Piercing the Solitude

WSO2Con2011: SOA Governance with WSO2 Products

2011-09-10T01:32:00.004+05:30

Join me to learn about SOA Governance with WSO2 Products. During this 45mins session, I'm planning to cover how WSO2's revolutionary middleware and PaaS offerings address Governance requirements of modern businesses.

Abstract:

The WSO2 Governance Registry provides end-to-end governance for enterprise applications. This session will outline will introduce key concepts of governance and then dive into a deeper discussion on how IT professionals can streamline application development, testing and deployment processes, as well as manage service lifecycles and assets using WSO2 Governance Registry. Attendees also will learn about the community and social aspects of WSO2 Governance Registry as an enabler of collaboration between distributed teams, converting traditional human-centric tasks into key assets of the governance process.

Getting Started with WSO2 Governance as a Service (GaaS)

2010-11-21T23:26:00.010+05:30

Stratos, WSO2's latest introduction, is an implementation of a complete middleware platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution on top of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), based on WSO2 Carbon. Stratos brings about all the features available on a complete WSO2 Carbon platform deployment, on a cloud infrastructure, which provides a set of multi-tenant, on-demand services that provides you with solutions to all your SOA middleware requirements, in a matter of a few clicks. Click here to start using Stratos for free, or visit, the Stratos product page to view a detailed list of services available.

This post aims at introducing you to WSO2 Governance as a Service (GaaS), which is one of the ten different services available as a part of Stratos. WSO2 Governance Registry (G-Reg), provides a single uniform facade to your SOA metadata. G-Reg allows you to store, index, catalog and build a community around your enterprise service offerings, while making use of its easy-to-use interfaces to manage dependencies, analyze impact, enforce policies, create versions, search and drive business processes. GaaS, allows you to make use the very same features on the cloud, without having worry about setting up your own G-Reg instance.

Starting to use GaaS, is as simple as creating an account for yourself on WSO2 Stratos. Getting started is as easy as following the 5 steps below.

Step 1 : Register a new domain

Step 2 : Fill in your details

After clicking on the submit button, you will see a confirmation page as seen below.

Step 3 : Confirm E-mail address

You will then receive a confirmation e-mail, with the link to your all new account on Stratos.

You now have successfully created an account which you can use to access WSO2 Governance as a Service (GaaS). Making use of GaaS is just 2 more steps.

Step 4 : Login to your Stratos account

Step 5 : Select the Stratos Governance service

This will load your own GaaS account on the cloud. The homepage will list out some useful links to help you get started.

Feel free to try out some of the interesting features of GaaS. For more information and updates, please stay in touch with the WSO2 Stratos Development team.

Why use QR Code in Blogs?

2008-10-14T01:10:00.000+05:30

QR code, or Quick Response Code is a two dimensional bar code system invented by Denso, a Japanese Corporation, in 1994. Even though it being a very popularly used alternative to the single dimensional barcode system within Japan, its usage is limited in other parts of the world. The usefulness of a QR code is its ability to store much larger amounts of information and make it possible to be decoded at much greater speeds.

QR codes were designed initially to be used to track parts built in vehicle manufacturing systems or very large scale (the reason to why Denso, a popular vehicle part manufacturer invented it). But, as of today, its usefulness is found in quite different domains, contradictory to the thoughts of the initial developers. QR codes are used in applications related to mobile phones and also as means of an alternate mechanism to store URLs in a universally decodable format.

Bloggers have found it interesting to have a QR code of their blog (some prefer having the code varied by post as well, as you see in my blog), displayed on the widget bar. Fancy looking QR codes are not easy to generate. There are several popular QR code generators including the Google Chart API. Others are, http://qrcode.kaywa.com and http://www.qrcode.es. This blog uses the latter.

Benefits of using QR codes is the possibility to print the image on some form of media (paper, magazine, contact card etc.) and have a camera phone take a photograph of that image and automatically redirect to that location, using a QR code reader application along with a suitable web browser. Thus the usefulness is immense. For instance, if you have a QR code reader, sharing your favorite blog post with a friend is as simple as sending him an image of your QR code generated using the URL.

Microsoft Committers at Apache Software Foundation

2008-10-13T01:00:00.000+05:30

Microsoft through out the past as seen by many has been a strong opponent to the Open Source community, as it being one such company who believed 100% in the commercial aspects and development of software and related infrastructure (including services, support, add-ons and extensions etc.). However, along with the drastic change of perception, where clearly marked development models and interactions of software are now void, and rather moving towards a more globalized system including involvement of varied disciplines, Microsoft too have decided to make their move into the Open Source territory.

The change might seem rapid and sudden to some, but not to those who've been having a careful eye of the recent changes in the industry (more info here). My two previous posts (Microsoft Funds ASF, and WSO2 @ Tech.Ed 2008) of how Microsoft approached true Open Source provides a solid justification to this fact. The greatest question presented by many is whether 2008 is the turning point which breaks the prolonged and greatly spoken barrier between Open Source and Commercial worlds of software.

I was amazed to see this post which introduced the first ever committers from Microsoft to the Apache Software Foundation, who'd perhaps be the first ever contributors to broader Open Source in a manner that is publicly aware. In my personal opinion this unfolds a new era in the entire industry of IT, Systems and Software. The Apache Software Foundation is also a much admired community by many due to its openness and true contribution to create a world of freedom to use software unlike most other entities that promote the same.

The entire Open Source community would un-doubtfully be looking forward to further involvement and contribution by not only Microsoft, but also several other commercial strongholds.

Does Technorati Do the Right Thing?

2008-10-12T02:00:00.001+05:30

Technorati is an internet search engine that indexes blogs (over 100 million) and tagged social media (over 250 million), and claims to be the world's best blog index. The Technorati claims have been criticized by many and at the same time acknowledged by many as well. An open source based development team with several active developers is what keeps Technorati going despite heavy competition from search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

However, certain aspects of Technorati's model seem very much questionable. For instance, Technorati displays each blog indexed as a part of their website (http://technorati.com/blogs/..) and to a certain extent makes use of others work to increase the number of their pages, and thereby the number of visitors to their pages; improving the website's overall ranking and advertising revenue.

Another fact is that Technorati actually displays each post appearing on publicly visible blogs within their site and display some advertisements based on the content appearing on those particular pages. The advertisements displayed may be purely random, but the content appearing on the page seems to influence at least one such add appearing in many occasions. You can give this a try (make sure to check around 20-30 different blogs/posts instead of making conclusions based on a few).

Whatever the scenario, Technorati does make some amount of money through these advertisements posted on their website (either contextual or not). Also, even members (people who have user accounts) of Technorati can't decide whether or whether not to turn off these adds, and Technorati's making money out of your blog/post is beyond the control of an ordinary individual.

Why this is wrong is a good question. Some bloggers do allow use, re-use or re-distribution of posted content for commercial purposes. But, some don't. There are blog licenses specifically designed to enforce this requirement. The Creative Commons Non-commercial licenses are a good example. These licenses restrict the use of posted content for commercial purposes (read section 4.b of this license which is one of the least restrictive variants).

But, as of today Technorati still does not have a mechanism where they only advertise based on content appearing on blogs that allow use of content for commercial purposes. The correct way to go would be therefore to refrain from advertising on all blogs until they come up with a scheme that is intelligent enough to account for this requirement or pay compensation to affected bloggers. But, sadly Technorati is not doing it in the correct way, and thereby violating the free-right of a blogger to enforce a license that does not allow use of content for commercial purposes.

The Better SharePoint...

2008-10-11T00:06:00.000+05:30

Microsoft SharePoint is a browser based document management and collaboration system, that rules out traditional content management systems with its investment in the powerful interaction with Microsoft Office. SharePoint in general refers to a family of products that include, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft Search Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer(SPD).

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) provides the base infrastructure that facilitates and enables the usefulness of other SharePoint family of products. The best part of WSS is that it is built upon a IIS 6 (Internet Information Server) - SQL Server - ASP.NET 2.0 infrastructure and integrates seamlessly with the .NET framework. Which means that any .NET based developer at his/her option can enhance the capabilities of WSS at their option.

WSS is formulated by a ring of services provided around some core platform services. Ian Morrish explains the WSS 3.0 Architecture in here. Among the ring of services provided are:

Collaboration
BI
Business Processes
Portal
Content Management
Search

However, these basic services can easily be extended or supplemented by enhancements or additions, by exploiting the flexibility of the WSS Architecture. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Search Server are implemented on top of WSS and add more functionality upon the existing core. Microsoft Office Forms Server is another product that exists within the WSS based application line of sight.

The Better SharePoint comes with further extending the infrastructure to tailor corporate requirements that expose multi-divisional, geographically dispersed, large organizational information infrastructures, under a single system that provides all necessary document management and collaboration requirements. Typical systems enable employees, customers, and other interested parties interact through highly customized business systems based on SharePoint family of products.

One Year of Contribution to Axis2/C

2008-10-10T00:13:00.000+05:30

It is quite hard to understand how fast time advances, as it has been like yesterday to me, when I made my first contribution to Axis2/C, in the form of reporting a bug on the manual (you can find the ticket here). If you are interested in understanding what I meant in this issue: I reported, the file found in here was missing, an year back.

It is quite interesting to see how I gradually got on track with Axis2/C development activities. But, to be honest I haven't been doing much ever since I started my final year at the University. I'm looking forward to re-join the contribution camp as soon as I find some free time, which is somewhat a scarce resource these days.

Axis2/C recently began its third year. More information is found on Samisa's post made here. It is quite nice to see many new names appearing on the mailing lists, and also several new contributors joining the project. A special thanks to the two participants of GSoC 2008 who worked with Axis2/C.

When I started working with Axis2/C the project had merely completed its 1.1 release and was looking forward to further additions before the next major release. It was during this era I started working on a improved scheme for HTTP Authentication on Axis2/C. A more detailed description of what it is all about is found in here. My contributions to Axis2/C helped me become a committer to the Web Services Project at the Apache Software Foundation.

Afterwards, during the latter part of my internship at WSO2, I worked on implementing support for RESTful Services on Axis2/C. This was one of the major additions to the project. I also contributed fixing a number of bugs and added few other improvements as well. Thanks to ohloh, you should be able to see some of my commits to Apache Axis2/C in here.

Many thanks to all those who helped me and supported me with my work on Axis2/C, and also to many others who were major factors that influenced my contributions to the project. Today, Axis2/C is perhaps the best and fastest Web Service engine written in C, supporting both SOAP and REST over a magnitude of transport protocols. Axis2/C is also the basis of other popular WS projects at WSO2 including WSF/PHP and WSF/C.

FOWA Expo - London 2008 begins

2008-10-09T00:37:00.000+05:30

The Future of Web Apps Expo - London 2008, began on the 8th October with a workshop held on the 8th followed by a 2-day conference held on 9th and 10th. What's so special about FOWA Expo 2008 are the speakers during the event who are some of the web-industry's revolutionary figures including people such as Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Bray, Kevin Rose and many more.

What FOWA is all about is explained in detail on its website. The Future of Web Apps showcases the successful web technologies and business trends of the future, delivered by the pioneers of today. Attended by all the major European and US start-ups and industry experts, it's the best place to learn directly from the developers, designers and entrepreneurs behind the web's brightest stars in a relaxed and fun environment.

FOWA, is a Carsonified based project which mainly focuses on European and United States based establishments in the web applications and web technology domain. Also, another important fact is the participation of some of the world's leading IT & Services companies (the so called big players) such as IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Yahoo, etc.

The long list of speeches during the workshops are found in here. They range from fundamental web development to large-scale deployments such as Social Networking systems and community sites. The packed conference schedule hosts a number of good talks as detailed in here. The entire workshop & conference program is designed towards creating a fun-loving developer. And, the organizers at Carsonified have not forgotten to add some fun events at the end of each conference day along with some interesting happenings.

The Expo is targeted at mainly a UK audience, the event being held in London; and, has a setup as seen in here. Workshops and events are to be held in at the ExCel center, London. The organizers are also providing state of the art facilities for the developers to make maximum use of their stay. I gotta say that this is one of those events that one should not miss. Looking forward to see some similar events happening in this part of the world as well.

Why Blog Licensing is important

2008-10-08T13:43:00.001+05:30

Your blog is a way that you reveal a great deal of information to the outside world. The most important fact is that the constitutes of your blog is in fact Intellectual Property, which you own (if you don't copy others stuff :-)... ). According to WIPO, Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. And, therefore, your blog deserves some legal respect if you are interested in securing ownership for your information.

But, the question is why a license is required. According to this article, a licensor may grant license under intellectual property to do something (such as copy software or use a patented invention) without fear of a claim of intellectual property infringement brought by the licensor.

Thus, the importance arises, if you are interested in claiming what you own (or in other words secure your intellectual property). Blog licensing can vary from a all rights reserved to no rights reserved. Technically, if you say nothing, depending on the Territory to which a IP infringement law is enforced, you have the chance of falling into somewhere between these two extremes.

Therefore, if you want to specifically allow, or disallow the way people interact with your information in a variety of forms, you might consider creating a your own blog license. However, there are lots of easily adoptable schemes, such as Creative Commons. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

What ever scheme you may choose, the security of your information lies in the strength of the legal license document you present. You must consult a lawyer if your information requires severe protection, but in most cases a trusted third party (ex:- Creative Commons) might be helpful.

All new WSO2.com

2008-10-07T20:50:00.000+05:30

The WSO2's .com site has put on a new look since last September. The new theme describes the Open Source Company in more detail. Three years ago, WSO2 began as a company with a mission to build a fully functional enterprise-grade SOA middleware platform, which has now grown to become one of the best SOA infrastructures out there, and as Dr. Weerawarana describes, WSO2 is ready to take IBM's and Oracle/BEA's seat as your SOA vendor.

WSO2's .com site combines various components of the company's SOA middleware products to formulate a one-single system that implements a better SOA, as seen in the image above, which is the spotlight of the main page. Samisa, has described the new CCCG Theme of WSO2 in this post. The products page explains how each of WSO2's key products fit into this Theme. Samisa's post better explains this fact.

WSO2 now a three year old company is looking forward for more exciting updates and introductions, enabling superior technology at the lowest costs (hey who says you gotta pay, most of it is free :-)... ).

Dynamically Changing Text Size in your Blog

2008-10-06T00:21:00.005+05:30

Display text size is dependant on the current font and display settings of your browser in the case of most blogs. Also, some people might have difficuilty in reading your blog (especially on modern screens which support very high resolutions). Therefore, you might be interested to give your visitors the option to dynamically increase/decrease the size of text displayed on your blog.

The feature can easily be added with a least amount on effort provided that you can fulfill the basic pre-requisites. In order to get started, you will have to go to Layout -> Edit HTML. After that make sure to keep a copy of your current template in case you want to revert back. Now, identify each font-size entry that use an absolute size (size in px), and replace them with a relative size (size in em, or %). You can make use of the preview to make sure that you got the right font size.

Now, just after the <body> tag add, <div id='resize-wrapper'> and add </div> just before the closing </body> tag. After you have done this step, add this text above the ]]</skin> tag.

  #resize-wrapper {
   font-size: 13px;
 }

Then just after the ]]</skin> tag, add the following text:

  <script>
   var r;
   var current_size = 13;
   if (document.all)
     r = 'rules';
   else if (document.getElementById)
     r = 'cssRules';
   function change_size(s) {
     if (!s)
       current_size = 13;
     else
       current_size = current_size + s;
     if (current_size < 10)
       current_size++;
     else if (current_size > 16)
       current_size--;
     for (var i = 0;
           i < document.styleSheets.length;
           i++)
       for (var j = 0;
             j < document.styleSheets[i][r].length;
             j++)
         if (document.styleSheets[i][r][j].selectorText
              == '#resize-wrapper') {
           document.styleSheets[i][r][j].style.cssText =
             document.styleSheets[i][r][j].style.cssText
              .replace(/\d+/g,current_size);
           return;
         }
   }
 </script>

Once you have done that step, save your template and then tick the Expand Widget Templates check box. Now you can add the following text, anywhere on your blog, which enables the text-resize functionality.

  <div id='size-control'>
   <a href='javascript:change_size(-1)'
     style='font-size:16px' title='Reduce Size'>A</a>
   <a href='javascript:change_size(0)'
     style='font-size:20px' title='Default Size'>A</a>
   <a href='javascript:change_size(1)'
     style='font-size:22px' title='Increase Size'>A</a>
 </div>

Now, save the template once again, and test the functionality, in order to make sure that you got all of it right. Optionally you can make use of CSS to add style attributes to the layout of the #size-control element.

Why Should you choose WSF/PHP

2008-10-05T02:26:00.003+05:30

Web Services Framework for PHP by WSO2 is by far the most comprehensive stack that provides most WS-* features for a typical PHP Web Services developer, having to put in the least amount of effort to get something done. The comparison of various strategies opted by PHP developers to Web Services is detailed in this post by Samisa.

Meanwhile, the WSF/PHP sphere of possibilities have gone from basic WS through SOAP to most WS-* specifications supported and also the demanding support for RESTful Web Services. Uthaiyashankar, and Katie in this video (story found in here) explains what makes WSF/PHP a well rounded product for your enterprise PHP-based Web Services applications.

Samisa also explains in this post how WSF/PHP blends well into the domain of enterprise-grade WS applications in PHP. This briefs many a feature of WSF/PHP against various expectations of the users of Web Services in PHP.

WSF/PHP's capabilities were appreciated by Andi Gutmans (CTO and Co-Founder of Zend), recently; who explained the mutual collaboration of WSO2 and Zend to make enterprise WS with PHP better as, "Zend and WSO2 are mutually dedicated to serving the diverse needs of PHP developers with world-class open-source software for implementing Web services. By bringing support for both enterprise-oriented WS-* and REST Web services to our managed PHP production environment, WSO2 joins us in empowering the developers supporting more than 20 million PHP websites with unprecedented flexibility for delivering enterprise-class Web services."

I therefore believe that the benefits of using WSF/PHP as a WS enabler in your PHP website or application is clear beyond further justification.

Richard Stallman against Cloud Computing?

2008-10-03T01:00:00.000+05:30

Among the recent discussions on the cloud-computing group @ GoogleGroups, the most interesting thread by far seems to be the impact Richard Stallman is causing to the latest buzz in IT Services and Computing. According to the summary of Stallman's interview with the Guardian(UK) as found in here, and in the original version in here, he described Cloud Computing as "It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign".

Adding to this, he did not forget to further elaborate on the aspect of programs available over the web as, "One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenseless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software".

My personal belief is that what Stallman points out is in fact true in a way, to a great extent, that investment to Cloud Computing made in billions would not be justifiable if not for its gains in trillions, leaving use of software applications still a luxury and now without the possibility even to be duplicated as free software.

As Stallman describes the notion of web-enabled software, services, cloud computing etc. are all based around a concept that you pay for services obtained and not necessarily for the tools you obtain to get serviced. But, this still doesn't give you the freedom to use the tool (the software) violating one of the primary interests pointed out by the FSF.

As of now, no solid implementations of large-scale cloud based service infrastructures are available to justify the actual fact, but it is clearly evident that what Stallman believes is going to happen some day and the freedom envisaged (at least partially) in modern day software is no longer going to be a reality in the future, unless someone is really donating infrastructure in addition to time.

HTML aware Twitter

2008-10-02T12:37:00.015+05:30

Twitter, an online status update tool, can easily be integrated to blogger to enable live updates to your blog in the form of miniature 160 character messages. Twitter does provide a widget that can be added to your blog, which is capable of doing the hard work of fetching and publishing the required information for you. However, the widget provided by Twitter (Twitter Badge for Blogger), as of today is not HTML aware.

However, on your twitter homepage, you will notice that Twitter intelligently replaces URLs and friend names with hyperlinks. To add a friend name in your message, you will simply have to append an @ sign in front of the name (ex:- senaka -> @senaka). Once done, Twitter will create a hyperlink to your friend from your post.

The problem I'm answering here is how to bring in this functionality to your blog. This though you might believe is hard, is apparently very simple. All that needs to be done is to simply add this text under your twitter code.

  <script type='text/javascript'>
    document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML
      = document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML.replace(
        /([^\"\'])(https?:\/\/([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(\/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)/g,
        '$1<a href="$2">$2</a>');
    document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML
      = document.getElementById('twitter_update_list').innerHTML.replace(
        /@([a-zA-Z]+)/g,'@<a href="http://twitter.com/$1">$1</a>');
  </script>

Once, you have done this, your Twitter updates will become HTML aware. The method employed here is the use of regular expressions and javascript to change the way in which the Twitter feed is published.

Camtasia: Recording Desktop made easy

2008-09-20T23:12:00.006+05:30

There are many tools that you can use to record your desktop, and some can be really complicating and at the same time, expensive. Camtasia is one good tool out there, which is reasonably expensive ($300), but provides a free 30-day trial version, as well. What you find at the Techsmith site is the latest version, 5.1, which has quite a lot more features than what you see in here (version 3.1, released in June 2006), which I apparently downloaded based on a link I saw in here, several months ago. The version 3, is now not supported, but link still works, if you want to give it a try.

The application provides you with a great deal of capability including:

Selecting various areas in your screen.
Recording/Pausing as you wish.
Editing and Removing un-wanted content.
Publishing in many popular video formats.

The video seen above explains how Camtasia can be used to easily record your desktop (you can find a tutorial here). The .wmv version produced is however not so good on the eye, and Windows Media Player is having it's problems even with the .avi version. However, I managed to make use of a professional video editting software, Adobe Premiere Pro (free tryout version available), which preserved the original formatting. I generated a .avi file, which I then converted back to a .wmv version with the help of Windows Movie Maker. Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker are a part of your Windows OS, assuming you have a version equal or greater than Windows XP.

Please note that the .avi file generated by Adobe Premiere Pro is around 100MB for a mere 100 seconds, and this means that if you need a good quality output for what you've done, you will need to have an equal amount

Surfing Standing on your head, courtesy Dulip

2008-09-13T20:45:00.000+05:30

Dulip Kokuhennedige, a 22 year old Sri Lankan living in Dorset Britain, became perhaps the only person in all of UK who could do the marvelous trick of surfing standing on his head made it to the headlines of most English news papers, for his amazing capability that attracted quite a number of tourists, and along with it a great deal of attention to the small town that he lived.

A resident of the Southern coast of Sri Lanka, Dulip was one of those unfortunate few who was badly affected by the tsunami that struck the island in December 2004, loosing everything he owned in this small island country. I bet he's putting up a marvelous show out there as seen on The Sun UK, The Mirror, Metro, Telegraph, and BBC's news videos.

As described on The Sun's news page, "Dulip can stay upside down - when most can’t even stand up - and ride a wave for up to 15 seconds before it breaks and flips him over. The builder has tried to teach his friends how to surf upside down but none of them have been able to do the stunt he invented."

The young chap is looking forward to the completion of Europe's first artificial surf reef currently being built in Bournemouth, which is to be finished in October 2008, providing waves like those found in Malibu Beach California.

J#: Java on .NET (part III)

2008-09-10T14:14:00.007+05:30

In addition to what I mentioned in the first two posts on this topic (part 1, part 2), I also discussed various other alternatives that are available as means for you to convert Java code to .NET. One such method is the use of the Java Language Conversion Assistant, JLCA which simply converts Java code to C#.NET. The JLCA tool is presently in version 3.0, and available for download from here. The JLCA tool version 3.0 comes with the capability to convert Java code upto J2SE and J2EE 1.3, which gives you a wide range of opportunity.

JLCA tool also has an associated companion, found in here, which gives you the capability to customize the way in which JLCA does language transformations. By doing so, you get the additional possibility to extend the capabilities of the tool to even support later Java versions according to your need. The tool also provides you with interactive assistance which guides you through the conversion process whilst providing you with valuable information on your legacy code base.

However, like J#, the JLCA tool also is now a discontinued product in terms of Microsoft's involvement in it. But, there are still several developers who are interested and working on the tool, who'd be ready to provide you with necessary help and support. The capabilities of JLCA is limited but ideally suits as a mechanism to convert legacy Java code .NET. Even though Microsoft seems to be quitting from the Java to .NET conversion sphere, there are other commercial tools available which are still continued.

The JNBridge is one such commercial tool that can be used to bridge your Java code into a .NET code base with least amount of effort. JNBridge comes with a number of advanced operations that make the life easy of developers who wish to migrate large Java code bases in to .NET. However, similar to its capability you need to pay a lot to get JNBridge. A single license can cost more than $1000 which is quite a big amount of money.

Therefore, J# still provides you with the necessary convenience of migrating legacy Java code in to .NET without much of a hassle and with the minimum investment. In addition to the information discussed in these three posts, which covers the presentation I did last Friday, we also discussed some important aspects during the QnA session.

I explained in the demonstration, that J# does not only recognize .jsl extensions but also the .java extensions. Therefore, converting a legacy Java code base only required you opening the existing Java source files inside VS2005 and then simply building it which will create a DLL for you which is now .NET compatible. Converting a legacy Java code base to .NET was left as a task for you to try out.
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) does not recognize Java Bytecode, and therefore the J# distribution also includes a JAR to DLL converter which can convert the .jar files to .dll files that are .NET compatible. This tool can be found inside your VS2005, or J# installation directory.

The complete presentation will be mailed to the Microsoft Student Champ (Sri Lanka) mailing list, and also will be made available as a part of the Student Champ Newsletter that we are hoping to make available by the end of September 2008. The presentation is also available in .pdf format in here.

IRC Logging Made Easy

2008-09-09T16:00:00.000+05:30

Internet Relay Chat, IRC has become a very popular means of communication not only among people of common interest, but also people who belong to a certain group or community. Open Source Development Teams are one such good example. I, along with my pals working on SCI-Flex, Final Year project at University of Moratuwa, decided to have our own channel as well.

Creating a IRC channel is not a big deal, but maintaining chat logs has become one big requirement for Open Source Projects such as SCI-Flex. We decided to have our very own chat logger as well (still experimental). Googling for chat loggers, I found that it is not a very big deal to write a simple chat logger software.

Based on this post, by Philipp Lenssen, I created my very own variant chat logger application that works on php. Perl scripts have also been a popular choice, but for my requirement I chose php. Therefore, inorder to get going with this script you simply need to install php and that's all. The bot was also registered on the freenode IRC network and thus needs to authenticate itself in.

This application is capable of:

Joining to your IRC channel
Authenticating itself
Logging messages on channel during presence
Periodically publishing the log (I use a daily publish cycle)
Hide IP addresses of all users on log

and several other features. You are free to donwload this from here.

Picasa 3.0 beta: Yet another release by Google

2008-09-08T01:00:00.000+05:30

Google announced the availability of Picasa 3.0 beta, a way in which you can personalize the photos you post on the web. Along with Chrome, the latest browser Google released few days ago, Picasa seems to be getting an equal amount of attention. For those who are already familiar with earlier versions of Picasa, the latest release brings a load of new features that you've long been waiting for.

Picasa's latest release also comes with upgrades to cousin, Picasa Web albums, which is a two year old technology according to Google, which brings together some millions of users sharing billions of photos online. Upgrades to Picasa Web Albums, adds several new features including name-tags, and explore. Two innovating introductions making organization rather simplified.

As seen in this video that shows a glimpse of several new features added, Picasa 3.0 gives you the ability to do quite a deal of photo editing including dust and scratch removal, improving colour and brightness, picture re-sizing, red eye reduction, text insertion and many more. And, the most interesting part is that all of these features, that normally are only a part of expensive professional photo editing software now comes at zero cost, you having only to download and install the software.

As a proud user of Picasa since its first release, I'm quite happy on the amount of effort Google has put in their latest introduction. The software has helped me better organize my photographs with having to pay virtually nothing for a great deal of functionality.

J#: Java on .NET (part II)

2008-09-07T11:00:00.004+05:30

I have created a video on the demonstration I did during the presentation on how you can easily create a J# application in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Shown below is the video uploaded on YouTube.

A better version which is more clearly visible is found here. In here I have focused on several key areas:

How to create a simple Hello World application
1. Creating the application
2. Compiling/Running program
3. Using Java as well as .NET code
Visual Studio Features
1. Intellisense
2. Debugging
3. Object Browser
4. Code Completion
5. Code Snippets
The Calculator Starter Kit
1. Creating the application
2. Using the code

I also discussed many other alternatives that can be used to utilize Java code in .NET applications, which I will be discussing in my third and last post on this topic.

To be continued...

Google Chrome: The latest Toy

2008-09-06T23:43:00.004+05:30

Google, adding yet another cool addition to what they call software, introduced Chrome releasing the beta version for MS Windows systems (chrome 0.2), on 2nd September 2008. The new open source browser is told to serve as a faster alternative to Mozilla Firefox once done, and since its inception seems to be. Geared around simplicity and innovation, Chrome introduces some of the most coolest features in browsing while using a little amount of screen real-estate and consuming a way little memory when compared to the bulky giant Firefox.

The lately introduced Open Source Browser uses a heavy amount of the Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox core, according to this introduction to the browser. Among some of the innovations Chrome brings for you is its advanced Java Script engine that provides a much better experience when running bulky Java Script dependant sites such as Google's very own Gmail, which Firefox is having a lot of problems with when it comes to memory and performance.

Google explains how chrome can be used in this most creative comic book approach they have taken. Chrome has brought about a wonderful and pleasing experience to browsing, including the ability to do most day-to-day web tasks efficiently and simply without bothering the overall performance of your PC. They are hoping to introduce the Linux and MacOS versions shortly and are hoping to embed into it some really cool and fancy additions while keeping it simple and small.

There are still some minus points with the beta version of Chrome, which might be in beta for quite a long time according to what most believe as in Gmail which has been in beta for ages, keeping Google from assuring things will go well as expected instead of that it should work always. Many complain that the ability to view larger pdf files and some occasional hangs in the application sort of needs a thorough investigation.

To me, Firefox starts up faster than Chrome on Windows, but loads pages a bit slower, having also needed to keep in mind that FF3 adds a lot of your time in storing bookmarks and organizing history, which Chrome seems to do as well, but, in a slightly different and efficient manner. Performance wise Chrome outweighs FF3, as it being extremely lightweight and virtually un-noticed by other applications.

J#: Java on .NET

2008-09-05T22:52:00.005+05:30

Today, I did a presentation on J#, at the September 2008 meeting of the Microsoft Student Champ community at the Microsoft Sri Lanka office, in Nawam Mawatha, Colombo 02. I decided to add here a few important aspects I discussed at today's meeting.

Taking a brief look into how various lrogramming langauges evolved, C/C++ strongholds of the 80s and early 90s, has by now gradually been reduced to a underlying system of core functionality that supports highlevel managed frameworks that sit upon them. Java was the most popular such managed runtime based programming language that came into being in the mid 90s.

Understanding the potential, and the possible gains in market and the ability to fortify the Microsoft Windows based production front, Microsoft put forward two main strategies, which involved the creation of an MS version of Java, which became known as J++ and the better replacement to Java, known as C#. VB.NET grew to become C#'s cousin but with some of the obviously crappy logic that makes programming a nightmare at times.

Due to some reason in time, Sun began to start accusing Microsoft for its unlawful use of Java technology that was to a great extent propietary in ownership, which lead to the demise of J++, which was brought to a virtual standstill in 2001. J# was then thought of, which became a combination of Java and C# which is capable of plugging most Java code written before and around 2001, at the time when J++ was officially discontinued. Mostly developed in India, J# became popular with it's integration to Visual Studio 2005.

J#, began a journey in which Microsoft provided a mechanism to make use of its investment and time, in making Java from MS a reality. Today, J# which was last released in mid 2007, has started a process of gradual decommission, and by now the project has been discontinued, and marked as will be supported only until 2015.

In spite of its current stance, J# provides an excellent way in which legacy Java applications can be integrated into .NET environments, which would be quite advantageous if you are planning to do 0% work in moving your bulky legacy Java code base into a modern .NET base.

To be continued...

Sahana for Bihar Disaster

2008-09-02T02:26:00.000+05:30

You might already be aware of the recent floods in Bihar, and several other parts of India. Many people have various interpretations about the situation, but all reveal that quite a large number of people are displaced, and are in danger, and that by now several have even paid with their lives. Disaster Relief systems play a key role in incidents as such, and applications developed in the DR domain play a vital role.

Sahana, is a free and open source Disaster Management system which is a web based tool for collaborating and coordinating the management of disaster relief. Sahana, has made a lot of ground in Disaster Management applications, including installations to manage,

Tsunami Disaster in Sri Lanka (2004)
Earthquake in Pakistan (2005)
Mudslide disaster in Philippines (2006)
And, many other recent disasters in eastern Asia

Sahana, has put a step forward in a deployment in India as well, in address to the recent disaster situation in Bihar. A short but informative writeup is found in here. Sahana designed to work in a multilingual environment still lacks some crucial feature of not having a large scale language database. The present stance the team is facing is the need to translate most content in to the native Hindi language spoken in affected parts of India. If you are fluent in both English and Hindi, you have a great chance in taking part in a very worthy cause.

Sahana, one of Sri Lanka's greatest achievements in Open Source remains one of the most worthy causes designed to serve man kind. Your help and contribution is greatly appreciated.

Connecting WSO2 Registry with WSO2 ESB

2008-08-29T14:16:00.005+05:30

The recent releases of WSO2 ESB supported the use of a back-end Registry to store various configuration bits and other related information. The support comes in two flavors, local and remote. The use of a local registry is a fact that has been broadly discussed on the user guides. But, the same does not apply when it comes to using a Remote Registry.

Setting up WSO2 Registry is as simple as installing Apache Tomcat (can be downloaded from here) and deploying the wso2registry.war file. More instructions can be found in here. Having gone through the process, you should be able to access the WSO2 Registry from http://localhost:8080/wso2registry (please note that the port may vary depending on your configuration).

Now all that it takes is to inform WSO2 ESB to make use of your registry. This can be done by adding the following info into, server.xml (located in webapps/WEB-INF/classes/conf by default):

<registry>
    <importRoot>file:registry</importRoot>
    <type>remote</type>
    <configuration>
        <url>http://localhost:8080/wso2registry</url>
        <username>admin</username>
        <password>admin</password>
    </configuration>
</registry>

Please note that the port number and the username/password might vary according to your configuration.

Now, you will have to do some other changes to your synapse.xml. I assume that you know how to setup a local registry implementation (Simple URL Registry) in WSO2 ESB. If you don't please read this. In order to use the WSO2 Registry you will need to add this configuration information:

<registry provider="org.wso2.esb.registry.WSO2Registry">
    <parameter name="root">/</parameter>
</registry>

Well that's it. You can now upload what ever documents on the WSO2 Registry and access it within WSO2 ESB.

Can the Human Brain be Buggy?

2008-08-28T10:13:00.002+05:30

You might wonder while reading the subject of this post thinking whether I made a mistake in relating bugs found in computer software to the human brain. It has been thought that the human brain is far more superior than any other software (or machinery run using software, to be more precise) developed ever since Alan Turing began comparing the Computer to a Human. But the biggest question is that whether we have been taking things for granted.

Inspired by an e-mail sent to me by a friend I have been trying this activity over and over to realize that each and every attempt I make results in a failure. This is analogous to a bug found in a software, where you expect one thing to happen but something else happening instead. So here is what you have got to do:

While sitting where you are, at your desk, in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make anti-clockwise circles.
While doing this, draw the number 6 in the air with your right hand. Your foot will keep rotating as it was.
Now, remain seated in the same way, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
While doing this, draw the number 6 in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction!

As you will realize, this information is pre-programmed in your brain and you can't simply do anything about it. This should hold valid for most of the human population, but, there can be some who are not affected as well.

More information on this can be found at [1] - [3].

Please note that I'm not challenging the way in which a Human was created, stating an imperfection. Also, I have no intension in disputing one's religious viewpoints.

[1] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071222121325AAbdAhO
[2] http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/3619/
[3] http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2004/07/06/174234.aspx

Formula CSE 2008

2008-08-23T20:32:00.003+05:30

Formula CSE, is an annual toy car racing competition held by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, in which participation is required in order to pass the subject CS1960 Skill Development, a subject which is mandatory for each engineering undergraduate at the university. Each student of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering will make a toy car during the Level 1, in groups of 4-5 people which will race in the Formula CSE competition held at the end of the non-technical term.

Formula CSE competition is organized by the Level 4 students of the Department every year and the organizers will also mentor the students for a period of around 7 weeks teaching them how to build a remote controlled toy car from scratch. Formula CSE began in 2006, and the one held on 23rd August 2008 was the third annual competition.

Having participated in the first ever Formula CSE competition in 2006, as a student I was privileged to mentor a group of five talented juniors this year, who did a great job in designing one of the best cars out there. Even though my team did not become the champions, I accept the fact that we did a great piece of work.

As a member of the organizing committee I was in charge of timing each race, with the aid of a countdown timer software. In addition to that I evaluated the graphical user interface developed by each team (20 altogether) along with a panel of judges. I must say that each team has done a marvelous job and it was very hard to evaluate. The amount of effort put in was more than what we expected from an average group of 1st year students.

We are very happy and proud of what our juniors have done and hope that the Formula CSE competition will continue in it's mission of creating better and more competent engineers in the field of information technology and computing in years to come.

P.S. I will try my best to post some photographs if I happen to find any.

The IT industry is bigger than we think

2008-08-21T21:17:00.002+05:30

Recently, Gartner published its report on spendings on IT industry's in the year 2008. It seems that we are all a part of a $3.4 trillion worth industry according to this media release. However, as it may seem, these figures may not be precise due to fluctuations in the US dollar. Gartner identifies that Cloud Computing will be the next revolutionary area in IT where people would focus on spending into services provided by a cloud rather than purchasing software.

A follow up discussion on the Cloud Computing discussion group @ GoogleGroups, [1], identifies several key areas that this post doesn't consider. For instance Open Source and Free Software are not paid for. And they also point out the fact that the post encourages CEOs, CTOs and CIOs to invest in cloud computing. This all means that the IT industry is growing even at this very moment and is much larger than we expect it to be.

Cloud Computing would give service providers the possibility to charge per service provided rather than software distributed. This means that you will be able to make more money in a fine grained manner. It return it means that the future IT industry is much bigger than what it is now. Computing will continue to be pervasive and IT will continue to grow. That means, the IT industry is bigger than we think.

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/cloud-computing

I'm now a Microsoft Student Ambassador

2008-08-18T20:52:00.001+05:30

The Microsoft Student Champ program in Sri Lanka, hosted by Microsoft Lanka Pvt. Ltd. has been something that I've been taking part in for the last two years. The program consists of two groups of students who take part in various volunteer activities conducted by Microsoft in Sri Lankan universities and colleges. They are, Student Champs and Student Ambassadors. Student champs are anybody who take part, whilst ambassadors are people who lead various activities. I was invited to be a Student Ambassador last Monday. A complete list of Student Ambassadors can be found here.

After being elected as Student Ambassadors, we were also invited to Microsoft's Technical Communities Open Day 2008. More information on that can be found here. It was day full of activities and fun. Must say that I enjoyed it a lot. During the event, I also got a small award recognizing my contributions to the student champ community and also various other technical presentations done for students.

As a student ambassador, my role incorporates updating and notifying the student champ community regarding various activities that are to be held. I will be sharing the responsibility with Bhashitha Jayawardhane.

Cloud Computing is not 100% Dell

2008-08-16T21:49:00.000+05:30

Dell, which is a company that develops, manufactures, sells and supports computers and related products was trying to acquire the Cloud Computing trademark recently and failed. Sam Johnston has posted a lengthy account in this regard. Dell's attempt was also criticized in CIO.com, as an approach to grab the future of computing.

To me it means that Dell was trying to coin a term in there advantage and create a confusion to what perhaps in the future someone would believe that Dell pioneered cloud computing which is not very true. The time at which the application for registration was filed, the term cloud computing was popular but Dell said that they believed it wasn't. Forrest Norrod, VP and GM - Data Center Solutions in fact implicitly stated the fact that cloud computing did not belong to a single entity.

However, as of now, the dispute seems to be resolved and cloud computing becomes something that is not a proprietary implementation that belongs to a single vendor such as Dell.

Google's 1 trillionth Index

2008-07-27T10:08:00.002+05:30

Google marked another milestone in search engine history on last Friday. Two of it's Web Infrastructure Team engineers claimed that they've realized that the Google's spider finally crawled the trillionth web page. Indexing about 26 million pages in 1998, 1 billion pages in 2000, Google's back-end grew to something like 8 billion indexes by 2006. However, it didn't take that long for it to reach the 1 trillion mark.

This can mean many things, and one could wonder whether Google just made up this story. But, however, considering websites that dynamically generate pages, ever increasing blog-o-sphere, and several other feed publishing sites are continuing to increase even at this very moment. As the two engineers from Google adds the size does matter, but it depends on how you define it. Thus, if not all those 1,000,000,000,000 are useful to you that would not mean there are that many indexes.

Apparently, the trillionth page had just one word according to this article. And, that might be a good reason to accept the fact that the trillion might be still on the way. Thomas Claburn sees this as a mere trait to stay in the lead of it's competition. This is in fact evident in the post made by the Google's engineers as they add that the most significant achievement is them being certain that they have the most comprehensive index.

To me, Google suffices even it has a trillion pages indexed or whatever, as long as it returns results that I expect for my search. So far I should say that it does a good job relatively, and is one of the good search engines out there.

Microsoft Funds ASF

2008-07-26T21:29:00.005+05:30

It finally happened I should say... Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it would be contributing $100K to the Apache Software Foundation. John Fontana also adds that Microsoft even made there first code contribution to the ASF, which is a remarkable achievement in terms of Open Source and Proprietary software collaboration.

Well if you can't imagine this read Paul's post which relates a number of interesting articles which better explains the move. I was lucky to witness the Tech.Ed presentation made by Jonathan Marsh which was probably one of the greatest achievements Open Source has ever made within the MS domain, which described the power of the WSO2's stack of software projects that enables an unmatched SOA experience.

Just a bit more than 1 1/2 months from that day, I'm wondering did WSO2 influence Microsoft to march its way towards the ASF? Well, what ever the reason behind the choice made by Microsoft, it is good news for everybody. Microsoft even has made other initiatives in making software free such as codeplex, live, and dreamspark. We believe that other giants in the industry will also mark their presence in the Open Source arena in days to come.

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) - an Evaluation

2008-06-28T15:24:00.003+05:30

I've been using Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), since about a week it was released in late April 2008. Recognizing the amount of effort I put together in making my Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10) box the most pleasing experience to me, I decided to upgrade to Hardy and do a minimum amount of tweaking to make sure it meets my requirements.

The upgrade was so smooth and happened quite faster than I expected. I was delighted to see smoother graphics, easy-on-eye themes and layouts which were appealing at the first instance. However, in reality Hardy wasn't too far away from a most up-to-date Gusty distribution. Among the other improvements, additions and features introduced in Hardy are:

Long-Term Support (LTS)
Newer GNOME and Pidgin etc.
Firefox 3 beta 5
Brasero CD/DVD burning application
Transmission BitTorrent client
Linux Kernel 2.6.24-16-generic

A more detailed list can be found in the RC wiki.

However, at release point, Hardy was not as stable as Gutsy (or even Feisty perhaps). Updates have been flowing in, in abundance. It is noteworthy to state that there even was an upgrade to the Linux kernel itself in less than a month after the release. Thus, Hardy came sooner than the community expected it to.

An internet connection becomes a must perhaps to run Hardy as most incompatibility issues (including unsupported drivers, erroneous applications and numerous other bugs and vulnerabilities) were sorted after the release in the form of patches. But, this attempt to me signifies that Hardy is not a much stable OS out there. It is better suited for developers (or users) who are aiming at the latest trends in Linux based operating systems, but not for an average user who'd rather expect to have a reliable and easy to use OS.

Firefox 3: A new definition to browsing

2008-06-22T15:09:00.003+05:30

Firefox is the present world's most popular browser. The latest member in the family of Firefox was released last Tuesday, with a staggering amount of 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours.

I started using the Firefox 3 interface since it's beta days, starting from Firefox 3 beta 5 which came with my Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) operating system. Ever since then I've been enjoying Firefox 3, but with a few incompatibility issues such as, the popular work offline problem, and the unavailability of 3rd party plugins. The release solves these issues and also several other fixes that were dearly needed.

Among the improvements from earlier versions are the,

Improved, intelligent address bar.
Better resolution scaling.
Lesser memory consumption.
Improved security, making it the most secure Firefox ever.
Faster browsing.
Easy installing and management of plugins.
Further language support.

And, most importantly with all these features Firefox 3 becomes the worlds best browser. Influenced by total communal participation, Firefox 3 is one great example of the true power and capability of open source, beating giants in browser industry such as IE and Netscape.

The latest version of Firefox can be downloaded by clicking the fancy download button (Spread Firefox button) on the right.

Release Cycle begins @ WSO2

2008-06-19T15:11:00.004+05:30

The WSO2 Incorporated has been a very busy company this May/June, with a number of releases in various open source projects. Ahead of others was released the WSO2 WSF/C 1.3.0 in late May and WSO2 WSF/PHP 1.3.0 (The latest stable release of WSF/PHP is 1.3.2). WSO2 WSF/C didn't see a great deal of feature improvements since the 1.2.0 release early this year but a number of bug fixes, and memory leak fixes. WSO2 WSF/C 1.3.0 ships with Guththila as the default parser which makes WSO2 WSF/C totally 3rd party independent in it's most primitive build.

Meanwhile the WSO2 WSF/PHP team has added a lot of value to their move from 1.2.0 to 1.3.0. The major features introduced are,

Schema constructs support improvements for WSDL mode including SimpleType restricitons, ComplexType restrictions/extensions and attributes.
WSDL Import support.
Support for WSDLs with multiple bindings, API is provided to pick the preferred bindings.
wsdl2php code generation improvements to support the improvements done in WSDL mode.
HTTP Basic Authentication Support.
SOAP Messages with Attachments support (SWA).
Custom Security token support.

WSO2's WSF/PHP team did two more releases this June which mainly fixed some bugs related to security, the latest being 1.3.2.

The release with the greatest number of additions was the WSO2 ESB 1.7 adding quite a many features:

Support for Hessian binary messages
FIX (Financial Information eXchange) protocol transport
WS-Reliable Messaging support with WSO2 Mercury
Ability to stop, re-start and gracefully shutdown the ESB through JMX
Integrated WSO2 Registry shipped, with ability to connect to a remote WSO2 Registry
Support for re-usable database connection pools for DB report/lookup mediators
Support for GZip encoding and HTTP 100 continue
Natural support for dual channel messaging with WS-Addressing
Cluster aware sticky load balancing support
Non-blocking streaming of large messages at high concurrency with constant memory usage
Support for an ELSE clause for the Filter mediator
Ability to specify XPath expressions relative to the envelope or body
Support for separate policies for incoming/outgoing messages
Support for a mandatory sequence before mediation
New Router mediator
Ability to re-deploy proxy services

In addition to the WSO2 ESB, the WSO2 WSAS 2.3 was released adding,

Improved interoperability
Improved Data Services support
Various bug fixes to Apache Axis2, Apache Rampart & WSAS
WSO2 Mercury Integration - A new WS-RM Implementation

The last four weeks at WSO2 has been quite hectic, with also an Axis2 training session currently being held.

AMQP support now in Apache Axis2/C

2008-06-18T14:11:00.005+05:30

Axis2/C, the world's best implementation of a WS engine in C supports both SOAP and REST style invocations. Axis2/C can be used to implement web services in many other languages as well due to it's inherent portability allowances. Examples found in the WSO2 stack, such as PHP, C++, Ruby and Perl fortify this aspect. An implementation supporting WS on Python is also underway, and will be released soon. Axis2/C can also operate based on a number of transports such as HTTP, TCP, and XMPP. The latter being a part of WSO2 WSF/C which is a glorified implementation of Axis2/C with all of its sub projects.

AMQP, or the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol is a relatively new protocol supporting network communication which was introduced about 2-3 years back. AMQP is an open standard application layer protocol for message oriented middleware. AMQP is intended to bridge the gap between common guaranteed-delivery messaging middleware, which enables complete interoperability at both protocol level and broker services semantics level. AMQP also defines an efficient wire-level format to enable a technology-neutral interoperable standard.

The AMQP transport for Axis2/C which was introduced few days ago addresses a popular demand for making it possible to author web services to use the AMQP protocol, which is a best of both worlds implementation. AMQP + Axis2/C makes it possible to integrate the world of AMQP based communication with WS services based on other standards. The Axis2/C project uses an extension provided by Apache Qpid to implement a transport based on AMQP.

WSO2 @ Tech.Ed 2008

2008-06-11T21:14:00.005+05:30

Yesterday was a big day for Microsoft, WSO2 and the entire web service middleware provider industry. The true power of advanced web services and the gains in interoperability was presented in front of thousands seated, and perhaps a million or more online viewers taking part at the Microsoft Tech.Ed 2008 for IT Professionals, North America.

Jonathan Marsh, director of Mashup Technologies, WSO2 presented a real time demo on interoperability of WCF, WSO2 WSF/PHP, Axis2 (Java based), integrating several other components such as a WPF frontend and PHP enterprise applications. Jonathan was accompanied by Greg Leek, Director of Connected Systems Division, Microsoft, in the demonstration which was a part of Bob Muglia's keynote speech. The video broadcasted live is available for viewing at, [1].

Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, CEO WSO2, adds more spice in this blog post, which identifies interoperability as the heart and soul of a web service middleware framework. And, WSO2 provides perhaps the most comprehensive line of projects that are superior in standard and free to use.

The actual pieces of of the larger application in play are found at WSO2 Oxygen Tank, and the MSDN.

[1] http://tinyurl.com/3vr5rn

Introducing SCI-Flex...

2008-06-08T13:53:00.004+05:30

SCI-Flex is my present top-priority involvement, which is my final year project at the University of Moratuwa. The project is worth 10 credits of my 150 credit requirement for the 4 years of my BSc. in Computer Science and Engineering, making it the largest single contributor to my degree program.

SCI-Flex is a project aimed at the Flexible Integration of Service Oriented Architecture and Complex Event Processing. The topic is relatively new in the world of SOA as well as in the world of CEP systems. And, the achievement is a distributed SOA system utilizing a CEP system in a fully-parallel and concurrent fashion.

I'm a part of a team of three (others are Harsha, and Madhumal) individuals who are taking part in this project which focuses on the development to a real world project, Apache Synapse making it possible for it to fully utilize the power of the popular open source CEP system, Esper.

In addition to the three members in our team, Paul Fremantle, VP of Apache Synapse and CTO of WSO2, will be coordinating the project being our principle mentor. Sanjaya Karunasena, Director of Services at WSO2 is also another mentor of this project.

We have so far been able to create a mediator interface that enables both XML and AXIOM based communication between Synapse and Esper. A project has been setup at Google Code as means of facilitating our effort.

Our aim is to create a empowered and enhanced implementation of Apache Synapse with the necessary improvements and additions to fully incorporate the true power of Esper.

More information of SCI-Flex is found on the SCI-Flex blog.

UOM does great at GSoC

2008-05-31T21:57:00.006+05:30

Google Summer of Code is an annual competition targeting open source software development. The event brings together some talented individuals from all over the world in an attempt to win $ 4500 as a reward for successful participation. Even though participation is rewarding, not all are allowed to take part. You must get selected.

Selection for participation in Google Summer of Code happens internally within various open source software development organizations and selected individuals are announced by Google. This year around 1125 students were offered funding and the University of Moratuwa has become the number one university in terms of participants.

Sri Lanka being a really small country in size, and population has not many individuals involved in software development as a whole. However, it has been discovered that Sri Lanka is the number one per capita contributor to open source as well, meaning that the percentage of developers working on open source development against all software developers is much higher than the rest of the world. And, Google Summer of Code has proved this fact.

Shown below is a pie-chart depicting the top 10 participating universities. More information is found on the Google Open Source Blog.

REST on Axis2/C

2008-04-13T22:17:00.005+05:30

Rest is a well known concept in the world of HTTP. However, it didn't fully make it through to Web Services until very recently. RESTful Web Services became popular with many benefits of REST against SOAP, which would drive SOA towards its ultimate potential.

However, it is a well known fact that REST and SOAP do things differently. Thus, the requirement of new implementations are needed. The WSDL 2.0 HTTP Extensions do provide some convenient implementation of REST for existing SOAP engines, but, RESTful Web Services demands more.

Axis2/C addresses these demands well. Now it has support for HTTP Headers (Standard and Custom), the entire range of valid HTTP Status Codes, and also has the capability to handle several content types, demanded by RESTful implementations.

At present, Axis2/C still lacks the support for much needed x-www-form-urlencoded, which I hope to add in the future. I hope that the experience of Axis2/C REST implementation is as RESTful as one would expect.

WSF/C++ 1.0.0 Released

2008-02-01T21:12:00.000+05:30

Wso2's latest approach towards popularizing Web Service Frameworks on C compatible languages resulted in its latest offspring, WSF/C++ or Web Services Framework for C++. I happened to be working on the project in making an all new C++ style exposure to the C API, with C++ style functionality. The initial release focused on the Client API, leaving out the server-side implementation in native C.

In terms of features, WSF/C++ in its full capability surpasses Axis/C++ by quite a margin mainly due to its highly advanced Axis2/C core with supplements such as Rampart/C, Sandesha2/C, and Savan/C.

Among the list of features available on the initial release

Client API to consume Web services
- WSSOAPClient class with one-way and two-way service invocation support for SOAP 1.1, and SOAP 1.2.
- WSRESTClient class with one-way and two-way service invocation support for REST style invocations.
- Options class for getting and setting generic service related options, for SOAP and REST clients. REST Clients ignore SOAP related options and vice versa.
Attachments with MTOM
- Binary optimized
- Non-optimized (Base64 binary)
WS-Addressing
- Version 1.0
- Submission
WS-Security
- UsernameToken and Timestamp
- Encryption
- Signing
- WS-SecurityPolicy based configuration

The team is hoping to complete the entire Framework by implementing full Server-Side support making it the most complete Web Service Engine for C++ users.

Proxy Authentication on Axis2/C

2008-01-20T21:42:00.000+05:30

I believe that it is better to have a brief analysis on Proxy "Basic" Authentication support, which was lately added into Axis2/C.

THE REASON
The main reason behind implementing Proxy Authentication was due to a user request made on the Axis2/C JIRA, which was in fact a major improvement. This is due to the widespread use of proxies in the corporate environment where Axis2/C deployment is mainly targeted.

THE ANSWER
I have implemented Proxy "Basic" Authentication and am presently working on Digest Authentication so that the requirement would be addressed. The basis of this implementation is the RFC2617, which describes authentication requirements in general.
I have added several mechanisms of setting up proxy authentication in Axis2/C clients, which can be found on the Axis2/C Manual.

THE ADVANTAGES
In the current implementation their are some added benefits with respect to Proxy "Basic" Authentication. They are,

Ability to authenticate blind proxies
Ability to globally or locally set-up authentication
Preemptive authentication support
Client API integration

Why CURL shouldn't be the 1st choice in Axis2/C

2008-01-15T11:32:00.000+05:30

There have been quite an amount of concerns regarding, making CURL's library for HTTP Transport in C, LibCURL the first choice for our HTTP Sender as well as the HTTP Responder in the Axis2/C engine. Thus, the interest is to make the engine do the processing up to Layer IV and get CURL to handle Layer IV. This fact is strongly supported by means explaining the advantages of CURL's widespread implementation support for HTTP Transport.

However, Axis2/C is an engine designed to port to multiple platforms ranging from Mainframe to Mobile computers, and thus making it the widest as well as the most feature rich Web Services Engine written in C. Thus, I, for several reasons, believe, CURL shouldn't be our 1st choice in terms of transport, as it,

Introduces an additional dependency (MS Windows is a good example).
Might have issues in terms of mobile platforms.
Lesser control over the transport layer.
Threading issues that may crop up.
License issues that may change in time.
Dependency on CURL's performance.
Additional size in binary distributions.

These are only a few examples. Dinesh, has written a nice article to why he believes CURL must be made the 1st choice at [1]. Samisa, has replied to Dinesh, explaining why CURL should not be the 1st choice at [2]. This discussion is open for anybody else who wishes to contribute.

[1] http://nethu.org/2008/01/14/axis2c-default-http-transport-should-be-libcurl-based/
[2] http://wso2.org/mailarchive/wsf-c-dev/2008-January/003101.html

Are we getting back what we paid for?

2008-01-15T00:10:00.000+05:30

Today I watched "Shrek The Halls" or Shrek 3.5, which apparently lasted for only 20min. I was expecting at least something memorable, where as I got some king-sized burps and donkey 'n family greeting cards. Well, if I were a little kid I might have thought that it was fun to watch it, I don't think I had enough.

Comparing it against the last Shrek, "Shrek the 3rd", which made a fool of Arthurian Legends, I don't think that this movie seems to have a bright future if they are going to do this in this manner.

I'm utterly displeased with what I saw... Both Thumbs Down!!!

Using GPG to generate a KEY to Sign a Release

2008-01-13T00:06:00.000+05:30

Initially I had a hard time figuring out how to use GnuPG to create a public/private key pair to sign releases. I fortunately had a friend at office who has done that before, who helped me out in getting it done. Thanks Asankha @ WSO2. To save another person's valuable time, I thought of blogging the procedure. Please replace text inside square brackets with your own data, if required, whilst others will be generated for you. I have used RSA as the signing/encrypting algorithm.

STEP 1: Create a Public Key

gpg --gen-key

Please select what kind of key you want:
(1) DSA and Elgamal (default)
(2) DSA (sign only)
(5) RSA (sign only)
Your selection? 5
RSA keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048) 2048
Requested keysize is 2048 bits
Please specify how long the key should be valid.
0 = key does not expire
= key expires in n days
w = key expires in n weeks
m = key expires in n months
y = key expires in n years
Key is valid for? (0) 2y
Key expires at [TIME]
Is this correct? (y/N) y

You need a user ID to identify your key; the software constructs the user ID
from the Real Name, Comment and Email Address in this form:
"Heinrich Heine (Der Dichter) "

Real name: [NAME]
Email address: [E-MAIL]
Comment: [COMMENT]
You selected this USER-ID:
[ID]

Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? O
You need a Passphrase to protect your secret key.

STEP 2: Create a SubKey

gpg --edit-key [ID] addkey

Please select what kind of key you want:
(2) DSA (sign only)
(4) Elgamal (encrypt only)
(5) RSA (sign only)
(6) RSA (encrypt only)
Your selection? 6
RSA keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048) 2048
Requested keysize is 2048 bits
Please specify how long the key should be valid.
0 = key does not expire
= key expires in n days
w = key expires in n weeks
m = key expires in n months
y = key expires in n years
Key is valid for? (0) 2y
Key expires at [TIME]
Is this correct? (y/N) y
Really create? (y/N) y

MD5 support integrated to Axis2/C

2008-01-12T16:32:00.000+05:30

Apache Axis2/C a fully fledged SOAP processing Web Service Engine, lacked one very important feature in the past. That was the ability to generate digest checksums. In order to sort this out, OpenSSL a common SSL extension was used as it had integrated support for generating digest checksums. I was able to develop a utility capable of generating md5 (Message Digest Algorithm) checksums based on rfc1321.

With this inclusion, I also added support for generating checksums of files and also a test-case for testing md5 operation. Now, we can look forward for another major inclusion to our client-side. That is the inherent support for handling HTTP Digest Authentication.

The ability of generating md5 checksums for files is exposed through a command line utility, md5, which can be found inside the bin/tools directory at the deployment (installation) location.

I would like to sincerely thank Ronald Rivest in his approach in making md5 a reality.

Thrown by Exceptions

2008-01-06T22:09:00.000+05:30

Today I was working on the Exception Handling mechanism of WSO2 WSF/C++, and ran into a great deal of trouble. Things started going downhill after I discovered that an exception object created on the runtime stack is copied shallow when it is accessed using a pointer in C++ leading me to nothing better than extreme misery. :)...

However, it would have been simple if I could actually use a copy constructor in my code. But, making things so worse, I didn't have a way of using a copy constructor as I decided not to export class symbols of the base classes.

Anyway, towards the end of the day, fortune just struck me when I finally realized that c++ did have another type of parameter passing using the magical '&' operator unlike C.

Understanding the hardships I had with not having adequate information on the internet, or at least not having a way to search for them, I decided to post my solution so that at least someone else would benefit by reading it.

Adding Value to your Smile

2007-11-11T00:50:00.000+05:30

Today, I happened to watch Mr. Bean's Holiday, apparently for the third time. It was one of those films that you could watch all over from the beginning and enjoy just as if you saw it for the first time. Written by Rowan Atkinson himself, along with Simon McBurney, Hamish McColl, and Robin Driscoll, the comedy wouldn't have become a reality if not for the commendable effort put forth by director, Steve Bendelack.

From the point at which he enters the room in which the raffle takes place, when he says that he has won it even before it being drawn, to the very end at the beach in Cannes, Mr. Bean does his usual hilarious, awful, disgusting, idiotic, sympathetic, sick etc. stunts and just as in the comedy series, gets going with everybody’s bellies about to blow for the amount that they laugh.

However, there were few scenes that added value to what I smiled for. :)… Setting apart a few of them, we have,

When Bean ate seafood at the French restaurant,
When he sang O Mio Babbino Caro, with such a lot of emotion,
When he tried hitch-hiking, to get a free ride and got himself locked up,
When he made a mess at the yoghurt advertisement,
When he drove the car trying to stay awake,
The way people slept watching Carson Clay's film,
And finally when Mr. Bean plugged his video camera instead of Clay’s original film.

Taking a break from the busy lifestyle of the 21^st century, films as such, not only brings that smile into your life, that you always did not have time for, but also eases your stressfulness and adds that spice of enjoyment in to your life.

I would definitely put a third thumb up if you were asking me to comment on that film. There is also a website dedicated for the teaser which can be viewed at http://www.beansholiday.com/.