweets, based on your number of tweets, it will delete all tweets, it might take a while if you have lots of tweets
I really like twitter for being so open, you can delete all your tweets (you can not do that in your Facebook, even manually)

Facebook:

Use like as less as possible specially on webpages outside Facebook. If you have to use Like and nothing else on the world make you happier than hitting Like button, do it. What I suggest is to have a Trace folder/tag in your favorite bookmark and bookmark that page.
Do visit your wall often (e.g. once a week), your wall shows all your interactions on Facebook, like any comments you've made recently. Go over old comments of yours and do delete them, do delete tags of yourself in photos as well (or you can set photos of you to be only available to yourself and no one else, your choice. I selected the later one, I do like to have access to all my photos on Facebook)
Do visit the Trace folder/tag in your bookmark and unLike the pages, photos, groups that you've liked.

Google+:

Google+ is somehow the same as Facebook, it is more transparent in terms of privacy (at least in my view) but still there is not API announced for it yet. So you can not expect to have whipe all your activities on G+ using some tools like twitwipe. You have to do that manually.
There is not wall in G+, you have to visit your notifications page (https://plus.google.com/u/0/notifications/all) and post page (e.g. https://plus.google.com/101413016003587078317/posts this is my G+) to be able to see all your transactions with G+. You can delete your posts, your comments, your +1s.

Remember, it is nice to comment on friend's engagement photo, congradulate him/her on his/her best day of his/her life. But there is no point to leaving it there, if he replied back to you and thanked you on that. It means that he received your message. Keeping your comment there is like saving your voice-mails for eternity. I am sure there wouldn't be any use for you, is it? So it is up to you to delete that.

Access EJB via HTTP in JBoss AS

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:50:00 +0000

If you are trying to acccess EJB through HTTP, you need to use org.jboss.naming.HttpNamingContextFactory for your context factory. However, there is only one small twitch in using that. You need to specify credentials accessing that invoker. This is what you need to add:

env.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, "admin");
env.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, "admin");

This is complete code:

Hashtable env = new Hashtable();
env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,"org.jboss.naming.HttpNamingContextFactory");
env.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, "http://localhost:8080/invoker/JNDIFactory");
env.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces");
env.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, "admin");
env.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, "admin");
Context ctx = new InitialContext(env);
ejbTestRemote obj = (ejbTestRemote) ctx.lookup("ejbTest/remote");

This is how it looks like if you are using NamingContextFactory:

Hashtable env = new Hashtable();
env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,"org.jboss.naming.NamingContextFactory");
env.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, "localhost:1099");
env.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.naming.client");
Context ctx = new InitialContext(env);
ejbTestRemote obj = (ejbTestRemote) ctx.lookup("ejbTest/remote");

ENC in JNDI JBoss

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:39:00 +0000

The application component environment is referred to as the ENC, the enterprise naming context. It is the responsibility of the application component container to make an ENC available to the container components in the form of JNDI Context.

// Obtain the application component's ENC
Context iniCtx = new InitialContext();
Context compEnv = (Context) iniCtx.lookup("java:comp/env");

http://docs.jboss.org/jbossas/admindevel326/html/ch3.chapter.html

Lytro, living pictures from a light field camera

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Lytro, will be a revolution in photography, no doubt about that. There were so many revolutions in this industry, from film photography with negatives to digital photography to the small cameras you can have it wherever you are carrying your phone with you. I don't want to write a review about Lytro or persuade anyone to buy it. I am going to list my concerns about it. To my opinion, Lytro is nice for taking pictures and viewing them online, or in its small LCD it has. You can't find any discussion about if you can import the image to a jpg file or not. If not, you are stuck with the lpf file and you have to only view your images in that. You can not have images on your cell phone, photo frame or any other device. I believe there will be a conversion tool available (if not already in the software included). Other concerns of mine are the quality of the images imported from the lpf file.

My other concern is how much noise is going to be there? Is it even comparable to the most amateurish DSLRs in terms of quality in pictures taken? It is half price of some DSLRs. With a DSLR you can adjust everything, ISO, exposure, .... With Lytro you don't even have a flash. Is it good enough for you? If you don't mind the price and are too eager to be among the first people to try it, head to lytro.com and buy it. If you are looking for some point and shoot, you can find cameras for under 100$s. For 1000$s you can buy a really nice DSLR right now, top of the line. You can take HDR images with DSLRs, ... but you can only have a picture taken with Lytro that you can focus later. How many pictures you want to have that functionality? Imagine 350 images (i.e. it's lowest capacity version of Lytro) you have taken from a wedding, how long will it take to figure out the best focus points using its software? isn't it easier to take two or three pictures using a nice DSLR and do no after-taking-focusing anymore?

Javascript in Goole (IO 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Functional Language

No type testing (in JavaScript)

Reads top to bottom (no multi threading)

Everything an Object (Java Duh!)

Desugaring

Python & Google

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:59:00 +0000

Python an Object Oriented Language
-Script
-Code Compile (first time)
Python is battery included (don't have to download anything else)
Python main designer work at Google App Engine Team
Everything other than PC has python in it (PS3, Nintendo DS, Mac, Linux)

Two versions of Python
Python 2 (current)
Python 3 (coming soon)

HAR files and how to package them (in JBoss AS)

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:44:00 +0000

HAR file is short for Hibernate Archive File (in JBoss world). These types of files are being used to configure JBoss AS to utilize hibernate and access hibernate and be able to provide access to hibernate via itself to the client code. Configuration files can be archived in a .har file and deployed on the JBoss server. Minimum HAR file consists of the entity class heirarchy and its hibernate mapping files (hbm.xml) and an XML file resides under META-INF folder. The xml file which is needed to be ended with -hibernate.xml is for registering SessionFactory and how it handles sessions.

Let's say you are trying to automate your build process, and you are using Ant. How many HAR files you want to generate and in what structure ?

The best is always the easiest, you only need a single .har file which has all the necessary classes and hbm.xml files.

hibernate.har

|META-INF

-|hibernate-xml-hibernate.xml

|org

-|domain

--|package

---|Entity.class

---|Entity.hbm.xml

---|AnotherEntity.class

---|AnotherEntity.hbm.xml

You can not have more than one har file with the same SessionFactory name in them. That will result in an exception. Also it won't be a wise choice to have more than one SessionFactory.

hibernateAnotherEntity.har

|META-INF

-|hibernate-xml-hibernate.xml

|org

-|domain

--|package

---|AnotherEntity.class

---|AnotherEntity.hbm.xml

hibernateEntity.har

|META-INF

-|hibernate-xml-hibernate.xml

|org

-|domain

--|package

---|Entity.class

---|Entity.hbm.xml

You might want to create one har file with only the xml file under META-INF and have every class and its hbm.xml in another har file, this won't work either. Since the SessionFactory have not been bound to the classes. The bounding is done by being in the same file (or folder).

hibernate-xml.har

|META-INF

-|hibernate-xml-hibernate.xml

hibernate-hbm.har

|org

-|domain

--|package

---|Entity.class

---|Entity.hbm.xml

String ... VS String []

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:28:00 +0000

Both are the same, but the later one calling the method you need to create String [] first and then call while the first one you can call it without creating String [].

More @ stackoverflow

Google I/O 2011: How to Get Your Startup Idea Funded by Venture Capitalists

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:03:00 +0000

Some of the most interesting people in business, founder of Excite, have you ever used it ? Founder of FriendFeed and former employee of google and Seth, creator of scavenger. Watch it if you have time.

Google Hosting and its problems

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:03:00 +0000

It is easy to use Google Sites, Google apps and Google blogs (next generation name for blogger). But it is not that easy to remember if you have registered your blog with one of these services long time ago or is it someone else ? I am saying that for those who encountered this problem in hosting their sites/blogs with the custom domain name with google blogging.

It says

Another blog or Google Site is already using this address.

Good luck finding that blog or one page that you created long time ago and deactivate it. I couldn't find that, I wasn't even sure if it was me that created it, so I ended up deactivating my whole google apps for my domain, and I am still waiting for it to deactivate to see if it solves the problem. I know google for privacy issues won't let anyone know who is the one hosting your domain name on their sites. It is not fair to the real owner of the sites since even without confirmation that it is their own, you can ask google to host it on its google sites or blogger service. There should be some sort of approval for domains to add to your blog or sites. It might be as easy as first change the CNAME to ghs.google.com. and then use them with google sites, blogger service. That way one who has no control over a domain can't add that to his/her account and blocking you from using it in future.

There should be some simple way to resolve this issue, and should have been at least addressed in one of blogger's posts.

Hibernate / Jasper Report Integration

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 23:56:00 +0000

I am looking into Hibernate / Jasper report integration. It seems that Jasper Report has not initially been compatible with Hibernate but only from it later versions. This make life harder when it comes to the nature of Jasper Report, whom as a novice I believe treats everything as a row and should be inputed with rows of data to be able to generate the report.

In different sources, I have come across solution on how to integrate Hibernate with Jasper reports. These are what I have found.

In 1 author has mentioned that:

However, when the Hibernate query returns tuples of objects (each tuple as an array, each array as an element in the returned List), things get a little tricky. Jasper needs a way to reference each object in the array by a field name. This class is a good solution, but at this time you are required to pass an array of field names matching the results of the query.

And he/she is suggesting that it is a helper class needed to interpret those results and transfer them into usable data for Jasper.
John is also suggesting the same solution for using Hibernate with Jasper; You can find more tips on optimization of Hibernate / Jasper integration in his post as well.
This is also a really good start for Jasper, a really nice Hello world tutorial for Jasper Reports.

Resources:

@EJB Annotation in EJB Client

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:12:00 +0000

Problem:

App server is JBoss, I created the Jar file for the bean class and interface in the right directory. Now I created a simple client using EJB annotations, but I am getting a NullPointerException.

Solution:

EJB annotation is an incejction, it is supposed to be deployed on the app server and then executed in an Application Client Container (ACC) so that injection can occur. Starting the ACC requires an application server specific command.

The following wiki explains the usage of the ACC in JBoss (how to package, deploy and launch an ACC): How to use an application client in JBoss-5.

If you don't want to use an Application Client Container and instead just run the application client class through a java command, injection won't be possible and you'll have to perform a JNDI lookup.

And in both cases, you'll have to provide and use a remote business interface for your bean.

JNDI in POJO

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:30:00 +0000

If you have used JNDI lookup in your services, JSPs or servlets, it was as easy as looking it up using some code like this:

InitialContext ctx; ctx = new InitialContext(); MyBean hello = (MyBean) ctx.lookup("MyBean");

However, if you want to use this code in a POJO style, you won't be successful, looking up that JNDI. In the first cases, you were running your code within a container, thus you don't need any specific configuration and the container will take care of it. However, in a POJO style (i.e. using main() method), you need to have some specification detailed out. One need to set up server properties to get the InitialContext.

For JBoss, you need to have the following set and be passed to your InitialContext:

Hashtable env = new Hashtable(); env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContextFactory"); env.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, "localhost:1099"); env.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.naming.client"); Context ctx = new InitialContext(env);

You also can create a jndi.properties files with the following parameters, and place them in your class-path.

java.naming.factory.initial=org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=jnp://localhost:1099
java.naming.factory.url.pkgs=org.jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces

Resources:

http://community.jboss.org/wiki/AccessEJBsRemotely

UserTransaction vs. TransactionManager

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:54:00 +0000

The UserTransaction interface allows applications to control transaction boundaries.

The TransactionManager interface allows the application server to control transaction boundaries on behalf of the application being managed.

XADatasource in JBossAS & Hibernate

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:52:00 +0000

If you have ever wondered how you can use an XA Datasource in your JBoss AS, this is the answer. First you need to define the XA Datasource in your JBossAS, it is as easy as creating an XML file like this:

XAOracleDS true false oracle.jdbc.xa.client.OracleXADataSource jdbc:oracle:thin:@monkeymachine:1521:jboss jboss password org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.vendor.OracleExceptionSorter jboss:service=TransactionManager

Then you need to copy this file to your default (or another profile in your JBossAS) deploy folder, tada! you have registered a JNDI registry for the XA Data-source of yours. Now the question is how to use it with Hibernate. Hibernate configuration files are usually something like:

oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver rms_owner jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:HBTTST rms_owner org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect

in this hibernate file as you can see, all the variables required to connect to database are specified. However, now that you have created the Datasource you just need to point hibernate configuration file to the new Datasource file, something like:

org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect java:XAOracleDS

now you should be able to use Hibernate and it should be able to connect to your database flawlessly.

Please note that the connection datasource name in hibernate file is java:XAOracleDS and not XAOracleDS.

Google I/O 2011 - Talks

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 18 May 2011 18:31:00 +0000

Google I/O 2011: The Secrets of Google Pac-Man: A Game Show
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttavBa4giPc?rel=0&w=560&h=349]

Google IO 2011 - Countdown Music & Keynotes - Days one & two

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:42:00 +0000

Google IO Countdown Music

Google Keynote Day 1

Google Keynote Day 2

Hibernate First Steps

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:58:00 +0000

For adding a new object (to database) the code below suffice (you still need to define xml files / JPA annotation still for hibernate configuration):

Configuration conf = new Configuration().configure(file);
SessionFactory sessionFactory = conf.buildSessionFactory();
session =sessionFactory.openSession();
//Create new instance of Contact and set values in it by reading them from form object

Transaction tx;
tx = session.beginTransaction();

System.out.println("Inserting Record");
contact contact = new contact();
contact.setId(6);
contact.setFirstName("firstt");
contact.setLastName("lfirstt");
session.save(contact);

System.out.println("Done");

tx.commit();

This is not the whole code, you need to take into consideration the flush and close of the session.
For updating or deleting, one should know the uniqeIdentifier, if not you can use SQL query to get that (not described here how).
When you have that identifier, you just need to have the following code:

Long identifier = (long) 2;
contact contact1 = (contact) session.load(contact.class, identifier);
System.out.println(contact1.getEmail());

Persistence in jBPM

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:12:00 +0000

Trying to persist a jBPM into a database ? and you are searching the internet for it ? that's not going to get you the best result. You might get to this page: http://docs.jboss.org/jbpm/v3/userguide/persistence.html where it says you need to use the jPBMContext but what you need to know is that you don't need to do anything. jBPM if set up correctly, it persists automatically into database. You only need to change (or use) jPBMContext where you want to change the default behavior of the system.

Making external monitor the primary monitor in Linux

noreply@blogger.com (!) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:51:00 +0000

Making some monitor, a primary monitor is a matter of having the panels on that monitor. No one wants to work on one monitor that has panels of its machine on the other one. I have tried this on Red Hat Enterprise 6.

Here's a step-by-step way of moving a panel to another screen:

Right-click the panel you wish to move and select "Properties".
Uncheck the "Expand" option under the "General" tab.
Grab one of the edges of the panel by clicking on the left or right end (top or bottom end for vertical panels).
Drag the bar to the desired screen and position.
Check the "Expand" option in the "Panel Properties" window and click "Close".