Cape Henry Technologies Inc.

Author Archive

Usually my local paper is fairly quiet, but today it caught my attention. I’ve tried to keep up with the technology used to kill cancer cells for quite some time. My wife had breast cancer for 16 years and recently passed away because of it. Chemotherapy has been the choice of weaponry against cancer because most treatments would signal cell-death hence no renewals (loss of hair, anemia, etc.). A new drug group is now being tested called Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase or PARP inhibitor. This drug targets enzymes that help DNA correct itself. All of our body’s cells contain DNA or genetic code that provides instruction like a computer program for the cell during replication so that it is made “exactly” like the cell it’s made from. Cancer cells tend to grow more rapidly and their DNA is somehow incorrect. The PARP Inhibitor acts to target the cancer cells and attempt to correct the DNA causing the cancerous cell growth.

The trials for PARP Inhibitors is exciting because scientists know that the answer to eradicating cancer is to stop the hidden bug within our DNA or fix the DNA once we know someone has cancer. Current chemotherapy uses a technique called apoptosis where the drugs trigger the cells to kill themselves. Apoptosis is a type of cell death where the cell uses a set of programmed events (genetics) to cause its own demise. This technique used is most effective on cells that use apoptosis to heal themselves such as skin, hair, stomach lining, etc. And, of course it also works with cancer cells that grow rapidly. Personally, I’m not a big fan of current treatments because while it lengthens the patient’s life, it does not heighten or enhance the quality of one’s life. In fact, the second chemotherapy drug, Abraxane, my wife used was supposed to be very mild for the effects of nausea and she was hospitalized 3 times for nausea that lasted about 5 days each time. Abraxane is however a second effort treatment where other treatments have failed.

The PARP Inhibitor trials are a welcome sign that the research community is looking at other solutions to this problem. You can follow the trials by going to clinicaltrials.gov and typing PARP inhibitors in the search box.

Introduction

Developers today are bombarded with articles and blog posts about Agile development. There are books on the subject and plenty of consultants to share with you these agile practices. It’s a buzzword and it’s way overrated. Before they were marketing agile as a way of life, I had the opportunity to work for Newport News Shipbuilding and we were an agile team before the publicly marketed practices made famous by Alistair Cockburn and Scott Ambler. And, we were not so much agile as we were efficient. Efficiency creates effective lines of tested quality code and we wasted very little time during our coding phases.

Our efficiency was brought about by a very well-controlled software versioning system (CVS) and a custom continuous build system. I’ll quickly address the version control system and then focus on the benefits of a continuous build.

The version control system is a versioned and protected storage system for software that represents snapshots of the codebase throughout the project until the codebase is ready for a software release. The key here is that throughout the life of this project, our goal is to maintain a buildable codebase at all times. If each developer takes ownership in the project and promises to never check in a source file that would break the build, we’re golden. That’s too much to ask, but assume that the codebase is being kept in pristine condition.

The continuous build system will periodically checkout the codebase from the version control system and perform a compile and build of the software. If anything goes wrong, the continuous build system will notify all stakeholders and inform them that the build was unsuccessful. What do you think happens now? Well, the code gets fixed and quickly. The developer didn’t break his promise, he just made a mistake. We’re all human. The benefit to the continuous build is that the build gets fixed quickly. And, the problem was not that the build was broken but that the software was in error.

Quality is a perception. Quality software does not mean that the software is always perfect. This perception of quality comes when the software is released or the project is completed and the project team knows that the codebase has been continually tested and built successfully. And, this success should take into account that various small issues have caused the builds to fail but things were always easily and quickly fixed.

Scenarios

No Continuous Build

Usually the development group that does not utilize a continuous build, also does not use version control. However, I’ve seen some small projects that use version control but feel that the continuous builds are a waste time. Usually this stems from some management level that cannot see the ROI for implementation of the continuous build system. Days can pass and build problems, unknown to management, never get fixed. And, what happens if an impatient market or other business indicator deems for an early release? A broken build will delay the early release. And, it may take some code check-in and extensive investigation to determine truly what’s wrong?

Happiness is a Continuous Build

Welcome to true euphoria and great happiness. The development team that has a continuous build system in place knows that everytime a developer checks in a new code module or a revision to an existing one, the entire repository is normally checked out to a location remote to the repository (could be the local build machine). The code is built there and packaged into a deployment or software release. If everything is successful, no one even knows that the CPU in the build machine even warmed up. If something fails, usually everyone knows and the message spreads quickly. Nobody stresses out. We see in the build log that the helloworld module is the culprit. “Isn’t that Joe’s module?” “Yes, call Joe and have him check.”

Joe quickly spots the problem and checks in a fix. The build system checks out the code again and does another build. This time it’s perfect, all tests pass and the deployment archive was created.

Pros

A continuous build system will allow no isolated pockets of development. It is a very transparent system. Build errors are communicated immediately. This creates a keen sense of urgency and these errors are eliminated quickly. Management can take comfort in knowing that the build will always produce a packaged product that has been compiled, built, and tested once the project is underway.

Cons

There is a cost to implementing the continuous build sytem. And, human resource is required to implement the product and maintain it. This is however the only negative aspect that opposes the huge benefits of having a continuous build system.

Conclusions

A continuous build system will bring about a huge improvement in the transparency of the project’s codebase. Also, the codebase will quickly evolve into a packaged product that can be released for demonstration much earlier in the lifecycle of the project. I purposely wanted to show the benefits of a continuous build system and not go into anything specific. I think many people get excited about a particular product or open source download and their focus is on the features and not about the more important change from not having a system to having one and using it continuously (no pun intended).

Copyright Cape Henry Technologies Inc. 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Introduction

Software projects come about because of the need for desktop or web applications to perform tasks for business. Many times these tasks are part of a larger business project. Every software project consists of some collection of textual software or scripts. This textual instruction is either compiled into an executable binary, packaged as a compressed deployment, or placed on a web server for direct interpretation. The instructional materials (code or script) are extremely valuable and change constantly over the course of time. Also, as the development team grows, this source code base can grow exponentially and will never be static again. And, across an enterprise, this moving mass of important documents should be managed centrally. If the enterprise consists of .NET and Java development groups, then at least the repositories should be centralized for each of these camps, i.e. the .NET and Java groups each have their own central repository. It is feasible, however for the .NET and Java groups to use the same source code repository.

Prerequisites or Considerations

There are several prerequisites and considerations for the implementation of source code management. The prerequisites will consist of server(s) for the repository hosting and software to manage the access, delivery, and committals. The server(s) will provide hosted access for the development staff via some port listener over the network. Each software versioning control product will have its own detail requirements for the server hosting. The overall requirement should be the implementation of an enterprise version control system.

A written process for the management of source code artifacts will be needed before anything is put in place. A clear understanding of the SCM product is not enough. This process should contain high-level instructions that show how multiple developers will work with their repository and how they will resolve conflicts. This step is critical. It is advised that you follow the successful model of other projects. You can find this information using Google searches. Do your homework, this is very important to the success of your project. Also, another option is the contractor vehicle. A contractor can be hired for the short term task of setting up your development environment using various technology stacks. This is somewhat time-consuming for developers are not already highly skilled in the use of these software tools, hence the contractor vehicle.

Planning and Choices

The first steps to planning an enterprise source repository would be to determine the exact number of projects within the enterprise and then estimate the disk space needed to store them all in one centralized repository. Extra space would also be required to account for growth and to host the software product. A good estimate would be 2 times the size of the entire collection of projects. Always be prepared to grow the file system or migrate to another quickly.

Next, determine your needs and choose an enterprise version control system. Consider the versioning model first. There are really three basic models. These are the file system model, lock-modify-unlock model, and copy-modify-merge model. Every source control versioning system employs one of these models. /p>

The file system model is really inefficient because it would never record versions. Every change would be a revision to the file in the repository or file system directly in this case. And, users changes would not be merged. Users would have to communicate frequently and even pass changes between each other and not through the so-called source repository itself. The second committer would overwrite any changes that had just been checked in. This system should never be mistaken for a true versioning control system. This model limits the decision now to one of two models.

The lock-modify-unlock model is used by some source control systems to keep users from modifying each other’s work. In a perfect world there would be no need for developers to change each other’s files as long as their work was properly managed. It still almost impossible to assign developers specific files on a project. Under the lock-modify-unlock method, if someone has a file locked or “checked out”, another developer cannot checkout the file to make changes. This user must wait for the “locked” user to unlock or “check in” the file before he can lock and modify the file. Visual SourceSafe employs this model.

This model is more restrictive that the copy-modify-merge model. E.g. if Robert checks out file A and forgets to check it in or worse, loses the file and the hidden file that works with the repository, and Susan needs file A right away, an administrator is needed to unlock the file so that Susan can modify it for a Friday afternoon build. Also, does anyone know what Robert was working on and do we care? We just overrode his checkout and allowed Susan to modify the file without talking to Robert first. It’s common for one developer to be working on one method and another working on another method. That’s okay, but for this model that doesn’t work well at all.

The copy-modify-merge model is the best choice for version control of textual source code files. The lock-modify-unlock model is too restrictive in the event that a developer has a file checked out and he’s on vacation or cannot otherwise be contacted. This model works better because it actually operates in reverse. The repository is not aware of any new or revised work until the commit is made. The only failure would be in the event that another developer has huge changes to a file and has not committed those changes. It makes sense to update frequently, build successfully, and commit often. The key is to never commit work that puts the build at risk. Many development teams use a continuous build process where an isolated build is run everytime anyone commits a change to the repository. This build should always be successful but in the event of a failure, notifications are sent out via email. Communications will then occur, the code will be corrected, and the fix for the broken build committed. This is a very well managed process. And, it does require good communications.

Resources

Resources that are needed for the versioning control system would be for continuous use and maintenance. Be sure that adequate disk space is allotted and disk space is available for growth. Backups of the repository are critical and necessary to the security of the repository in the event of disaster. The backup process is an important resource that’s integral to the safety of the enterprise’s source code base.

Once a version control system is in place, an administrator is needed for the management, backup, and maintenance of the source repository. For single project instances a developer may serve as an administrator, however enterprise solutions would require a dedicated administrator. A business could train an existing employee as the repository grew in size and project number. That might be an economical option. Many developers have extensive knowledge of the various source control versioning systems because they use them during their development. One could hire a developer/versioning administrator.

Specific Choices

While GIT is now becoming more popular with the independent contractors and developers than Subversion (SVN), SVN still stands to be the best corporate choice for an open source solution. Here’s an executive summary from a Forrester report on Version Control Systems by Carey Schwaber. The entire document was proprietary and is not available to the public (even though she’s talking about freely-available open source products).

“Some development teams need only simple version control, the base functionality of software configuration management (SCM) systems, to manage their application code. In the past many such teams have used the open source version control tool Concurrent Versions System (CVS), but CVS’ file-based architecture saddles it with many serious limitations. Subversion, an open source tool designed as a replacement for CVS, has been in development since 2000 and is now ready for mainstream adoption. Shops evaluating version control tools should put Subversion on their shortlists, and shops using commercial version control systems like Microsoft Visual SourceSafe should consider whether Subversion might meet their needs just as well. The availability of an open source tool without many of CVS’ pains will accelerate commoditization of the market for commercial version control tools. But while Subversion is a better tool than CVS, it’s still just a version control tool, and it shouldn’t be used in place of a full-featured SCM system.” … Cary Schwaber for Forrester

Cary’s last statement was a marketing one. You want to read on. And, you can if you pay up. She assumes that you need a full-featured SCM by the way she ends her last sentence. An enterprise can implement such a system and still use Subversion for it’s versioning control component. Commercial vendors are quick to assume that an enterprise needs a full-featured SCM system. This is entirely not true. Vendors of these products want to convince you that their integrated systems blend requirements, issues, versioning, documentation, management, etc. making development the focus and reducing the burden of trivial administrative functions. In fact, manually developed systems work fine too. A project could be completed successfully and never use an SCM tool.

Another document, “The Forrester Wave: Process-Centric Software Configuration Management, Q4 2005, also by Cary Schwaber, quite possibly paid for by IBM, is freely available to the public. It does not recommend any open source products. In fact, it does not consider any solution that isn’t company backed with a minimum of $25 million in total annual revenues. This document recommends an integrated IBM solution using all of their SCM products. Does this make IBM the better choice just because they meet the $25 million annual revenue minimum? Does the revenue minimum inherently represent worth and quality? I know this axiom not to be true.

IBM’s Clearcase is a versioning system just like Subversion, however they have several other products when installed that can be considered a full-featured SCM system. The IBM products have high licensing costs while Subversion alone is free. A full-featured SCM system is not needed for agile development methodologies. The IBM “need” is to market the purchase of their products so that your enterprise can complete the project successfully that would have failed had you not purchased their software. This is wrong. Many successful software development projects use incompatible applications for version control, bug tracking, and documentation. My personal recommendation for both the .NET and Java groups would be host Subversion’s version control system on Redhat Linux server(s), Atlassian JIRA enterprise issue tracking, and Atlassian Confluence enterprise wiki.

Cost of ownership can direct choices. License costs really don’t balance with administrative costs. Proprietary and open source solutions require trained administrators. Proprietary solutions come with steep licensing costs. Open source solutions generally are free, however security comfort is sometimes compromised. This is only due to the fact that the enterprise may have only recently considered open source alternatives. Open source is generally secure because it’s very dynamic and the source code is freely available to anyone, including vulnerability hackers.

Conclusions

Every IT enterprise creates textual artifacts that range from configuration scripts to computer language code. Every enterprise should maintain versions of these files. To do this the enterprise needs a central repository and versioning software. The most important factors that face the deciding enterprise should be model first, and cost second. Also, access to the repository is accessible to anyone that’s authenticated and authorized to look at it. Developers that only maintain code locally essentially hide their work from everyone. Source code should be shared. And, even if it’s not open source, it should be shared among similar language developers within the company for re-use if licensing permits.

I have equal experience with each of the versioning control systems. The copy-modify-merge model is my favorite and has been the least troublesome. I’m personally a command-line person and that’s why Git is my absolute favorite, Subversion or SVN second, CVS third, and Visual SourceSafe fourth. I have used Borland’s Starteam for 2 years with CIBER and absolutely hated it. Customizations were of no benefit to our project. Daily use of Borland’s product also required tweaking hidden files essentially proving that the product was unstable even though the license costs should represent high quality.

Copyright Cape Henry Technologies Inc. 2010, All Rights Reserved.

While I’ve been doing a little research, I actually created two working projects that demonstrate a JSON to Flex mashup. The Flex project will probably evolve into a complicated mess over time because I’ll use it for testing with an AppFuse instance hosted on my local machine. For now, however, I’m going to tag compatible versions so that those that want to take a look at it can get it to work easily.

The two projects are found on Github here: http://github.com/dlwhitehurst/appfuse-rest and http://github.com/dlwhitehurst/appfuse-flex-client First, download and build the rest example (tag v0.1-MASHUP) first. If you don’t see the tag yet, I haven’t done it but you can trust me that the latest commits work. I’ll tag tonight.

Once you successfully build a WAR file you can “mvn jetty:run-war” in a terminal and just leave it running. To see the Flex client in action you can just double-click on the main.html in the $project/bin-debug folder. That’s it! You should see a simple button and a datagrid. Push the button and the datagrid should load.

All of the source code is available in both projects. Check it out. The difficult part was getting the data to display in the datagrid. The Bindable declaration is what fixed my problem. I had read that even if the data (JSON) was parsed and visible as an Array, the data would not work with the mx:DataGrid object unless it was converted to an ArrayCollection object. I fumbled with that for a while then I started getting warnings about static types vs. dynamic components. I eventually found an example where [Bindable] was used just over a variable declaration for the ArrayCollection that would populate the mx:DataGrid and that worked! Here’s the main.mxml that does it all.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- add license -->
 
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"
	backgroundGradientColors="[0xFFFFFF, 0xAAAAAA]"
	horizontalAlign="left"
	verticalGap="15" horizontalGap="15"
	>
 
	<mx:Script>
		<![CDATA[ 
		import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent;
		import mx.controls.Alert;
                          import com.adobe.serialization.json.*;
		import mx.collections.ArrayCollection;
 
                         [Bindable]
	            private var customersCollection:ArrayCollection;
 
	            private function runService():void
	            {
     	                  getCustomers.send();
	             }
 
                         private function resultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void {
	                  var rawData:String = String(event.result);
     	                  var customers:Array = JSON.decode(rawData) as Array;
     	                  customersCollection = new ArrayCollection(customers);
                         }
 
 
		]]> 
	</mx:Script>
 
	<mx:HTTPService id="getCustomers"
		url="http://localhost:8080/customers.json"
		method="GET"
		resultFormat="text" 
		result="resultHandler(event)">
		<mx:request xmlns="">
      		<getCustomers>"true"</getCustomers>
    	</mx:request> 
	</mx:HTTPService>
 
    <mx:Button x="266" y="338" label="Get Customers" id="getCustomersButton"
         click="runService()"/>
 
	<mx:DataGrid id="cGrid"
		x="80" y="141" 
		width="400" height="92" 
		editable="false" 
		enabled="true"
		dataProvider="{customersCollection}">
	    <mx:columns>
	        <mx:DataGridColumn headerText="Id" dataField="id" />
	        <mx:DataGridColumn headerText="Name" dataField="name" />
	        <mx:DataGridColumn headerText="Phone" dataField="phone" />
	    </mx:columns>
	</mx:DataGrid>
 
</mx:Application>

The key to global security for the instance of WebSphere running within your Rational Application Developer product is to keep the server security and RAD’s understanding of the security synchronized. To do this, always set or disable security first using the administrative console.

With Websphere running within the IDE, go into the security area and set or disable the security parameters. Once you are done, kill the admin console window or tab within Eclipse (RAD). Then select the server and shut it down. Once it’s down, you can right click and edit the server security properties.

If RAD or the server get out of synch with each other, it’s very possible you will not be able to shut down the server properly within the IDE. Open a terminal window and I’ll show the windows version here:

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...\runtimes\base_v6\bin > stopserver server1 -username test -password test

This posting will document the best way to install and setup IBM’s Rational Application Developer (RAD) for Websphere as a non-administrative user. I’ll be editing this along as I do the install and prepare the documentation for a group of developers at a large state organization.

To get started you would obtain the CDs or the installation media from IBM. In our case, we have the full downloads for Rational Application Developer (RAD) 7.6 for System Z. I found an article online for 7.5 and some of the instructions are a little different. Also, some windows paths have been changed. Once you have the downloads (zips), extract them all in a directory (as a general user) e.g. c:\RAD76 (ours is RADz76). Check in the setup directory for another folder or directory called InstallerImage_win32. Next, check to see if a file called userinstc.exe exists there. If yes, let’s proceed.

You’ll now need to prepare a small .bat file to execute the user installer to install the IBM Installation (Product) Manager silently as a non-administrative user to the user’s profile instead of c:\Program Files. Here’s the .bat file needed. Remember that your paths may be different.

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echo off
SET LOGDIR="c:\temp"
SET INSTALLER="c:\RAD76\RD76_Setup\InstallerImage_win32"
 
%INSTALLER%\userinstc.exe --launcher.ini %INSTALLER%\user-silent-install.ini -log \
%LOGDIR%\Installer.log
echo on

The above script can be run in a cmd terminal and will silently install the IBM Installation Manager under your user profile. Under my user profile “dlwhitehurst” I now have … \IBM\Installation Manager and \IBM\InstallationManagerInstaller. This installation script will also write an entry to your Start menu “My Installation Manager”.

The next part is a bit more difficult. Another .bat file is needed to run the installer to setup and install RAD 7.6 and create a default WebSphere profile for testing.

The actual RAD installation was a little more difficult because we had downloaded separate media into our install directory. The media consisted of …disk1 and …disk2. The second .bat file is here. It was run but was unsucessful. I’ll explain how to fix after the script listing.

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echo off
 
SET ILOGSDIR="c:\temp"
SET INSTLMGR="C:\RADz76\RDz76_Trial_Setup\InstallerImage_win32"
SET RESPONSEFILE="c:\temp\responsefile-nonadmin.xml"
 
del %RESPONSEFILE%
 
echo ^<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
echo ^<agent-input acceptLicense='true'^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
echo ^<server^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
echo ^<repository location='C:\RADz76\RDz76_Trial_Setup'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
echo ^</server^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<profile installLocation='c:\dlwhitehurst' id='IBM Software Delivery Platform'^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='eclipseLocation' value='c:\dlwhitehurst'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='cic.selector.nl' value='en'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.help.option' value='remote'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.help.url' value=''/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.was.v70.createProfile' value='true'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.was.v70.profileName' value='was70profile1'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.was.v70.profilePath' value='c:\dlwhitehurst\runtimes\base_v7\profiles\was70profile1'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.was.v70.enableSecurity' value='false'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.was.v70.username' value=''/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<data key='user.was.v70.password' value=''/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^</profile^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<install modify='false'^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<offering profile='IBM Software Delivery Platform' version='7.6.0.20090930_1054' id='com.ibm.rational.developer.systemz.v76.trial'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
echo ^</install^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
echo ^<preference value='%USERPROFILE%\IBM\SDPShared' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.eclipseCache'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='true' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.http.proxyEnabled'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='false' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.http.proxyUseSocks'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='localhost' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.http.proxyHost'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='9080' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.http.proxyPort'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='30' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.connectTimeout'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='30' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.readTimeout'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='0' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.downloadAutoRetryCount'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='true' name='offering.service.repositories.areUsed'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='false' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.ssl.nonsecureMode'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='true' name='com.ibm.cic.common.core.preferences.preserveDownloadedArtifacts'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^<preference value='false' name='PassportAdvantageIsEnabled'/^> >> %RESPONSEFILE% 
echo ^</agent-input^> >> %RESPONSEFILE%
 
%INSTLMGR%\userinstc.exe --launcher.ini %INSTLMGR%\user-silent-install.ini -input %RESPONSEFILE% -log %ILOGSDIR%\RadInstall.log 
echo on

When the above script was run, an error message was given stating that the silent install cannot be performed because of multiple media disks. Normally with a GUI install, the installer can stop and request that the user switch CD’s. A silent install is programmatic and therefore cannot interact with the user via a graphical environment. The silent install is running in terminal. The two disks are zipped and the paths in both disks begin with RADz76/.. This allowed me to extract the disks into RADz76 and now the disks were combined under one directory RADz76. I re-ran the installation script and it worked.

There are problems with the above script that did not affect the installation. The profile information would be fine for a RAD for WebSphere installation. What I found was that WebSphere was not embedded with the RAD for System Z install. I have installed RAD for WebSphere and both version 6 and version 7 were present. The RAD for System Z only contains support for WebSphere 6.

I really like Ruby on Rails for personal application development. If I had more time, I would probably invest more of this time learning Rails to actually help small businesses develop applications. Anyhow, I have created an accounting program called “Books” that is really easy to use and I wanted to describe here how the database is used and created.

When you create your Rails application a ton of code is written for you. The key database file is called database.yml and it’s found in the project tree at /config/database.yml. Here’s my file.

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# Licensed by Cape Henry Technologies Inc. 
# Cape Henry Technologies Inc. licenses this file
# to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
# "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
# with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
# software distributed under the License is distributed on an
# "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
# KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
# specific language governing permissions and limitations
# under the License.    
 
# SQLite version 3.x
#   gem install sqlite3-ruby (not necessary on OS X Leopard)
 
 development:
  adapter: mysql
  encoding: utf8 
  database: books_development 
  pool: 5 
  username: root 
  password: 
  socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
 
#  adapter: sqlite3
#  database: db/numbers_development
#  pool: 5
#  timeout: 5000
 
# Warning: The database defined as "test" will be erased and
# re-generated from your development database when you run "rake".
# Do not set this db to the same as development or production.
 
 test:
     adapter: mysql
     encoding: utf8 
     database: books_development 
     pool: 5 
     username: root 
     password: 
     socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
 
 production:
     adapter: mysql
     encoding: utf8 
     database: books_development 
     pool: 5 
     username: root 
     password: 
     socket: /tmp/mysql.sock

Notice the database name is “books_development” for all database schemas. I commit the project files to Github and tag versions. I then download a zip of the version I want and explode it into a directory called “books-2010″ and I then change the database.yml file database names to “books-2010″. This way when I run the application and actually use it, the production data is safely handled by this application source code I downloaded.

When I make the application public, one would download the version, and issue the following commands in the project root directory.

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rake db:create <enter>
rake db:migrate <enter>
rake db:seed <enter>

The seed functionality is very cool in it’s own right. You can make up a file to preload reference data or in my case, initial accounts for your chart of accounts. Here’s a copy of seeds.rb and it’s found at /db/seeds.rb.

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# This file should contain all the record creation needed to seed the database with its default values.
# The data can then be loaded with the rake db:seed (or created alongside the db with db:setup).
#
# Examples:
#   
#   cities = City.create([{ :name => 'Chicago' }, { :name => 'Copenhagen' }])
#   Major.create(:name => 'Daley', :city => cities.first)
 
 
general_ledger = GeneralLedger.create([
{
  :company_name => 'Acme Mousetraps Inc.',
  :address1 => '123 Pleasantville Road',
  :address2 => '',
  :city => 'Omaha',
  :state => 'Nebraska',
  :zip => '76499',
  :registered_agent => 'John Doe',
  :tax_id => '1234567890'
}
])
 
accounts = Account.create([
    {
      :acct_no => '100',
      :acct_name => 'Cash',
      :acct_type => 'A',
      :balance => '1000.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '102',
      :acct_name => 'Accounts Receivable',
      :acct_type => 'A',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '109',
      :acct_name => 'Capital',
      :acct_type => 'A',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '103',
      :acct_name => 'Supplies',
      :acct_type => 'A',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '104',
      :acct_name => 'Equipment',
      :acct_type => 'A',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '202',
      :acct_name => 'Accounts Payable',
      :acct_type => 'L',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '202',
      :acct_name => 'Tax Payable',
      :acct_type => 'L',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '300',
      :acct_name => 'Drawing',
      :acct_type => 'L',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '500',
      :acct_name => 'Rent Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '501',
      :acct_name => 'Supplies Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '502',
      :acct_name => 'Books Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '503',
      :acct_name => 'Meals Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '504',
      :acct_name => 'Auto Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '505',
      :acct_name => 'Misc Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '506',
      :acct_name => 'Electric Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '507',
      :acct_name => 'Internet Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '508',
      :acct_name => 'Liability Insurance Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    },
    {
      :acct_no => '509',
      :acct_name => 'Medical Insurance Expense',
      :acct_type => 'E',
      :balance => '0.00',
      :general_ledger_id => '1'
 
    }
 
])

The third rake command you issue, finds this files and pre-loads your database with this data.

I coined a new acronym the other day and I thought I’d share it here for historical reasons. Things get done during your day by completing each of your 15 minute to-do’s, tasks, honey-do’s, etc. These small tasks add up at the end of the day. And, the more you can get done, the more successful you are. It’s simple. Success comes in small wins. My acronym is SBSS or Success By Small Steps. Try it.

My contract with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) ends in April, 2010. A family medical situation restricts my moving again and I’d prefer to find a full-time position with a small but successful company because I’m looking to truly help their IT business thrive by providing more than just development skills. I would like to manage the development of medium to large enterprise Java development. My present position with NCDOT is an Enterprise Architect with the office of the CIO. I have been helping to steer and guide a large enterprise project that affects several State agencies. This project involves both mainframe and Java work. Please contact me with any opportunities you may have for the following:

• Enterprise Applications Architect
• Enterprise Java Architect
• Senior Java Developer
• Java Team Lead
• Senior Software Engineer
• Senior Development Team Lead
• Software Project Manager

I am available to start with a 2 week notice. I live in the Raleigh NC area and I’m willing to travel some if needed. I can also work well remotely. I’m dependable and I will get things done for you.

Introduction

I’m up against a rather difficult situation to solve a security issue for local WebSphere 7.0 developers. The network users are not allowed to install anything on their PC workstations, yet several teams of developers will be required to develop Java code on secured workstations using WebSphere 7.0. Even if an administrator were to install each WebSphere application server, the user would not be able to administrate the server properly because he/she would not have administrative rights to execute scripts, programs, tools, services, monitoring, port access, etc. I’m determined to find a good solution to this problem. I will share anything I find here.

Solution No. 1 (Unsuccessful)

I found some documentation online where individual profiles can be created from within the Rational Application Developer (RAD) tool (Custom IBM Eclipse). I tried using the profile management tools that came with the installation. I tried all permutations of check boxes, user selections, permissions modifications and did not find an acceptable solution. Usually something requiring special permissions would be part of IBM’s customization of Eclipse hence Rational Application Developer. This information would not be available on the Internet. I quickly accepted this solution to be a failure.

Solution No. 2 (Successful)

I have a local administration account and a general user account. As admin, I set permissions on two folders. These are:

• c:\Websphere
• c:\Program Files\IBM

The general user was added to both directories with write access. The directory c:\Websphere is used as extract_root, i.e. the directory is used to explode the 788 mb download of Websphere 7.0 at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/wasdevelopers/index.html. Next, I logged out as admin and logged in as the general user.

As general user, now I would extract the install into c:\Websphere and then do the install. The extraction of the install file was successful. No problems there. The install was a different story. The install will use a limited JRE, Java.exe and begin to install the application server. To begin the install run the following:

5

c:\Websphere\WAS\install.exe

The first dialog seen was a system dialog warning that a file called “install.exe” is being run. Click run. The next dialog is another system UI presentation asking “who” is going to run this file. I selected to run the program as a general user. The third system dialog asks if you want to run java.exe. Click “Run” and you will see the initial WebSphere Application Server 7.0 dialog. No frills, select “Next”. You are now presented with a license dialog. There are IBM and Non-IBM terms. Just check the radio button (accepting) and “Next”. Now, a dialog is presented informing you (general user) that your operating system prerequisites failed. Ignore this and select “Next”. That dialog did note that Service Pack 2 could not be found. Service Packs are installed but the general user does not have the level of access needed to verify them. The next dialog provides some information to consider. It says that it detected a non-root or non-administrative user. This will mean that the installation program cannot create a Windows service and also cannot write to the registry. Specifically, it would create a Windows service for WebSphere and write entries to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services . It also notes that port access may be affected. Normally, locally running servers can access all ports locally as localhost. It “SHOULD” be okay to proceed. Select “Next”. You are now presented with a dialog for Optional Features Installation. You probably do want to select the checkbox for the Sample Applications. Select the check for the Sample Applications and then “Next”. Now you will see a dialog for specification of the installation directory. The default directory is normally for an administrator install c:\Program Files\IBM\Web, however in this case since we are installing something and not creating a Windows service, the installation has defaulted the directory to c:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer . That “SHOULD” be okay. Accept that directory choice and then select “Next”. Another dialog is shown and it asks to select a particular environment. By default it’s set to Application Server. Select “Next” and proceed. You should now see a dialog called Enable Administrative Security. Select an administrative user name and password. I personally recommend that the password for the “samples” user be the same as your admin user. Now click “Next”. Now select the preview tasks and let the install begin. We will soon know if WebSphere Application Server 7.0 can be run and administrated by the general user.

It’s finished and … the dialog, Installation Results are in. The dialog noted “Partial Success”. The install of the IBM product WebSphere Application Server was successful. The IBM WebSphere Application Server Base is found at c:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer . Some configuration steps have errors but these can be found at server_base\logs\install\log.txt . Also important information can be found server_base\profiles\AppSrv01\Logs\AboutThisProfile.txt . Click “Finish”.

I reviewed the install log and it looks like IBM is merely concerned that it cannot query the resident OS. We know the following about the partial success of this product.

• Installer cannot verify Service Pack 2 (It’s Installed)
• Installer cannot create a Windows Service
• Installed cannot write to Registry

The IBM product defines the “failure” where it cannot write to the Registry as “cannot perform a native registration with the operating system”. This should be okay. It only means that the general user has installed something that the administrators know nothing about unless they were to inspect the general user’s hard drive for this installation. The general user may not start and stop his development application using the Window’s service tools found under Control Panel/Administrative Tools. The start menu was modified during the install and start and stop options are available to the general user. I will test this thoroughly now.

When the installation completes it runs a Java application (dialog pop-ups) that provides a panel called WebSphere Application Server – First Steps – AppSrv01. AppSrv01 is the initial profile that is created during the installation. It should be sufficient for your local development. Select Installation Verification first. It should run some things and provide a log of its success.

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Server name is:server1
Profile name is:AppSrv01
Profile home is:C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01
Profile type is:default
Cell name is:TestMachineNode01Cell
Node name is:TestMachineNode01
Current encoding is:Cp1252
Start running the following command:cmd.exe /c "C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\bin\startServer.bat" server1 -profileName AppSrv01
>ADMU0116I: Tool information is being logged in file
>           C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\server1\startServer.log
>ADMU0128I: Starting tool with the AppSrv01 profile
>ADMU3100I: Reading configuration for server: server1
>ADMU3200I: Server launched. Waiting for initialization status.
>ADMU3000I: Server server1 open for e-business; process id is 3040
Server port number is:9080
IVTL0010I: Connecting to the TestMachine WebSphere Application Server on port: 9080
IVTL0015I: WebSphere Application Server TestMachine is running on port: 9080 for profile AppSrv01
Testing server using the following URL:http://localhost:9080/ivt/ivtserver?parm2=ivtservlet
IVTL0050I: Servlet engine verification status: Passed 
Testing server using the following URL:http://localhost:9080/ivt/ivtserver?parm2=ivtAddition.jsp
IVTL0055I: JavaServer Pages files verification status: Passed 
Testing server using the following URL:http://localhost:9080/ivt/ivtserver?parm2=ivtejb
IVTL0060I: Enterprise bean verification status: Passed
IVTL0035I: The Installation Verification Tool is scanning the C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\server1\SystemOut.log file for errors and warnings.
[2/8/10 12:40:58:079 EST] 00000000 WSKeyStore    W   CWPKI0041W: One or more key stores are using the default password.
[2/8/10 12:41:06:782 EST] 00000000 ThreadPoolMgr W   WSVR0626W: The ThreadPool setting on the ObjectRequestBroker service is deprecated.
IVTL0040I: 2 errors/warnings are detected in the C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\server1\SystemOut.log file
IVTL0070I: The Installation Verification Tool verification succeeded.
IVTL0080I: The installation verification is complete.

This proves that the general user can run the server. Now, the server sample applications should be tested to see if ports remain unblocked locally.

Select the link on the First Steps Dialog called “Administrative console”. You should get a browser with a block because of the self-signed certificate. Ignore the warning after you are sure that you understand what is happening. You will now see the login for the Administrative Console at URL https://localhost:9044/ibm/console/logon.jsp. I’m almost convinced that WebSphere only requires Java and use of ports locally. The server is running as localhost. An interesting note is that when you log in as the application administrator, the server switches the console server to port 9043 (security trick).