It’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to setup a Coherence Server with Weblogic, how to access this server with Coherence console and how to use out-of-process caching strategy to scale your caching with no impact on the Enterprise Service Bus.

To read the full article click here.

References:

• Documentation about Result Cache in Oracle Service Bus
• Coherence Knowledge Base with documentation, Screencasts and examples
• Script that connects to Oracle Coherence console and Oracle Service Bus
• Oracle Service Bus documentation index

Detailed information: https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=1316076.1

What’s New from Documentation: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/web.1111/e13852/toc.htm

For now I’m sharing a complete reference for all annotations available in Java EE 6. As you already know, Java EE 6 is really changing the way to program for Java Enteprise platform and these annotations are responsible for hiding part of the complexity of EE development.

http://wikis.sun.com/display/GlassFish/Java+EE+6+Annotation+Reference

Enjoy!

Please Note: These steps worked for me but it’s possible that will not work for you. It’s a very stable procedure but $hit happens. Do follow the steps at your own risk.

UPDATE – The same procedure works with Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) firmware. Version I9000BVJJV3 – Jun 2011. Please check samfirmware website to download.

Heimdall

According to their website, here is a description:

Heimdall is a cross-platform open-source tool suite used to flash firmware (aka ROMs) onto Samsung Galaxy S devices.

It has ports for Mac OSX, Linux and even Windows, although most of the Windows users prefer to use Odin to flash their devices or even Samsung Kies.

You can grab heimdall packages for Ubuntu from their website -> http://www.glassechidna.com.au/products/heimdall/

For this tutorial I’m using Heimdall 1.1.1 command line tool. Using the GUI version I’ve got some strange behaviours and some times the GUI just said that Flash happened without any processing.

Android Froyo firmware download

To flash your device you must obtain the firmware version that you’ll apply. You have many options over the web to obtain different versions of Android. Some of them claims to be original ones from operators and some others modified/hacked versions with extra functionalities. I’ll stick with the “original” ones and since I’m in Brazil, my device has digital TV so I need to use a GT-I9000B firmware. Here are two options to download firmwares:

• Samfirmwares -> http://www.samfirmware.com/firmwares.htm
  • The website requires login but it’s 100% free.
• Apopovici’s Blog
  • These are specific to Brazil (or Latin America) region and has firmwares to Brazilian operators.

For this tutorial I’m using  Froyo 2.2 (Operator Free):

• Base Band    I9000BVJJPD
  Kernel            2.6.32.9
  Compile        FROYO.VJJPD
  PIT                 s1_odin_20100512.pit
  Link to download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7FTPJCEL
  Link to PIT download: http://www.megaupload.com/??d=Q4P9R8GW

Procedure

1. Install heimdall
2. Uncompress the downloaded firmware package, in my case -> OK – 2.2 – FROYO – BRASIL SEM OPERADORA.rar
3. Check if you have all the necessary files:
   

   -r--r--r-- 1 markito markito  13955072 2010-12-11 01:23 cache.rfs
-r--r--r-- 1 markito markito   4833980 2010-12-11 02:04 zImage
-r--r--r-- 1 markito markito    716800 2010-12-11 02:04 param.lfs
-r--r--r-- 1 markito markito 254341120 2010-12-11 02:04 factoryfs.rfs
-r--r--r-- 1 markito markito  12582912 2010-12-12 22:30 modem.bin


4. Move or copy the PIT file (s1_odin_20100512.pit) to the same directory you uncompressed the firmware
5. Put your device in download mode. On a Galaxy S you should hold -> home buttom + power buttom + volume downand wait until you see the Android logo with “Downloading” written below.
6. Now that your phone is ready to receive a new firmware, plug the USB cable, wait a few seconds and type the following command in the same directory you have uncompressed all the files:
   

   heimdall flash --factoryfs factoryfs.rfs --cache cache.rfs  --param param.lfs --kernel zImage --modem modem.bin --pit s1_odin_20100512.pit

7. Now you should wait a few minutes and expected for the best: successful messages.
8. Your device should boot and will stuck a few moments in the Samsung S logo. That’s normal because it’s the first boot of your new kernel. But your are ready to go now, firmeware updated!

If it worked for you, congratulations. If you had or still have some problems, please take a look at some of the sources that I’ve used to learn and apply to my device, maybe it will help.

Sources:

• http://apopovici.wordpress.com/
• http://forum.xda-developers.com
• http://www.glassechidna.com.au/products/heimdall/

Source: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/web.1111/e13852/toc.htm

The most common message is:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: $MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0).
Failed to mount ‘/dev/sdb3′: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it’s a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the ‘dmraid’ documentation
for more details.

One workaround for this issue is to do as the message says, boot on Windows and try to use the awesome NTFS tool that Windows offer. But a perfect solution for a Linux users is to use the ntfsprogs utility.

ntfsprogs is a suite of NTFS utilities based around a shared library. The tools are available for free and come with full source code.

• mkntfs: Create an NTFS volume on a partition
• ntfscat: Print a file on the standard output
• ntfsclone: Efficiently backup/restore a volume at the sector level
• ntfscluster: Given a cluster, or sector, find the file
• ntfsfix: Forces Windows to check NTFS at boot time
• ntfsinfo: Dump a file’s attributes, completely
• ntfslabel: Display or set a volume’s label
• ntfslib: Move all the common code into a shared library
• ntfsls: List directory contents
• ntfsresize: Resize an NTFS volume
• ntfsundelete: Find files that have been deleted and recover them
• ntfswipe: Write zeros over the unused parts of the disk
• ntfsdefrag: Defragment files, directories and the MFT
• ntfsck: Perform consistancy checks on a volume
• nttools: Command-line tools to view/change an offline NTFS volume, e.g. ntfscp, ntfsgrep, ntfstouch, ntfsrm, ntfsrmdir, ntfsmkdir
• ntfsdiskedit: Walk the tree of NTFS ondisk structures (and alter them)

Be careful with these utilities, they might damage the filesystem, or your hard disk !

With ntfsprogs installed (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs) you should execute the following commands in a terminal:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/partitionName

After this command you should expect the following output:

~$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb3
Mounting volume... FAILED
Attempting to correct errors...
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr...
Reading $MFT... OK
Reading $MFTMirr... OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT... FAILED
Correcting differences in $MFTMirr record 0...OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Setting required flags on partition... OK
Going to empty the journal ($LogFile)... OK
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb3 was processed successfully.

After this step you should be able to access your external drive partition as usual, mount or use nautilus to access your files.

Source:  http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/ntfsprogs.htm

Below I made a quick overview of HTTP status codes and the intent is to help during the development and test of REST services.

General HTTP Codes

1xx – Informational: Request received, continuing process.

2xx – Success: Action successfully received, understood, and accepted.

3xx – Redirection: Client must take additional action to complete the request.

4xx – Client Error: Request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled.

5xx – Server Error: Server failed to fulfil an apparently valid request.

In the table below you have the description of the most common response codes:

Code	Meaning	Description
200 201 202 204 206	OK Created Accepted No Content Partial Content	- Successful HTTP request. - New resource created. - Accepted for processing, but not yet completed. - Successfully processed, but no return content. - Only part of the resource returned.
300 301 303 304	Multiple Choices Moved Permanently See Other Not Modified	- Multiple options for the resource that the client may follow. - This and all future requests should be directed to the given URI.  - Response can be found at URI using GET method. - Resource has not been modified since last requested
400 401 403 404 405 406 409 410 412 415 417 418	Bad Request Unauthorized Forbidden Not Found Method Not Allowed Not Acceptable Conflict Gone Precondition Failed Unsupported Media Type Expectation Failed I’m a teapot	- Request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled.- Request refused, when authentication is possible but has failed or not yet been provided. - Request was legal, but the server refuses to respond to it. - Resource could not be found but may be available again in the future. - Request made using method not supported by that resource. - Resource can only generate content not acceptable given Accept headers sent in. - Request could not be processed due to conflict in the request. - Resource no longer available and will not be available again. - Server does not meet precondition put on the request. - Request did not specify any media types the resource supports. - Server cannot meet requirement of Expect header field. - Response entity “MAY be short and stout”.

This usually is good information for RFPs when you have to check if your platform is compliant or not.

Note that this information is public in the product documentation.

Sources:

• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/downloads/fmw-11gr1certmatrix.xls
• http://www.oracle.com/appserver/docs/weblogic-server-se-datasheet.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_WebLogic_Server

Requirements:

• Oracle VM Virtual Box 3.2.1 (.deb)
• Ubuntu 10.04  64bit (for host OS)
• Windows XP (for guest OS)
• ITunes 9.2
• Setup your Windows guest on Oracle VM Virtual Box.
  Note: You can use any Windows installation, but you need to install the updated Virtual Box Guest Additions.

Steps:

1. Before start we need to do a set of tweaks in Ubuntu groups configuration
   1. Click on System > Administration > Users and Groups
   2. Select your “current desktop user” and click on Manage Groups
   3. In the group list, look for vboxusers. Select and click on Properties
   4. In the Group Members list, mark your user name and click Ok.
   5. Click on Close in the Group Settings and close on User Settings.
   6. Now to make your session ready, Log-out and Log-in of Ubuntu.  (If you don’t know how to do that, restart your machine)
2. Now open Oracle VM Virtual Box (Applications > System Tools > Oracle VM Virtual Box)
3. Select your Windows machine and click on Settings.
4. With your IPhone plugged, go to USB and verify if the option “Enable USB Controller” is checked and UNCHECK “Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller”.
5. Add a USB Device Filter selecting the plus icon on the right side and select your IPhone device from the list. This will make your VM directly bind to the USB port the device is using. After that, when you boot this VM, you’ll not be able to mount/use the device on the HOST machine (Ubuntu), only in the GUEST machine (Windows). That’s exactly what we want.
   
6. Start your Windows VM and install ITunes 9.2. After the installation, proceed with the normal IPhone update steps.
7. If you see any errors, you can just click Ok and select/deselect the IPhone USB port in USB icon (3rd button from left in the picture below).
   
8. After some error messages (3 of them in my case) I’m with the brand new iOS4 in my IPhone 3GS.

Unfortunately, I don’t know another way to do this without using a Windows VM and ITunes. If you do, please share! 
References:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18852
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1318160&page=2

That’s curious. After many years of study, computer scientists decided to structure data and transform data into information reading these from common data structures, tables or whatever. Of course I’m just making things simpler here just to get the point of this post, but data structure is a huge field of study in Computer Science and is a key part of any system. The way you design the system is always coupled with the way you will persist, model and query data.

Well, that said, the fact is that today we are dealing with a “revolution” about the way we’re dealing with data. The way we’re doing persistence is changing. The way we are storing data is changing. The relational concept that everyone thought was “good enough” for database design, is changing too. And all these changes are everywhere.

Analysis

These changes are not limited to databases, but it’s also affecting some other aspects of software development. (Agile methodology ?)

For example:

• Web Services: JSON x XML (XML Schema, XSLT, etc) or REST x SOAP style
• Databases: CouchDB x Neo4J x RDBMS

In these cases we can clearly see that after years using these technologies for our systems, today with everything going “Web X.0″ or going “SOA enabled” (or any of these “new wave techs” we hear everywhere), fact is: things had to change.

These 2 new “databases engines”: CouchDB and Neo4J are very promising and they’re already making their space. And remember that CouchDB is just at Apache Incubator yet… It’s a great important asset for NoSQL enthusiasts. In the other example, JSON/REST web services are growing up faster too.

But the point here is, aren’t we missing anything ?! I mean, is it really that simple to create a new instance of a database to support a high volume system ?! Is it really nice to forget about data types and try to make everything with keywords, like JSON and strings ? All these dynamic languages like Ruby, Python, Groovy are hidding complexity for development and to create a web system with data access, CRUD operations and some Ajax you don’t need to spend more than 15 minutes, according to many videos you find over the web teaching “how to develop” with these languages. This is really good improvement on software development, since things become more clear and easy to get done. But, don’t you like to create something yourself and not delegate all this/that responsibility to some crazy framework/language that you’ve learned yesterday ? I really like Python, Ruby and Groovy, but sometimes things get done so “magically” that I’m a feeling that I’m missing something. There are some counter-points that must have be considered on all these new generation technologies that most of the “them” (I’m still thinking a name for them) don’t see.
I’ll make a quick list from the top of my head, and probably make some mistakes since I’m not an expert on any of these technologies, but comments are welcome discussing the concepts.

• Data structure: Relational databases are still necessary. Loosely coupled, non-relation data are great for high-traffic websites, but commercial systems will store data in a relational manner, one day or other, this is the destiny of most of the data. Of course it’s an elegant solution use these NoSQL (or “NoREL”) databases as a front-end to collect all the data and then parse,validate e consolidate in a relational base. But, IMHO there are people selling this as the most revolutionary… Thanks God, there are really good people involved on the NoSQL movement and they say the same, they don’t want to take place on the relational database world, the idea is to have more one architectural option for some situations.
• Web Services: Sending data without the well-known XML overhead is awesome, fast and very good. But you might not forget that some backend validation will still be necessary and sometimes, you’ll save a lot of time doing your RESTful interface with JSON, but will spend a good time designing mechanisms to convert and validate this into other structures. Validation is my main concern here since by definition, an SOAP/XML service, designed based on an WSDL/XSD, already offer a good validation mechanism since these specs were built with that in mind. My advise here is take a deep look into your requirements and if you decide by using a web service without contracts (WSDL) or XML as an input, if you really need that performance and have available time to create the validation on the backend.

Conclusion

This post started by the end of 2008 and I was only able to finish it today. Probably some ideas here have changed, but the main message is still the same: All these new technologies are great allies when designing a new system, but it’s not the solution for your life. Humanity history is a cycle and we always return to the same point and the samething is happening with IT. We evolved to relational data for a reason, to structured data for another reason and are getting away from that now without a clear reason.