December 22nd, 2009
I ran across this while working on tweaking some of my own flows. As luck would have it, I never got a chance to test it out, but wanted to keep a note on it just in case I run across it again:
Tags: fireCustomEvent, WLP
Posted in WebLogic Portal | No Comments »
December 19th, 2009
The usual URL at http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/ doesn’t work for Workshop for some reason. This URL does: http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/1.1/update-site/
Posted in Can't Live Without, WebLogic Portal | No Comments »
December 15th, 2009
The most dreaded question for an IT professional is “What do you do”?
I’ve finally found the answer. I solve problems.
What kind problems? All kinds. The key piece is, my efficiency in solving a problem is directly proportional to how interesting I find the problem. It’s true for all IT pros.
For an MIS guy, it’s fascinating to find the best way to get file A to point B while keeping away hacker C.
For a Web Services guru, it’s all about getting data from one place to another, and the further apart they are, the more interesting it is.
I have a lot of problems I find interesting, but the one I find most interesting is how to get user A to use system B and for system B to do something useful with system C while user A has no idea that there is a system C. It just happens.
That is what I do.
Posted in Random Musings | No Comments »
November 17th, 2009
When I search for something too many times, I try to remember to post it here. So, to drop the warnings for type safety when you know all is fine, you can do the following:
@SuppressWarnings(“unchecked”)
List<CustomerBean> customers = (List<CustomerBean>)session.getAttribute(CSRD_CONTACT_LIST);
Tags: Annotation, eclipse, surpress, unchecked, warnings
Posted in J2EE | No Comments »
November 3rd, 2009
Posted in Cool Stuff | No Comments »
October 18th, 2009
I’m on a roll with the LinkedIn rants today 
Do software development efforts fail because: 1) the technical staff is not skilled enough for the work, 2) management has unrealistic expectations, 3) lack of reasonable resources to perform the effort. I would be interested to know your thoughts.
Someone once said that failure can only occur when time and resources are limiting factors. In the case of software, all of the above are true, though the most consistent cause I see is that the process of doing the following in order:
1) Set a completion date
2) Define the requirements
3) Design the software
4) Develop the software
5) Change the requirements
6) Wonder what went wrong
Agile is a good step in preventing failure from the above process except that even shops that use Agile often face that the end date is set before work begins and that unrealistic expectations are set at the same time.
Another ongoing issue is that management’s reaction to bad news about meeting functionality or a date is to throw more people on the project and demand more frequent meetings which pull the people most capable of solving the issue away from solving the issue. This trains developers to not communicate issues until the last minute, which accelerates this vicious cycle.
As Dennis Miller used to say “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”
Tags: Agile, failure, fuq, Software
Posted in Random Musings | No Comments »
October 18th, 2009
I ran across a question on LinkedIn today and gave a long-winded rant-like response that I thought I would post here, too.
Javabeans are hailed as reusabel software components. Is anybody aware of a market for these wigits?
My Answer: Yes, and it has been dominated by IBM and Oracle for the past decade. When the books were written that proposed business models around the technology the expectation was that Swing would win massive acceptance and that Applets would continue to be the key technology of rich web applications. None of this came to pass.
There was also the expectation of an open market of beans, which missed the fact that most developers would rather write their own and only reuse when directed, or until it becomes a habit from being directed to do so. The reuse is still mostly of internally developed beans or those that are part of vendor applications.
And the vendor applications mostly make the beans proprietary, i.e., they only run within their servers.
The exceptions to my cynical gut-reaction is the FOSS community, where many Java Beans and other reusable components can be found.
As Dennis Miller used to say “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”
Tags: beans, FOSS, fuq, Java, resuse
Posted in Random Musings | No Comments »
October 14th, 2009
A guy I used to work with posted this handy article:
Posted in WebLogic Server | No Comments »
October 7th, 2009
I often save web pages as Word documents for different reasons, and sometimes need to disable the links. Finding no help in Help, I did the usual search and found the trick elsewhere.
Here’s what I found:
If you just want to remove the hyperlink property of the entry, select the document—[Ctrl]A—and unlink the field—[Ctrl][Shift][F9].
Tags: doc, Links, remove, word
Posted in Personal Tech | No Comments »
October 6th, 2009
I believe that AI is taking the wrong path. They are trying to work top down because that’s how humans who are generally successful at solving problems approach solving problems. Problems that are somewhat familiar are best served with a rigorous approach that leads to a planned conclusion. Still, many of the greatest break-throughs have come about by accident, i.e., not following the general path at first. Penicillin and Post-It Notes come immediately to mind.
But humans only solve most problems the usual way because they have a solid ground work to start from. The accidents create a new ground work for development. Accidents come about by not following the normal path, and I think the solution to AI is in taking a different path that will lead to a ground work that will support the entire field.
AI should take the approach of developing siloed expert systems. Make lots of them and keep refining until commoditized. Then start working on higher systems that can merge related systems together though interfaces like web services (but more efficient). Then build ever higher systems until a small set of controlling systems can leverage the legacy systems. The legacy systems, truly failures to create AI and the wrong accepted path will provide an infrastructure that will support a true AI solution.
Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, fuq
Posted in Random Musings | No Comments »
