Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Transcript of Sun and Microsoft Interoperability Exchange Forum

A complete transcript of the Sun/Microsoft Expert Exchange Forum is now available. And if you still have questions, feel free to post them to users@metro or Metro Forum.

Try 3 things today:

1. Download GlassFish V2.
2. Develop and Deploy a Reliable Web service using NetBeans IDE following this screencast (complete list).
3. Read more details about Project Tango in this 26-page article.

Technorati: wsit metro webservices glassfish netbeans sun microsoft interoperability

Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices  |  Comments[1]

Completed San Francisco Marathon 2007

4 hours, 4 mins, 33 secs - yeah, that's what it took me to complete my first San Francisco Full Marathon.

I did First Half Marathon 2 years ago and First Full Marathon last year, but this was the first Full Marathon on the hills of San Francisco. Even though I could not complete within less than 4 hours but I was happy that I took only 3 short walk breaks and maintained my pace as planned. There was San Francisco characteristic-fog all through the course with no Sun shine anywhere at all, and in a way that helped. Here is the complete breakdown from the official results (bib# 1378):

Some other stats are:

The fastest male runner clocked 2:25:57 and the fastest female runner was 2:43:41.

The race was very well organized and some of the highlights that I liked are:

• The course was very well marked and the local crowd support was very supportive. This was much better than Silicon Valley Marathon last year where the course was lonely at quite a few spots. Today the course was well guided by cops or event team.
• There were ample water stations and each station was accompanied with a medical aid staff as well. This proved out to be a boon at Mile 23 where they applied Biofreeze to my sore thighs. And there was no stopping after that at all.
• There were music stations all through out the course and the frequency of stations increased during the last miles. This helped me maintain the rhythm closer to the stations. Kudos to all the bands for playing early in the morning.
• National Holistic Institute, College of Massage Therapy were giving a free massage to all the runners after the race. This helped a quick recovery of my sore body parts.

With my son before Start	Start Line
Right after the Finish	In front of the Bay Bridge
2007 Finisher Pose	With my wife and son after the Finish

And lastly, my wife and 4-year old son drove me to the race early morning and cheered for me at the start and the finish line. This was the biggest morale booster!

I read it somewhere "The only thing that does not hurt after a Marathon is your Pride". And I completely felt it today right after the race and the massage turned out to be a big blessing :)

Technorati: running runsfm marathon

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running  |  Comments[8]

OSCON 2007 Trip Report

As reported earlier jMaki and GlassFish, along with a host of other Sun-led open source technologies (NetBeans, OpenJDK, OpenDS, Project Indiana, etc.), were present at OSCON 2007 last week. I spent my entire 2 days at the jMaki booth which had a consistent stream of visitors on both the days. In case you are interested, here is what I presented:

• What is jMaki ?
• Running Mashup with jMaki
• Displaying RSS feed in jMaki widgets
• jMaki on Rails

The videos of other demos shown at the pod will be made available on this blog in the next few days.

I could not attend any of the sessions except some of the keynote sessions on second day. Of all the keynote videos the one I'd like you to watch is Overcoming Bias by Prof Robin Hanson. The professor, an Economic Theorist, talks about how cognitive bias cause software projects to slip. Some of the quotes from his talk are "Be more honest about writing code" and "If you really care about truth, you'll work at it and try to overcome bias".

Here are some pictures.

Sign Board	List of sponsors	Welcome Sign
jMaki and NetBeans booth	Sun booth	Sun booth
Sun booth	Marguerite @ Sun desk	Job Board
Mozilla Booth	An old friend - Tim Riley	Myself explaining jMaki
Cool give-away	OpenSolaris and OpenJDK booth	Joyent booth
Sun Microsystems in the keynote	Greg @ NetBeans booth	Ken @ GlassFish booth

Technorati: oscon sun jmaki glassfish opensolaris openjdk

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[1]

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron!

"Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron" in the English language means "Let It Go Friends". The Indian Film Industry (aka Bollywood) has produced one of the most hilarious movies by this name. The video snippets below from the movie are meant for readers who understand Hindi language. Found the link through an internal alias.

Technorati: movies bollywood youtube

Posted by Arun Gupta in General  |  Comments[0]

jMaki - Accessing External Services

A jMaki widget in a page can communicate with:

• Other widgets on the same page using publish/subscribe mechanism
• Services in the application domain using service="data.jsp".
• Services outside the application domain using proxy (xhp).

This blog entry explains how external services are accessed by jMaki widgets.

This image shows a Web application with multiple pages (Page1, Page2, Page3) where one of the page (Page2) contain at least one jMaki widget. For a BlockList widget, the generated code fragment looks like:

<a:widget name="jmaki.blockList" value="[
    {title : 'jMaki Project Home', link : 'https://ajax.dev.java.net', description : 'Where to go for the latest jMaki.' },
    {title : 'jMaki Widgets Home', link : 'https://widgets.dev.java.net', description : 'The source for the latest jMaki widgets.' },
    {title : 'jMaki-Charting Home', link : 'https://jmaki-charting.dev.java.net', description : 'Enables complex charts rendered on the client in any modern browser.' }
]" />

This code fragment populates the widget with static data specified in the value attribute. In order to populate the widget with data from an external service, such as an RSS feed, the value attribute needs to be replaced with service="/xhp?id=rss". Let me explain how that works.

If any page consists of a jMaki widget then the jMaki runtime is bundled with the application. The runtime consists of jmaki.xhp.XmlHttpProxyServlet class that maps to "/xhp" URL pattern within the application context. The id specified in the URL, "rss", is configured in a configuration file named "xhp.json". This file consists of a list of default external services that can be accessed by the widgets in a page. Each entry in this file can can be specified using up to 5 different parameters:

• ID (required parameter, unique identifier for the entry)
• URL (required parameter, location of external service)
• Parameters (optional parameters specifying the default values passed to URL)
• API Key (optional parameter to invoke the service with a specific key)
• Stylesheet (optional parameter to process the response)

So if BlockList widget needs to access the RSS feed, then the code fragment needs to look like:

<a:widget name="jmaki.blockList" service="/xhp?id=rss" />

The corresponding entry in xhp.json is:

{"id": "rss",
    "url":"http://weblogs.java.net/blog/ludo/index.rdf",
    "xslStyleSheet": "rss.xsl"
}

The tag and the default entry tells the jMaki runtime to fetch the RSS feed from http://weblogs.java.net/blog/ludo/index.rdf, apply the 'rss.xsl' stylesheet (that understand the multiple RSS/Atom formats) to the received response and convert the data into into a common JSON data format of the type "dataType" : "jMakiRSS". The BlockList widget knows how to convert jmakiRSS data to its specific data model.

This approach allows all widgets, that take a "value" attribute, to consume data from external services.

Technorati: jmaki rss services web2.0

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[2]

jMaki "SpeedGeeking"

What is jMaki ?

If you have been following my blog, then you know it already. But a picture is worth a thousand words so here it is.

One-liner: jMaki is a light-weight framework for building Web 2.0 applications. The "j" is for JavaScript and "Maki" means to wrap in Japanese. The logo is a Kanji symbol that means to wrap.

Three key points about jMaki:

1. Toolkits - It allows to create Ajax-enabled widgets and provide a JavaScript wrapper over widgets from existing toolkits such as Dojo, Yahoo, Script.acualo.us and many others. The key advantage is that it provides a standard data model for each widget such as DataTable, Tree and Menu. This shields the developer from dissimilar data models of these widgets from different toolkits.
2. Languages - jMaki-enabled web applications can be deployed on the Java platform, for example Java Server Pages (JSP) or Java Server Faces (JSF). They can also be deployed on Phobos - a server-side scripting environment that runs on the Java platform. And jMaki widgets can be embedded in PHP or Rails applications. It provides a natural format to the developers' language of choice.
3. Tools - jMaki comes with NetBeans and Eclipse plug-ins that allow you to drag/drop widgets in a page and generate the appropriate code fragments. And for non-IDE developers, there is an Ant task that allows you to create a project with the appropriate library dependencies.

This is my "speedgeeking" @ OSCON 2007.

And for those with a "serious" interest, I'm showing how some of the cool mashups are empowered by jMaki. Couple of them are available as screencasts at:

• Display RSS feed in jMaki widgets (running log mashup)
• jMaki: Visually appealing Views for Rails

And more videos will be available later.

Technorati: jmaki netbeans oscon oscon07

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[6]

Ready For San Francisco Marathon

4 - days to San Francisco Marathon
24 - weeks of Training (including this one)
2 - weeks of Taper Down (including this one)
656 - miles of Running (excluding this week, once again jMaki helped me calculate the total mileage)
6 - long runs
4 - Personal Records (PG&E, PG&E again, 7-mile, PG&E yet again)
4 - fellow runners from Family & Friends

And I'm ready.

For friends who'd like to cheer me up in person, here is some information:

• Course - Text-based description and RunningMap.com-based map
• Spectator Guide (Suggested Spectator Viewing Location, Spectator Bus Options - Two spectator bus options that run in full loop around the course. You can purchase tickets online or at the registration area.)
• Parking and Transportation
• Street Closures and Traffic Impacts
• And then of course, you'll see me in the following gear (picture before last year's run) with my bib# 1378.

For fellow runners, wish you all good luck and here are few references:

• Packets can be picked at One Market Plaza on July 27th (11am-6pm) or 28th (9am-5pm) and find your bib# here. Race shirt is available at the Expo after packet pickup (Justin Herman Plaza).
• Full Marathon Pace Groups are available with a finish time from varying from 3hr to 5hr 30 min. First Half and Second Half pace groups are available as well.
• Pace Calculator - This tool calculates split times for Aid stations along the marathon course based on a desired finish time. It accounts for uphill and downhill, as well as increased fatigue that might be expected later in the race, by applying different “weights” to each section. A more generic version of this tool is available at Marathon Pace Band.

And for those whose wishes are always with me and will not be able to participate in person:

• Live results will be available here and you'll hear my story afterwards on this blog and whenever we meet :)

Wish me luck, my goal is to finish the marathon in less than 4 hours.

Technorati: running runsfm

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running  |  Comments[1]

Total Running Mileage Mashup with jMaki

I updated the running log filter to the one given below. This allows me to generate the total running mileage of all the weeks. The changes are highlighted in this color:

jmaki.namespace("jmaki.filters");

myDays= ["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday","Sunday"];
oneDay = 24*60*60*1000;

function addDays(myDate, days) {
    return new Date(myDate.getTime() + days*24*60*60*1000);
}

function formatDate(myDate) {
    var dateString = String (myDate.getDate());
    dateString = (dateString.length == 1 ? "0" + dateString : dateString);
    return (myDate.getMonth()+1) + "/" + dateString + "/" + myDate.getFullYear();
}

// convert Running blog feed to the jMaki table format
jmaki.filters.tableModelFilter2 = function(input) {

    var startDate = new Date();
    startDate.setFullYear(2007,1,12); // Feb 12, 2007
    var _columns = [
        {title: 'Title'},
        {title: 'Day of The Week'},
        {title: 'Date'},
        {title: 'Mileage'}
    ];
    var _rows = [];

    var totalMileage = 0;
    for (var _i=0; _i < input.channel.items.length;_i++) {
        var weekNumber = input.channel.items[_i].title.split(' ')[1];
        var weekStartDate = addDays(startDate, (weekNumber-1)*7);
        var desc = input.channel.items[_i].description;
        desc = desc.slice(0, desc.lastIndexOf("</span"));
        var spanArray = desc.split("<span");
        for (var _j=1; _j < spanArray.length; _j++) {
            var span = spanArray[_j].split("</span>")[0];
            if (span.search(/run/) == -1)
                continue;

            var runDay = myDays[_j-1];
            var runDate = addDays(weekStartDate, _j-1);

            mileageInt = parseInt(dayMileage);
            totalMileage += mileageInt == "nan" ? 0 : mileageInt;
            var row = [
                'Week ' + weekNumber,
                runDay,
                formatDate(runDate),
                span.split(': ')[1]
            ];
            _rows.push(row);
        }
    }

    var summaryRow = [
        'Final Week',
        'Last Day',
        formatDate(new Date()),
        totalMileage
    ];

    _rows.push(summaryRow);
    return {type : 'jmakiModelData', columns : _columns, rows : _rows};
}

The updated web page looks like given below. Notice the first row of the table gives the total mileage:

Technorati: jmaki mashup running web2.0

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running  |  Comments[3]

Screencast #Web4: Creating Mashups with jMaki - Display RSS feed in jMaki Widgets

jMaki provide a flexible framework to create mashups very easily. Today, I'm starting a series of screencasts that will focus on this aspect of jMaki. The first one in the series is a very simple mashup that pulls RSS feed from a blog entry and display it in two different widgets, without any extra effort. The NetBeans IDE is used for tooling and the jMaki-enabled Web application is deployed on GlassFish.

Enjoy it here!

The key message is jMaki + NetBeans IDE + GlassFish provides a complete platform for creating and deploying powerful mashups, quickly and effectively!

Technorati: jmaki mashups netbeans screencast glassfish jmakimashups

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[9]

jMaki on Rails - Updated for NetBeans 6 M10

Based upon a user request, this is a follow up entry to show how jMaki on Rails For Dummies work on NetBeans 6 Milestone 10. Some of the steps are simplified and more details are provided. The updates from the previous blog entry are highlighted in this color.

1. Download NetBeans 6.0 M10 (Full version) and configured to install only "Base IDE", "Java IDE", "Web and Java EE" and "Ruby" modules. A cutting-edge build can be obtained from the hudson build.
2. Download and install jMaki plug-in in NetBeans update center.
   1. In NetBeans 'Tools', 'Plugins', select 'Downloaded', click on 'Add Plugins ...'.
   2. Select the downloaded .NBM module, click on 'Install' button (bottom left corner). Follow the next few instructions to install jMaki plug-in and restart the IDE.
   3. To verify, go to 'Tools', 'Plugins', select 'Installed'. It should show 'jMaki Ajax support' with today's installation date.
3. Create a new "Ruby on Rails Application" Project, lets say named 'jmaki_ror'. Take everything else as default.
4. Create a new controller by right-clicking the project, select 'Generate ...', select 'controller', specify the Name as 'jmaki' and Views as 'yahoo'.
5. jMaki-enable the Rails app
   1. Right click on your Rails project, select "Rails Plugins ...".
   2. Select the "Repositories" tab.
   3. Click "Add URL" and specify "http://jmaki-goodies.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rails_plugins".  This adds the plug-in registry to the list of repositories used for searching plug-ins.
   4. Now install the jmaki runtime. Select the "New Plugins" tab .
   5. Multi-select jmaki_core and jmaki_yahoo and press "Install". Follow the instructions and the two plug-ins will be installed. After the installation is complete, you'll see the following:
      
      
      
      and click on 'Close'.
   6. Expand 'Views', right-click on 'layouts', select 'New', select 'RHTML file ...'. Enter the 'File Name' as 'standard'. This will add 'standard.rhtml' in layouts sub-tree. Enter the following fragment before <body>:
      
      <head>
  <%= stylesheet_link_tag "jmaki-standard", :media => "all" -%>
  <%= javascript_include_tag "jmaki" -%>
  <%= jmaki_setup -%>
</head>
   7. Within <body>, add the following fragment:
      
      <%= @content_for_layout %>
   8. In 'Controllers', 'jmaki_controller.rb', add the following fragment before 'def yahoo' line:
      
      layout "standard"
6. Download and Configure the MySQL database
   1. Download MySQL 5.0 Community Server and install by taking all the default values.
   2. In a command prompt window, Start MySQL server using the command: 'mysqld-nt --user root'.
   3. Create database using the command: 'mysqladmin -u root create jmaki_ror_development'. You need to make sure that the database name in this script is changed to match the project name.
   4. Right select the NetBeans project, select 'Generate', select 'model', specify the arguments as 'grid', click 'OK'. This will generate, in NetBeans project, Database Migrations, migrate, 001_create_grids.rb.
   5. Open 001_create_grids.rb, change self.up helper method such that it looks like:
      
      def self.up
  create_table :grids do |t|
    t.column :company, :string
    t.column :price, :float
    t.column :change, :float
    t.column :percent_change, :float
    t.column :last_updated, :string
  end
end 
   6. Right-select NetBeans project, select 'Run Rake Target', 'db', 'migrate'. This generates the database table.
   7. Execute the query to insert data into the table.
      1. The easiest way to run this query is to run mysql client in the command prompt window as: 'mysql --user root'.
      2. Enter the command as 'use jmaki_ror_development' to see the following interaction:
         
         mysql> use jmaki_ror_development;
Database changed
      3. And then execute the query given below:
         
         insert into grids values (1, 'A Co', 71.72, 0.02, 0.03, 'Jan 1, 2007, 10:00am' );
insert into grids values (2, 'B Inc', 29.01, 0.42, 1.47, 'Feb 1, 2007, 10:00am' );
insert into grids values (3, 'C Group Inc', 83.81, 0.28, 0.34, 'Mar 1, 2007, 10:00am' );
insert into grids values (4, 'D Company', 52.55, 0.01, 0.02, 'Apr 1, 2007, 10:00am' );
7. Add jMaki-wrapped Yahoo DataTable widget
   1. In NetBeans project, in 'Views', 'jmaki', 'yahoo.rhtml', drag-and-drop 'Data Table' widget from the 'Yahoo' category of jMaki palette.
      1. Until the jMaki data model for grid and data widgets is consistent between Java and JRuby, you need to replace the generated code in 'yahoo.rhtml' with the following:
         
         <%= jmaki_widget 'yahoo.dataTable',
    :args => {
        :columns => [
            { :title => 'Company', :width => 200, :locked => false },
            { :title => 'Price', :width => 75, :renderer => 'usMoney' },
            { :title => 'Change', :width => 75, :renderer => 'change' },
            { :title => '% Change', :width => 75, :renderer => 'pctChange' },
            { :title => 'Last Updated', :width => 85, :renderer => 'italic' }
        ]
    },
:value => @table_data
-%>
      2. '@table_data' is defined in 'jmaki_controller' in 'def yahoo' as:
         
         def yahoo
    @table_data = []
    Grid.find_all().each do |data|
      @table_data << [ data.company, data.price, data.change, data.percent_change, data.last_updated]
    end
end
8. That's it, run your app and view the page at 'http://localhost:3000/jmaki/yahoo'. Now jMaki-wrapped Yahoo DataTable widget is picking data from the MySQL database. 

And as a next step, you can WAR'up this RoR application and deploy it on GlassFish V2 using these instructions.

Technorati: jmaki rubyonrails ror netbeans mysql glassfish

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[12]

Metro on Tomcat 6.x

Rama described how to run JAX-WS samples with Tomcat 6.x. JAX-WS is part of Metro - the Web services stack in GlassFish. Another key component of Metro is WSIT (aka Project Tango) that provides Secure, Reliable, Transactional and Interoperable Web service. Read more about Project Tango in this 26-page article.

A stable version of Metro is integrated in GlassFish V2 and the latest nightlies of stand-alone bundle are also available. The stand-alone bundle comes with an install scipt (wsit-on-tomcat.xml) that allows it install on Tomcat 5.x. I followed the steps in Rama's blog to install Metro on Tomcat 6.x. But first, a little bit of explanation and then the actual code fragments.

Tomcat's classloading mechanism has changed slightly between 5.x and 6.x. The first change is that Tomcat 5.x used to have shared/lib directory to share classes across all web applications. This directory in turn used to be specified as value of shared.loader property in  conf/catalina.properties. In Tomcat 6.x, the property still exists but it's value is set to nothing and shared/lib directory no longer exists in the default installation. I see the motivation behind this change as it keeps the Tomcat installation directory clean and any shared resources can still be specified in conf/catalina.properties. But this means that wsit-on-tomcat.xml script, that copies the files in shared/lib directory, will work on Tomcat 5.x only. In order for this script to work on Tomcat 6.x, the value of shared.loader property need to be changed to include Metro jars.

Now, the code fragments! The value of shared.loader property in Tomcat 5.x is:

shared.loader=${catalina.base}/shared/classes,${catalina.base}/shared/lib/*.jar

And in Tomcat 6.x is the value of this property is:

shared.loader=

If Metro is installed in c:\metro then changing its value to:

shared.loader=file:///c:/metro/lib/*.jar

will enable Tomcat 6.x to host Secure, Reliable, Transactional and .NET 3.0-Interoperable Web services. And this mechanism will work for Tomcat 5.x too, so changing the value of this property in Tomcat 5.x installation to:

shared.loader=${catalina.base}/shared/classes,${catalina.base}/shared/lib/*.jar,file:///c:/metro/lib/*.jar

instead of copying the files in shared/lib will be sufficient as well.

The second change in Tomcat's classloading mechanism is required if you are using Java SE 6. Tomcat 5.x used to have common/endorsed directory which no longer exists in Tomcat 6.x. Java SE 6 is bundled with JAX-WS 2.0 and Metro needs JAX-WS 2.1. So if you are using Java SE 6 then copy webservices-api.jar in c:/jdk6/jre/lib/endorsed directory. Read Endorsed Directory Mechanism for more details.

Several screencasts are available that show how to develop Secure, Reliable and Transactional and Interoperable Web service. All the screencasts use NetBeans IDE but if you are more of a command-line user then follow this entry that shows how to develop a reliable endpoint and invoke it from WCF and vice versa.

Technorati: metro webservices wsit jax-ws glassfish tomcat

Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices  |  Comments[34]

Week 23 - Improved PR on Rancho by > 2 minutes

Mon: Rest
Tue: 3.5 miles
Wed: Rest
Thu: 7 miles
Fri: Rest
Sat: Rest
Sun: 9 miles

Here are good reads of this time:

• Peanut Butter - A Great Runners Food - Packed with vitamin E, niacin, folic acid, protein, fiber and monounsaturated ("good") fats, peanut butter just might be the best runner's food on the planet.
• Eat Smart on the Road - Whether you're driving cross-country or just to a nearby state for a race weekend, these five tips will help you eat right along the way.
• Try a 'Three-Lap' Workout - Running 1200's (three times around the track) is a great, often-overlooked way to boost your aerobic capacity. Start with these five workouts.
• Strength Train in Sun (with video) - Outdoor circuit workouts, or sessions that alternate running and resistance exercises, are a perfect way to build strength.

Technorati: running fitness runninglog

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running  |  Comments[0]

jMaki and GlassFish @ OSCON

Sun Microsystems is a platinum sponsor of OSCON 2007 (Jul 23-27, Portland, OR). There are tutorials, sessions, bofs, expo hall and other events. Sun's continued commitment to Open Source is reflected in its leadership and key contributions to the many projects including OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org, GNOME, Grid Engine, java.net, Jini, JXTA, GlassFish, NetBeans, and Mozilla.

jMaki is another such commitment! It's an open source lightweight Ajax framework to build Web 2.0 applications that will be shown at the Expo Hall. We will show how jMaki enables cool and useful mashups. Previous Posts show some of the capabilities of jMaki.

And of course there is a booth on GlassFish - an open source, production quality and Java EE 5 compatible application server.

You can sign up for a free pass.

A complete list of Sun sessions is listed below.

Technorati: jmaki glassfish sun oscon conf

Posted by Arun Gupta in web2.0  |  Comments[3]

PR for 7 miles & Running Pace Calculator

Here is a tool that calculates your running pace per mile or kilometer.

And it tells me I ran 7:33 min/mile pace for my 7 mile run this morning, my best timing for that distance, yipppee! One Rancho PG&E over the weekend and couple of more speed bursts next week and then the race!

Technorati: running tool

Posted by Arun Gupta in Running  |  Comments[0]

Fourth Microsoft Interop Plugfest Report

As reported earlier, Metro team from Sun participated in the fourth (third, second, first) Microsoft Interop Plugfest. Microsoft is working on .NET 3.5 (codename Orcas) and the focus this time was to ensure that there are no regressions with WSIT 1.0. Read Harold's report for more details.

Technorati: webservices metro plugfest glassfish microsoft interoperability

Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices  |  Comments[6]