Online Java practice lab

A CS lecturer from Stanford, namely  Nick Parlante, has created this site: http://www.javabat.com/ . It is a neat idea to get the students going and test out their java skills online. He describes some sample problems and gives the users a place to put their codes. Upon completion, the user can submit their code and run tests against expected results. Definitely recommended for people who are learning java.

GWT hosted browser problem in Debian etch

Just installed Debian 4.0 (etch) on my laptop (clean net install) and fixed all my development environment there. But surprisingly I found that none of the gwt sample application, and my gwt applications were running on the bundled hosted browser provided with GWT.  I was getting an error relating to: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError .

The following two commands solved the problem. May be helpful for someone else searching for solution.

apt-get install libstdc++5

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/gwt-linux-1.3.3/mozilla-1.7.12

Running DOS in Applet!

Here is something new! Researchers from Oxford has developed full x86 virtualization at the level of pure java, resulting running DOS (and other OSs) event with applets. See yourself!

Launched Chhobi.net

Missed my blog yesterday, because I was very busy setting up the initial configurations of http://www.chhobi.net. Currently there is only one album over there (http://www.chhobi.net/sanith), but it will be growing up soon. I plan to have Joomla CMS on the front, but it is still in planning stage. As my photography team is growing, I plan to attach the team with chhobi.net, instead of mozammelhaque.com.

Google releases guice: lightweight dependency injection framework

Google has reported that it released guice, a lightweight dependency injection framework which they say that they use for their mission critical projects (adwords). Few of the Spring developers are also involved into the guice project. It will be interesting to see how Spring framework, and guice complement/compete/merge with each other.

http://code.google.com/p/google-guice/

General SSL session persistence behavior among browsers

For load balancing issue, I need to find out the typical SSL persistence behavior among browsers (and servers). What I’ve found out so far that SSL 3.0 (onwards) have moved out the session ID from encryption. So now load balancers can take advantage of that session ID and implement sticky sessions. But one problem remains that, after IE5+, Internet Explorer renews the SSL session in every two minutes. I’m yet to figure out the Firefox/Mozilla implementation for this, but seems like I cannot rely on the SSL session ID for being the same for a long period of time, thus invalidating the Sticky Session implementation which will depend on session ID for SSL connections.

Related Links:

• http://www.ssl-technology.com/ssl_persistence.htm
• “At any time, due to internal or external stimulus (either automation or user intervention), either side may renegotiate the connection, in which case, the process repeats itself.” (Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257591).

Wedding photography design sites

I have been researching about wedding photography design sites for few weeks on the net. I’ve found out that one of the best, and widely used company is: http://www.bludomain.com/. Though their price structure is quite high, they are facing tremendous challenge to meet the market demand. It has been predicted that they have 1000% increase in their demand. Good for them! Interestingly they have put this comment in their starting page:

“We apologize to our valued clients and prospective clients for any delays. Due to a sudden increase in demand we are running a bit behind schedule. We are doing all we can to rectify this issue in the next few weeks. Please bear with us as we make these adjustments, your patience is greatly appreciated. For any support or sales related questions please click on the link below to ensure that you inquiries are received. You can track your ticket at any time by returning to the help desk and submitting your ticket number.” – BLU Desk

Atom vs RSS

Just out of curiosity, I wanted to poke around the history behind these two technologies. It seems that though RSS is widely deployed, Atom is more mature and feature rich.

Here is a link of good comparison between the two:

http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/Rss20AndAtom10Compared

This wikipedia article is also very informative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndication_format_family_tree

My first GWT Widget

Just changed the portfolio page of my photography site with a GWT Widget. Though quite simple, but this page will help me to check GWT’s compatibility with all major browsers including some embeded platforms.

 http://www.mozammelhaque.com/portfolio.html

Choosing between GWT & OpenLaszlo

I’ve been struggling to choose between GWT and OpenLaszlo for last couple of days for the frontend of my next AJAX application. It was a tough choice because OpenLaszlo seems more matured and stable where GWT adds the UI management at the tip of a Java developer.

Being a Java developer myself, it is hard to neglect the flexibility offered by GWT. Though much responsive, and polished UI can be developed using OpenLaszlo within short period of time, at the current moment, GWT seems the right choice for my next AJAX application. OpenLaszlo has an XML/ECMAScript based UI designing language. Implementing the application with OpenLaszlo means adding an extra steep learning curve for the people who will be managing/developing my application further. In case of GWT, any java developer will be able to pick up the codes within reasonable time and thus continue the development.

So, ultimately after exploiting the possibilities and flexibilities with these two UI frameworks, GWT won the upper-hand due to its Java based UI developments, and flexibility offered for the Java developer community.