If programming languages were religions...

I look through Slashdot.com and noticed that it pointed to a very interesting blog where the post compares different programming languages to different religions in the world. Read and take a good laugh :)

http://www.aegisub.net/2008/12/if-programming-languages-were-religions.html

Adjusting PATH variable for Java

I was fiddling with the adjustment of the PATH variable in my Win XP for my Java JDK. I pointed the PATH variable to the /bin of my latest JDK and nothing else. So it's "PATH=C:\Program Files\jdk1.6.0_01\bin" if you put it in text form. Next , I tried to do a 'ping' and an 'ipconfig' in my cmd the next day and it says that ping / ipconfig is not recognized as whatever internal command type of error. I noticed that system32 is also using PATH so I set "PATH=C:\Program Files\jdk1.6.0_01\bin;C:\Windows\system32" and now , you have Java's JDK and system32 using PATH ... happy ending. I can do my Java stuff and ping and ipconfig.

Songbird , H2 jarSmall

I was reading through LifeHacker as usual and caught some news on Songbird. I was thinking to test out yet another Mozilla product , Songbird . I was expecting high quality product but when I finished installing Songbird just a while ago, it crashed upon launching up for the first time and I restarted it but again , it crashed everytime it tried to launch. Well... too bad for this Mozilla product... I doubt how ready Songbird is , so I uninstalled it without a second thouht.

I have been looking for media players capable of playing and accessing podcasts but sadly, I haven't found any other than iTunes. I have been avoiding iTunes and WMP for a long time since I think these 'commercial' products aren't of my taste. Another thing of Songbird that put me off when i was viewing it's screenshot was how similar it's GUI was when compared to iTunes.

I have nothing against iTunes or WMP but things that are too 'commercial' and 'Big Boys' who have reputation of not being open or are open just to avoid some lawsuit from some organization just puts me off ... my personal opinion...

Anyway, thanks to Thomas Mueller for helping me with figuring out why I can't build H2, finally got it to work. It seems that Java doesn't automatically set the PATH for you and you have to do it yourself which figures why my Java act weirdly when I tried to build H2 jarSmall.

Finally got myself a H2 jarSmall and now I can proceed with my stuff that requires a jarSmall H2.

Manutil in Makagiga

Lately, I have been working on manutil (Man utility aka Man) for Makagiga whenever time presents itself an opportunity to sit down and do the coding. The development of Man was pretty quick and I have got the basic functions working but they are still not ready for the wild yet. There are other stuff to do, including making Man able to survive in the wild where 'abuses' would be thrown at it.

Just a quick explanation on what Man is... It's simply a manual page like those on Unix OSes (e.g. Linux). Anyway, I got my inspiration while playing with the Man pages on my Linux Fedora OS and thought that it would be interesting and useful to equip Makagiga with one and also, I am a Makagiga user.

Man would not be exactly the same as those Linux Man since it's going to be implemented using Java on a Makagiga platform...not some OS... and plus... I like to give my Man utility a twist and flavouring it with my own style.

I made it a console base since Man is supposed to be a console based app and plus.. it looks geeky :P

Anyway, I scanned through some tech news and there wasn't much thing that is interesting to discuss... so laters...

Back and More...

Hi again . I have not been blogging for a long time since I have some issues and work to handle.

Recently, I have been planning and starting coding on some Makagiga plugins in an effort to add more useful tools into the Makagiga platform.

What is Makagiga for those who don't know what it is. Makagiga is a desktop platform written in Java. It has a SDK which allows you to create widgets and plugins for it. Simply, it's just a general purpose platform where you install plugins that you want to use.

You can visit Makagiga's official site at http://makagiga.sf.net .

Some plugins I have written is the quickQuit and the login plugin. Login plugin is not offically available for downloads since it is deemed in the testing phase. The quickQuit is simply a quick access quit button to quit Makagiga.

Login plugin for Makagiga still needs a bit more polishing for it's Look and Feel , which otherwise, it can be pretty usable.

Some Makagiga plugins I am currently doing is a Linux-like man page plugin for the Makagiga console so that console man pages can be available. A contact / address book plugin is still under the way in the planning phase and one very difficult and troublesome plugin that have been hard to develop is the encryptfs plugin which essentially encrypts the entire Makagiga filesystem if you switch it on. The difficulty is the portion where I have to handle is how to pull off a one time login on Makagiga where users after logging into Makagiga (have login plugin installed and password already set) don't need to produce another password for encryptfs to decrypt the filesystem for use. I could simply implement another login for the encryptfs but users have to login to Makagiga than the encryptfs again just to use Makagiga. I want the login process to be smooth and hassle-less with a single password so users don't need to remember so many passwords.

Time constraint is another factor to hindering the efforts of development of these plugins and other factors hinder the progress of the development of these plugins.

Enough of my rant now... off I go...

An embedded or a non-embedded ?

For those who want to run light quick and portable apps, embedded DBs are the way to go. But what if you have an enterprise web application that would be used by all the departments in the an enterprise company and you have a web site to hook to the DB too and your company is a very important financial institution ? Would you use an embedded Db or a solid network based , non - embedded DB ? I would rather throw aside the embedded ones if I need a solid , fault tolerant database ... and of all, they should be written in non VM based languages like Java.

So let's touch on why I think embedded aren't going to be a good option in my view. Embedded are mostly optimized for the portable stuff... small and sleek... but the compensation for some small stuff is mostly ... the ability to tolerant huge traffic ... lots of faults and errors occuring. What do you really expect for something made so small and used for embedded applications ?

I would prefer to go for those solid MySQL or Postgres servers which are dedicated servers with networking capabilites. Codes are not needed to be withold to make it small and light ... instead... codes are made in these stable database servers , to withstand enormous amounts of faults and traffic.

Why do I say that it's not recommended to use VM based languages to create enterprise databases ? Simply because, before the codes upon execution , have to pass through the VM tier before actually executing. If you use a code that directly 'speaks' native language, you bypass the troublesome VM tier. It would be faster indeed.

So if you want a database to handle real enterprise stuff, I would prefer to use a dedicated , non-embedded database and if better.

My First HORRIBLE JSF tutorial with NetBeans 6.1

I thought since I have been trained in some JSP and servlets and there's so much hype and buzz about JEE 5 , Glassfish server... JSF ... why not try them out and so, I use my 'trusty' NetBeans 6.1 . I use Netbeans because I was introduced to Netbeans during my courses and that Netbeans is Sun supported so ... what better to use than something that is endorsed and supported by Sun (maker of Java).

I browsed the Netbeans website and found a simple HelloWeb web apps tutorial for the JSF. The link to the tutorial is http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/web/helloweb.html .

I setup my web apps according to what is said and set my server to Glassfish V2 since I wanted to try out Glassfish for the first time (I have to manually point Netbeans to the Glasshfish folder since Tomcat is set as default server) and I selected JEE 5 since I have not used JEE 5 but J2EE 1.4 during my courses.

First half of the HelloWeb went fine and I managed to create the specified app where you keep in your name and it echoes back.

The second half needs a Java DB/ Apache Derby database installed together with NetBeans package using the PERSON table in the TRAVEL database.

I managed most parts until when I hit the portion where the database is needed. I tried to connect to the TRAVEL database to view the database tables as they specified. I right click > Connect ... and guess what ?

ERROR ! Unable to Connect ! Cannot establish a connection to .... using org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver (DERBY SQL error: SQLCODE: -1, SQLSTATE: XJ040, SQLERRMC: Failed to start database 'travel', see the next exception for details.::SQLSTATE: XSLANDatabase at C:\...\.netbeans-derby\travel has an incompatible format with the current version of the software. The database was created by or upgraded by version 10.2.).

I thought... oh no ... of all moments.. why now. I have been able to connect to databases using NetBeans 6.1 and I can even connect to my favourite database systems , the H2 database.

I thought to myself.. fine... why don't I look into other databases for use in this tutorial and of all things none of them worked !!!

I thought maybe since I can use H2 and I am getting more familiar with H2, why not use it to create a mock up TRAVEL database with just one table... called PERSON since that's the only table to be used and in the PERSON table, make a PERSONID and NAME field rather than the rest of the fields since the fields needed for this tutorial is simply the NAME field. I made it, got NetBeans to connect (I need to specify the schema manually too) , and I am done . I created and populated the database before getting NetBeans to connect just in case anything breaks. I can view the data I populated it with but when linking the PERSON table to the drop down list in the part 2, it didn't automatically or even show the names of users in the visual web editor as was said in the tutorial and when I tried to bind the drop down list to the database , there wasn't any values of the fields for me to select which field to bind.

I tried to create a Java DB / Derby database by using the database tools in NetBeans ... all those right click , create connection ..tables... the list of databases did not show the database I made at all !

EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART !

As like many NetBeans tutorials I have attempted... it's always vague and leaving you to guess things.

I gave up on this JSF tutorial and just blog what happened here.

Firstly, why in the world is there such compatibility issues with Derby ? From the start, I don't like Derby because it just doesn't just run right off the box and you need to tweak things here and there.. use consoles... no out of the box GUI console to set up for you like what H2 and MySQL provide. Now, Derby just drop lower in my eyes after this incident. Why of all things is there a compatibility issue I have to handle and not handled by the system ? H2 and MySQL , for what I know by using them , didn't give me such stupid compatibility issues.

And one thing... why would the drop down list not recognize my H2 database's TRAVEL database ? The errors aren't even H2 database but most point towards some internal error and things inside screwing up ! Why would a database created using NetBeans provided tools not be displayed in the side bar after I tried to create a Derby database to use in the tutorial ?

NetBeans and Derby developers, if you are reading this, do look into the matters.

Just a word for Derby developers... if you want to truely make your database better ... make it feel 'warm and friendly' like what H2 did. At least have some GUI so people wouldn't be lost especially during setup.