Ruchith's blog

Google enters into mobile

2007-11-06T17:20:00.000+05:30

Google takes a big step forward by moving into mobile and introducing Open Hanset Alliance(OHA) which includes 34 powerful companies such as Qualcomm, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile, Sprint, Skype, LG, HTC, KDDI, DoCoMo and China Mobile,etc. Goal of this alliance is to develop an open source operating system for mobile phones, in other words "an alternative to Symbian OS, Windows mobile and iPhone". (I'm sure Apple will think about opening their OS and Symbian too).

Google's mobile OS will be called "Android" (No "Google" word/logo attached at all .... how humble they are .... ) which is an open source OS built on Linux and Java.
Since this mobile OS is available for free of charge for OEM vendors, this will be a major hit for proprietary mobile OS vendors.
Further it will give more flexible environment for mobile application developers.
And I'm sure ......... this will lead to come up with some more mobile OS distro like in linux desktop.

Surprise ........... this Android SDK will be available from Nov 12th, and mobile phones will be available from mid of 2008 [Not sure how fast it going to come here , since it will be launched initially USA, Europe, Japan and China ].

I think this is a great news to mobile application development companies like us, it will eliminate some of the barrier currently we have because of the closeness of the mobile operating systems.

Finally.........mobile application developers are getting more flexibility and more open environment.

Sources :
image from http://www.dailytechrag.com
info from here

Web apps scalability

2007-08-09T16:54:00.000+05:30

Along with web 2.0, web traffic is getting increased day by day. Individual users as well as enterprises are getting into the the web eyeing on the SAAS type of application and moving away form the desktop apps.
The amount of traffic generated by these apps are tremendous, Just to name few

Over 100 million video downloads per day from YouTube.
More than 4 billion queries per day on FlickR.
Do I need to mention Google, .........

How these apps handle the traffic, whats the architecture behind, what are the technologies empower them ..... are some of the questions come to our mind,

I came across a good web site with some of the very good informations about these apps, answering above questions. It talks about how much scalable they are , and how it has been achieved and the technologies are being used.

Google Architecture info - here
YouTube Architecture - here
FlickR Architecture - here

Installing LAMP - tips

2007-07-17T14:21:00.000+05:30

Thought of sharing some experience I came across when installing LAMP stack. My intension is not to give step by step procedure for "How to install LAMP stack" [LAMP it self provides very good documentation for that ], But some of the issues you may come across.
My LAMP stack compose with :
- Linux [Fedora 5] ;) yeah too old. Should have gone for 7
#uname -a
Linux petronas 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp #1 SMP Tue Mar 14 16:05:46 EST 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

- Apache 2.2.4 latest
- Mysql - 5.0.36 latest
- PHP - 5.2.3 latest.

1. If you are planning to install LAMP from the scratch, REMOVE default installations of Apache, Mysql and PHP which come with the Linux installation.

Check the existence of the packages using following commands :

rpm -qa | grep -i mysql

rpm -qa | grep -i apache

rpm -qa | grep -i httpd

rpm -qa | grep -i php

if you get any response for this with list of files, rpms, remove them using following :

rpm -e "file name"

But if you are a Fedora user, use "Yum" [fantastic tool for package management, less headache with dependencies],

yum remove "file name"

With this you can remove earlier installations, now you ready for the installation.

Installation links are :

Mysql : http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/installing.html
Apache : http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/install.html
PHP : http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.unix.apache2.php

Mysql and Apache installation were very smooth, not much issues,

2. When you install , PHP if you come see following error message :

Configuring extensions
checking whether to enable LIBXML support... yes
checking libxml2 install dir... no
configure: error: xml2-config not found. Please check your libxml2 installation.

You may need to install libxml2 development packages, you might get this error even you have libxml2, do following in fedora,

yum install libxml2-devel

3. If you install PHP with mysql option, some times you might get following error,

checking for MySQL UNIX socket location... no
configure: error: Cannot find MySQL header files under yes.
Note that the MySQL client library is not bundled anymore.

If you install mysql without using RPMs there is a high probability of facing this issue, since PHP conigurator cannot locate the mysql.
Use following command to configure the PHP.

./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs --with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql

============================================

Getting Screenshots in symbian phones

2007-06-19T13:04:00.000+05:30

Today I came across a situation where I wanted to get some screen shots of a Symbian application we developed to update some product documents. Did bit of surfing and ended up with a very nice tool called "Best Screen Snap" which gives similar experience like "Sangit" [Desktop screen capturing tool]. I think this is a very handy tool for mobile application developers. More importantly it is a freeware.
Click here for more info and download.

Offline readings with google reader

2007-06-01T16:37:00.000+05:30

This may be a great news to people who carry laptops and who use google reader as their RSS or ATOM feed readers or any goooglers . You do not need internet always, to read articles anymore. When u have internet access, just download your subscribed articles [2000 articles] to Google reader, and read them leisurely...

The newly released Google gadget Google gears [a browser based plugin] enables off line reading on google-reader. You can download upto 2000 articles.

Google recommends Firefox 1.5+ or IE 6+. But some how I was only succeeded with Firefox but failed with IE 6 [understood still it is a beta version].

Free and Open Source Java

2007-01-03T13:16:00.000+05:30

Another Freedom for Java Technology

Sun started a revolution with Java technology 10 years ago. With a free runtime, an open specification, and a platform-independent promise of compatibility, Java technology became a gold standard in embedded devices, mobile phones, on the desktop and within the enterprise. Now, in 2006, Sun is open sourcing its implementations of Java technology as Free/Libre software. More

Google Teck Talk Videos

2006-11-14T11:31:00.000+05:30

If anyone looking for teck talk videos visit google vidoes and search for type:google engEDU
. This gives very good teck talk presentation videos including test first coding, agile developments, open source development tools, python, ruby and may more... Further it has more videos such as technical trends, analysis , and managment related topics.. but more towards software engineering.

Congrats !!!........ Mahela ... Getting selected as the captain of the Year

2006-11-06T16:47:00.000+05:30

Mahel Jayewardane, Sri Lanka Cricket captain was selected as the captain of the year 2006 ICC awards.... This is a great honour to Sri Lanka and we are proud about you.......And also he is named as the captain of the world ODI team........

Read more About this from cricinfo...
link 1
link 2

Mobile Applications presentation

2006-11-02T16:47:00.000+05:30

The mobile application presentation done for mobile computing subject.

slides

Unit testing anti patterns

2006-10-17T09:44:00.000+05:30

I think nowadays everybody is willing to write unit test cases, and it is very important to know the things we should not do when writing unit tests or in other words unit test anti patterns.
Found some very good article about junit anti patterns....
http://www.exubero.com/junit/antipatterns.html
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-junit/

Happy reading.......

Getting older by one more year

2006-10-04T11:14:00.000+05:30

Today is my birthday , getting older by one more year and moving through 30's. The only thing no body can stop... Time. How fast time is moving..... it is really nice to recall the things happen, did in the last 30 years , Which make always me smile........

Reducing the size of a j2me jar

2006-09-28T12:23:00.000+05:30

In J2ME application development , the size of the j2me application jar file is very important as the application has limited resources in mobile devices. Below you can see some of the points would help you to reduce the size for the jar.

Some points for j2me jar size reduction

There are many ways to reduce the size of your wireless Java application.

* Keep it simple. Simplicity of design can yield robustness, speed, and efficient use of space.
* Recompute rather than store. Recomputing a value rather than storing it for later retrieval can save space. As an example consider the following code fragment:
* Choose an elegant data structure to store information. You should always consider your options for a data structure to store your information on the device.
* Remove unnecessary classes. One way to "keep it simple" is to review your application design and eliminate classes that are not actually needed.
* Reduce functionality and features. Is all the functionality you've planned actually needed?
* Avoid inner classes. Many programmers use inner classes, to implement event listeners for example. Convenient, but behind the scenes the compiler generates special instructions to allow the inner class to access the outer class's private data.
* Avoid deep inheritance hierarchies. Although the benefits of inheritance (such as software reuse, increased reliability, and code sharing) are great, nothing is without cost of some sort, including inheritance. Programs must use memory and time to construct fields inherited from a base class even when the derived class makes no use of them. When a method is invoked and it is not part of the derived class, its immediate superclass will be searched; if that class doesn't define the method, its superclass will be searched, and so on. All that extra message passing adds bulk to the bytecode and steals processor time. If a class doesn't use most of the resources it inherits from the base class, it's better to reimplement the resources it does use, instead of inheriting them.
* Avoid using inheritance when it isn't necessary. For example, if you wish to use multiple threads, implement the Runnable interface rather than extending the Thread class.
* Use short names for classes, methods, and fields. Savings from abbreviating any one name aren't dramatic, but they add up. An automated way to get shorter names is to use obfuscation tools. Although their primary intent is to make it harder for a competitor to reverse-engineer your application by decompiling your .class files into easily read .java files, obfuscators also reduce code size by shortening names. There are several obfuscators available, but you may want to try RetroGuard, which is available for free. You can use this obfuscator from the J2ME Wireless Toolkit.

* Take advantage of resource-processing tools that reduce PNG resolution and color depth. Many devices are capable of displaying only a few colors per pixel, so creating images with many colors per pixel may increase your app's memory footprint without adding any value to it. You may also want to reduce the dimensions of the image.
* Don't include unnecessary images. Why use memory for images that don't enhance your application?
* Eliminate access methods. Get and set methods can cause your application to run more slowly than if it accessed member variables directly, and they increase program size. Once again, though, it is all about trade-offs.
* Refactor. As applications evolve over time, they often become less space-efficient. Sometimes the best way to save space is to refactor the application, with space-efficiency as a high-level design goal.
* Minimize object creation. Object creation consumes memory and processor cycles, and leads to object destruction, which further reduces performance. Look for ways to reuse existing objects rather than create new ones.
* Avoid string concatenation. It is well known that concatenating objects with the + operator causes object creation and subsequent garbage collection, and thus chews up both memory and processor time. It is more efficient to use StringBuffer. Note, however, that merely switching from concatenation to use of StringBuffers is not always sufficient because of the way arrays are reallocated. Inefficiencies arise, chiefly because the default character buffer for StringBuffer is 16, and when the buffer is full a new one (usually twice the size of the original) must be allocated. Once the content is copied to the new one, the old buffer is released. This frequent reallocation can be avoided if you create a StringBuffer big enough to hold the longest string you're likely to store.

This information was captured form Sun developer network. Click here for the full article.

Enabling high availability in Spring applications

2006-09-21T12:20:00.000+05:30

Spring has been one of the buzz word in the software development industry, it make developers life easier using concepts such as IoC, DI, AOP. Ofcourse Spring did a revolution in the j2EE similar to what EJB did. To add more value to the Spring framework , terracotta has come up with high availability, high performance clustering without code changes.
For more info read following captured from www.theserverside.com

Terracotta for Spring is a runtime for Spring-based applications that provides high-availability and high performance clustering for Spring applications with zero changes to the application code. Terracotta for Spring provides plug-in capacity, availability and scalability for Spring applications with absolutely no changes to existing code.

Features:

High performance runtime for Spring Applications
Cluster Spring Beans, Events, JMX State and Spring WebFlows
Virtual memory for large, shared Java heaps
Flexible sharing and locking configurable at runtime
Cross-JVM Thread coordination (Wait / Notify)
Runtime visibility into the application cluster

It can be downloaded now with registration.

Python IDE

2006-09-19T19:47:00.000+05:30

Very nice Python IDE , a cool one , would love it if it is a open source one.

http://wingware.com

Struts + J2ME --> Strutsme

2006-09-12T12:45:00.000+05:30

Struts did a major revolution in the web application development , specially since it is MVC pattern based farmework it gave a lot of structured architecture for java based web applications. Now a days Struts and JSF are competeing each other neck to neck. Both has prons and cons. I'm not willing to compare each other as I'm a fan of both. How ever for you reference Struts vs JSF gives some comparison.

J2ME also did major revolution in the mobile application development industry. Currently J2ME has huge market share in thee mobile phone / application market.

Going forward, now we can see a combination of Struts and J2ME -- > StrutsME , This enables J2ME clients to call struts based action classes and use struts validators,etc.
You can get more information about this from here.

Getting started with Flash lite

2006-09-06T09:50:00.000+05:30

No need to mention , the importance of mobile phone in current
era not only for calls but also to enable the access to other service on the move.

I have been working on mobile and telco application development for last 6 years with hSenid and it is amazing to see the growth of mobile technologies. We talked about about SMS,MMS, WAP2.0, XHTML,Symbian C++, J2ME......... and NOW Flash Lite.
Flash Lite is the latest matured technology which is ready provide rich but light wei ght GUI in mobile phones. I'm sure anyone who is interested in mobile application development would definitly like to know about flash lite.
I found a good article , infact a tutorial about Flash Lite in "sony ericsson" web site..... thought of sharing it with you all.
Yes.... definitly there will be a bias towards Sony Ericsson, But it is a good starting point.

Tutorial link

Happy reading.............

Online word processors,spread sheets, slides, project management and lot more.

2006-09-01T10:51:00.000+05:30

Got to know about a great site, absoultly fantastic ......... Everything is on-line. What are you looking for it is there......
Word processors, spread sheets , slide creation, project management tools, virtual office, CRM, Planner, Chat.... everyting....
This is going to be a definite threat for Microsoft office [can't help].

where you can find this , visit www.zoho.com

Thanks Kutila[@ hSenid], sending me the link.

MySQL Wins Prestigious International Database Contest

2006-08-30T16:59:00.000+05:30

It is great to hear that MySql wins the database contest in performance. This is a great benchmark to convince customers to use mysql.
Read more info ...

Good Article : About JSF & Struts [The add-and-remove pattern]

2006-08-24T10:02:00.000+05:30

Java Feature — Jakarta Struts & JavaServer Faces

The add-and-remove pattern

Long lists and ordered selections require a more complex design pattern. This pattern displays available items in one list and chosen items in another so the user's choices are always visible and easily modified.

This design pattern is commonly called a Dual List or Dual Listbox selector. It is also known as the Selection Summary or List Builder pattern. In the Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines, it's called the Add-and-Remove pattern:

Typical Struts implementations of this pattern require JSPs, Java, and JavaScript. JavaServer Faces doesn't need JSPs, but they're used here for easy comparison.

Good Article : Write Right Java Faster Using Test-Driven Development

2006-08-23T19:18:00.000+05:30

Write Right Java Faster Using Test-Driven Development

Testing Java code is increasingly a task taken on by developers rather than separate teams to which the programs are handed. Many Java developers are now familiar with JUnit and know the different between unit tests and integration tests. This has been driven largely by the focus on test-driven development (TDD) in extreme programming (XP) and other agile software development methodologies. While the industry-at-large has recognized the value of unit tests and has a new outlook on testing in general, for the most part, actual TDD (meaning, the tests are written first) is not usually practiced outside of hardcore agile shops.

In this article, we'll present a specific example (based on a real-world scenario that we recently faced) and walk step-by-step how to take a pure TDD approach and hopefully show the benefits of embracing TDD completely in this scenario. (For a clear and concise explanation of some of the major benefits of TDD in general, see www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/testfirst.html.)

The Scenario
This scenario is modeled closely on one we faced at a client site recently. In short, we were a pair on a development team working on a project with typical issues:

A deadline/delivery date had been set
Little or no requirements existed and
It didn't look like we'd be getting requirements any time soon (due to limited staffing, etc.).