Surprise! Chrome is out of beta

I have just updated my Google chrome and guess what it does not have 'beta'. Isn't it surprising(or shocking) to see a Google product coming out of beta in just over three months since it is released. I can not find the release notes but I am sure that it just might have few bug fixes not any enhancements. I hope this version does not crash while playing flash videos.

Trivia: How to update chrome?
Click on wrench icon, select 'About Google Chrome' and button to update chrome should be there, if it is not up to date.

Alternative to FlexBuilder

Trying to build flex applications? But can not pay for FlexBuilder. No worries. Open Source Community has already a solution for it but available in two pieces i.e MXML editor and AS3 plugin. We need to put them together to build a Flex application. Darran Schall has an old post that explains how to set up eclipse for working with MXML files. Though it is meant for flex's older version, the procedure remains same for newer versions too. I would just like to extend his post to make it work for Flex3 with MyEclipse.

Step 1. Get new xmls xsd file for Flex 3 version from xsd4mxml project.

Step 2. Start MyEclipse, from the menu, select Window -> Preferences. Select General -> Content Types. On the right, expand Text and highlight XML. Click the "Add" button and enter "*.mxml" as the file type. Click OK.

Step 3. Again from the menu, select Window -> Preferences. Expand "MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench" -> "Files and Editors" ->"XML". Click "User Specified Entries" and click "Add" and use the following values.

URI: browse for the path to the mxml.xsd file downloaded at Step 1.
Key: http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml

Step 4. Click "OK" to save the changes and close the window.

That is it. Set to create/modify mxml file with code assisting.

Now the second part. Download an eclipse plug-in from www.axdt.org that helps you to work with ActionScript 3.0. Though this plug-in does not have code assistance feature for AS3 but definitely good start to developing and compiling AS3 classes.

Happy building FLEX applications!!!

Cloud Computing

Check out this link for an excellent guide on what is Cloud Computing and where are the top cloud computing providers such as Google, SalesForce and Microsoft currently are and what they gonna offer in near future.

Introduction to RESTful Webservices

I have found an excellent presentation on REST webservices here that serves as beginning point to start learning REpresentational State Transfer(REST) WebServices.

Free PDF Creator software

Looking for PDF creator software? I have found the following free PDF creators very easy, useful and feature-rich. Why to buy expensive Adobe PDF creator when I have these software on hand for free :)

1. Primo PDF

Creates PDF files from 300+ file types. You can secure with passwords and add document information (title, author, etc.) during creation.

2. PDF Creator


PDF Creator allows you to easily create professional looking PDF files in seconds. It is very simple to use. Open any file or document you want to turn into a PDF file. Click File -> Print and select "PDFCreator" as your print and click Print. PDF Creator will take over and in seconds your new PDF file will be ready to save.

3. PDF reDirect

JBoss ESB 4.2 presentation

Cool presentation on JBoss ESB 4.2 product.

Managable SOA

Today I have stumbled on an article that describes why Service Oriented Architecture is still slow to be adopted in large organizations.

Problem connecting to Websphere MQ in binding mode

Today, I have run into a problem in sending a message to Websphere MQ. I just want to send a message from a stateless session bean running in JBoss 4.0.5 on Solaris box. Both my application server and Websphere MQ are running on the machine. So, I decided to connect to MQ in a binding mode. Simple task isn’t it?
I quickly wrote a simple MQ java client, modified the session bean to call the mq client , deployed the application, run a sample test and expected the message to show up in the MQ queue. But, instead I got an exception reported in the application server log. Below is the stack trace of the exception.

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no mqjbnd05 in java.library.path
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1517)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:788)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:834)
at com.ibm.mq.MQSESSION.loadLib(MQSESSION.java:872)
at com.ibm.mq.server.MQSESSION$1.run(MQSESSION.java:228)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at com.ibm.mq.server.MQSESSION.(MQSESSION.java:222)
at com.ibm.mq.MQSESSIONServer.getMQSESSION(MQSESSIONServer.java:70)
at com.ibm.mq.MQSESSION.getSession(MQSESSION.java:492)
at com.ibm.mq.MQManagedConnectionJ11.(MQManagedConnectionJ11.java:168)
at com.ibm.mq.MQBindingsManagedConnectionFactoryJ11._createManagedConnection(MQBindingsManagedConnectionFactoryJ11.java:179)
at com.ibm.mq.MQBindingsManagedConnectionFactoryJ11.createManagedConnection(MQBindingsManagedConnectionFactoryJ11.java:215)
at com.ibm.mq.StoredManagedConnection.(StoredManagedConnection.java:84)
at com.ibm.mq.MQSimpleConnectionManager.allocateConnection(MQSimpleConnectionManager.java:168)
at com.ibm.mq.MQQueueManagerFactory.obtainBaseMQQueueManager(MQQueueManagerFactory.java:772)
at com.ibm.mq.MQQueueManagerFactory.procure(MQQueueManagerFactory.java:697)
at com.ibm.mq.MQQueueManagerFactory.constructQueueManager(MQQueueManagerFactory.java:657)
at com.ibm.mq.MQQueueManagerFactory.createQueueManager(MQQueueManagerFactory.java:153)
at com.ibm.mq.MQQueueManager.(MQQueueManager.java:451)


Just by looking at error message, it is clear that the system can not find library file for mqjbind05 in java’s library path. A quick grep on the system showed that required mq java library file(libmqjbind05.so) is available at /opt/mqm/java/lib.
I thought adding the above directory path to my environment variable $PATH would solve the problem but it did not. Apparently, Solaris does not seem to pick this entry from $PATH variable add to java’s library path. That left me no option but to add the path as VM argument. I did it so by adding
‘-Djava.library.path=/opt/mqm/java/lib’ to my server’s VM arguments. And guess what? It worked!!

Jboss Seam Author's site problem

I am trying to download source code for the JBoss(R) Seam book but unfortunately the author Michael Yuan's site is no longer available. I have googled in vain to find any alternative source for this source code. I think I should contact Michael if the site is down for temporarily or for ever.

Flex and Seam examples

Recently there is a lot of momentum in two simple and great frameworks Seam and Flex. Seam is a lightweight web integration framework that glues EJB and JSF components whereas Flex brings on Rich Internet Application capabilities to Web applications.

People started thinking why can not marry these two frameworks to come up with more sphesticated framework for web applications.

Here is an article that discusses why Seam and Flex can work together on OnJava.

On similar lines, Cameron Ingram an application architect in a company I am currently working for, created an excellent project called FlexBooking that uses Seam and Flex technologies. This project is based on Seam's Hotel booking example. You can also find more sample projects using GraniteDS, Seam and Flex here at Cameron's blog.

Sun buys MySQL

Sun announced yesterday that it was going to buy MySQL, the most popular open source database.
What does this mean to both Sun and MySQL. Yahoo biz says that

With millions of global deployments including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile, MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL's open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL's offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun's global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun's channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.

Read on more here

Java Persistence and EJB3 -from EJB Spec Lead

EJB spec lead Linda DeMichiel covers the key aspects of the Java Persistence API including use of the EntityManager API, persistence units & persistence contexts, queries, ORM, etc at QCon organized by infoq.

Top Adobe Flex misconceptions

In a QCon conference with InfoQ,James Ward has dispelled major misconceptions about Adobe Flex technology. Find this interesting article here.

GridRepublic : Using unused CPU cycles for a good cause

GridRepublic members run a screensaver that allows their computers to work on public-interest research projects when the machines are not otherwise in use. This screensaver does not affect performance of the host computer any more than an ordinary screensaver does.
You can know more about GridRepublic and join the program here

Unit testing JSF

Unit testing JSF based web applications has been considered difficult because of the constraints of testing JSF components outside the container. Most of the web-tier testing frameworks follow black-box testing approach where developers write test classes using the web components to verify the rendered HTML output is what is expected. Frameworks such as HtmlUnit, HttpUnit, Canoo WebTest, and Selenium fall into this category. The limitation of these frameworks is that they only test the client side of a web application.

But this trend is changing with the recently released JSFUnit and other JSF testing frameworks such as Shale Test and JSF Extensions that support white-box testing to test both client and server components of the web application. And projects like Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) and JXInsight are also helping in the development and testing of JSF applications.

Read on more at JSF Unit Testing Tools

James Gosling on JavaFX

Redmond Developer News has published an interview with James Gosling where in James discussed about JavaFX which is Sun's answer to Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft's Silverlight technologies.
Read the interview here.