J2EE, portal, SOA, etc.

MVC or application portlets (JSR 168/286, Struts, JSF, Springs, etc)

2008-03-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

This category of portal integration pattern is when portlets are developed in-house as full fledged applications. This could be from simple to complex ranging from 1 view to multiple views. Portlet developer implements all the tiers of standard MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern. Code can be written using standard JSP, JSTL, Java as well as several popular frameworks like Struts, JSF, Spring, etc but make sure whatever framework you choose is supported/integrated with portal product that you are using.

When developing portlets make sure to implement using standard portlet API JSR 168. The newer portlet 2.0 standard JSR 286 has also been improved but may have limited support by vendors. It is best to avoid using propritory portlet framework like IBM portlet API which is now deprecated with IBM Portal 6x.

Web service client/SOA/BPEL portlets - Portal Design Pattern

2008-03-16T19:44:00.001-07:00

These comes in several flavors.

Lets say you have a web service that you want to expose on the portal. You can than create a web service client portlet - lot of IDEs may let you drop the service WSDL and auto-general all the code letting you place the input to the service as HTML UI elements as well as custom layed output. It will auto-generate the html code and all the backend plumbing code. Just package as the war file and deploy. An example of this can be "Package Tracking Portlet" which simply takes a tracking number and returns the results in the portlet.

A variation of the above is when you just want to display the results and there is no input which is based on users profile that is passed to the service - this can be custom coded or auto-configured depending on the sophistication of the IDE. In custom code you would have to do quite a bit of tweaking where you have to make the results page as the home page of the portlet and behind the scenes submit the 1st/input page to the service.

SOA portlets are basically giving UI interface via portal to your SOA solutions. The portlet can be calling one service that choreographs multiple services or you can have a portlet that calls multiple services.

BPEL portlets are the ones generated as implementation of human task in a business process flow.

Blogged with Flock

JSR 286 Approved

2008-03-15T12:57:00.001-07:00

Great news for portal developers and vendors alike :)

JSR 286 Approved

via JSR 168 JSR 286 Portlets & Enterprise Portal by Punit Pandey on 3/7/08

You would be happy to know that the JSR 286 is approved and the final version should be available soon. By the time, you can have a look at final draft here. I am sure JSR286 will prove a big leap forward in success of Java Portals. I congratulate spec lead Stefan Hepper and all expert group members for the efforts and hard work.

Iframe portlets - portal design pattern

2008-03-02T20:01:00.001-08:00

Iframe portlets can be used to expose existing internal web applications and even external sites - as a matter of fact any web site as a portlet. Below are high level steps:

Create a basic portlet using the portlet IDE that comes with your portal, like RAD (rational application developer) for IBM portal.
In its most simple format there is just enough code to use the html iframe tag.
This tag takes url as one of the parameter which is where you specify the site url.
Some additional parameter that can be used are height/width of the iframe - so if you have more than one portlet on the page than use these to adjust accordingly.
To add more - you could use the out of the box help/edit feature of the portlet and even let the user specify the url of the site.

This approach lets you integrate existing applications very easily with your portal and is probably used a lot.

Blogged with Flock

Portal Integration Patterns

2008-03-02T19:41:00.001-08:00

There are several portal integration patterns that I would like to talk about over several blog posts. This is to expose applications/functionalities that people can use on portal. Some of them are:

Iframe portlets
Web service client/SOA/BPEL portlets
MVC or application portlets (JSR 168/286, Struts, JSF, Springs, etc)
Launch applications via portal
WSRP (Web Services Remote Portlet)
Fun/productive/vendor portlets
Web Clipper portlets

Blogged with Flock

Gartner Top 10 for 2008

2008-03-01T08:59:00.001-08:00

I am very interested in social networking and enabling apps on mobile devices in an enterprise setting from this top 2008 list from gartner http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/100907-10-strategic-technologies-gartner.html?page=3

Blogged with Flock

integrated with flock ;

2008-02-23T17:37:00.001-08:00

Trying out the new social browser flock and so far looks great

Blogged with Flock

Enterprise tips 1

2007-11-25T19:35:00.001-08:00

Two interesting points -

1. Consumers at home are enterprise users from 9 to 5.

2. IT should become from enabler of business apps to enabler of
business innovation.

$ Rob Levy - CTO BEA

Portlet & J2EE

2007-11-03T10:46:00.001-07:00

JSR286 is going to be part of J2EE 5.

Testing for DST change in 2007

2007-03-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

I believe testing at below different points in time should suffice.

1. When the daylight patches are applied by the sys admins, the application teams should go in and test from basic to full functionality. But if time pressed below testing should do:
a. Application home page comes up fine
b. Test one or two critical time related functionality (date formatting, time related calculations, etc).
2. New rule Spring DST time, March 11th: Early morning (if possible 2:01am) testing.
3. Old rule Spring DST time, April 1st. Early morning (if possible 2:01am) testing. (if the 2nd one above works than this is more of a sanity check).
4. New rule Fall DST time, November 4th: Early morning (if possible 2:01am) testing.
5. Old rule Fall DST time, October 28th. Early morning (if possible 2:01am) testing. (if the 4th one above works than this is more of a sanity check).

SOAs don't enable mashups?

2007-02-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

If you have a SOA infrastructure than you have soap xml messages over http or may be mq messages. So you can use these to orchestrate/choreograph sercices but this is composing at the system/backend integration level. Mashup is more of an integration at the UI level. It expects the services to be available as javascripts. Think JSON/REST. So what do you have to do with those SOA services? For the ones that make sense to be available to do mashups currently you would have to expose them as javascript and having nothing to do with SOA related services. So what do you think?

Fimoculous.com - misc - Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading

2006-12-09T10:38:00.000-08:00

Fimoculous.com - misc - Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading

I went ahead and subscribed to #1

IBM - IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 Tuning Guide

2006-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

IBM - IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 Tuning Guide

New features in SharePoint 2007

2006-11-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

I have been using SharePoint for sometime and it's really cool. The newer version promises to be better. I am hoping to be able to try it out as soon as we upgrade.

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/294609.htm

Trixie -- IE's version of Firefox's greasemonkey

2006-10-14T17:50:00.000-07:00

Trixie

Dive Into Greasemonkey

2006-10-14T17:47:00.000-07:00

Found this excellent introduction to Greasemonkey.

Table of contents [Dive Into Greasemonkey]

Free book on "1001 best things said about work (and the workplace)"

2006-10-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

I have read only few quotes but already fell in love.

Click here

Ajax and REST, Part 1

2006-10-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ajax and REST, Part 1

Best Practices for Applying AJAX to JSR 168 Portlets

2006-09-30T21:35:00.000-07:00

Best Practices for Applying AJAX to JSR 168 Portlets

GigaOM » FON selling $5 Wireless Router

2006-09-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

I am blown away by this social sharing of WIFI connection company FON.com

GigaOM » FON selling $5 Wireless Router

Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory.

2006-09-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

Feeling hard to keep up with hot web 2.0 sites. Your one stop shop is below web site :)

Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory.

Portal study by Aberdeen Group

2006-09-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

I have been thingking about trying out the JBOSS portal sometime and glad to find out that it is the #1 open source portal as per the below report. Another big surprise for me is that SAP & Oracle are ahead of IBM in responsiveness to customer requests. But surprisingly the report failed to mention the #1 portal amongst high profile vendors.

report

10 Avoidable IT Interview Flubs

2006-09-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Lot of these points make sense. Happy interviewing :)

10 Avoidable IT Interview Flubs

Gartner's 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle Highlights Key Technology Themes

2006-09-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

So you thought that there is only Ajax enabled web 2.0 to figure out. Well that is just one of the many emerging technologies as per gartner and I feel it makes sense. Happy surfing and learning :)

Gartner's 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle Highlights Key Technology Themes

Carson Workshops Summit - The Future of Web Apps

2006-09-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Looks like an interesting conference for what is this thing called "web 2.0" but fees of $295 is a bit high for me :(

Carson Workshops Summit - The Future of Web Apps

Google Research Publication: BigTable

2006-09-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

Google Research Publication: BigTable

Roles: Composable Units of Object Behavior

2006-08-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

Roles: Composable Units of Object Behavior: "A significant new part of Perl 6’s object model and type system is the addition of roles. Part of their origin is an implementation in Smalltalk (there called traits). They also solve some systemic problems of other OO systems. Why are they useful and how do they work? What is a Role? A role is a named collection of behavior — a set of methods identified by a unique name. This resembles a class or a type, in that referring to the role refers to the combined set of behaviors, but it is more general than a class and more concrete than a type. Put another way, a role is an assertion about a set of capabilities. For example, a Doglike role identifies the important behavior that any doglike entity will possess: perhaps a tail attribute and the methods wag() and bark(). Even only this much is a great advantage to using roles. Presuming you have a method that needs something Doglike, you can ask “Does the class or object I receive behave in a"

Enterprise build system

2006-08-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

I am involved in providing an enterprise build system at my workplace. We are using maven/cvs. We have something that works but with lot of room to improve. Below article lists some features that are interesting on this topic.

:: zutubi :: articles :: The Road To Build Enlightenment
:: zutubi :: articles :: The Road To Build Enlightenment

Top 5 business maxims that need to go - Part II

2006-08-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am very moved by these 5 business ideas that must go as I must admit that I did believe in at least 2 of them so much....

Top 5 business maxims that need to go - Part II

Software by Rob : Personality Traits of the Best Software Developers

2006-08-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it!!!

Software by Rob : Personality Traits of the Best Software Developers

Airfare Predictions, Find Cheap Airline Tickets - Farecast

2006-08-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

Interesting website that can be used to track air fares.

Airfare Predictions, Find Cheap Airline Tickets - Farecast

Java #3

2006-08-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

Signature of main()

The signature of main method in java is as shown below:

public void static main(String [] args)

[copied from google operating system] Google's Master Plan

2006-08-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

Google's Master Plan: "Maybe we should stop trying to guess the next Google services. What's next for Google is right here on a big whiteboard from their GooglePlex. The photo was taken last year by Niall Kennedy and includes a small part from their master plan. As you can see many projects that don't have a tick in the whiteboard have been launched.A bigger and more comprehensive image is available here, but it's not very clear.As you can see, there are a lot of verticals and new domains: travel, health, TV, games, reviews, marketplace, dating, real estate, jobs, mortgage, pets, music and many ambitious projects like redesigning TCP/IP, and HTTP and creating a new generation of web based on BitTorrent.Other pieces from the puzzle (half jokes, half serious projects): "

JBoss and Liferay provide open portals to SOA | InfoWorld | Review | 2006-05-05 | By Mike Heck

2006-08-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

JBoss and Liferay provide open portals to SOA | InfoWorld | Review | 2006-05-05 | By Mike Heck

My first podcast

2006-08-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

Wow!! this is cool... enjoy my first podcast.

java101_vol1.mp3

[copied from IBM blog] A new company enters the enterprise mashup space

2006-08-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

A new company enters the enterprise mashup space: "Dion Hinchcliffe asserts in this post that enterprise mashups are becoming increasingly important to IT organizations and the business they support. However tools to enable the creation of enterprise mashups are few and far between. In fact, while he notes 'Not sure about any of this? IBM has clearly identified mashups as a key enterprise trend as well', he only cites one tool that meets all his criteria: 'However, I've recently come across one product that clearly shows almost the full potential of enterprise mashups in a single package, despite a few rough edges. Datamashups.comI recently came across Applibase's impressive DataMashups.com site, and more than any other product I've seen so far, it clearly demonstrates the possibilities and potential of enterprise mashups guided by end-users and shared amongst co-workers. The site has an excellent service preview that lets you quickly start assembling mashups visually, right online, using a rich palette of pre-existing widgets, feeds, data from local and remote SQL database"

[originally at chiefhappinessofficer] Get lucky at work - be positive

2006-08-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Get lucky at work - be positive: "My driving force in business has always been enthusiasm. I’m easily amazed and get curious and fired up about many different things. In fact, I refuse to work on anything that does not grab me in that way. I remember one meeting I had with a woman who was… let’s say slightly less positive. At one point in the meeting, she said “You’re very positive, arent you?” I had to agree, that that was indeed so. It was only after the meeting that I realized that she’d meant it as criticism :o) Positivity has been getting a bad rap at work. If you’re too positive you can be accused of being pollyannaish, uncritical, unrealistic, silly, etc… “Well,” some people say, “it’s all very good for you to be so optimistic but some of us have to work in the real world.” And while there are many great reasons to be more positive at work, there’s one I’d like to mention specifically: Being positive at w"

[originally at theserverside.com] Article: Binding XML to Java

2006-08-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

Article: Binding XML to Java: "Manipulating XML data easily and efficiently in Java remains a challenge. In this article, Ed Merks and Elena Litani explore, through the use of an example, how the Eclipse Modeling Framework solves the XML binding problem and how it compares to alternatives. "

[from original article at theserverside.com] Ease the integration of Ajax and Java EE

2006-08-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ease the integration of Ajax and Java EE: "Patrick Gan has written an article for IBM-Developerworks that provides an overview of how Ajax can be integrated into a Java EE Web application. Part of the integration is trying to reconcile the differences in the communication models used by Java EE and Ajax. To help reduce complexity, Patrick points to Apache Shale and DWR as showing promise. "

[from original blog by bobby wolf] Effective SOA Governance

2006-08-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

Effective SOA Governance: "So how do you do SOA governance? IBM has a new whitepaper available, 'Effective SOA Governance.' It's authored by a couple of IBM's leading experts on the topic. You need a free dW account to download it. If you'd like to learn more about what governance is in the first place, check out Introduction to SOA governance and Service Governance."

[copied from martin fowlers blog] Writing Software Patterns

2006-08-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

Writing Software Patterns: "Updated web site: A while ago I started to put together a little article to describe why I write patterns and pass on my opinions to others about what makes good patterns. I didn't finish it at the time, but recently I dusted it off and finally finished it."

[blogged from google reader] Open Service Oriented Architecture

2006-07-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

Open Service Oriented Architecture: "Vendors have established an organization to develop a standard programming model for SOA. The Open Service Oriented Architecture (OSOA) collaboration is a group of 15 vendors who are working together to develop a standard programming model for SOA. IBM is one of the founding members. Nine vendors who have just joined include Sun Microsystems, Tibco, and Red Hat. The SOA programming model being developed is based on service component architecture (SCA) and service data objects (SDO) specifications, which were created by IBM (SDO was co-created with BEA) but are now being developed by this group of vendors. Thus far, the only products that implement the SCA spec (which includes the SDO spec) are from IBM: WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus. Apache Tuscany will be (is?) an open-source implementation of the specs. I've talked about SCA and SDO previously: Service Component Architecture (SCA) Industry Leaders Endorse SCA Spec David Chappell: Why Service Component Architecture Is Big News Apache Tuscany For more information "

AJAX Developer Resource Center

2006-07-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

Great source of AJAX info from Sun. Your first stop for AJAX related material. Obligatory quote: "Get ahead of the curve and start developing AJAX applications today. This is your source for Java tools, technologies and expert advice."

read more | digg story

Johnson on Feeds

2006-07-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

Johnson on Feeds: " Dave Johnson gave a talk this morning at a local XML interest group. His slides (PDF) are the single best introduction and overview I’ve ever seen about feeds and syndication and RSS and Atom and all that stuff."

Out-Of-Container Testing When Using JNDI Lookups

2006-07-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Out-Of-Container Testing When Using JNDI Lookups: "Many applications, particularly J2EE applications, use JNDI to look up their resources. While this is a convenient and useful service, it makes components that depend on the lookups harder to test outside of a running application server. There are a couple of strategies that can be applied to still acheive the much desired goal of testing these components outside of a running server."

Copied this from google blog - Embed MP3 Files Into Your Website

2006-07-22T17:08:00.000-07:00

Embed MP3 Files Into Your Website: "You have an MP3 file (a podcast, a song of your band, a lecture) and you want to share it with the visitors of your site. You can just put a link to the MP3 and let people download it or you can include it as an object and let the browser play it with a plug-in like QuickTime (and most of the times also crash the browser). Most people want to preview the audio and not wait until it downloads completely. You can play a partial MP3 file in audio player, but many people aren't aware of that.But there's another away: a Flash player that allows you to pause and rewind the MP3. It's like an audio version of Google Video or YouTube, with the difference that the file is hosted on your server (or on another server). While there are many solutions based on Flash, this is the one I like the most. It's a modified version of Odeo player, that's used to play podcasts on odeo.com:You just have to replace [MP3 file address] with the actual address.Here you can see how it looks (in this audio, Marissa Mayer talk"

Copied from InsideLotus Blog - IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6 one stop shop for info

2006-07-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6 one stop shop for info: "IBM WebSphere Portal version 6.0 is just around the corner. It can be tough keeping up with all the press releases and content on the upcoming version. While I have a slew of Portal v6 bookmarks, I thought I would share my favorites and the ones I most point customers to.IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 Buzz pageIBM Workplace Web Content Management Version 6.0IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory Version 6.0Why Upgrade to IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0IBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0: The Face of SOAIBM WebSphere Portal Version 6.0 DemoTed"

The world is flat

2006-07-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

Here is the video link to Thomas Friedman's presentation to MIT audience about his book The World Is Flat. One of the best books I have read in a while and gave me a different perspective of the world - offshoring, web 2.0, terrorism, etc.

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/266/

Guide to Those Useless Windows XP Services

2006-07-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Cool link that I dugged and really should have come from microsoft for at least tech aware people. Nevertheless, now we have it :)

read more | digg story

Martin Fowler's agile approach to offshore development.

2006-07-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

An excellend article from software development methodology guru Martin Fowler on how to apply agile methodology to offshore development. Something worth noting for likes of Infosys, IBM, Accenture, et al.

read more | digg story

Artificial Intelligence Turns 50 Years Old

2006-07-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Computers can beat the world's best chess players, but we still can't get them to think like a 4-year-old. Artificial Intelligence has managed to exceed, and fall short of, our grandest expectations. A look back at what's been accomplished in 50 years and a look ahead at where the field is going.

read more | digg story

Tabblo - online photo story site

2006-07-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

Found out about Tabblo at http://www.tabblo.com/studio. They provide a way to share stories online using photos. You upload to the site and weave a story around your pictures. I liked it somewhat. Give it a spin.

Great tips for job seekers from Niniane Wang.

2006-07-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

Found the below great tips from Niniane Wang who is currently a tech lead at google.

Resume tips at http://ofb.net/~niniane/resume_howto.html

Interview tips at http://ofb.net/~niniane/interview_howto.html

Niniane Wang's own resume at http://ofb.net/~niniane/resume.html

Another great resume from a google developer is at http://www.ofb.net/~egnor/resume/

Niniane Wang's blog is at http://niniane.blogspot.com

java#2

2006-07-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

The class name should be the same as file name

So if your class name is CustomerOrder than the file name should be CustomerOrder.java. If not than you would get compile time error. Editors like eclipse/RAD flags this right away while you are coding.

java #1

2006-07-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

Java is platform independent which means you write code once and it can be run on any platform.

You compile your .java files into .class files or package .class files into .jar files using java compiler. Java complilers are platform dependent so you have compilers for windows, linux, etc platforms. The .class/.jar files are run on something called java runtime environment, JRE. These JREs are platform dependent again.

So the idea is that .class files are platform independent but java compilers and runtime environment are platform dependent. So as developers you do not have to worry about platform issues.

Week of 06-09-2006

2006-06-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

For my ongoing project to glue the missing pieces between ibm portal and documentum this week i was busy cleaning up my code mostly. There were code fragments that was not used and I took those out. Fixed most of the issues reported by checkstyle, findbugs, and pmd reports.

Another key feature was to parse the server side include files as well. The idea is take all relative links published by documentum to modify for portal to recognize those. We are using the wps:urlGeneration tag to do that. The issue was that include files were being ignored but that is fixed now.

Next week I am hoping to provide caching for parsed content files and navigation files.

Also, read up an article in DDJ on web 2.0 and the key thing that I got was that the new brave web world will be more contextualized and collaboration driven than ever before. Another interesting information was software engineering podcast on domain driven development. We seem to now have model driven developement and event driven development as new paradigms as well. Interesting and hope to have fun learning more on those.

Trying to get added to technorati

2006-06-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

More blogs about java101.

Week of 06-02-2006

2006-06-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

I am currently involved in the development of a portal project using IBM websphere portal. The project involves integration of portal and documentum based publishing. It is surprising that there is no direct integration between the two products, something like what BEA portal and documentum has. Here one system has no idea about the other so we are writing glue code that integrates the two. We are providing customization around personalization, navigation, and content rendering.

Project will continue for few more weeks and this week was focussed on integrating the navigation feature. Authors will be publishing the content and associating the navigation with taxonomy files (represented as xml files) and our glue code will take that content and render it withing a portal page. Navigation glue code is in a custom portal theme which paints the left nav. Now I will be focussing on the different scenarios how the navigation should behave. There are several requirements where the entire tree will be displayed or display just the same level nodes and so on. Each level is denoted in the taxonomy file and there can be n-levels.

Continuous integration thoughts

2006-06-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

I came across the continuos integration concept a while back and found the idea interesting. I have been developing j2ee applications for a while in teams of 1 to 15 people now and this seemed like an helpful process to deliver less buggy code in a well controlled environment. But I have looked at this concept at a very high level and hoping to dig a little deeper in future. What prompted me to blog was chance hit at Martin Flower's blog on the subject at : http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html.

One of the issues that we have been facing is how to do unit testing of components that go out to external systems like database and web services. And this article sheds some light on what possible steps can be taken : http://martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html

Need to start looking into this more seriously.

Why not integrate design patterns directly into java language?

2006-06-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

I have been doing java programming for over 5 years now and trying these days to understand the design patterns better especially the ones proposed by gang of four. The more I read these design patterns the more I feel that these patterns should have direct support in the java language (and for that matter any OO language). I mean think about this for a minute why not let the language evolve in the direction of best practises by building the same into it so that there is less and less scope for doing things wrong. I believe that if there are more than one way to do something and a particualr way is a design pattern or best practices than it should be directly built into the language as default and if someone wants to use some other way than he has to follow extra steps to do so. Today you have to follow extra steps to do the right thing.

I am hoping to post my thoughts on each pattern as I read more about it. Some initial thoughts are as follows. Take Observer design pattern, it is currently built into java which is good. The Singleton design pattern support is somewhat provided by java's static keyword but should be expanded so that it is not required to worry about doing those extra steps of making the constructor private and providing getInstance() method or front it by Factory pattern and so on.

test for tagworld widget

2006-06-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

some c# stuff

2006-05-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

I have been for sometime working on a .NET project where we are using c# to make web service calls and populate an excel sheet. I would be blogging my experience while working on this project as it relates to .net, c#, and vsto (excel mainly). I have mostly J2EE experience so this is a very interesing as well as challenging experience. I would also like to blog some cookie cutter code or just what I think is useful.

Some .net training notes

2006-05-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

Below are some notes that I took while attending .NET training which is useful.

Casting
there is hard cast and soft cast, examples below

int x = (int) obj; //hard cast, so if obj is not of type int there will be class cast exception
int x = obj as int; //soft cast, in this case if obj is not of type int than x will be null

Boxing C# has a feature called boxing and unboxing which is basically copying value types from stack
to object on heap and vice versa. An example is below:

int x = 3;
Object obj = x; //boxing
int y = (int) obj; //un-boxing.

Second more subtle example below:

Console.WriteLine(" {0} ", 3); //boxing

Boxing from performance perspective is not good so best to avoid. So for the above
examples change as below.

int x = 3;
Object obj = x.ToString();
int y = int.Parse((string)obj);

Console.WriteLine(" {0} ", 3.ToString());

Use command line utility, ildasm, to check generated MSIL code if boxing code is generated.

ildasm <name of dll>

WMI -- windows management and instrumentation, can be used for performance analysis.

Inheritane
keywords: constructor chaining, virtual chain of methods, sealed classes,
marker interfaces (interface with no methods)

use "is" in C# is same as "instanceof" in java

in c# it is possible to hide methods of implemented interfaces by using interface
name for method declaration. So to use it you have to cast object to the specific
interface.

ADO
DataSet -- reads and remembers -- composed of DataTables. DataTables composed of
DataRows and DataColumns

DataReader -- just reads

DataSet uses DataReader to get the data.

For very small amount of data use DataReader to get the data and store in some
collection object like arraylist, etc instead of using DataSet.

With DataReader you have to explicity open/close connection but with
DataSet since you are using DataAdapter it will open/close connection
automatically.

best practices -- http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnadonet/html/adonetbest.asp

DataSets are typed and un-typed. If you have xml xchema (or can create one) than
DataSets can be created out of this schema. typed are faster and compiler checked.
Also, you are using GUI to auto generate DataSet code.

DataTables and DataSets can keep track of changes (diffgram).

Use Transaction objects if rollback is needed.

Config file
App.config is default, do not chnage the name. This file can be added to projects. Works only
for .exe and not for .dll

Web Services
proxies stand between client code and web service.
.asmx files represent web service in .net world.
.net has something similar to java annotations called "attributes" (just declare above method definition).
you can type the location of .asmx file in browser which can be used for testing.
.asmx?wsdl will return the wsdl file
wsdl.exe /l:CS /o:c:\testproxy.cs <wsdl-url> //will generate client proxy code, another way is to use webreference from IDE.
for webrefernce there is an option to update web service
for webservice proxy you can set credential, timeout, proxy, etc.

VSTO
to run .xls without running dll run the .xls by pressing shift key

if a solution has only execute permission (and not full trust) than web service call will fail.

PIO code is under c:\windows\assembly folder, format of the file name is Microsoft.Office.Interop.xxx

+= is used for event registration called delegation

-= is used for de-registration

if += is called 3 times and -= is called once than the registration of event is still ther, you would
need to call -= 2 more times to actually un-register.

dlls get downloaded in "documents and settings"...."application data" directory.

AssemblyInfo.cs has version number, [assembly: AssemblyVersion(" 1.0.*")], which is used for creating
different versions of the dll. this version gets referenced in c:\windows\assembly\download folder

to combine multipe ranges can use "union"

RecordSet in un-managed code is equivalent to DataSet in .net, there are apis to copy from one to another.

To add a windows form to excel, add a form and than from officecodebehind create an instance of
form.

Also, since windows form is built into .net no need to worry about registering events like
onclick, etc but for excel you have to worry.

When need to pass data from form to OfficeCodeBehind, it is possible to pass OfficeCodeBehind
to form class or other way around. Second approach is preferred where form class provides public
api to access data which is than called by OfficeCodeBehind.

Events
Delegates holds references to callback methods

delegates can be called asynchronously.

difference between ABO and ABO.NET

2006-05-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

At a high level ABO.NET is an enhancement over ABO as it provides support for disconnected mode and is integrated with XML. Will make more enhancement to this blog as I learn more. One more note is that ABO.NET looks very similar to SDO (Service Data Object) in J2EE world.

JSF notes on event handling

2006-03-08T13:07:00.000-08:00

Three different kinds of listeners:

Phase listener -- listener is invoked as jsf goes through each of the 6 phases, you can register for a specific phase or all of them.
Action listener -- listener is invoked when an action like command button is clicked.
Vlaue change listener -- listener is invoked when an input component like textbox value is entered and form submitted

There is subtle difference between the use of action handlers and action listeners, handlers are meant for business rules, iterfacging with backend systems, and
navigational logic whereas listeners are meant to handle with UI elements only.

Action listeners are invoked before action handlers.

Value change and action listeners can be added as UI element attibutes as well as tags. It is better to add as tags.

Below are the execution of different phases for different scenarios:

value change listener --> 1 -- 2 -- 3 (listener called) -- (4 -- 5 -- 6)
value change listener with immediate --> 1 -- 2 (listener called) -- 3 -- (4 -- 5 -- 6)
action listener --> 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 (listener called) -- (6)
action listener with immediate --> 1 -- 2 (listener called) -- (6)

JSF General Notes

2006-03-08T12:48:00.000-08:00

Some notes from the core jsf servlets book.

value binding expressions, eg., "#{....}". property getter is invoked when the component is rendered and setter is invoked when when the user response is processed.
method binding expressions
JSF connects the view and model
each ui tag is associated with a tag handler. tag handlers collaborate with each other to build a component tree (not necessarily binary tree)
encoding is when the renderer of a component generated the output. eg., html output
decoding is when the html elements are processed by JSF container to do things like update component values, navigation, etc.
six life cycle steps: restore view, apply request values, process validations, update model values, invoke application, render response
action methods have 2 roles, first carry out the model updates and second tell the navigational handler where to go next
action method can return null to indicate that the same page should be redisplayed
all form controls (ui elements like textbox, etc) generated by JSF have names that conform to formName:componentName. if you do not specify id attributes, jsf framework creates automatically
DataTable : The body of h:dataTable tags can contain only h:column tags and all the other component tags are ignored.
DataTable: value attribute can be set to an array, List, ResultSet, javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.sql.Result, javax.faces.model.DataModel
DataTable: h:dataTable wraps objects in a model that extends the javax.faces.model.DataModel class which provides apis like getWrappedObject() and setWrappedObject() which can be used to add/remove table rows.
Conversion: this happens in the "apply request values" phase where the string values submitted as part of form is converted to appropriate objects.
Conversion:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content= "0; URL=index.faces"/>

Setting data members in a class

2006-02-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

How many ways are there to set data members of a class? One way is to have the class provide setter apis. Second way is that the constructor
of the class lets client pass the values as arguments.

Web Services Frameworks Notes

2005-12-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

These are notes from chapter on web services framework.

Web service framework comprises of standards, design patterns, other frameworks.

Service itself: This is divided into 2 categories, role and model. Role is basically the temporary role that the service assumes during the runtime. These are requestor, provider, passive and active intermediaries, ultimate requestor, ultimate provider, and member role in composite scenario. Model is how the service fits into overall enterprise architecture. In this respect a service can fall into these categories, business service, utility service, and controller service.

Service description: This is basically describing to the outside word what the service is or in other words service contract. There are several articats that provides this contract like, wsdl, schema, policy, and legal docuemtns. Providing just the wsdl is most popular. wsdl has two parts abstract and concrete. Abstract describes portTypes, operations, and messages. Concrete describes port, bindings, and service. wsdl however does not provide semantic information about the service. UDDI is based on similar concepts of abstract and concrete. Service entity is abstract and tModels are concrete entities.

Messages: These are autonomous and intelligent messages that can carry with them information like how to process, route, etc. Messages adhere to SOAP protocol and a message is a envelope which has a header and body. Header is extensible and various WS* specifications leverages this feature to provide their own specific entries.

cloudscape and derby

2005-12-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

Just found out that cloudscape was donated by IBM to Apache and there it
is being worked on as database project Derby. IBM continues to work on
Derby as well as release Cloudscape versions. Looks like Cloudscape has
more features that Derby. The latest Cloudscape release is 10.x and it
is written in Java. Probably a good idea to try in next J2EE project.

Notes on visitor design pattern

2005-11-14T19:56:00.000-08:00

The operations or the behavior of classes are implemented by concrete implementation of visitors.

Concrete visitors are implementation of visitor interface where overloaded "visit" methods are defined, one for each class that needs a visitor.

A class that supports visitor defined a method called "allowVisitor" with argument of visitor interface. The method calls the "visit" method passing "this" as argument.

The advantage of visitor pattern is that new functionality can be added without touching the existing classes but the disadvantage is that the concrete visitor probably needs to know each supportable classes in detail.

Secrets Of The Masters: Core Java Interview Questions @ JAVA DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL

2005-09-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

http://jdj.sys-con.com/read/48839.htm

Websphere Business Integration Modeler notes

2005-08-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

Notes from reading an article on WBI Modeler

Article is at: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0502_mitra1/0502_mitra1.html

High level steps for creating a business models are as below:

Creating a business modeling project.

Creating the business items.

Creating the process model (that involves identifying the individual tasks and defining their inputs and outputs).

Creating the process flow by connecting the tasks together (as sequential or parallel steps).

Notes from reading documentation on WBI 5.1.1 on infocenter

Models are organized into folders which are referred to as catalogs.

In the same project multiple data catalogs/resources/organization/report/process can be created and they can also be nested.

Both processes and tasks represent activities that are performed in a business. Processes are more complex than tasks, however, and can be represented as a sequence of activities that are linked by flows of control and data. This sequence as a whole is known as a process flow. By contrast, tasks are atomic activities that cannot be divided into smaller actions. For example, Payment Handling is a process made up of three tasks: Input Customer Information, Input Customer Order, and Obtain Product Availability

The difference between a merge and a join is that in merge as soon as an input is received it is sent as an output where as in join it waits till all the inputs are received.

A single process can have multiple start nodes.

A stop node marks the end of a process. Every process, subprocess, and loop must have at least one stop node. When a flow reaches a stop node while the process is running, the process immediately terminates, even if there are other currently executing flows within the process.

Tasks are the basic building blocks representing activities in a process model. Each task performs some function. Visually, a task represents the lowest level of work you can portray in a process.

There are two types of tasks: local (specific to the process) and global (reusable within a project). A local task is owned by a process and can only be used by elements within that process. The task exists only while the process exists. A global task is a top-level task that you create in the Project Tree within a process catalog. It can be used by multiple processes within the project.

notes on working with https

2005-07-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

how to create keystore

java keytool options

How to handle logging in portlets?

2005-07-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

There are several ways to go about this and one can choose the approach according to ones taste and organizational standards.

At high level below are some of the logging options.

1. Good old System.out but use this only during initial development phase. Plan on converting this to some logging framework as soon as possible. You can either do global replace all or use a free eclipse plugin, log4e, to convert to log4j statements.

2. Jakarta Log4j which seems to be the industry standard.

3. JDK 1.4 logging apis.

4. Simple Log from java.net

5. Websphere logging apis which is my preference.

There must be several more open source, vendor propritery, and in-house developed logging framework.

I will continue with this article with my experience on using log4j, system.out and websphere apis as soon as i collect my thoughts on this.

top 10 architecture books

2005-07-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

I had initially added this list based on an article in software development journal for my note. Since than based on a feedback I have extended the list. Clicking the link takes to amazon's web site.

Agile Software Development with SCRUM (Paperback)by Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle

Software Requirements, Second Edition (Paperback) by Karl E. Wiegers

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback) by Frederick P. Brooks

Software Architecture Design Patterns in Java (Hardcover) by Partha Kuchana

Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides

jsse tips

2005-05-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

1. To add public key to keystore from certificat file (*.pem, *.der, *.cer) is as below:
keytool -import -alias myalias -file certfile -keypass passwd -keystore storename -storepass passwd

2. To start a java client with debug info is:
java -Djavax.net.debug=ssl -Djavax.net.ssl.KeyStore=storename -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=storename javaclient

3. Use the below java code that works with point #2 above.

SSLSocketFactory factory = (SSLSocketFactory)SSLSocketFactory.getDefault();
SSLSocket socket = (SSLSocket) factory.createSocket("localhost", 443).

rest of the code is standard to get output stream and use buffered reader.

4. an alternate approach is at javaworld article

IBM portlet programming interview questions

2005-05-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between a servlet and a portlet?
Portlet is basically an extension of servlet but with some fundamental differences like a web page can consist of mulitple portlets but can have only single servlet, portlets cannot do browser redirect but servlet can.

What are the similarities between a servlet and a portlet?
Portlet is a an extension of servlet, can write html output, can forward but within the same portlet context, access to HTTP objects like session, request, response, along with similar Portlet objects like session, request, response.

What is WSRP?
Web Services Remote Portlet.

What are the different approaches for logging in portlet?
Websphere log apis, log4j, custom logging, jdk1.4 log apis and any logging framework should work just as well.

What are the different approaches for managing environment specific configuration?
Properties file, portlet attributes (configured via the config-param in portlet.xml).

Difference between abstract portlet and concrete portlet?

Explain struts portlet. How to create one?
Create a struts standalone web app and convert to portlet. There are 8-10 steps to do so.

Explain JSR168 portlet. How to create one?
Use WSAD wizard.

What is the difference between HTTPRequest and PortletRequest?
HTTPRequest is for the entire portal page and portlet request is abstracted out of HTTPRequest and is unique per portlet. As best practises portlet code should use PortletRequest object.

Should you use class scoped variables in portlet?
No, single instance of portlet in the JVM and so can cause data corruption if variable values are changed. However, no harm in using "final static" singleton kind of variables.

Can you do browser redirects from the portlet?
No, only forward.

What does the tag <portletApi:init /> do?
Initializes portletRequest, portletResponse, etc on the page.

What are the different portlet states?
Maximize, Normak, Minimize.

What are the different portlet modes?
View, Edit, Configure, Help.

Portlets execute in two steps, what are those?
Action and render in portal 5.0. There is a new phase IStrutsPrepareRendor introduced in portal 5.1 to address browser refresh, back, etc issue.

How to access external systems from portlet code like database, credential vault, and ftp server?

What is portal service?

patterns

2005-05-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

There is pattern everywhere or should we say everything is a pattern. It is patterned that mango seed will grow into a mango plant, baby into a grown up, and so on. These patterns exist in nature. We also tend to do things in pattern, cars are mass produced in patterns, we invented patterns to build buildings and bridges. There are also patterns in the software world like Facade and DAO (Data Access Object).

But it looks like that sometimes there could be anamolies in the patterns. The patterns may not be perfect, there may be disadvantages, or they may not be just right. In the software world there is something called anti-patterns. Sometimes in nature we see malformed plants and animals which does not seem to conform to intended behavior of pattern.

Kapow Robots

2004-11-10T18:43:00.000-08:00

I am using Kapow to create 'web clipping robots'. It is kind of neat as Kapow lets you clip any page and then out of the box you can create IBM Portal 5 portlets. You can also create portlets for BEA portal 8.1. I was able to successfully create 3 IBM portlets. These were created as .war files and I was able to install them seamlessly in our test environment. We had RoboServer also running in the background and it looked like it was all set. However the portlet contents were empty. Troubleshooting revealed that Kapow also creates a .robot file for every web clipped content and they needed to be installed under the "{KAPOW_HOME}|projects" folder.

By the way linux version of Kapow provide "RoboServer" and "RoboServerService" as runtime component. Use RoboServer, I am not sure what RoboServerService is as it was not doing anything.

notes on ibm portal 5.02

2004-11-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

I am currently working on IBM portal v5.02. At first glance this looks like way behind BEA portal 8.1 but looks to be very stable and deploying a new portlet is much easier (just export as a war file). Below are some of the notes that I found useful while reading on IBM portal.

Usually, many portlets are invoked in the course of handling a single request, each one appending its content to the overall page. Some portlets can be rendered in parallel, so that WebSphere Portal assembles all the markup fragments when all the portlets finish or time out. Portlets that are not considered thread-safe are rendered sequentially

WebSphere Portal provides discoverable services for its credential vault, for managing persistent TCP/IP connections, and for managing the WebSphere Portal content repository.

WebSphere Portal includes the Document Manager portlet application for contributing and sharing documents between users. Document Manager provides a simple method for storing, navigating, viewing, and searching documents and other content.

By defining the transcoding PortletFilter on a portlet, the portlet HTML output can be converted to WML or cHTML, depending on the device that is making the request

The WebSphere Portal page aggregation subsystem supports several markup languages and recognizes certain browsers and mobile device user agent signatures, all out of the box. The framework is easy to extend to support additional markups or new devices.

The default set of user profile attributes is based on the inetOrgPerson schema, which is supported by most LDAP directories. The user repository might consist of multiple data sources.

The mapping of user profile attributes to LDAP object classes is defined using in the file wms.xml.

The file attributeMap.xml specifies the details of how each attribute is mapped to the LDAP directory or database.

After determining the identity of the user, the portal server consults locally cached access control lists to determine which pages and portlets a user has permission to access.

notes on bea workshop 8.1 page flow

2004-10-31T13:27:00.000-08:00

--- Basically, a page flow is a directory of Web app files that work together to implement a UI feature.

--- The *.jpf file is also a BEA innovation and is the main focus of this article. It contains annotated Java code that implements the navigation and state management logic.

--- Many classes in Java Page Flow inherit from Struts classes and interoperate with the Struts plumbing that serves as the foundation for the Java Page Flow runtime.

--- All action methods are specially annotated with @jpf:action to indicate to the *.jpf compiler that they should be configured as action methods in the auto-generated Struts configuration files. Also, all action methods may be annotated with @jpf:forward to indicate to the *.jpf compiler and to the IDE tools the possible navigation decisions that the action methods may make such as deciding to forward to a page like address.jsp.

--- Because the page flow runtime makes it possible to cache state in controller instance members, it’s very easy to implement support for a back button in a wizard.

--- WebLogic Workshop makes it easy to expose business logic as controls, and the Java Page Flow feature makes it easy to call controls from action methods. Because the page flow runtime performs automatic instantiation and initialization of controls for all instance members that are annotated with @common:control, action methods in page flow controllers may call Workshop controls without having to include code that performs control instantiation and initialization. For example, the confirmation_next action method can simply and directly call the createUser( ) method of UserManager.jcs:

--- Every page flow must have a begin method. The begin method is the first method executed when your page flow is invoked by a web browser

--- Form Beans are used to separate the data presentation layer from the data processing layer of your web application. Form Beans are used as intermediaries between the data that users input into JPS pages and the Action methods. Instead of submitting the data directly to the Action method, the data is first databound to a Form Bean and this Form Bean is then passed as a parameter to the Action method. This helps to separate the presentation layer (i.e., the user input forms on the JSP pages) and the processing layer (i.e., the Action methods), because the Form Bean can play a flexible, intermediary role.

--- Page flows allow you to separate how your web application processes data from how it presents that data to users. When data processing is separated from data presentation, it's much easier to re-use the data processing aspects of the application in other contexts and to manage any future changes to your web application. Page flows link data processing and data presentation by means of databinding. Databinding is accomplished through the use of a special library of JSP tags that allow you to associate the presentation of data on the JSP pages with the data processing inside the page flow file. The special library of JSP tags begin with the prefix "netui-databinding". Two cases of databinding: (1) databinding when a user submits data, (2) databinding when data is displayed to the user.

--- A page flow is a Java class that controls the behavior of a web application through the use of specially designed annotations and methods. The directory that contains the page flow class also includes the JavaServer Pages (JSPs) used in the page flow. For a JSP to be considered part of a page flow, it must reside within the page flow directory. The JSP files use special tags which help bind to data and business logic actions. The actions in the JSP correspond to action methods that are defined in the page flow. These actions methods implement code that can result in site navigation, passing data, or invoking back-end business logic via controls. Significantly, the business logic in the page flow class is separate from the presentation code defined in the JSP files.

--- Data binding is the process that ties data to presentation tags in JSPs, thereby creating dynamic web applications that are easy to build and maintain.
--- Components of the Page Flow Programming Model
Page flows implement user interface control logic, and contain:

Action methods
Form beans - A form bean class is typically defined as an inner class within a page flow class, and in most cases extend com.bea.wlw.netui.pageflow.FormData
Forward objects

In the page flow class, action methods are methods that are annotated with a @jpf:action tag. Action methods can perform several functions:

Implement navigation decisions
Flow data into and out of pages
Invoke back-end business logic via calls to controls

--- Advantages of Using Page Flows

Ease of use
Nested page flows
State management
Rich Data binding features
Service-oriented design with Java controls
Integration with Portal
Strong data typing
Powerful exception handling
Iterative development experience
Built on the open-source Struts framework

--- When your form bean contains a complex data type, you must add a reset method to your form bean definition to ensure that an instance of the complex class is available to hold the values that the user entered in a form and subsequently submitted (posted).

Note: The reset method is called by the underlying Struts framework used by WebLogic Workshop. You do not need to call this method directly anywhere in the code.

public void reset(org.apache.struts.action.ActionMapping mapping, javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest request)
{
this.customer = new Customer(); //initialize complex class.
}

--- The NetUI Data Binding tags fall into one of the following categories:

Method invocation tags
Repeater tags
The CellRepeater tag
Grid tags

---

notes on bea workshop 8.1 control

2004-10-31T13:20:00.000-08:00

--- controls are lightweight JavaBeans based framework with a single goal: making it easy to leverage resources in j2ee.

--- Most of the inbuilt controls are designed to generate a Java control extension (JCX) file when you add a new one to your application. The JCX file contains configuration information specific to that use of the control. You can reuse a generated JCX file in multiple applications. This kind of reuse assumes that the resources specified by the JCX file are present for each application in which it's used.

--- Not all Java controls generate a JCX file. Controls that do not must always be added as new controls. An example of such a control is the Timer Control.

--- Custom java controls are built from a Java control source file (JCS) and an interface file (JAVA) .

--- By default WebLogic Workshop adds this control file with a JCX extension to the same folder as the file that is currently open in Design View. This control file cannot be located in the root of the project. If the application is in the root of the project, you must create the built-in control in a different folder.

--- controls are javabeans and can be instantiated and used from anywhere like jsp, pageflows, JSF, web services, ejbs, and other component types.

--- For the sake of convenience, you will develop your Java control within a web application project instead of a Java control project. By developing a Java control within a web application project, it is easier to generate and use Workshop's testing devices.

--- When creating custom control, Note that two files are created: (1) a JCS file (which stands for "Java Control Source") and (2) JAVA file. The JCS file contains the implementation code for your Java control, the JAVA file contains the public interface for the underlying implementation code. The JAVA file is the public face of your Java control: it is essentially a list of methods that users can call to access the functionality contained within the underlying implementation code. For the most part, you do not have to directly edit the JAVA file, because WebLogic Workshop automatically maintains the JAVA file as your edit the JCS file.

--- A JCX file extends one of Workshop's pre-build control classes.

---- When creating controls server must be running. controls can be created without server running but it looks like that it may not show all methods. found this issue when adding jms control in the control tutorial.

--- It is necessary to separate the (Investigate) Java control from (its test) web service because web services aren't enabled in Control projects.

--- Java controls can be compiled into JAR files for general distribution to other containers.

--- Also note that once you have compiled a Java control, WebLogic Workshop uses the JAR version by default, instead of working directly from the source code contained in the control project.

--- You can use Java controls to encapsulate complex functionality.

--- Java controls can communicate asynchronously with other components.

--- Control property attribute values are stored as Javadoc annotations in source code

---- tried to use controls from the following but did not work. there was no option to do a 'new control'.

from java project (.java files have no design tab)
from ejb project (even though their was design tab)

cvs delete and 'attic' folder

2004-09-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

When you delete a file in cvs, the file actually does not get deleted but it goes to the 'Attic' folder in the cvs repository. 'Attic' is an internal folder on the server side that is created in your repository under the directory where the file was deleted. However when you do a check out this folder is not checked out and is meant only to hold deleted files in that particular folder. What this means is that once you have added a file then cvs remembers it 'permanently' even though you have deleted. In case you really want to delete the file then you can delete it from inside the 'Attic' folder and it will then be gone for good. One needs to be very careful when doing this kind of deletion directly on the cvs server and should be done only if absolutely needed.

Keep in mind that only files can be deleted in cvs and not folders. If you want to delete a folder then this is done indirectly by deleting all the files in that folder. On the client side you have to checkout or update with the option 'prune' empty directories.

checking how it works

2004-09-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

this is my attempt to see how this blog concept works.

this worked great. i was trying to find if i can add comments to my own post but ended up editing my origianl post.

i was also able to add atom feed to my rss reader.

pretty cool stuff.