Various ... my my herculean task

It has bcom an herculean task to keep track of the current
technology updates... man so many new technologies..
very eager to learn but no time...the time is just not
enough to read these news/updates. Here are the various
new emerging techs:

1. Ruby on Rails replacing PHP/Java/.Net
2. Microsoft WPF code named Avalon & WPF/E promising cross-platform UI development.
Microsoft Atlas (ajax)
LINQ - Easing access to data model/DB

3. Microsoft Indigo
4. AJAX (many)
5. War of the Web (client/server technologies competing) - The best article!
6. Top 10 Ajax apps

Microsoft Longhorn - Vista : The pain they gone thru

A good article on how microsoft battled until mid-2005 to build
the new windows OS. Its amazing one.

AJAX for Java Developers - with example

IBM has released this article.

Eclipse and Lomboz JSP editor Integration

Visit this link.

I thought Lomboz plugin integration with eclipse would be as easy as just dropping
in the files in the plug-in directory.
But there are many issues to consider and handle and configure before u go-ahead
and start a web-project or a J2EE project.
I wasted 2 days of mine due to this. At first glance I can say that Lomboz is very good plugin for J2EE projects. Worth to give a try if u are looking for a JSP editor.
Other editors are either trial for limited # of days or too complex.

Installation of Eclipse

How to install and configure Eclipse.

1) First of all, download and install a Java 2 SDK, Eclipse needs version 1.3 or higher, but Lomboz needs 1.4, so use J2SDK 1.4.2 from Sun http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html.
2) Download Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/, preferably the latest 3.0 version.
3) Unzip the file to the root of the drive, for example C:\, this will give you a C:\eclipse\ directory where you’ll find the eclipse.exe binary.
4) Start eclipse by executing the eclipse.exe file.
5) Go to Window->Preferences then look at the settings for Java->Installed JREs and make sure that your JSDK is used. If it is not, add it to the list of installed JREs and check it. When I change JRE, I usually exit Eclipse and restart it... just to be sure.
Installation of EMF

How to install and configure EMF, a required J2EE plug-in for Eclipse if you want to use Lomboz.

1) Download EMF (in my case, version 2.0.0) from the EMF site.
2) Unzip it so it fits nicely into the existing Eclipse directory, in my case I unzip it to the C:\ because that's where I unzipped Eclipse (default).
Installation of Lomboz

How to install and configure Lomboz, a J2EE plug-in for Eclipse.

PRE-REQ: Lomboz v3.0 uses models based on eclipse EMF project. If you do not have it installed already, You will need to download and install EMF runtime builds release 2.0.0 or later. Download the "ALL" package.

1) First, download a version of Lomboz that runs well with the version of Eclipse that you use. In my case I use Lomboz version 3 RC 2 available from http://forge.objectweb.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=97
2) Exit Eclipse if it is running.
3) The plug-in is distributed in ZIP format, therefore, using your ZIP file utility, unzip lomboz.zip file into the directory. This will create a couple new plug-in directories named com.objectlearn.jdt.j2ee and com.objectlearn.jdt.j2ee.editors. Make sure that Lomboz is extracted properly into the C:\eclipse\plugins directory.
4) Start Eclipse.
5) Select menu "Window>Customize Perspective...", in the "Shortcuts" tab choose the "New" submenu and check "Java->Lomboz J2EE Wizards".
6) Select menu "Window>Customize Perspective...", in the "Shortcuts" tab choose the "Show View" submenu and check "Lomboz J2EE".
7) Select menu "Window>Customize Perspective...", in the "Command"s tab in the available commands tab, check Lomboz Actions.
8) Close the "Customize Perspective" dialog by presseing the OK button.
9) Select menu "Window>Preferences", in the "Workbench->Label Decorations", check "Lomboz J2EE Decorators".
10) Once you confirmed your selections, you will see the newly added toolbar button in the Eclipse toolbar and the different Lomboz wizards will be available to you from the “File->New ” menu.
Configure Lomboz
Some settings really MUST be properly configured for Lomboz to work. Follow these instructions to the point.

Java Settings
You must make sure that Java projects have separate source and binary folders. Open the preferences dialog from "Window->Preferences" menu and expand the "Java->Build Path->New Project" settings. Make sure you set it up with this values:

o Check the "folders" radio button.
o Source folder name should be "src".
o Output folder name should be "bin".
o Select "JRE_LIB variable" in the drop-down list for JRE libraries.

Lomboz Settings
Most application servers use the standard Java compiler (javac) to compile JSP files. Javac is found in the tools.jar distributed with standard Java JSDKs (NOT JREs), that is why a proper JSDK must be installed for Lomboz (see above). You must select the tools.jar that will be used by the application servers here. It is normally found inside the “lib” folder under the JSDK installation.

Open the preferences dialog from "Window->Preferences" menu and expand the Lomboz settings. Then enter the path to the tools.jar file, something like: C:\j2sdk1.4.2_03\lib\tools.jar (depending on where you installed your JSDK). Leave the default values, but if Tomcat is used, you might want to check the setting for restarting server after deploy.

Ganesh - Lord of knowledge

The tallest Ganesh Idol installed at Khairatabad my hometown
every year on Ganesh Chathurthi festival. It is 42 feet.
The height was restricted due to official reasons.

MySQL 4.1 Post-Installation Problems

I spent the whole one and half day searching and playing with java/tomcat/mysql.
Version details:
Java : 1.5
Tomcat: 5.28
Mysql: 4.1

The problem is with mysql, the famous problem of:
Access denied for user: user@localhost (using password: yes)

The problem is with the new version of mysql 4.1, which uses a new mechanism
for authentication and storing passwords in the database. So due to this, the
old Java Connector/Driver is not compatible with the 4.1 and above.
So download the current version of the Java Driver here.
Uzip the driver. Unjar the driver again
and place the com and org folders in tomcat/common/classes.
Using the driver connection string: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

Create users carefully using this link.
Dont forget to do the following after creating users:
>flush hosts;
>flush privileges;

Microsoft Vs LAMP

More than a few might be wondering, whats LAMP and how can
Microsoft b competing with something called LAMP, as its busy competing
other big-wigs like Google, Yahoo & ofcourse OSS.
LAMP stands for [Linux Apache Mysql (Perl,Python,PHP)].
A framework of open-source software(OSS).
Therez another acronym SASH which stands for Struts,Apache,Spring,Hibernate.
Basically everything currently looks against MS in the web atleast.

Plz read this link on how Microsoftz planning to handle this. Sounds good!

Tomcat and Mysql

To execute mysql .sql script files.
Go to here.
Ex:
The mysql client typically is used interactively, like this:

shell> mysql db_name

However, it's also possible to put your SQL statements in a file and then tell mysql to read its input from that file. To do so, create a text file text_file that
contains the statements you wish to execute. Then invoke mysql as shown here:

shell> mysql db_name < text_file
You can also start your text file with a USE db_name statement. In this case, it is unnecessary to specify the database name on the command line:

shell> mysql < text_file

If you are running mysql, you can execute an SQL script file using the source or \. command:

mysql> source filename
mysql> \. filename


Tomcat:
----------
After installation, set the path to server-api.jar in the local class path so that
v can compile the servlet java files. The servlet-api is found under tomcat-install-dir/common/lib

And in config/web.xml , UNCOMMENT the xml tags having the invoker term.

otherwise it sucks!

Apollo Missions Repository

Great site to pass the time..with lots
interesting stuff