hands on Gilad Manor

Flex Debugging Not Working on Chrome w7

2012-01-20T07:51:00.003+11:00

The solution is here

Mysql2::Error (Invalid date: xx) on a text field?!

2011-10-16T20:24:00.000+11:00

I have this rule, the longer it takes to figure out a bug, the dumber the solution is going to be. This one was no exception.This bug on the rails adapter for mysql (the native Mysql2 for Windows) cost me a day and a half of bewilderment.

The symptoms were that when populating a particular field in a table caused the created_at filed that was directly after to corrupt.
Although the entry would save successfully, once i tried to retrieve it, it would omit an argument error, without any explanations or indication to the field that was causing the problem.

After literally hours spent reinstalling and reconfiguring and redeploying my application and the run times involves i stumbled upon this error "Mysql2::Error (Invalid date: xx)" where xx was the text value of the field preceding the "created_at" standard field.
A quick search on Google pointed me to the bug in Mysql2.

My solution was (cross my heart and hope to die) was to add an extra field that i never populate before the date fields.

Good Luck.

Switching between Ruby Runtime versions on Windows

2011-08-24T23:14:00.000+10:00

A nice tool for switching between ruby versions on windows is the pik gem
To use it, run gem install pik
Install locally by running: pik_install C:\pik
And add the installation dir (in this case c:\pik) to your system path.
Once you have that set up, you add ruby installations by running pik add C:\Ruby192\bin
and switch between them by pik 192

Running Rails 3.x with mysql2 on Windows

2011-08-24T23:13:00.000+10:00

Every time I have to set up Ruby & Rails with MySQL on windows its the same old drag.

The easy part goes like this:
Installing Ruby 1.9: download ruby installer
Installing gem: follow gem installation instructions
Install MYSQL: I like using the WAMP server, but its also possible to go for the MySQL regular installation
and:
Install Rails 3.x: run gem install rails

But then you will need to:
Install mysql2 by running gem install mysql2 -v 0.2.6
and
Copy libmySQL.dll from mysql bin to ruby-home/bin

Now generate and run your server.
Don't forget to configure your database.yml file

Note: that if when sunning the server, it responds like:
Could not find gem 'mysql2 (~> 0.2.11)' in any of the gem sources listed in your Gemfile
Then go into your server root directory and open up the Gemfile
substitute the line:
gem 'mysql2', '~> 0.2.11'
with
gem 'mysql2', '~> 0.2.6'

...And your good to go.

Ruby 1.8.7 CSV parser workaround

2011-08-11T06:00:00.000+10:00

Apparently there is some kind of problem when using the CSV parser for particular text structures. I want able to determine the exact cause of this problem expect that for some csv structures, the parse process result in an error.

In my frustration I resorted to write my one parser that is implemented as following:

def self.parse(text)
    rows=text.split("\r")
    res=[]
    rows.each{|row|
      res << row.split(",")
    }
    res
end
And amazingly enough, that's what did the trick.

Independent on Sundays.

Flex and Rails

2011-08-02T10:03:00.000+10:00

Hi Peter
Thanks for visiting my blog

In my company we have quite an extensive use of the ruby - flex combination, and to my experience it has the best results for the fastest development time.

The key to communicate between rails and flex is to set up REST services that generate json/xml structures.

On the server side, all you have to do is have the controller render the result as json/xml using the following line:

render :json => {an object with the data you want to send}
or
render :xml => {an object with the data you want to send}

It works just as well in rails 3 as in 2.x

On the flex side, it gets a little more complicated, but in essence, you send an http request to the rails service and on the ResultEvent you encode the string you get to json/xml respectively

here is a code example:

protected function call(action:String,arg:Object,resFunc:Function, failFunc:Function,resultFromat:String="e4x"):void{
var service:HTTPService;

service = new HTTPService();
service.url = server+"/"+action;
service.method = "POST";
service.contentType = "application/xml";
service.resultFormat = resultFromat;
service.useProxy = false;
service.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT,resFunc);
service.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, failFunc);


arg["account_id"] = accountId;
arg["service_key"] = serviceKey;

var req:Object = new Object();
req["data"] = arg

service.send(req);

}

public function getDetails(result:Function,fault:Function):void{
var o:Object = new Object();
call("get_details",o,result,fault);
}

private function detailsResult(e:ResultEvent):void{
details= JSON.decode(String(e.result));
}

Where do Good Ideas Come From

2011-08-01T09:36:00.000+10:00

At WikiBrains, we have solved this:

Stay tuned, while we change the world.

Ruby rufus-scheduler on Rails

2011-04-21T16:36:00.000+10:00

I've been playing around with the rufus-scheduler, trying to make it work in a rails environment.
The problem I was facing was that the new threads that were created by the scheduler for running the jobs were somehow detached from the the Active Record environment resulting in a failure to load my application models within their scope.

Every time I tried loading a model object from the database I would get an error that the copy of my job instance "has been removed from the module tree but is still active"

Pretty confusing

My cowboy programming solution for this was to activate a block as the job instance and in it invoke a controller. from the controller, I managed to access everything I needed in terms of active support.

The code as following:

scheduler.every "10s" , :timeout => "1m", :tags => "etl_job" do |job|
url = "#{server_url}?tag=#{job.params[:tags]}"
run(url)
end

The run is defined as:

def self.run(url)
    logger.debug "--- Initiating Job with: #{url} "
    uri = URI.parse(url)
    http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
    http.use_ssl = true if uri.scheme == 'https'
    request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)
    response = http.request(request)
end

The url hits a controller and from there everything acts normally for rails.

Independent on Sundays

Israel 21c post on the tierx application

2010-12-09T22:32:00.001+11:00

Prepare for a revolution in social media marketing

By Jeremy Last

A groundbreaking product from an Israeli on-line marketing service is set to revolutionize the way social media is utilized by the corporate world.

Once the exclusive realm of a handful of computer geeks, over the last five years social media networks have been transformed into an Internet phenomenon with hundreds of millions of members.
Businesses across the globe are aware of the potential inherent in these networks to connect with customers, but few have been able to take full advantage of the ever-growing databases belonging to websites like Facebook and Twitter.
Now a groundbreaking product, developed by Israel's on-line marketing service provider Valueshine, is set to revolutionize the way social media is utilized by the corporate world.
Valueshine's Tier-x software enables companies to turn every customer into a business partner, generating their own profits through the power of social media networking.
These partners are able to bring in more customers, and earn money, through the simple marketing power of personal recommendations. Customers use social networks such as Facebook and Myspace as well as email accounts like YahooMail and GMail to invite friends to join their mini-network.
Taking the gaming world by storm
The gaming industry has been the first to jump in. Six months after Tier-x's January launch, Valueshine has already built a bespoke version for leading online poker site Noblepoker.com, owned by British-based Internet gaming conglomerate PartyGaming.
Called the Noble Partners Program, it is the first time ever that players are able to earn consistent dividends from online poker even when they're not playing. This innovation is taking the Internet gambling world by storm.
Valueshine's chief technical officer Gilad Manor was a key member of the team that developed Tier-x. He joined Valueshine in 2009 when it had been providing boutique on-line marketing services for high-tech companies, focusing on affiliate recruitment and management for six years.
"The obvious trend we saw was that the world is going social - in the gaming industry, entertainment world, in news, even in the way people shop, Manor tells ISRAEL21c. "The network is becoming global and local at the same time. People have friends from all around the globe while staying in close contact with the same group of people. The strength of community-based services is on the rise."
It was this realization which prompted the creation of Tier-x and encouraged Noble Poker to get involved. Previously, on-line poker sites generally attracted players through advertising and search engine optimization. But Noble Partners relies on a far more reliable source - word of mouth.
A new approach to business
Launched in mid-August, the product already boasts hundreds of members and Manor is excited by the potential impact the Partners Program could have on the entire on-line poker industry. "This new approach could change the way Internet poker companies do business. It's very exciting," says Manor.
Unlike other referral schemes, the Noble Partners Program pays players every month rather than giving them a one-off bonus, and the money earned is real cash. Once they become Noble Partners, players create their own networks and then earn a percentage whenever their friends play, with the cash paid directly into their Noble Poker account each month.
Manor has been "exhilarated" by the response to the launch of Tier-x and sees the success of Noble Partners as only the tip of the iceberg. "From the early, positive reactions we've been getting, I think it has already changed the way things work in on-line poker.
"I think the conventional ways of recruiting new players in the gaming industry, particularly in the poker industry, are worn out. The poker room companies are all using the same methods and nobody has any edge. The Noble Partners Program is an edge no one else has right now."
A major change in marketing practices
Valueshine is currently building similar products for other companies and industries. According to Manor: "The advantages of advertising through word-of-mouth marketing rather than the cumbersome traditional advertising methods can be applied to most businesses. We can see hotels and restaurants, credit card and insurance companies getting involved.
"People are tired of the traditional advertising they are subjected to day in, day out, on the Internet, on the television, on billboards. You naturally build a wall and defend yourself from that mass exposure to information. But in spite of that you always rely on a good word from a friend. If a friend recommends something and enjoys it you are more likely to use that and join that group yourself. That is what we are building on," he tells ISRAEL21c.
Manor is particularly enthused by Valueshine's placing itself on the cutting edge of what could be a major change in marketing practices. "The on-line social revolution is extremely exciting, and it's a great feeling to be part of this global change with a solution like Tier-x. The circle is widening and that's easy to understand when considering the massive scale Tier-x can reach."

Original post at Israel21c

Where is Zed?

2010-11-30T20:31:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, I said goodbye to a dear friend.

I will remember him for the joy, and for the good times.
love you, Shay!

Look over us.

Rails Application variable II

2010-11-11T20:57:00.001+11:00

Ah, it turns out that my heist and ignorance in Ruby and Rails I missed out on the Rails.cache options.
All you need is...

def self.alive? (id)
    if Rails.cache.read(id)!=nil and (Time.now - Rails.cache.read(id))<10
      true
    else
      Rails.cache.delete(id)
      false
    end

end

def self.present(id)
    Rails.cache.write(id,Time.now)
end

(...love)

Rails Application variable

2010-10-31T10:51:00.001+11:00

It almost seemed that there was no easy way out of putting application scope variables in the database.
But there is a way out:
    if Thread.main[:uuid] == nil
      Thread.main[:uuid]=0
    end
    uid = Thread.main[:uuid] += 1

This code accesses the mail thread of the rails process and puts a variable on it. (the thread is an object and can have key => value sets)
And since rails has only one main thread... its shared with all the threads underneath.

Good Luck

Multilingual Support for Flex

2010-10-29T11:05:00.000+11:00

Some Cowboy coding techniques for supporting multilingual flex interfaces:
Instead of the usual form (from an Adobe development center post):
...text="{resourceManager.getString('resources', 'POSTDISPLAY_POST_TITLE')}"...
My label looks like:
...text="{gS['POSTDISPLAY_POST_TITLE']}"...
Which is so much shorter and nicer to read when you are coding.

The gS is actually a static object (i.e. hash map) that I load with all the key:value pairs of the language.
Once you declare gS as [Bindable] you can replace the object at runtime with other languages, resulting with the replacement of all the strings in the application.

Note: the compiler issues a warning that since you are using square brackets, the GUI object will not be able to detect changes in the data source. Well, it does.

Independent on Sundays

"localhost" Server isn't working? Blame Skype!

2010-10-28T20:33:00.000+11:00

It took me a while to reach this grim conclusion, The Skype client blocks quite allot of communication ports on the machine its running on. Apache Tomcat, WAMP and RoR are effected (as far as i can tell).

Solution:
Kill the Skype process.

Good Luck.

Exporting from SQLServer to SQL insert script

2010-10-27T19:38:00.000+11:00

The problem:
Export data from an MS SQL server to an SQL script of insert statements

It appears that there is no built in option for performing such a simple a task. After all, SQL is the common protocol for SQL based databases.

What i did manage to find is a script (stored procedure) for SQLServer 2000 and SQLServer 2005
The original post and instructions are available here.

Good luck

AAdmin - Flex on Rails Agile Admin Application

2010-10-24T06:22:00.000+11:00

The AAdmin is a little project I'm developing on the side, for Valueshine which in essence is a fast Administration Application based on a Ruby on Rails back-end and a Flex Web front-end.

I love fast development mainly because I'm a lazy son of a batch file and for some reason, I feel that Ruby and Rails was made just for people like me.

Having a server side application that 70% of its tasks sum up to persistence functionality just screamed scaffolding to me. the only obvious difference is that for the sake of using a flex client, i would have to skip over the default view machinery, that are generated by the rails scaffold.

Pre Programming:
I've created the alternative controller template so scaffolding command would generate an XML based web service.
to match that I've written an ActionScript client side that talks CRUD on the one side and hands out a set of a-sync methods on the other side.

The application, is based on the two elements described above, let me have a RoR restful web services that would accommodate a rich client.

The server:
I have employed a standard scaffold script generation with a tweak to the controller template. this change bypasses the standard view that is created by Rails to relay on pure XML rendering.
there is one extra controller that is utilized for configuration data purpose. I use it for authentication, and to extract the entities structure xml file.

The Client:
This part is where the quick admin app comes to play. the AAdmin client enables all CRUD functionality on a list of entities, predefined in an entity xml.
the client logs in, extracts the entity xml file, and presents the table structure and functionality according to the definitional in the file.

Screen shoots:


AAdmin Login Screen.

The CRUD Data View

The Create and Edit screen

Resources:

controller.rb - scaffold template for xml web services
controller.rb - original template
ActiveReasourceClient.as - client side adapter

Flex for Rails Scaffolding (cont) - the controller template

2010-10-20T05:29:00.001+11:00

I've made a little improvement to my development process, in such a way that the scaffolding i do for creating the web services I later use for my flex client are generated in their final form without the need to adjust them.
What i did was make some changes to the controller scaffold template.
The controller.rb template file is located at: [Ruby Home]\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\rails-2.3.4\lib\rails_generator\generators\components\scaffold\templates

Backup the original (or pick it up from here).
Download the modified template

The Template should end up looking like:

class <%= controller_class_name %>Controller < ApplicationController
# GET /<%= table_name %>
# GET /<%= table_name %>.xml
def index
    @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.all
   render :xml => @<%= file_name %>
end

# GET /<%= table_name %>/1
# GET /<%= table_name %>/1.xml
def show
    @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.find(params[:id])
    render :xml => @<%= file_name %>
end

# GET /<%= table_name %>/new
# GET /<%= table_name %>/new.xml
def new
   @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.new
   render :xml => @<%= file_name %>
end

# GET /<%= table_name %>/1/edit
def edit
    @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.find(params[:id])
   render :xml => @<%= file_name %>
end

# POST /<%= table_name %>
# POST /<%= table_name %>.xml
def create
    @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.new(params[:<%= file_name %>])
    if @<%= file_name %>.save
      render :xml => {:notice => '<%= class_name %> was successfully created.'}
    else
      render :xml => {:notice => @<%= file_name %>.errors}
    end
end

# PUT /<%= table_name %>/1
# PUT /<%= table_name %>/1.xml
def update
    @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.find(params[:id])

    if <%= file_name %>.update_attributes(params[:<%= file_name %>])
      render :xml => {:notice => '<%= class_name %> was successfully updated.'}
    else
      render :xml => {:notice => @<%= file_name %>.errors}
    end
end

# DELETE /<%= table_name %>/1
# DELETE /<%= table_name %>/1.xml
def destroy
    @<%= file_name %> = <%= class_name %>.find(params[:id])
    @<%= file_name %>.destroy

    render :xml => {:notice => '<%= class_name %> was successfully deleted.'}
end
end

Flex For Rails Scaffold

2010-09-24T08:57:00.000+10:00

I’ve written a little component for connecting flex with rails scaffold as close as possible.

Step 1: Create a scaffold for Card

Within your rails application run the script:

./script/generate scaffold card id:integer timeStamp:timestamp data:text

(data types with Ruby and mySQL)

Step 2: Change the Card controller

Edit the Card Controller found at: myApp/app/controllers/cards_controller.rb and remove all view elements. this will make the controller omit pure XML structures

should result with the controller looking like:

class CardsController < ApplicationController
# GET /cards
# GET /cards.xml
def index
    @cards = Card.all
    render :xml => @cards
end

# GET /cards/1
# GET /cards/1.xml
def show
    @card = Card.find(params[:id])
    render :xml => @card
end

# GET /cards/new
# GET /cards/new.xml
def new
    @card = Card.new
    render :xml => @card
end

# GET /cards/1/edit
def edit
    @card = Card.find(params[:id])
    render :xml => @card
end

# POST /cards
# POST /cards.xml
def create
    @card = Card.new(params[:card])
    if @card.save
      render :xml => {:notice => 'Card was successfully updated.'}
    else
      render :xml => {:notice => @card.errors}
    end

end

# PUT /cards/1
# PUT /cards/1.xml
def update
    @card = Card.find(params[:id])

    if @card.update_attributes(params[:card])
      render :xml => {:notice => 'Card was successfully updated.'}
    else
      render :xml => {:notice => @card.errors}
    end

end

# DELETE /cards/1
# DELETE /cards/1.xml
def destroy
    @card = Card.find(params[:id])
    @card.destroy
    render :xml => {:notice => 'Card was successfully updated.'}

end
end

Step 3: Client Side

To connect to the Rails server use an intermediate adapter called ActiveResourceClient.as

For testing, use the ServiceTester.mxml

good luck

Passing a Byte Array through JSON

2010-09-13T19:44:00.000+10:00

Its a well known issue when communicating complex structures between client and server, using the JSON encoding.
I've encountered it when attempting to transfer an encrypted Byte Array back and forth between a client and server, that communicate via JSON.

What doesn't work:
Base64 encodings and conversions to string formats

What does work:
Converting the Byte[] to a number array and back

Here is an example code in Flex (works just as well in Java / PHP / Python etc)

Independent on Sundays

Flex List Item Renderer Repetition

2010-08-14T18:21:00.000+10:00

The Flex implementation of lists, data grids, and advanced data grids generate a fixed amount of item renderer components that usually match the first visible set of elements in the list.
This implementation might cause that elements in the list seem to repeat them selves once you scroll down.

This is because although the items data is different, since its display object hasn't been properly refreshed, it shows the data it has from its previous appearance.
To solve this follow these guidelines:
1. do not set data inline i.e. mx:label text="{data.text}"
2. implement the renderers updateDisplayList method to set all the data in place

that's it,
good luck

Flex Directory Compression

2010-04-01T04:29:00.000+11:00

Here is an example for compression and decompression of files and directories using the DEFLATE compression algorithm.

The structure I have created for the file structure in the compressed file is arbitrary. for each file it describes the name and data witch is a byte array of the file content. Directories do not have a data attribute, but children that recursively describe files with in.

Download the source code here

Download the example AIR application here

When running the example, drag and drop a file or directory into the upper box, this will catch the link and create a compressed version of the file in the application storage directory (i.e. /AppData/Roaming/Deflator/Local Store)

To extract the file back, click on the compressed file in the list and click the extract button. This will recreate the file or directory on your desktop.

Please note: that if the original file is still on the desktop when you extract, you will have an error. so if you deflated something from the desktop, make sure you rename it before you extract

Good luck.

First Steps for Apache Pivot, Java-based RIA Framework

2010-03-24T22:25:00.000+11:00

Apache Pivot is an open source project, which attempts to create a modern, rich client development platform in Java. Pivot started off as an R&D effort at VMWare in 2007 and was released as an open-source project in June 2008 under the Apache 2.0 license. Pivot then joined the Apache Incubator in January 2009 and graduated as a top-level Apache project in December 2009. Pivot is currently driven entirely by the software development community.
Read more on InfoQ

GigaSpaces XAP 7.1 EA: Elastic Middleware, Data Querying and Spring 3.x

2010-03-21T20:41:00.000+11:00

GigaSpaces XAP is a distributed application server with an in-memory data grid. The XAP 7.1 release includes a number of themes: an Elastic Middleware Service, enhanced virtualization compatibility, data querying, an updated web-based management application, embedded Spring 3.0, and performance improvements. InfoQ explored this EA release to learn more.

Protect Your Passwords! A beta release

2010-03-05T00:36:00.013+11:00

The past month I have spent time developing a little desktop application for safe guarding web account details. This application helps in maintaining a well organized database of secret account information and free text notes, in an ordered and easy to find manner.

What makes it so safe?

This application installs on your local desktop, so the information you type into it never leaves your computer. This application encrypts everything you put into it using a high, U.S. government approved standard called AES-128 (Advanced Encryption Standard). This application uses the password you provide as part of the encryption key ensuring no one else can breach the critical information you have, unless he has your password. It’s important to remember that nothing is 100% safe, but it helps not to be the easiest pray.

This beta release includes:

· An encrypted database, using AES-128

· Managing records for web accounts, mail accounts, software registration and general notes

· Managing categories for organizing the records (including custom categories)

The next release (not a beta) will include:

· File attachments (you will be able to drag in and out files and the system will encrypt/decrypt them accordingly)

· Backups (you would be able to have temporal backups and retrieve data in case the computer got corrupted, all backups are fully protected)

· Any cool feature I get from people using it (email me for special requests: giladmanor@yahoo.com)

Installing the Protect Your Passwords! application

The installation process is very simple; and it works for all major Operating systems (i.e. windows, Mac and Linux) just follow the instructions on the badge:

To intsall this application please follow these two steps
1. Install Adobe Air
2. Download and run Protect Your Password

Or download directly and run installation manually.

After installing you will find the following icon on your desktop:

Double click it, to run the application. After consenting on the disclaimer, you will be asked to enter your master password in a screen shown in figure 1

Figure 1: Master Password Creation.

The master password is the one password you will need to remember from now on, and better not forget. The master password is used as the key for the encryption of the file containing all the vital data. This means that the encryption is unique to you. The master password registration screen requires you to enter a password of a certain minimum length. While typing your master password the password strength indicator will let you know who safe your password is.

Using the application

Once the master password is entered, the next time you open this application you will be asked to enter your master password in order to unlock the application, see figure 2.

Figure 2: the login screen

Failing to provide the correct password for over 4 times locks the application, as displayed in figure 3. The reason for this is to make life harder for hackers using automation software to try and guess your password.

Figure 3: a locked application, no further attempts are allowed until the application is restarted

Important note: If you forget your master password, there is no way to retrieve the data, not even me, since I will have to have the correct password to decrypt the database.

After logging in, the application dashboard is opened up, where you have shortcuts to all the important features of the application, as displayed in figure 4.

Figure 4: the application dashboard

From the dashboard you can:

· Search for a protected record, the search is either by a search phrase or by category

· Create a new record

· Create your own categories, delete existing categories (deleting a category doesn’t delete the records that were related to it)

· Change your master password

Not yet in this version: the settings screen for advanced configuration

Searching for Records:

To find a record you are looking for, you may either click on the category it belongs to, or click the search records button. This will move you to the search screen displayed in figure 7.

The new record button will move you to the details screen for entering a new record, displayed in figure 6

The new category button will open up a popup for entering a label for a new category as shown in the following figure 5

Figure 5: creating a custom category

Removing an existing category envolves right clicking on the category you would like to remove and selecting “delete”.

Clicking the change master password button on the dashboard directs you to the master password screen as displayed in figure 1. Failing to complete this form will leave you with the previous password.

Creating a new record is done by the new record screen depicted in figure 6

Figure 6: creating a new record

The record form is structured from two input arias, once for standard details, as displayed in figure 6, and the other is for free text notes, which is accessible by clicking on the “Notes” bar in the bottom of the details screen.

Note that when entering a new account, the details form allows you to create a random password to use on the web account. Since you don’t have to remember the special password, it’s easier to have web accounts that are even more secure. Choose the length of password you would like to have and click on the “Generate” button to render a unique password.

For convenience, you can put the web address (URL) of the site for the web account. This is saved for later quick access but is not mandatory.

The tags have no significant use for now, but in later releases, I intend to have advanced searched and categorization according to these tags, so it might be useful to start tagging your information.

Exiting the application or this screen without clicking on the save button; will result in loss of the changes.

The search screen, as shown in figure 7 allows you to look for a particular record of information either by selecting a category, or by a search phase, or a combination of both.

Figure 7: the search screen

Once you found the record you were looking for, there are several functionality shortcuts you can access on the record display:

· Navigate to the web account site by clicking the label. This feature is available only if you entered a valid URL in the link filed on the details form, as shown in figure 6. If you left the field empty, then clicking on the label will open the record for editing

· Copy USER NAME to clipboard, this is available to you only if you put the user in the user field in the details form

· Copy PASSWORD to clipboard, this is available to you only if you put the user in the password field in the details form.

· The little x button is for deleting the record

· The little pencil button is for opening the record for editing

Clicking on any of the category icons on the side will automatically change the search result to include the selected category.

That’s it for now, please remember that I welcome any suggestion warmly, feel free to send your suggestions to my mail at: giladmanor@yahoo.com or by posting it as a response on this blog.

Flex Asynchronous Ciphering using as3crypto

2010-02-14T03:44:00.001+11:00

Built myself a little password safe application based on Adobe AIR, and one of the features I wanted to put into it was to store encrypted files. I downloaded the as3crypto package from google code, and had my encryption/decryption functionality ready and working in an hour.

It was working smoothly right until I tries to use it on a slightly larger file (a 6.7Mb image file) when the application froze and i got the “Not responding” message on the title of the application window. The application defrosted after a while and the file was processed properly, but it had the GUI locked for far too long.

No worries, I said to myself, all I need is some background process to do the dirty work while the GUI stays free for working with me.

Its a shame that Adobe Flex do not support multi threads.

Eventually I worked around this problem and wrote a component that interlaces calls to whatever function you give it, so the GUI wont freeze. (see my post on flex multi threading workaround).

Then I took to the task of making my ciphering class work a chunk at a time. After a superficial profiling session I came to the conclusion that the reading and writing of the files are by far cheaper operations then the ciphering, so the steps used in the solution are:

Initiate everything: read source file into memory

Interlace on encrypt and decrypt for a small chunk at a time

Finalize: write file

Note: I made a lenient assumption that I wouldn't store a file I cant open all at once.

When I put everything together, it didn't work. I kept crashing on decryption and got an error saying: Error: PKCS#5:unpad: Invalid padding value. expected [252], found [152]

I had a vague idea what this meant, but no idea what I was doing wrong. The answer came to me an hour after i posted a mayday question on stack overflow. so I posted the answer too:

the encryption and decryption actions change the actual chunk size. in the processChunck method, the ByteArray length before encryption was 16400 and after changed to 16416. using the decrypt changes the ByteArray length from 16416 back to 16400.
hence the solution i chose was to use two numeric values, one for each method used.
I have no idea why this happens, its not the padding (tested it with Crypto.getPad("none")).

So now I'm sharing it with the world (or rather with the 6 other people who viewed the question in stack overflow so far)

Requirements:

Download and add the as3crypto package from google code into your project
Create an interlacing component that would call the async-crypto in pace with the GUI frame rate (or use what i wrote: here)

Download the source for the CryptoAsync and add it into your project.

Usage example:

var aCrypt:CryptoAsync = new CryptoAsync("C:/screen.jpg","C:/xxx.crp",key,CryptoAsync.ENCRYPT);
aCrypt.getSet();
asyncThread.exec(aCrypt.run,aCrypt);

var aCrypt:CryptoAsync = new CryptoAsync("C:/xxx.crp","C:/result.jpg",key,CryptoAsync.DECRYPT);
aCrypt.getSet();
asyncThread.exec(aCrypt.run,aCrypt);

When:

key is a string of your liking
asyncTread is an instance of AsyncThreadComponent you can find here

good luck

Flex AS3 Multi Treading Workaround

2010-02-12T09:14:00.004+11:00

Its well known that the current versions of Flex (using either the flash or AIR players) do not provide support for multithreading. Everything you do is loaded on the same main thread that is running the GUI too.

This restriction means that if you have to do a dutiful task, the GUI actually stops responding to the user and your app may even get the “Not Responding” label in the title bar while its off processing.

The way to bypass this issue is to follow two guidelines

Break down the big process in to smaller, manageable runs. this means that if you have a loop that each iteration is taxing, you would want to call that loop one iteration at a time.
Call the single iteration in a way that interlaces with the GUI refresh rate.

Here is a simple GUI component that you may place on your application, to invoke calls on some other process without hampering the responsiveness of the GUI.

The method you call by this component has to be in the nature of:

public function runFunction(data:Object):Boolean

Download zip file for AsyncThreadComponent

Usage:
Paste this on your app:

<view:AsyncThreadComponent id="asyncThread" />

When you want something to be invoked, create an object and pass the method:

asyncThread.exec(theObject.runFunction,theObject);

Independent on Sundays

The TimeLabel component

2009-12-18T09:03:00.003+11:00

The time label component is something I slapped together to show accumulated time. Its an enhanced ActionScript3 Label with a simple API for making it tick.

Input a numeric value of time in milliseconds, and the TimeLabel will display it grouped nicely in days, hours minutes and seconds.

Invoke the time label’s start/stop to make it count seconds in any direction you like.

This is the image of the TimeLabel, I surrounded with the controls that operate its API.

The API is as following:

Set and retrieve the numeric value representing time in milliseconds (note; there is no numeric validation, so its up to you):

function set data(value:Object):void
function get data():Object

Start and stop the timer:

function start():void
function stop():void

Determine if the timer goes up or down:

function increment():void
function decrement():void

download source code

Software Disclaimer Sample

2009-11-17T08:14:00.002+11:00

I’ve found this text:

This SOFTWARE PRODUCT is provided by THE PROVIDER "as is" and "with all faults." THE PROVIDER makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the safety, suitability, lack of viruses, inaccuracies, typographical errors, or other harmful components of this SOFTWARE PRODUCT. There are inherent dangers in the use of any software, and you are solely responsible for determining whether this SOFTWARE PRODUCT is compatible with your equipment and other software installed on your equipment. You are also solely responsible for the protection of your equipment and backup of your data, and THE PROVIDER will not be liable for any damages you may suffer in connection with using, modifying, or distributing this SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

(taken from: www.deq.louisiana.gov)

just have to replace “THE PROVIDER” with your name or company name, and hopefully it should be ok.

if anyone knows about a better generic disclaimer for software, i would really appreciate a tip.

Crafting blog

2009-11-16T17:02:00.001+11:00

I've revived my old “practical art” blog with some things I've done lately.

Lately I have been spending my time either on the White Rabbit project or in my studio, making pots and bowls.

This is the link to my crafty blog: http://practicalart.blogspot.com/

And here is a screen shot from the new White Rabbit version:

In this version I thought it nice to use the spring-graph by Mark Shepherd. I’m not sure its the best concept, but its lots of fun.

I’ve also been playing around with the skinning, but i haven't mastered it yet ( as one can see )

Scala, the java of the future

2009-09-12T00:39:00.004+10:00

The tug-o-war of software development languages gets really confusing; it’s hard to decide what language would prevail and become the new standard in application development. Why is it important? Because we are application developers, and our relevance in the business landscape is linked to the tools we are skilled in operating.

I have heard Professor Martin Odersky say that Scala is the java of the future. Although I cannot vogue for such a promise, I can certainly say that Scala is the most compelling language I have encountered.

Scala has incorporated many ideas, new and old from the other existing languages. Scala functional and object oriented. It has cool stuff like traits (aka mixins) and Actors (erlang style threads) and advanced pattern matching. Most of all, Scala is expressive and esthetic. Clean and comprehensible code means easy and efficient maintenance, and that is important.

Scala runs over the JVM. Hence Scala can call upon java functionality and vice versa. Scala also has a .net support but that is not my scope at this time. According to professor Odersky, the overall performance is not hampered and the results are usually as fast as Java. Michael Galpin posted some figures about Scala performance on his blog here and Nick Wiedenbrueck compared Scala, Java and Groovy here.

Following are some interesting links I found for getting into Scala top down:

Presentations:

A nice introduction to pragmatic Scala development by Jonas Boner and the presentation slides
Introduction to Lift by David Pollak
A conversation on Scala and Groovy by Scott Davis, featuring Dr. Venkat Subramaniam:

Articles:

First steps in Scala
Scala by example (pdf):

Downloads:

The NewsWay Reports

2009-09-07T19:23:00.006+10:00

This is the marketing leaflet for the product I am managing for ProImage which is a subsidiary of Agfa. ProImage specializes in pre press workflows with its leading product called NewsWay. The NewsWay Reports is an enterprise solution that complements the production workflow and facilitates executive decision making.

Production events analysis
Graphical data visualization
A production data warehouse

NewsWay Reports provides easy and quick access and analysis of accumulated production data. This enables you to tune and optimize production for maximum performance, at minimum cost.

This powerful browser-based report generation software provides the ability to compare planned schedules with actual job completion, track deadlines, evaluate plate consumption and track waste. It allows you to review file input and output time of each NewsWay workflow process, and log user times.

This facilitates the rapid identification of production bottlenecks and enables you to make real-time adjustments to your production.

NewsWay Reports integrates with any workflow. The reports generated are easily exported to PDF or Excel formats, making them accessible by other people within your organization. You can even automate the creation and distribution of status reports to the executive management for “first thing in the morning”.

The production statistics are accessible from the NewsWay Reports viewer and via any 3rd party data visualization tool, providing you with the tools you need for in depth analysis of production.

Make the right decisions with NewsWay Reports

NewsWay Reports is a browser based application allowing easy and quick access to accumulated production data. The data is presented in a consistent, easy to read format, enabling statistical analysis to be performed effortlessly and facilitating better decision making.

Additionally, its advanced querying capabilities enable in-depth analysis of production data, customized to your requirements.

High Performance Backbone

NewsWay Reports is anchored on a specialized Reports Data Processor. The Reports Data Processor gathers production information and performance details from the machines without hampering the production flow of events. The accumulated data is reshaped to fit into a data warehouse where the production information can later be queried with simplicity and efficiency, guaranteeing high performance response to queries.

The vast amount of information gathered in such a data warehouse enables tracking of even the minutest of trends and bottlenecks.

Comprehensive reports

NewsWay Reports offers three suites of reports designed to meet your budget and needs. All suites include the NewsWay Reports Data Processor and NewsWay Reports Data Warehouse.

NewsWay Basic Reports

Ideal for many, this solution comes complete with a basic set of reports for output statistics and analysis, workflow throughput, and reporting on historical data.

NewsWay Enterprise Reports

NewsWay Enterprise Reports provides an extended suite of reports that additionally include reports for enterprise transmission and waste analysis.

NewsWay First Class Reports

This solution is fully customizable. It provides a tailored solution to meet the needs of the most demanding print production organization.

Credits for the leaflet are to Izzet Edige (ProImage) and Richard Hall (Media Matters).

View in Scribd

Application performance, the highways and the sideways (opinion)

2009-08-20T18:27:00.005+10:00

The phrase “everything should work as fast as possible” describes the wrong way for developing software. Software is a means to an aim. The aim is a functionality of a sort, just like a car or a house. When constructing a solution, one has to take performance in the context of the solution and not as an ideology.

Imagine how a house would look like if the drive way was paved four lanes wide just for the sake of performance.

The prioritization of performance is determined by the business requirements. A thorough analysis of the required throughput in each of the application flows reveals by itself the highways and the sideways.

Marking the road map in such a way is not premature optimization, but the proper use of the information that the architect has from day one. The final tuning can be done at the later stages when performance issues come up. However, developers need to know how wide the road they are paving should be.

License security in Java, don’t be the easiest target

2009-08-11T04:10:00.016+10:00

Java based enterprise products that are not open source have a big issue with Intellectual Property Rights license protection. The relative ease of byte code decompilation makes it easy to copy the product with the license protection disabled. One can measure the magnitude of the problem just by counting the number of products that claim to have the solution. Dongle, code encryption or machine signatures are popular techniques for license security. However, there is always that weak link, that single validation method, returning a Boolean that checks the existence of the license.

A friend of mine once suggested that instead of striving to be perfect, it’s better to invest just enough to avoid being the easiest target. It’s easy to spot this strategy in nature. If you happen to be a wilder beast, you don’t have to be the fastest runner to survive. Just make sure there are a few others slower then you. If you are a zebra, just go stand next to the wilder beast. When I park next to a Lexus, I don’t bother to lock the doors.

The way to implement this strategy over software licensing is by understanding the domain of product hacking and license cracking for enterprise installed software. The goal would be to introduce enough complications in order just to become “not the easiest target”.

Understanding the domain

A business would choose the illegal options of requesting a hacked product if they are far enough or obscure enough from the hands of the IPR owner and only if the cost of the cracked software is considerably lower than the license fee.

The basic interaction with a hacker is; “I give you money and you give me a working version of the product without the license verification part”. Since any single method is prone to be broken eventually, sooner or later the hacker will deliver the “goods” as promised; a cracked version of the product.

The weakness in the hacker’s ‘user story’ is that although the hacker is a master in the technology he employs, he knows nothing about the domain of the product. Thus, obscuring and masking the validation for the license into multiple points in the business logic is an advantage for the IPR owner.

Create an illusion

By all means, use all the conventional protections; obfuscate the code so it won’t be a picnic after JAD (Java De-compiler). Encrypt and put signatures on the classes that handle the license, and so on. Make the hacker sweat a little, in his comfort zone, before he delivers a hacked version that is not really cracked.

Take no immediate action

The easiest way for a hacker to pinpoint the license validation code, is by the actions that are taken by your software when the license is invalidated. The easy points to spot may be log messages, explicitly stating the lack of license or the point where the system freezes up, that’s where the hacker starts his reverse engineering. Instead, do the unexpected. Randomization of decision (heads to freeze, tails to grace), Postponing the enforcement action, and reusing the validation variables for other purposes would make the hacking task so much harder.

Dead code

Implanting license validation code is business logic that is called upon in very specific conditions is probably the best cloaking method. The way to reveal license validations that are hidden in obscured parts of code would be to run every possible scenario. The hacker would have a learning curve to adjust to the unfamiliar domain, in the mean while the business that bought the hacking would suffer more than one production cycle that goes bad on account of licensing.

No Code Reuse please

As code reuse makes code more readable, the way to secure the license validation would be the exact opposite. Repeat the functionality of the validation without referencing or even repeating the code.

In summary

The bottom line is money. The price of an acquisition of a legitimate license compared to the price and risks involved in deploying a hacked version. All you have to do is break the hacker’s promise of his delivery. Instability and unpredictability in a hacked product, and an expensive hacking process can bring you just far enough from being the easiest target.

Suppress mouse events on child components - Flex3

2009-08-03T20:29:00.003+10:00

A college of mine showed me that in order to suppress mouse events on children components is by the obscure property of mouseChildren = false;

I use it when i want to catch a mouse event on a container, regardless of the component within that container that was exactly under the mouse.

There is no way under the heavens to guess this is the functionality of a property with such a name.

Thanks Liran.

Down the rabbits hole with neo4j (Part 1)

2009-07-18T06:50:00.004+10:00

While standing on one foot, I would say that the neo4j project is an implementation for an embedded java graph database. Unlike the traditional relation databases, the graph database has no table structure for storing its data. Instead it uses a more dynamic (unstructured) network composition. Using mathematical terminology, a network of nodes is called a graph.

I’ll put my other foot down now.

Applications use an object data structure in order to describe and abstract the business domain they address. Stitching together the object oriented structure onto the table oriented data structure of a relational database is a major part of the time consumed in server side programming. This price has been, and still is willingly paid because of the absolute reliability of the traditional relational data structures.

Truth to be said, there are implementations that make much more sense when persisted using tables. However, I would dare to argue that when querying becomes complex and cumbersome, it just might be a sign that the persisting method isn’t appropriate.

The unstructured graph database leads the field when it comes to implementing an ad-hoc structure that is prone to runtime changes.

I decided to give it a try after watching Emil Efirem’s demonstration on the web and I’m sharing my experience as I played around with three aspects of use:

Part 1: Converting plain java data objects into persisted neo nodes
Part 2: Managing lookups
Part 3: Experimenting With Transactions

Setting up a neo4j environment

The neo4j jars are available on: http://neo4j.org/download, under which there are two packages;

The apoc package includes some extra utility jars, i.e. the indexing jar, the shell jar and some examples
The kernel package includes the bare minimum, i.e. neo and jta jars

My example project’s source code is also available here, compatible for eclipse and intelliJ.

Part 1: Converting POJO into neo

In my mind’s eye I saw a plain old java data objects that would define my domain data structure. These objects would be passed to some kind of neo facilitating mechanism that would take care of the persistence for me.

Using annotations

Java annotations are a wonderful tool; I use Annotations to load metadata on class elements, when the metadata is not intended to be part of the primary business course of the class.

In this example, I have a type representing a person that has a couple of properties and lists of friends and foes. I annotated the fields with the hinting I needed to ease the conversion into neo.

Note that the conversion is handled at runtime so the annotation retention policy is set appropriately.

Here is the annotation declaration:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Persistance {
  Type type() default Type.Property;
  Peers relationType() default Peers.NA;
  public static enum Type {
    Property, Peer
  }
}

The annotated POJO, representing my person data is as follows:

public enum Peers implements RelationshipType {
  Friend, Foe, NA
}
public class Person {
  @Persistance(type = Persistance.Type.Property)
  public String name;

  @Persistance(type = Persistance.Type.Property)
  public String nickname;

  @Persistance(type = Persistance.Type.Peer, relationType = Peers.Friend)
  public List<Person> friends;

  @Persistance(type = Persistance.Type.Peer, relationType = Peers.Foe)
  public List<Person> foes;

And so on…

The conversion to the neo nodes

The neo world speaks in two basic terms, the node and the relation. Each can bear its own properties.

The nodes have no typing, which I think is a shame, but relationships do require typing. I went along with the recommendations and defined my relationship as an enum.

The snippet for the relationship type:

public enum Peers implements RelationshipType {
  Friend, Foe, NA
}

The persistence mechanism is a recursive breakdown of the POJO graph (the person and all this friends etc.) according to the hints I get on the annotations.

Within a neo transaction I call the converting method by passing the object I want to persist onto it:

    Transaction tx = neo.beginTx();
    Node node = null;
    try {
      node = objectToNode(object, null);
      tx.success();
      return node.getId();
    } catch (Exception e) {
      tx.failure();
      e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
      tx.finish();
    }

The method objectToNode(..) is the recursive part and I load it with a stack map to prevent the recursive calls from looping forever on objects that were already processed.

    if (stack == null) {
      stack = new HashMap<Object, Node>();
    } else if (stack.containsKey(object)) {
      return stack.get(object);
    }
    Node node = neo.createNode();
    stack.put(object, node);
    Class cls = object.getClass();
    Field[] fields = cls.getDeclaredFields();
    for (Field field : fields) {
      // only persisting the fields that have my special annotation
      if (field.isAnnotationPresent(Persistance.class)) {
        processFieldData(node, object, field, stack);
      }
    }
    return node;

The method processFieldData(..) is where the annotations are processed. Properties are loaded on the nodes and hints for relationships invoke the recursive call that handles the linked objects as independent nodes.

      if (annotation instanceof Persistance) {
        Persistance p = (Persistance) annotation;
        log("processing annotation: " + p.type() + " "
            + p.relationType());
        if (p.type().equals(Persistance.Type.Property)) {
          // TODO: verify that the property is actually a primitive
          Object value = field.get(object);
          log("setting property: " + field.getName() + " " + value);
          // here is a neo setting of a property
          node.setProperty(field.getName(), value);
        } else if (p.type().equals(Persistance.Type.Peer)) {
          Object value = field.get(object);
          log("setting peer: " + field.getName() + " " + value);
          if (value instanceof List) {
            for (Object item : (List) value) {
              // here is another neo bit, where a new Node is
              // created by recursively calling on the converting
              // method with the child object
              // after the new node is handed back, i create the
              // relationship between the two
              Node otherNode = objectToNode(item, stack);
              node.createRelationshipTo(otherNode, p
                  .relationType());
            }

Download the complete java source code

Factory Implementation in Flex AS3

2009-07-01T16:04:00.006+10:00

The closest thing i could find for implementing a simple factory in Flex is by using the getDefinitionByName function.

Usage:

import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;
private static const basePath:String = "..path to implementation..";
private var a:SomeClassImp;
private var b:OtherClassImp;
public static function getRendrer(className:String):Object{
var classFullName:String = basePath+ className;
var objClass:Class = getDefinitionByName( classFullName ) as Class;
return new objClass();
}

Note: The classes that the factory is suppose to generate in run time have to be explicitly stated as var’s in the factory class. this is for the compiler to know to add them into the compilation product.

Bazooka Developer

2009-06-14T22:00:00.005+10:00

It is so told, that there should come a time for every developer, when he be faced with the challenge of coding in the sky. A situation like this happens when a client is faced with a critical problem and needs an immediate solution. The solution provider decides to give it a go, sends out a repair man, for a fast, cowboy style solution, and cashes in the check.

When my turn came, I was handed the assignment along with the flight tickets and a brief rundown of the functionality I had to deliver. The functionality took about an hour for him to describe.

This kind of positive thinking often reminds me of the ‘Bazooka Joe’ bubblegum fortune, telling me that by the age of 21 I would probably land on the moon.

Keeping that same positive thinking in mind, I realized it would be a nice opportunity for setting my agile development skills to the test. I preach agility all the time. I preach it to my colleges and to my developers. I even preach it to my boss. There was no way I was about to turn ‘cowboy’ on all that.

The entire time frame for this task was less than a standard agile heart beat, but I stuck with the principles, and used them to guide me.

My first task was to deliver functionality. So I set to inquire whatever I could about the requirements. There was the way my boss envisioned it and there were some correspondence with the customer that preceded the request. I swept through the mail exchanges, to find out how the customer wanted it to work and how it ought to be fitted in the surrounding landscape of the other systems. I came out with a detailed feature list, reflecting the functionality requirements, an outline sketch of the interfaces and a high level cubistic design with a short list of would be obstacles (i.e. outstanding issues yet to be resolved).

Meeting the bare minimum to enable testability: I wrote a mock up interface invoker (two actually, that know how to talk to each other in a session like manner). Just like in the real world, my module was going to be ‘stuck’ right in between the two mockups, doing so I could have a convenient testing envelope where I can gradually grow my functionality.

I felt I was ready for some hard core coding.

Fortune: you will not get much sleep the next few nights.

I developed in short cycles. I used my short list of suspected pickles to define the steps for development. After coding a new solution that was suppose to address a particular issue, I ran the module against the testing facilities, with all the scenarios I had so far, and a new scenario that would test the solution. This got me through debugging and I made sure that I was not disrupting previously developed features (i.e. regression testing).

I know, I know, I was sprinting or whatever. In any case it kept me focused on my goals and constantly in check with working functionality.

I sprinted at the office, I sprinted at home, I sprinted at night, in the airport and on the airplane.

It so happened that by the time I got to the site, I was far from done, but I did have a prototype that was solid enough and being as it was, I had it installed on one of the development environment there.

I made use of the customer. The customer in this case was a respectable American corporate. I met there with the IT team that held everything together. Right at the beginning, they brought into my attention that they had four sets of environments. This was an important point to note since there were differences in application versions between them. The version differences meant that every time I got environmentally promoted, I had to adjust to the changes in protocol and behavior.

Fortune: an overnight success is the result of years of preparations

At this stage, I could have my testing cycles run up against real applications and not the mockup applications I prepared myself. The people from the IT team helped me learn about the extreme scenarios and together we were able to devise a meticulous testing plan. Together we defined the scope for load testing.

During the working hours, I ran tests on the various environments that were available and spent the nights at the hotel for code fixing and optimization. This was not an easy time for me. By the end of the first week we have conducted a few cycles of testing and amendment, and we were already deep into the load testing.

Fortune: the love you give is equal to the love you get

I was also able to cater for some extra requests for changes. These were minor modifications that had to do with logging and configuration options, but it made customer happy. The help I got from the customer staff I met there was absolutely essential in making the delivery and having the module go into production.

A month after I flew back, my module was set into production. Of course there were some more bugs identified and some new feature requests as well. But all in all, the customer was satisfied.

Fortune: don’t let it go up to your head

Flex MDI, Always On Top window

2009-06-12T00:30:00.005+10:00

So how does one go about and opens an “Always On Top” window, using the FlexMDI (on flexlib)?

Sadly, I wasn’t able to find any nice solution for this problem and when such frustration comes, I resort to tricks.

My trick in this case was to wrap the MDICanvas with a class of my own, and in it I had two MDI canvases one on top of the other.

I added a nice utility method for opening a window, and according to an indicator on that method I either open it in bottom layer, or the top one; hence the “always on top”.

Not perfect, but working.

Flex loads with a blank screen

2009-06-09T16:42:00.006+10:00

I'm developing some complex GUI app using the Flex builder 3 (eclipse plug in) and while i was working i suddenly got a blank screen when i ran my application.

no error was printed out in the consul. it appeared that flex was loading but wasn't loading my application.

if this happens to you too, check your code to see if you are embedding a file as XML:

[Embed(source="...data.xml")]
private static var xmlData:Class;

if you are, and the file happens to be malformed (some mistake in the XML structure) you are not going to see any error from the compiler or the runtime(!)
just a peaceful, zen like, blank page.

bugger

Agile Safari

2009-05-27T08:04:00.011+10:00

A giraffe, which I hold dear, once told me that agile application development is all about pace, straight forward thinking and relevance. I can’t help thinking that us humans, like to make things all so complicated, even when we intend them to be ‘agile’.

We adore rules and regulations, and a static algorithm is fantastic when your target is motionless. The nature of things is not as static and rigid and not having a timely response might lose us the patch. “Follow your own heart”, the giraffe would tell me, “it should be as good as anything else you might find, and you can always change the rules and adapt to the new situations as they present themselves”.

I couldn’t help noticing that there was a wide nose rhino, staring at us from the other side of a patch of coffee.

Grasslands and software projects usually exist within a particular window of opportunity. The grazing has to be finished before the grass disappears: the problem has to be identified, addressed and delivered before it becomes irrelevant. “It has to be done and over with before the dry season” the giraffe would say. Managing software projects with agility is all about keeping up with the changing seasons, and the other moving animals.

The rhino was eyeing us ferociously. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Sitting there, leaned against a baobab tree, I heard the ‘agile of three points’ coming from above, straight from the giraffe’s mouth.

Always deliver functionality
Develop in short manageable cycles
Make use of the customer

These three principles form the conduct and rhythm of agile development: Combined together, they insure the growth of the product in relevance, while maintaining a steady flow of fresh capabilities under close supervision and immediate acknowledgment of the customer for every step.

“Is it clear yet?” asked the giraffe. Here is some more:

Delivering functionality

Delivering functionality has to do with the continuous effort of implanting new business ideas and capabilities into the product by way of every software drop. Functionality delivered alongside other non functional changes.

The principal has two immediate benefits.

From the customer’s point of view, each code drop brings some fresh and new solutions he needs for his business. After all, new functionality is exactly what he paid for.

From the development standpoint, the proper prioritization for new functionality prevents the product from freezing while the development team works in full capacity in revising and rewriting already working code.

I’m not saying that code maintenance is irrelevant. Software releases should be a balanced concoction of improvements both in business relevance and in code quality.

Short development cycles

Development in ‘short bursts’ is an all too familiar concept to the Agile advocates. This is a principal that has to do with the pace of the development and of the software delivery.

Having short and manageable development cycles insures close proximity for each issue between the time it is developed and the time it is tested. Nothing is lost by time or forgetfulness.

Another byproduct is by having pending and immediate deadlines; it is easier to keep the developers in check and optimal production.

Of course I’m letting go of many other aspects, but I think this captures the essence.

Customer involvement

This principal has to do with relevance. Nobody knows the business better then the customer. Hence, customer’s involvement in the application development is an asset.

Sounds so simple, but it’s probably the most difficult to practice. To make this happen, the customer needs to have focal points for every issue that might rise in development, and define direct access to these key professionals.

Having customer representatives on board during progress and status meetings might sound to some as walking naked in Times Square, but the other side for this exhibitionism is the total involvement of the customer in progress and prioritization.

And while involvement means cooperation and clarity means trust, the chances of the project to eventually ‘go live’ is as high as is can get.

Maybe next time I’ll have a short chat with the rhino.

Homecoming

2009-05-11T21:54:00.015+10:00

I have just got back from a month long vacation to Australia. No words can do justice with the magnificence of that continent at the other side of the globe. When I grow up, I would like to be an Australian.

During my too short a visit, I had the pleasure of engaging with some very interesting people in the Sydney Open coffee meet up.

Harsh times have come to the hundred-acre-wood of the IT industries, and the Australian IT was not spared. Yet, it was apparent that the world wide gloom was not in residence. The messages I’ve heard were about times of change, opportunity and of new beginnings.

It had occurred to me that in deed times have changed. The rules of engagement are being rewritten. Opportunities lay in initiative and added value, rather than in the sole code-literacy capabilities that are the tools of my trade.

I was discussing exactly this with a good friend and experienced Sydney IT Recruiter Darren Saul at one of the Sydney meet-ups. Darren mentioned that he has seen a definite shift in the way employers qualify potential employees – “after all”, said Darren, “a great organization is only as great as its people”.

The way Darren put it, is that employers need as much added value as possible and it’s no longer enough to “just” be proficient technically, it is as important to really understand your industry sector as a “Domain Expert”. Employers recruiting in the financial sector, for example, will be looking for technical support specialists or developers with a very strong understanding of the financial industry, a strong knowledge of the industry specific applications and will be looking for individuals that are generally “Business Savvy”. Thus continuous learning and broad thinking are of the utmost importance to stay ahead of the rest and ensure your place as an integral, valued and respected member of your team.

As I see it, Darren’s definition of Business savvy hits the spot in what concerns the attitude for the IT people and industry. It’s like the difference between being a co founder in a startup opposed to the first employee being hired.

When I was fresh in the army, we used to practice night time maneuvering. They would team us in pairs, and we were given two legs to cover, one for each in the pair.

While one was doing the navigation, the other would follow until it was his turn to lead. The partner that was not navigating was called the dummy. He would carry everything and concentrate on following.

We quickly came to the understanding that the more involved your dummy was, in the actual navigation, the better your own results would be. Even if it’s your turn to follow, do your best to help lead.

For more of Darren check out his blog at: www.carnegiehillblogging.blogspot.com

Step up, lead the field.

Open coffee in Sydney

2009-04-09T12:07:00.005+10:00

I love coffee, I love talking passionately about the things i do and the combination of both was what happened to me today.

Today I went to a gathering of entrepreneurs in down town Sydney and it was lovely.

Kim H is the organizer of this particular event and it takes place every other Thursday morning, behind the coffee shop of the Allianz Building.

Hanging out with a pack of people who are so receptive to innovation and ingenuity fills me up with so much energy, i can practically run on it for days.

My verve.

Flex HTTP Service result formatting

2009-03-16T20:51:00.003+11:00

when playing around with the flex HTTPService class, i got the following error:

faultCode:Client.CouldNotDecode faultString:'Error #1090: XML parser failure: element is malformed.' faultDetail:'null'

this is because i was using the default parser (i.e. “object”) for the result digestion, while the returned value from my HTTP hit was HTML.

all this is clearly explained in the adobe documentation for the HTTPService, but not that clear from the error.

when connecting to a site or external data source with an unknown structure, its easier to analyze the incoming stream when the result format is set to “text”. this returns the stream in its raw form.

the property is set as follows:

myHTTPService.resultFormat="text";

Flex Right to Left – for the Hebrew man

2009-03-16T09:13:00.004+11:00

here is some cowboy programming for handling the text direction in flex. i found that the simplest way is to extend the text UI component (i.e. mx:TextArea or mx:TextInput) with my own class with some instrumentation.

amazingly enough, selecting the right font family is all it takes to have the UI component type the correct order in words. the font i used was Ariel.

this.setStyle("textAlign","right"); this.setStyle("fontFamily","Arial");

it gets a little bit trickier when setting or retrieving the text from the component, so I've added a set and get methods, that crudely check for the first character. if its Hebrew, i flip the order of words.

the setter and getter look like this:

public function getText():String{ return LanguageUtil.getLocalazedText(this.text); } public function setText(s:String):void{ this.text = LanguageUtil.getLocalazedText(s); }

the language utility I'm using is actually the following method:

public static function getLocalazedText(message:String) :String { var c:int = message.charCodeAt(0); if(c>1487 && c<1515){ var resArray:Array = message.split(" "); var resLine:String = ""; for(var i:int = resArray.length; i>0; i--){ if(i != resArray.length){ resLine += " "; } resLine += resArray[i-1].toString(); } return resLine }else{ return message; } }

i haven't tested this on Mac yet. but for windows it seems to be ok.

hee haw

Data buckets

2009-03-11T18:39:00.000+11:00

For me, software development is just a nice way of saying ‘bit moving’. A good friend of mine used to describe himself as a bit reorganizer. We rearrange invisible magnets, he would say, setting their tiny arrows of residual currents to point this way or that. We are a bunch of “bitniks” and we are all about data.

Application design and development has been my main source of income for the last decade or so, it struck me as odd that there were so few terms that describe so many kinds of data.

It occurred to me, that the Eskimos had their fourteen words for snow, and they say that the Bedouins have nine words to describe sand. I felt so alone. I felt a need for discovering my own flavors of data. It took me a while, but then in a single perfect moment of clarity, I had realized what lay before me.

The orchestration of the moment was this; in the middle of a design meeting, yelling and shouting all around, we were discussing optimization and performance and spirits were high. My thoughts went back to when I have learnt about application design. The fact was that when developing any business application, the first step to take is to determine the set of business flows that describe the scope and functionality of that application within the organizations it’s meant to serve.

Listing these business-flows by rank and cardinality is no bother at all. The simplest evaluation I could think of is according to frequency of use and the sheer number of users that would eventually use the flow.

I thought that the categorization of the data body by the same yardstick could provide me with the flavors of data I was looking for.

... Read more: the complete post at JavaWorld

download this post from scribd

My new spot at JavaWorld

2009-03-04T07:15:00.002+11:00

I’ve been upgraded. i have a new spot at JavaWorld in the daily brew community and I've just posted my first article there.

This is the link to my article “Data Buckets”.

What next?

I have two things I'm working on at the moment. I'm finalizing version 0.3 of the white rabbit project and I've stated writing the next post. I hope I'll finish them before my vacation later this month.

Australia here i come!

The customer factor

2009-02-05T08:59:00.001+11:00

One of the greater challenges, I‘ve observed in the lifecycle of software development lay not in the technology, or in the method of solution, but with the interaction with the customer. The less fortunate case would be the lack of any interaction with a customer all together, resulting in a peculiar situation of over development.

An “Over development”, as I see it, happens when product features don’t match the majority use cases and no customer would be willing to pay for their development. Things that seem awfully cool to have, but don’t actually assist in the selling process.

I’ve been involved in many corporate development projects. These were huge projects, with large groups of developers, all working for functionality defined by a single customer. The past two years, I've been managing the development of a leading product for the paper press industry. This product is an “off the shelf” reporting solution for the production process of a commercial printing house.

The product tracks and accumulates data in any provided format. It produces a wide range of analyses and diagnostics, regarding the production line of a printing house operation.

Although the two development scenarios may seem different, I consider them to be quite similar, with a slight variation: in the development of an “off the shelf” product, the customer is the sales department.

For both development scenarios, the one big issue that stands out is having the application go into production. As obvious as it may seem, it is the least trivial, and to my mind, the hardest.

I’ve started out with a product that was extremely over developed, and not a single customer. The first thing I did was to set a goal for myself (i.e. my group), to push the product into production as fast as I could while shrinking the development cycles.

The sale department managers helped me come up with a bare bone requirement list of features. I used this “can’t go without” list to determine the entry point of the product. I used this leverage to get the sales department to arrange the first beta customer. Once there was a real life customer in the development cycle, crucial information began flowing back, requesting features and functionality.

There are two good things that a customer may give the application developer. One is money for the product; the other would be rejects on the product. The latter, when provided from a customer is worth more than any internal brainstorming process within the development group. To my opinion it is the best way to have the product pushed forward and to make it robust and usable.

Development war room

2009-02-05T00:03:00.001+11:00

I had a friend over the other day, one of the smartest people I know and an extraordinary talent. We were reminiscing about the olden days, and we were reminded of the principles we have learnt in the army so long ago. Actually, he was the one being reminded because I was never even close to anything like combat myself. As he was reciting his lines I came to think that some of the guidelines may apply to software development. I’ve listed them with some relevant modifications

1. Pursuing on the task at hand, in light of the goal. Goals have the awful habit of changing all the time: the market is prone to change; your boss might have a sudden change of heart. Thus tasks may become irrelevant. I found it a good policy to check every once in a while whether what I am doing, is still in concordance with the goal. Another term that might pop into mind would be the word adaptation. Yet, I don’t feel from it the conviction of getting the task done.

2. The customer is my supreme commander. The customer in this case may range from the actual person or company that makes use of the product, to the sales department. All in all, my customer has a wider angle of view on things than I do

3. Creativity and innovation. While creativity is thinking out of the box, innovation is the yoking of it to the purpose of the product. It’s a tipsy tread, balancing between both. Creativity without innovation is a waste of time, but there is no innovation without creativity.

4. Never fall in love with your own creativity. I keep forgetting that one.

5. Keeping it stupid and simple. Might make the difference when you are showing the product to a customer. Letting go of this principal, may also cost a fortune in application maintenance. Keeping up with simplicity is a task for no fool. Some Damoclesien solution is needed to chop off the unnecessary.

6. Logistics. The average developer, like me, has a thread timeout of half a minute. Any logistic task I have to do that might exceeds that, waiting for coffee, or a long walk to the little boys room, has an overhead of reengaging the lost thread of thought when arriving back to the seat (oh, caffeine enriched coffee may help as well)

7. Standardization vs. opportunism. For me, the key word here is balance. Before the agile love affair, we used to call it the quick and dirty approach, i.e. having things done the fast way, when a customer is at the door. The difference between quick and dirty and plain old sloppy is the set of guidelines and standards that the course of production is built upon.

8. Mapping the critical paths. Pretty obvious where this is going. While mapping tasks, it’s not that difficult to make estimation about dependencies. Once that’s figured out, any project management software provides tools to visualize the critical path

9. Reserve management. Each developer manages his own buffers. This is important when you want to deliver within the time frame you are committed to. This behavior backfires when buffers aren’t properly manages and instead, layers upon layers of time buffers are created. When a developer asks for 3 days on a 2 day job, on average, he or she would only start working on it on the second day. In most cases, the product would be ready on time, in some it would actually take worst case of 3 days, summing up in a 4 day total. The best practice for me is to club all buffers to a single pool. Each developer is assigned with a best case time table, and the development manager controls the pool of time buffers. The probable outcome would be that only a fraction of the tasks are delayed and exceed the time assigned, then pool reserve time is given. No time is spared to be abused.

10. Task breakdown; autopilot.

special thanks to Uri Holtzman

Java Auto-Boxing NullPointerException

2009-01-29T06:19:00.001+11:00

What may one think to ones self, when a null pointer exception is thrown from a line of code as following:

MySpecialThing specialThing = new MySpecialThing (aLongArgument);

As if just to spite, the constructor is as harmless as:

MySpecialThing (long someNumber){ this.longNumber=someNumber;}

This is just one of those things that even an hours worth of code staring won’t resolve. The stack trace in this case gives no reasonable hint to what might be the problem. However, if its not obvious from the title, there is an auto-boxing of a Long object into a java primitive long.

The java compiler, wont see anything wrong, because such an assignment is perfectly legal, but at runtime if aLongArgument is delivered as null, the runtime exception is thrown from the constructor call(!).

Shameless.

The bliss of code reuse

2009-01-25T00:36:00.000+11:00

Almost two years ago, I wrote a java service for relaying and replicating some communication protocol for an American customer.

One of the requirements of that service was to have persistence for the protocol commands it was passing, so in case of a communication failure, it would repeat the signal over and over until it got through. The file persistence was to ensure that if the service itself crashed for some reason, it would be able to pick up on the same note without loosing a thing.

The design was fairly simple, an array of producer/consumer queues, each accommodating a two way communication path to a far away server.

Even though I had a very short time to develop and deploy this service, I was anal enough to make myself a very nice persisted queue implementation.

I used generics for the object that represents a single communication element. I used it naively by applying a string in the service I was writing, but I did see others use it in more elaborate fashions.

Because of some problems I had with using the Log4J implementation, I wrote my own logging mechanism. I did this since Log4J creates a drizzle of a memory leak when the implementation constantly adds categories and appenders at run-time. I figured that out while load testing, where I bombarded it with new sessions, I’ve notices that the log4J accumulated all the session appenders and never cleared them out. To smooth things out, I wrapped the logging implementation with a comfortable delegator, which allows an easy substitution; thus, my persisted queue was initiated either with log4J or by any other implementation (i.e. my own).

The way I made the persistence stick was to have a transaction like de-queue sequence. In lighter terms, what I mean is that once a message is de-queued by the consumer, it isn't removed from the queue and the persistence file, until a complimentary “commit de-queue” message is sent. I supplemented this with a regular de-queue method and a remove method that bypassed the FIFO mechanism all together.

I worked hard on making it as simple to use as i could. The base line initialization was without anything special, and was simple as calling a constructor without any arguments and would result in a simple blocking queue. That meant that nobody had to learn anything special about it, unless of course a special feature was actually required. The hard part is to overcome ones own bias to ones own code.

I’ve finally realized I’ve struck gold with this, one day when I was re-factoring some packages and notices that this module was being used all over the application.

I was mirthful and jolly

One of the reasons for my tipsy reaction was that while writing this little component, I did right and took the time to make a generic reusable module. It’s sometimes hard to tell while writing something new, whether it would ever be in use again. The academic approach of having everything reusable, is a fine methodology, but does have drawbacks when a customer is breathing down your throat, and doesn’t exactly appreciate paying for the reusability of the code.

Sometimes one just gets plain old lucky.

Is it a bug? Is it a plane? no.. its...

2009-01-20T19:59:00.000+11:00

last night i found a very interesting bug while running the debugger in the flex builder (version 3)

I tries to compare an XML typed object to an empty string, don't ask me why.

the debugger was watching the expression (dataSource=="").
i then noticed that when the variable dataSource was not null, and actually contained a valid XML object; the debugger was evaluating a false result in the watcher while in the code, the result was opposite.

i caught a screen shot of this anomaly:

The white rabbit: bugs and suggestions

2009-01-18T19:32:00.001+11:00

current version : beta 0.2 (download)

this is what i have so far in terms of open bugs and suggestions:

unresolved bugs:

project and task tree collapses whenever changed
session time counter display: when changing back from monthly to session, the clock keeps showing the monthly accumulation

suggestions:

"coast plus" configuration for the reports; suggested by Roy Reshef. have a configuration for adding a fixed overhead on the hour report, that would express the standard extra expenses. this is useful for freelancers that need to overload extra coasts on the hourly report. this might be implemented as a conversion to monitory terms as well.
add a scheduler for tasks; suggested by Tomer Ben Arie. embed a scheduler into the project and task tree, that would allow time planning for implementation
go large in enterprise mode; suggested by Ori Manor. enable networking and task legation from one user to another.
oops mechanism, for backtracking in case i forget to stop the clock.
floating task; enable time measurement without first determining the ownership. this is a nice feature when you are presented with a problem that you cant decide where to frame it until well into the task.
task list view; a simple list like view where the user may thrown in "todo" tasks, and categorize them later.