tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80904752012-01-01T07:52:47.844-05:00Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-24764080958508388532011-01-29T14:35:00.000-05:002011-01-29T14:38:30.670-05:00

Couple of weeks ago I attended the January offering of GitHub's online Git class taught by Matthew McCullough. I had been using Git for a little over a month and was starting to plateau off. I grokked the basics (at least so I thought) and stayed within the lines. The timing of the course was perfect for me. It helped solidify some concepts, explain the git idiom and presented several aha!

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-61263410835152643952009-06-19T23:49:00.011-04:002009-06-22T22:55:06.510-04:00

Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon, and Bill Venners have collaborated to venture where everyone has gone before. Yes, I mean the age old story about right way to override the equals method in Java. I see you rolling your eyes with the "I know, I know I must override hashcode method as well" bored refrain. Spare me a few more minutes and I will convince you that you must give the article a serious once

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-3836367196648371762009-04-07T23:11:00.003-04:002009-04-07T23:21:13.241-04:00

Goes to show you, that you can teach an old dog new tricks. After years of using Eclipse I stumbled across a feature I am sure has existed since the glory days of Visual Age.I had added yet another test method to a large JUnit TestCase class. I wanted to just run and re-run the new method 'til I had it just right without having to run all the other methods as well.Yes of course, I could comment

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1883818062475294842009-02-27T14:22:00.007-05:002009-03-01T22:16:36.205-05:00

One of the things I have admired about the Spring framework is its helpful error messages. Yeah, of all the things I could point to, I picked that....However, work with me here. What I mean is that when things go wrong when using Spring, it spits out error messages that are full sentences that make sense and point the developer in the proper direction. None of the NoClassDefFoundError but not

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-13002996835306417932009-02-18T21:03:00.005-05:002009-02-18T21:36:04.740-05:00

It was driving me nuts when I got my MacBook that I could not use the tab button to navigate across a form. Let alone forms, on a browser page, I could only tab between the address bar and the search field. To go anywhere else, I had to reach for the mouse. Aaargh!!Surely the operating system that was God's gift to humanity could do better than that! It took a fair amount of Googling for me

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-65206246176513647442009-02-13T16:27:00.000-05:002009-02-13T16:28:24.944-05:00

Version 4 of the popular JUnit test framework has been available for use for quite some time (In fact, it is up to version 4.5). However, many projects have a wealth of JUnit 3-style tests and developers may choose to continue using it. If, on the other hand, you decide to dip your toes in JUnit 4 waters, make it a complete immersion. Don't try to mix and match.As you may be aware, couple of

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-13165351068514392952009-01-09T08:56:00.002-05:002009-01-09T08:59:31.865-05:00

I spent half a day cursing and spewing bile at JavaScript when after all was said and done, it was doing the right thing. The ignominy of it all...My writing here is part penance for casting aspersion at JavaScript and part hoping that you don't have to go through this agony.I have a typical Java Server Page (JSP) with its share of HTML, scriptlets (gasp) and JavaScript. Much of the HTML is

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-48975217791391956172008-11-24T16:25:00.004-05:002009-01-09T09:03:12.444-05:00

After getting all giddy about the ease of running Hudson (java -jar Hudson.war), I ran into rough weather pretty quickly. The main problems:Running under TomcatAccessing our CVS serverAs the saga unfolded the two issues got inexorably intertwined. After the Winstone experiment worked swimmingly, I cranked up Tomcat and dropped the Hudson WAR into the Tomcat webapps directory and it dutifully

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-26921093778454158232007-04-24T23:34:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.528-05:00

Setting up my unit tests with reliable fixtures is turning out to be quite a headache.Sparing you arcane application-speak let me use the classic simple EMPLOYEE-DEPARTMENT example to illustrate my problem.Facts:We have the typical EMPLOYEE table and the DEPARTMENT table Both use database-generated ids (sequence numbers) as primary keys.An EMPLOYEE belongs to a DEPARMENT.The DEPT_ID field in

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-7514627058689512982007-02-21T22:58:00.001-05:002008-11-17T23:17:08.529-05:00

I have been a longtime user of Bloglines. Sometime last year when Google introduced the Google Reader (GR) I took a looksee and was severely underwhelmed and so I stayed with Bloglines. One of my primary reasons was that GR did not work with my reading style. You see I like the blog posts grouped by feed -- all Slashdot posts together, all Javablogs together -- separated from the Slashdot

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1147707637463658982006-05-15T11:12:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.529-05:00

I have been attempting to work with JBoss Rules (nee Drools) and have mostly met with frustration.With the acquisition by JBoss, the Drools site (www.drools.org) pointed me to JBoss for v3 of the API. In fact, today, I can't even get to drools.org any more. Now cleverly annointed "JBoss Rules", I downloaded the version 3.0 RC2 of both the binary and the IDE. No joy, however (several errors

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1138999462502122562006-02-03T15:43:00.000-05:002008-11-17T23:17:39.530-05:00

The RailsConf has been getting a lot of press. So methinks let's see what the hullabaloo is all about.Q: What are the sessions going to be?Silly me, that's not been decided yet. Don't worry they have over 80 proposals.Q:Where is it going to be held?The web site says: Chicago, Venue TBA. TBA!!? What kind of amateurish prank is this? Oh, well, drill down a few pages further and you figure it's at

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1136122704221888352006-01-01T08:17:00.000-05:002008-11-17T23:19:49.927-05:00

I often find myself relying on the wisdom of crowds to guide my purchasing decision. How so? I go check out the customer reviews at Amazon. This has been a very a very good barometer for my purchase.Analyzing my habit a little further, I realized that I don't just pick out the majority opinion. BTW, is there a way to get a summary of the customer reviews for an item? Such as,Acme's New Super

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1135631107876277022005-12-26T15:58:00.000-05:002008-11-17T23:17:08.530-05:00

A colleague of mine upon hearing of the Spring experience, said "what a boondoggle". That captured exactly how I felt about it.Now, I don't object to one man's opinion of enterprise. I know Jay Zimmerman and I applaud him for putting up a fabulous show time and time again with his No Fluff Just Stuff series. However a symposium just on Spring? C'mon. If you are new to Spring, a symposium isn't a

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1121959943537030352005-07-21T10:16:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.530-05:00

Maven's multiproject plug-in is a very useful tool on a large project that's been organized into several sub-projects. Using the dependencies the reactor figures out the correct order in which to build the entire project. However Maven gets in its own way when doing such builds. Here's how:Consider a multiproject with sibling sub-projects that are interdependent. Having been bitten one too many

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1118680478135453932005-06-13T12:10:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.531-05:00

I just spent the last three days at my third NoFluffJustStuff conference -- the Research Triangle Software Symposium. My brain is full and I am wiped and extremely invigorated!! It is my annual shot-in-the-arm booster that makes me look forward to going to work! Here are some of my reasons why you shouldn't miss the next opportunity. (Of course you can also see their top-10 reasons):The

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1115872099014154712005-05-12T00:20:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:20:30.665-05:00

I have been using Null Soft's product and frankly, I just don't get the NSI scripting language. It just seems too arcane and doesn't seem to flow right -- if you know what I mean. I spend more time digging through the help docs and Googling to figure out how to get something going. I would welcome any alternative tool recommendation -- freeware of, course :) My target environment is Windows

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1115737661015095922005-05-10T10:57:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.532-05:00

Web Logic's config.xml is the center of WL universe. This is what WL uses to keep track of all servers, deployments, services etc and is one gnarly XML file. Yes it isn't for human consumption but it helps to be able to read it when diagnosing problems. Now you have a handy-dandy XSL stylesheet that'll present this file in HTML. Element names are hyperlinks. Following these links takes you to the

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1114030737179286972005-04-20T16:52:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.533-05:00

How does one get around the usage of Struts tokens when unit testing using StrutsTestCase? If the action class under tests for duplicate submissions using tokens,if(isTokenValid(request) == false) { // don't perform the action and route the user // to an appropriate location}it'll always fail. This is because, the token is set in the request by the tag and of course when running a

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1112908851560379712005-04-07T17:03:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.533-05:00

One of things a clusterable application server (for example, Web Logic) does for an application is to broadcast objects placed in the user's session. This happens (at least with Web Logic) whenever the application invokes the setAttribute method of the HttpSession interface. This has a subtle impact when the thing being placed in the session is a mutable object. To explain, first consider a

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1110213393125114382005-03-07T11:33:00.000-05:002008-11-17T23:17:08.534-05:00

[Updated: See end of posting]Recently, we came across some critical problems with our Jira installation. When we couldn't figure out/fix the problem ourselves, I posted a support request to Jira's support site. In response, I received a request for additional information. Since the request involved a fairly sizeable attachment I wrote back to clarify the request. Didn't get a response. I

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1106713883422516252005-01-25T23:26:00.000-05:002008-11-17T23:17:08.535-05:00

The following is a reminder to those working on implementing checkboxes on their pages. It is essential that you implement the ActionForm's reset() method. In this method, you must set the fields that populate the checkboxes to false. The reason is that an HTTP request only includes values for selected checkboxes. Any de-selected box will not be a part of the request and so the server-side

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1099069030063434072004-10-29T12:57:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:21:03.299-05:00

Stephen Marmon's article paints the scenario in which we could have John Edwards in the Oval office come Jan 2005. Interesting, if not anything.

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1097786368264093362004-10-14T16:39:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:21:19.729-05:00

The new Google Desktop Search is really a nice extrapolation (or is it really an intrapolation) of what Google does for the Internet. You can now just as easily search the contents of your desktop -- including Outlook-based emails. Even nicer, when you search the web using Google, it prefaces the search results with hits on your local machine!

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1096345523690570482004-09-28T01:20:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.536-05:00

Craig McClanahan, the creator of Struts and one of the leaders in the JSF 1.0 spec sees a world where JSF is a souped up presentation layer for a Struts-controlled application. He writes at length about this in his blog.

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1095427984877496582004-09-17T09:28:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.536-05:00

Found an interesting feature matrix comparing various CI tools. Aside: I got to this point from some article referring to Damage Control. I looked high and low at the site to see what is Damage Control. I could only infer that it is a tool in the same genre as CruiseControl. Sure could use better introductory docco. There is a lot of information if you already know what it is and what you

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1095194301692637222004-09-14T16:37:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.536-05:00

Dion Almaer writes about the growing interest in aspect oriented programming. There are, however, several hurdles to large scale adoption of AOP as one of the tricks of the trade. Using AOP requires not only a recognition of the cross-cutting concerns but also a paradigm shift programming practices. Conversely once you get into it, everthing starts looking like a cross-cutting concern. It

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1094591085741395932004-09-07T16:56:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.537-05:00

With Nic Wolff's nifty script you can now manage the passwords for all the countless sites that need one without having to remember countless different ones. Simply remember a master key, provide the domain you are accessing and it generate a nasty looking one. Very cool! Surely, you aren't using the same one everywhere...Yeah! Right! Attribute: Jon Udell's blog

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1094578900802471672004-09-07T13:34:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:21:56.527-05:00

NASA is going to use Hollywood stunt helicopter pilots to snag a space capsule from mid-air. Now if I had suggested some such escapade I would have been laughed off the lot. How about a splashdown in the ocean? The Russians have been doing hard earth landings -- with astronauts, nyet cosmonauts on board -- since the sixties.... Oh! And if I am looking for some mid-air snagging, I don't know

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1094150697383362452004-09-02T14:40:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.537-05:00

You can now get feedback for your CruiseControl builds right on your Windows' system tray. Checkout pragmatic automation for instructions.

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1094132931648766482004-09-02T09:41:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:17:08.538-05:00

For all the wonderful things it does, Eclipse is aggravating about other things. . For example Code completion not really helpful Code completion is nice if it is a little intelligent about it. For example, if I type Monkey m = (M Pressing CTRL+SPACE should automatically populate Monkey as the default for a cast operation instead of giving me a list of gazillion things that it knows about

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1094132106963306052004-09-02T09:09:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:22:15.845-05:00

For the last year or so, the SETI project has been following some unusual radio signals from a sector of space detected by the Arecibo observatory. Lately, while most of those signals have disappeared, one of them has become more pronounced. Now, apparently there is a universal "Ahoy! mate" signal. Scientists poring over the SETI logs have matched the frequency of the signals to the

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8090475.post-1093700179342589412004-08-28T18:25:00.000-04:002008-11-17T23:22:28.465-05:00

I have just had my broadband phone service from AT&T for a week and so far it's been outstanding! After having agonized over it for months researching the technology and comparing offerings from various I settled on AT&T cecause (a) They claimed their differentiator was call quality and (b) because I had a 30-day risk free trial and so I had nothing to lose. An added incentive was $19.99 per

Srivaths Sankaranhttps://profiles.google.com/107201414405071190918noreply@blogger.com1