Untangle the Integration Knot

Tune Up Paging with vmtouch

2012-02-28T10:10:00.001Z

A nice tool I came across recently ‘vmtouch’ which is used to help you manage what data is in memory. Its great when failing over from one machine to another where there is no active memory profile already.

To get started download vmtouch from here

http://hoytech.com/vmtouch/vmtouch.c

Then compile with the following

gcc -Wall -O3 -o vmtouch vmtouch.c

To find out how much of your /bin directory is in the file system cache run

./vmtouch /bin

You will see something similar to this

Files: 91

Directories: 1

Resident Pages: 512/2115 2M/8M 24.2%

Elapsed: 0.002669 seconds

If I want to check how much of mysqld is in the cache

./vmtouch /usr/libexec/mysqld

Files: 1

Directories: 0

Resident Pages: 671/1886 2M/7M 35.6%

Elapsed: 0.00029 seconds

Say you want to check how much of your mysql indexes are in cache this is two examples

./vmtouch /var/lib/mysql/xcart/xcart_products.MYI

Files: 1

Directories: 0

Resident Pages: 5309/5309 20M/20M 100%

Elapsed: 0.001485 seconds

./vmtouch /var/lib/mysql/xcart/xcart_zone_element.MYI

Files: 1

Directories: 0

Resident Pages: 0/1 0/4K 0%

Elapsed: 8.5e-05 seconds

Now something nice you can do is you can daemonize and lock pages from a file in cache, an example of this might be an index for a database which you feel may benefit from been loaded in the page cache full-time.

To do this you use the –dl option (daemonize and lock)

./vmtouch -dl /var/lib/mysql/xcart/xcart_products.MYI

Removing Connections Between Nodes in Message Broker via Java API

2012-02-21T16:45:00.001Z

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.ibm.broker.config.appdev.MessageFlow;
import com.ibm.broker.config.appdev.FlowRendererMSGFLOW;

public class LoadMessageFlow
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
File oMsgFlowFile = new File("/root/ibm/myflow.msgflow");

MessageFlow oMessageFlow = FlowRendererMSGFLOW.read(oMsgFlowFile);

MQInputNode oNode1 = (MQInputNode) oMessageFlow.getNodeByName("Node1");
MQOutputNode mNode2 = (MQOutputNode) oMessageFlow.getNodeByName("Node2");
oMessageFlow.disconnect(oNode1.OUTPUT_TERMINAL_OUT, oNode2.INPUT_TERMINAL_IN);
}
}

Read Symantec Backup Exec Job Report XML Files

2012-02-16T01:22:00.003Z

'----------------------------------------------------
' Basic Routine to Read / Parse XML Job Reports created
' by Symantec Backup Exec.

Dim serverName, backupJobFile, el, jobName, startDateTime, endDateTime, jobStatus
Dim fso,XMLDoc

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

backupJobFile ="c:\xml\m.xml"

Set xmlDoc = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")

xmlDoc.load(backupJobFile)

Set el = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("machine_name")
serverName = el.item(0).Text

Set el = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("name")
jobName = Replace(el.item(0).Text,"Job name: ","")

Set el = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("start_time")
startDateTime = Replace(el.item(0).Text,"Job started: ","")

Set el = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("end_time")
endDateTime = Replace(el.item(0).Text,"Backup completed on ","")

Set el = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("engine_completion_status")
jobStatus = Replace(el.item(0).Text,"Job completion status: ","")

Wscript.Echo serverName
Wscript.Echo jobName
Wscript.Echo startDateTime
Wscript.Echo endDateTime
Wscript.Echo jobStatus

New Features in WebSphere MB v8

2012-02-14T10:48:00.002Z

A list of some new features in websphere Message Broker v8

Better support for Microsoft Integration via the .NET Compute node and access to COM objects
Support for CLR based .NET languages including C#, VB.NET.
Support for DFDL which now allows your message flow to parse a variety of other data formats.
Support for WS-ReliableMessaging (Web Services Reliable Messaging)
Create message flows dynamically from your programs with a new command api
Record, edit and replay messages
Improved activity logging to easily understand broker behavior
Easy to use browser based web administration interface.

Creating a simple Alert / Success Message with ASP.NET/VB using Bootstrap

2012-02-10T20:09:00.002Z

In your AddContact.aspx page use something like the following

<div class="row-fluid">
<div class="span6">
<h2>New Contact</h2>
</div>
<div class="span6">
<asp:Label ID="AlertWindow" Visible="false" CssClass="alert alert-success" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</div>
</div>

And in your AddContact.aspx.vb code use something similar to this. Basically set the message for the alert window, make the alert window visible and set the approprate css style. You can make this alot cleaner with a set of classes to implement bootstrap for ASP.NET. So this is just an example.

......
......
AlertWindow.Visible = True
Try
......
sSQLQuery = "INSERT INTO......"
......
AlertWindow.Text = "New Contact Added Successfully"
AlertWindow.CssClass = "alert alert-success"
......
Catch ex As Exception
......
AlertWindow.Text = "ERROR: Record not created." & ex.Message.ToString
AlertWindow.CssClass = "alert alert-error"
......
End Try
......

Comparison of business integration software

2012-02-09T09:27:00.000Z

While this may not be 100% up to date its a useful start if you wish to compare the various business integration and business process automation software available on the market.

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

Using Linux / gcc / gsoap to call MBT SoapInput Node in Message Flow

2012-02-06T10:41:00.000Z

Firstly download, configure, compile and install gsoap

Step 1: get up and running
mkdir gsoap
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/gsoap2/files/gSOAP/gSOAP%202.7.16%20stable/gsoap_2.7.16.zip/download
cd /root/gsoap/gsoap-2.7
yum install byacc
yum install bison
yum install flex
./configure
./make
./make install

Step 2: Setup working folder and create stubs from remote wsdl via URL. Note I'm just using plain old C and not C++.

mkdir ./OrderService

wsdl2h -c -o OrderService.h http://83.71.23.20:7800/acmeOrders/WADDR/ProcessOrders?wsdl

soapcpp2 -c OrderService.h

Step 3: Create your test C client using your fav editor (mine vi)

#include "soapH.h"

#include "OrderServiceSOAP.nsmap"

main()

{

struct soap *soap = soap_new();

struct _ns1__submitPORequest request;

struct _ns1__submitPOResponse response;

request.partNo="1234";

request.partQuantity=1;

request.personName.firstName="Trevor";

request.personName.lastName="Trevor";

request.address.street="Abbeydorney";

request.address.city="Tralee";

request.address.zipCode="N/A";

soap_call___ns2__submitPO(soap,NULL,NULL,&request,&response);

printf("\nPart No: %s",response.partNo);

printf("\nQuantity: %d",response.partQuantity);

printf("\nOrder Status: %s",response.orderStatus);

printf("\nOrder Amount: %d",response.orderAmt);

soap_end(soap);

soap_free(soap);

}

Step 4: Compile

gcc TestSoap.c soapC.c soapClient.c -lgsoap -o TestSoap

Step 5: Run

./TestSoap

The output

Part No: 1234

Quantity: 1

Order Status: AVAILABLE

Order Amount: 50

Using Soap Client Library for C++ to Access IBM Message Broker Message Flow via SoapInput Node

2012-02-06T10:40:00.000Z

SQLData offers a SOAP client library which allows you to access web services using C/C++ code. With a few lines of code you can easily access a web service exposed from a SoapInput Node on Websphere Message Broker.

Here is a short example, the trick is to store the parameters you wish to pass to the Web Service Method in two arrays, the first array in this instance pParams stores the parameter names as they appear in the WSDL e.g. partNo etc, note that parameters which have a nested structure within the WSDL, they must appear similar e.g. address.zipCode. In the second array you store the values. Place a NULL at the end of each array.

Here goes, compiled with Visual Studio 2008, Soap Client Library for C++ 3.6, IBM Message Broker 7.0, Message Broker Toolkit 7.0 and MQ 7.1

#include <windows.h>
#include <tchar.h>
#include "SoapClientApi.h"
#include "exportdef.h"
#include "stringdef.h"

#define DEBUG_MODE_ON 1
#define DEBUG_MODE_OFF 0

int WMB_submitPO(int);

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
WMB_submitPO(DEBUG_MODE_ON);
return 0;
}

int WMB_submitPO(int nDebugMode)
{
TCHAR *pParams[8]={TEXT("partNo"),
TEXT("partQuantity"),TEXT("personName.firstName"),
TEXT("personName.lastName"),TEXT("address.street"),
TEXT("address.city"),TEXT("address.zipCode"),
NULL};

TCHAR *pValues[8]={TEXT("1234"),
TEXT("10"),TEXT("Trevor"),
TEXT("O Connell"),TEXT("Abbeydorney"),
TEXT("Tralee"),TEXT("N/A"),
NULL};

const TCHAR * szResponse = NULL;
SoapAgent *pSoapAgent;

pSoapAgent= MakeSoapAgent(NULL, NULL,4);

if(pSoapAgent==NULL)
return -1;

vector<tstring>* pOutputValues;

HRESULT hr;

if(SUCCEEDED(hr=pSoapAgent->ExecuteMethod(
TEXT("service.wsdl"), // WSDL file
TEXT("submitPO"), // method name to be invoked.
pParams, // vector of input parameter names.
pValues, // vector of input parameter values.
&pOutputValues // pointer to vector of output parameters
)))
{
_tprintf("\nWeb Service Call Success");
szResponse = pSoapAgent->GetResponse(NULL, true);
_tprintf("\nComplete Reponse : \n%s\n", szResponse);
}
else
{
_tprintf("\nWeb Service Call Failure");
}

DestroySoapAgent(pSoapAgent);

return 0;
}

Using ServiceMix to Poll Folder for files

2012-02-03T14:19:00.000Z

xbean in ServiceMix to poll a particular folder for incoming orders, pass them on to service OrderProcess, move a copy to archive folder and delete original from inbox.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<beans xmlns:f="http://servicemix.apache.org/file/1.0"
xmlns:tut="http://www.servicemix.org/ns/jbi"
xmlns:sm="http://servicemix.apache.org/config/1.0">
<f:poller
service="tut:orderfilePoller"
endpoint="pollEndpoint"
file="${file.poll.folder}"
targetService="ex:orderProcess"
period="${file.poll.period}"
deleteFile="${file.poll.delete}"
archive="${file.poll.archive}"
recursive="${file.poll.recursive}" />

<bean id="propertyConfigurer" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>file:${user.home}/esb/hunt.esb.properties</value>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>

hunt.esb.properties

file.poll.folder="file://D://HUNT//ORDERS//INBOX"
file.poll.period=10000
file.poll.delete=true
file.poll.recursive=false
file.poll.archive="file://D://HUNT//ORDERS//SENT"

Easy to use - Bootstrap, from Twitter

2012-02-03T02:20:00.003Z

I like simplicity, in particular when it comes to UI design, its nice to have a clean, simple, less is more approach.

Recently I came accross bootstrap from twitter and its all of the above.

When you need to design a system that does not require a flashy front end this is ideal. Best about components like this is that they allow you to spend more time on the actual functionality or problem the solution is acutally solving.

Check it out here

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/index.html

ULTRAESB - Poll a directory for a file with a specific pattern and upload it with an authenticated HTTP PUT

2012-02-02T03:46:00.001Z

<u:proxy id="file-proxy">
<u:transport id="file">
<u:property name="url" value="file:///hunt/pixmania/orders/incoming"/>
<u:property name="fileNamePattern" value=".*\.pxml"/>
<u:property name="startDelay" value="1000"/>
<u:property name="repeatInterval" value="1000"/>


<u:property name="moveAfterProcess" value="/hunt/pixmania/orders/processed"/>
<u:property name="moveAfterFailure" value="/hunt/pixmania/orders/failed"/>
<u:property name="moveTimestampFormat" value="yyyy_MM_dd_'T'HH_mm_ss.SSSSZ"/>
</u:transport>
<u:target>
<u:inSequence>
<u:java><![CDATA[
String fileName = msg.getFirstTransportHeader("FileName");
System.out.println("Got file : " + fileName);
mediation.addPreemptiveBasicAuthentication(msg, "trevor", "password");
msg.setContentType("text/xml");
msg.addMessageProperty("HTTP_METHOD", "PUT");
]]></u:java>
</u:inSequence>
<u:inDestination>
<u:address>http://192.168.0.1:7800/ProcessOrders/SubmitOrder</u:address>
</u:inDestination>
</u:target>
</u:proxy>

Implement Observer Design Pattern in C# - Real World Example Brokers watching company Share Price

2012-02-02T00:35:00.003Z

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ShareManager
{
abstract class Shares
{
private string _companysymbol;
private double _shareprice;
private List<ShareHolder> _shareholders = new List<ShareHolder>();

public Shares(string companysymbol, double shareprice)
{
this._companysymbol = companysymbol;
this._shareprice = shareprice;
}

public void Watch(ShareHolder shareholder)
{
_shareholders.Add(shareholder);
}

public void Detach(ShareHolder shareholder)
{
_shareholders.Remove(shareholder);
}

public void Notify()
{
foreach (ShareHolder shareholder in _shareholders)
{
shareholder.Update(this);
}

Console.WriteLine("");
}

public double SharePrice
{
get { return _shareprice; }
set
{
if (_shareprice != value)
{
_shareprice = value;
Notify();
}
}
}

// Gets the companysymbol
public string CompanySymbol
{
get { return _companysymbol; }
}
}

class CompanyShare : Shares
{
public CompanyShare(string companysymbol, double shareprice)
: base(companysymbol, shareprice)
{
}
}

interface ShareHolder
{
void Update(Shares companysharevalue);
}

class Broker : ShareHolder
{
private string _name;

public Broker(string name)
{
this._name = name;
}

public void Update(Shares companysharevalue)
{
Console.WriteLine("Notified broker {0} of {1}'s share price" +
" change to £{2:F}", _name, companysharevalue.CompanySymbol, companysharevalue.SharePrice);
}

}

class ShareManager
{
static void Main()
{
CompanyShare _kg = new CompanyShare("Kerry Group", 26.00);
_kg.Watch(new Broker("Davys"));
_kg.Watch(new Broker("Goodbodys"));
_kg.Watch(new Broker("NCB"));

CompanyShare _aib = new CompanyShare("AIB", 0.55);
_aib.Watch(new Broker("Davys"));
_aib.Watch(new Broker("Goodbodys"));
_aib.Watch(new Broker("NCB"));

_kg.SharePrice = 26.10;
_kg.SharePrice = 26.30;
_aib.SharePrice = 00.52;
_kg.SharePrice = 26.75;

Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}

Basic Parallel Reduction in C#

2012-02-01T00:59:00.000Z

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ConsoleReduceApplicationTest
{
class Program
{
public class ReduceSimple
{
delegate T Func<T>(T arg0, T arg1);

T Reduce<T>(T[] input, T seed, Func<T> r)
{
T result = seed;
foreach (T e in input)
result = r(result, e);
return result;
}

public void CheckReduce()
{
int[] nums = new int[] { 1, 2, 5, 10, 1 };
int sum = Reduce(nums, 0, (x, y) => x + y);
int min = Reduce(nums, int.MaxValue, (x, y) => x < y ? x : y);
int max = Reduce(nums, int.MinValue, (x, y) => x > y ? x : y);
Console.WriteLine("Total Value=" + sum);
Console.WriteLine("Max Value=" + max);
Console.WriteLine("Min Value=" + min);
}
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Simple Program to Demonstrate Parallel Reduction in C#");
ReduceSimple p = new ReduceSimple();
p.CheckReduce();
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}

Lock Free Stack Implementation in C#

2012-01-31T20:14:00.005Z

This method compares destination to currentValue, and if they're equal sets destination to newValue and returns currentValue unchanged.

If they aren't equal it just returns the value of destination.

This is done in an atomic fashion i.e. no other thread can interrupt it. In carrys out this in atomic fashion becasue its executed at hardware level with a single nstruction CMPXCH instruction.

public class LockFreeStack<T> {
private volatile StackNode<T> m_head;

private static bool CAS(ref Node<T> destination, Node<T> currentValue, Node<T> newValue)
{
return
currentValue== Interlocked.CompareExchange<Node<T>>(ref destination, newValue, currentValue);
}

public void Push(T item) {
StackNode<T> node = new StackNode<T>(item);
StackNode<T> head;
do {
head = m_head;
node.m_next = head;
} while (m_head != head || CAS(ref m_head, node, head) != head);
}

public T Pop() {
StackNode<T> head;
SpinWait s = new SpinWait();

while (true) {
StackNode<T> next;
do {
head = m_head;
if (head == null) goto emptySpin;
next = head.m_next;
} while (m_head != head || CAS(ref m_head, next, head) != head);
break;

emptySpin:
s.Spin();
}

return head.m_value;
}
}

class StackNode<T> {
internal T m_value;
internal StackNode<T> m_next;
internal StackNode(T val) { m_value = val; }
}

Using Microsoft .NET (VS2010) with WebSphere Message Broker V8

2012-01-31T19:34:00.003Z

I recently upgraded from MB7 and MBT7 to MB8 and MBT8

One of the first features I wanted to try out was the ability for MBT8 to import a .NET assembly

All was fine on the MBT8 side of things and I was able to create my basic Message Broker Project

However when I launched Visual Studio C# and selected New Project

I could not find any project templates for Message Broker

To install these template project wizards I had to run the following from a command prompt

C:\Program Files\IBM\WMBT800\wmbt\vsixinstall.bat

I assume the vsix stands for Visual Studio Extensions

And it worked

Ruby Talking to MBT SoapInput Node

2012-01-29T20:55:00.006Z

This is a basic Ruby Script to engage with SoapInput Node running on localhost 7800 with MBT

require 'net/http'
require 'net/https'

# Create te http object
http = Net::HTTP.new('localhost', 7800)
http.use_ssl = false
path = '/acmeOrders/WADDR/ProcessOrders'

# Create the SOAP Envelope
data = <<-EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<soap:Body>
<submitPORequest xmlns="http://www.acmeOrders.com/OrderService">
<partNo xmlns="">11</partNo>
<partQuantity xmlns="">0</partQuantity>
<personName xmlns="">
<firstName>Trevor</firstName><lastName>O Connell</lastName>
</personName>
<address xmlns="">
<street>DTM</street>
<city>DTM</city>
<zipCode>111</zipCode>
</address>
</submitPORequest>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>
EOF

# Post the request
resp, data = http.post(path, data)

# Output the results
puts 'Code = ' + resp.code
puts 'Message = ' + resp.message
resp.each { |key, val| puts key + ' = ' + val }
puts data

Expected results

Code = 200
Message = OK
connection = close
content-length = 366
content-type = text/xml;charset=utf-8
date = Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:53:54 GMT
server = Apache-Coyote/1.1
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soapenv:Body>
<NS1:submitPOResponse xmlns:NS1="http://www.acmeOrders.com/OrderService">
<orderStatus>AVAILABLE</orderStatus><or
derAmt>50</orderAmt><partNo>11</partNo><partQuantity>0</partQuantity>
</NS1:submitPOResponse>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Testing MBT SoapInput Node from VB.NET

2012-01-29T17:10:00.004Z

Once you've loaded and deploy the SOAP Node Samples project you can add a web service reference in Visual Studio 2088 (Project / Add Web Reference). Enter the URL http://localhost:7800/acmeOrders/WADDR/ProcessOrders?wsdl

In my case I added the reference name "orders"

So from within my Visual Basic.NET code

Dim vOrders As New orders.OrderService()
Dim vRequest As New orders.submitPORequest()
Dim vResponse As New orders.submitPOResponse()
vRequest.partNo = tPartNo.Text
vRequest.address = New orders.submitPORequestAddress()
vRequest.personName = New orders.submitPORequestPersonName()
vRequest.personName.firstName = tFirstname.Text
vRequest.personName.lastName = tLastname.Text
vRequest.address.street = tStreet.Text
vRequest.address.zipCode = tZipCode.Text
vRequest.address.city = tCity.Text
vResponse = vOrders.submitPO(vRequest)
tStatus.Text = vResponse.orderStatus

Below is a screenshot. Its nothing too difficult but it just gets your VB.NET application talking with an MBT Message Flow.

MBT/ESQL : Reduce CPU Load - Access nth Element in Array using Reference

2012-01-27T18:10:00.003Z

How to reference variables to access elements of an array.

DECLARE ref REFERENCE TO OutputRoot.XML.Invoice.SalesOrders.Item[1];

WHILE LASTMOVE(ref)=TRUE DO
SET ref = ref + 1;
MOVE ref NEXTSIBLING;
END WHILE;

Cloud based logging service

2012-01-25T16:50:00.001Z

Loggly is a cloud based logging service. It helps you collect, index, and store all your log data with the help of Solr

Dynamic Email from MBT/ESQL

2012-01-23T15:11:00.001Z

CREATE COMPUTE MODULE Send_Mail
CREATE FUNCTION Main() RETURNS BOOLEAN
BEGIN
-- CALL CopyMessageHeaders();
-- CALL CopyEntireMessage();

CALL CopyMessageHeaders();

-- Add recipient information to the EmailOutputHeader
SET OutputRoot.EmailOutputHeader.To = 'info@dtm.ie';

-- Add sender information to EmailOutputHeader
SET OutputRoot.EmailOutputHeader.From = 'trevor.oconnell@dtm.ie';

-- Add subject to EmailOutputHeader
SET OutputRoot.EmailOutputHeader.Subject = 'Test.';

-- Add SMTP server information to the LocalEnvironment
SET OutputLocalEnvironment.Destination.Email.SMTPServer ='mail.dtm.ie:25';
SET OutputLocalEnvironment.Destination.Email.SecurityIdentity ='MyIdentity';

-- Create a new message body, which will be sent as the main text of the email.
SET OutputRoot.BLOB.BLOB = CAST('This is the new text for the body of the email.' AS BLOB CCSID 1208);

RETURN TRUE;
END;

CREATE PROCEDURE CopyMessageHeaders() BEGIN
DECLARE I INTEGER 1;
DECLARE J INTEGER;
SET J = CARDINALITY(InputRoot.*[]);
WHILE I < J DO
SET OutputRoot.*[I] = InputRoot.*[I];
SET I = I + 1;
END WHILE;
END;

CREATE PROCEDURE CopyEntireMessage() BEGIN
SET OutputRoot = InputRoot;
END;
END MODULE;

What's wrong with certificate warnings? How can we abolish them?

2012-01-20T19:01:00.002Z

A new proposal called "Sovereign Keys", which is intended to resolve weaknesses in the way that encrypted Internet protocols perform authentication for applications such as web servers and mail servers.

Hopefully get rid of those nasty certificate warning messages that no one except techies understand, and even for techies they can be a struggle at times.
More on Sovereign Keys

MBT/ESQL to Modify XML element names

2012-01-20T01:27:00.001Z

<Shares>
<Kerry>5</Kerry>
<Fexco>12</Fexco>
<AIB>40</AIB>
</Shares>

Change AIB to BOI instead, Feed XML in to XMLNS format MQ Input Node, Create MQIN

CREATE FUNCTION Main() RETURNS BOOLEAN
BEGIN
-- CALL CopyMessageHeaders();
-- CALL CopyEntireMessage();
SET OutputRoot.XMLNS.Data = ROW(InputBody.Shares.Kerry,
InputBody.Shares.Fexco,
(InputBody.Shares.AIB) AS BOI);
RETURN TRUE;
END;

Receive output in MQ Output Node MQOUT

<Data>
<Kerry>5</Kerry>
<Fexco>12</Fexco>
<BOI>40</BOI>
</Data>

Basic Receive Message to MQ with Java and IBM MQ JMS

2012-01-20T00:00:00.003Z

package my.mq.samples;

import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Session;
import javax.jms.TextMessage;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueue;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueConnection;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueConnectionFactory;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueReceiver;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueSession;
import com.ibm.msg.client.wmq.WMQConstants;

public class MQReceive {

public static void main(String[] args)
{
try {
MQQueueConnectionFactory cf = new MQQueueConnectionFactory();
cf.setHostName("localhost");
cf.setPort(1414);

cf.setIntProperty(WMQConstants.WMQ_CONNECTION_MODE, WMQConstants.WMQ_CM_CLIENT);

cf.setQueueManager("QM_GRIDSERVER");
cf.setChannel("SYSTEM.ADMIN.SVRCONN");

MQQueueConnection connection = (MQQueueConnection) cf.createQueueConnection();
//MQQueueConnection connection = (MQQueueConnection) cf.createQueueConnection("username","password");

MQQueueSession session = (MQQueueSession) connection.createQueueSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);

MQQueue queue = (MQQueue) session.createQueue("queue:///MyTestQueue");

MQQueueReceiver receiver = (MQQueueReceiver) session.createReceiver(queue);

connection.start();

TextMessage receivedMessage = (TextMessage) receiver.receive();
System.out.println("Received message from Queue MyTestQueue: " + receivedMessage.getText());

receiver.close();
session.close();
connection.close();
System.out.println("Message Received OK.\n");
}
catch (JMSException jmsex) {
System.out.println(jmsex);
System.out.println("Message Receive Failure\n");
}
catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println(ex);
System.out.println("Message Receive Failure\n");
}
}
}

Basic Send Message to MQ with Java and IBM MQ JMS

2012-01-19T23:53:00.004Z

package my.mq.samples;

import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Session;
import javax.jms.TextMessage;

import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueue;

import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueConnection;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueConnectionFactory;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueSender;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueSession;
import com.ibm.msg.client.wmq.WMQConstants;

public class MQSend {

public static void main(String[] args)
{
try {
MQQueueConnectionFactory cf = new MQQueueConnectionFactory();
cf.setHostName("localhost");
cf.setPort(1414);

cf.setIntProperty(WMQConstants.WMQ_CONNECTION_MODE, WMQConstants.WMQ_CM_CLIENT);

cf.setQueueManager("QM_GRIDSERVER");
cf.setChannel("SYSTEM.ADMIN.SVRCONN");

MQQueueConnection connection = (MQQueueConnection) cf.createQueueConnection();
//MQQueueConnection connection = (MQQueueConnection) cf.createQueueConnection("username","password");

MQQueueSession session = (MQQueueSession) connection.createQueueSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
MQQueue queue = (MQQueue) session.createQueue("queue:///MyTestQueue");

MQQueueSender sender = (MQQueueSender) session.createSender(queue);

long uniqueNumber = System.currentTimeMillis() % 1000;

TextMessage message = (TextMessage) session.createTextMessage("Basic Queue Test "+ uniqueNumber);

// Start the connection
connection.start();
sender.send(message);

System.out.println("Sent message to Queue MyTestQueue: " + message.getText());
sender.close();
session.close();
connection.close();
System.out.println("Message Sent OK.\n");
}
catch (JMSException jmsex) {
System.out.println(jmsex);
System.out.println("Message Send Failure\n");
}
catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println(ex);
System.out.println("Message Send Failure\n");
}
}
}

Working with CSV files made simple with Websphere MBT and DFDL

2012-01-19T00:50:00.001Z

Working with CSV files and mapping them from/to any of the WebSphere Message Broker domains is a lot easier with the support for DFDL files in version 8.0

Using DFDL files you can easily create message flows to parse and serialize CSV messages to and from any of the WebSphere Message Broker domains.

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wmbhelp/v8r0m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.dfdl.editor.messagebroker.doc%2Fdf20071_.html

For example I'd a project where I needed to capture order information from several third party marketplaces.

Each marketplace offered different methods for accessing the most recent order information for our account. For example

Web Services Interface

FTP

In addition each marketplace used a different format sometimes XML based and sometimes CSV based to describe orders placed.

Using the DFDL its a lot easier to create a mapping between these various marketplace formats and in turn creates a standard output XML format that is suitable for our in house ERP system.

Configure EmailOutput Node in Websphere Message Broker Toolkit

2012-01-18T15:21:00.000Z

Launch a message broker command console and issue the following commands

mqsicreateconfigurableservice MB7BROKER –c SMTP –o SMTPAlias

mqsichangeproperties MB7BROKER –c SMTP –o SMTPAlias –n serverName –v mail.trevoroconnell.com:25

mqsichangeproperties MB7BROKER –c SMTP –o SMTPMyAlias –n securityIdentity –v mySecurity

mqsisetdbparms MB7BROKER -n securityIdentity –u trevor.oconnell@trevoroconnell.com -p trevor

Then within the WMBT, add your EmailOutput Node to the message flow

Open properties for the EmailOutput Node and for SMTP Server enter the alias SMTPAlias

Cloud Fault Tolerance with JClouds

2012-01-16T18:42:00.000Z

JClouds makes building highly available cloud based applications a lot easier. JClouds creates an abstraction layer that is independent of the underlying cloud infrastructure.

So for example JCloud Compute API allows you to easily interface with infrastructure cloud providers such as Amazon EC2 and VMWare vCloud etc using a single standard API.

So basically if you app runs across multiple computer nodes across multiple cloud infrastructure providers you only need to worry about learning one API to manage computer nodes i.e. the JCloud ComputeNode API.

http://www.jclouds.org/documentation/userguide/compute

Automating File Transfers - Multiple Directories / Lots of Files

2012-01-14T13:16:00.003Z

One of the big disadvantages of FILEZILLA is its poor command line interface (CLI) support. This makes it very unsuitable for use in an environment where you need to script automated file transfer routines

For example working on a recent project I've had to design a routine to automate the transfer of files (300,000 approx) from a local server across several remote servers.

Based on a defined local directory structure these files would be transferred in to specific remote folders on each remote server.

So I needed something that would allow me

1. Connect to a specific remote server and authenticate

2. Prevent interactive prompts i.e. asking user to confirm, retry or abort

3. Programatically select a local directory on the local server

4. Programatically select a local directory on the remote server

5. Transfer specific file types from the local server to that remote server

6. Close to the connection

7. Move to the next folder on the local server and repeat .....

While I could accomplish this with an enterprise class Message Broker by defining FileInput Nodes and FTP Nodes that seemed to be overkill and would be expensive.

A free and open source solution that offers an easy to use CLI / scripting language to accomplish this is WinSCP

Simple create your script file e.g. myscript.scr and then use the /script command line option for WinSCP to read commands e.g.
winscp.com /script=myscript.scr

For example to connect to an FTP server www.myserver.com

# Set confirmation off during batch processing
option confirm off
# change username/password and host i.e. myserver
open ftp://username:password@www.myserver.com
# Then chnage in to remote directory
cd <remote directory>
# Then change in to local directory
lcd <local directory>
# Then transfer specific file types
put *.txt ./
# Then exit
close
....
Repeat as required

You can create a simple VB.NET or Java/SWING desktop style application to make it easier for non-technical users to access this type of feature.

Insert placeholders in to the script above for example
open ftp://$username:$password@$host

Then once the user keys in the values in to a nice to use form, simple do a find/replace within the template script file and save it to run.scr

Then perform a system call to WinSCP with the /script=run.scr option

Its simple, nothing fancy but it works and it automates a task and saves time.

Java Send / Read from Remote MQ Queue on CentOS Linux

2012-01-12T16:03:00.002Z

package my.mq.samples;

import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Session;

import com.ibm.jms.JMSMessage;
import com.ibm.jms.JMSTextMessage;

import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueue;

import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueConnection;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueConnectionFactory;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueReceiver;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueSender;
import com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueueSession;
import com.ibm.msg.client.jms.*;
import com.ibm.msg.client.services.*;
import com.ibm.msg.client.wmq.WMQConstants;

public class MQConnect {

public static void main(String[] args) {

try {
MQQueueConnectionFactory cf = new MQQueueConnectionFactory();
cf.setHostName("82.195.136.246");
cf.setPort(60000);

cf.setIntProperty(WMQConstants.WMQ_CONNECTION_MODE, WMQConstants.WMQ_CM_CLIENT);

cf.setQueueManager("dtm.queue.manager");
cf.setChannel("SYSTEM.DEF.SVRCONN");

MQQueueConnection connection = (MQQueueConnection) cf.createQueueConnection("Trevor","Password");

MQQueueSession session = (MQQueueSession) connection.createQueueSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
MQQueue queue = (MQQueue) session.createQueue("queue:///Q1");
MQQueueSender sender = (MQQueueSender) session.createSender(queue);
MQQueueReceiver receiver = (MQQueueReceiver) session.createReceiver(queue);

long uniqueNumber = System.currentTimeMillis() % 1000;
JMSTextMessage message = (JMSTextMessage) session.createTextMessage("Basic Queue Test "+ uniqueNumber);

// Start the connection
connection.start();
sender.send(message);
System.out.println("Sent message:\\n" + message);
JMSMessage receivedMessage = (JMSMessage) receiver.receive(10000);
System.out.println("\\nReceived message:\\n" + receivedMessage);
sender.close();
receiver.close();
session.close();
connection.close();
System.out.println("\\nSUCCESS\\n");
}
catch (JMSException jmsex) {
System.out.println(jmsex);
System.out.println("\\nFAILURE\\n");
}
catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println(ex);
System.out.println("\\nFAILURE\\n");
}
}
}

Setting Up a Websphere MQ Listener on CentOS

2012-01-10T18:31:00.001Z

Step 1 - Add the following to /etc/services
-bash-3.2$ vi /etc/services
WebsphereMQ 1414/tcp # WebSphere MQ channel listener

Step 2 - Create a service configuration file in /etc/xinetd.d
-bash-3.2$ vi /etc/xinetd.d/websphere # place the following in it

service WebsphereMQ
{
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = mqm
port = 1414
server = /opt/mqm/bin/amqcrsta
server_args = -m dtmtest.queue.manager
log_on_failure += USERID
}

Step 3 - Restart xinetd

-bash-3.2$ service xinetd restart

Step 4 - Check your logs for errors

-bash-3.2$ tail /var/log/messages

Step 5 - Check its listening on port 1414

-bash-3.2$ netstat -an | grep 1414

Getting Started with Websphere MQ on Linux CentOS

2012-01-10T16:38:00.005Z

Install Procedure for MQ Series 7.1.0-0

Step 1 - Create Working Folder
-bash-3.2$ mkdir $HOME/MQ
-bash-3.2$ cd $HOME/MQ

Step 2 - Download
-bash-3.2$ wget https://www15.software.ibm.com/sdfdl/v2/fulfill/CI50ZML/Xa.2/Xb.JSiMj8YMb5GyHPzC8QrNFjOjmKulz6rMpstKQz2u2A/Xc.CI50ZML/CI50ZML.tar.gz/Xd./Xf.LPr.D1VK/Xg.6326855/Xi.ESD-WSMQ-EVAL/XY.regsrvs/XZ.xZgIo09btSUWIzRzk9IMAGmpv4I/CI50ZML.tar.gz

Step 3 - Run License Acceptance Script
-bash-3.2$ ./mqlicense.sh -accept

Step 4- Install MQ Runtime Environment
-bash-3.2$ rpm -ivh MQSeriesRuntime-7.1.0-0.i386.rpm

Step 5 - Install MQ Server
-bash-3.2$ rpm -ivh MQSeriesServer-7.1.0-0.i386.rpm

Step 6 - Install MQ Samples need these for testing

-bash-3.2$ rpm -ivh MQSeriesSamples-7.1.0-0.i386.rpm

Step 7 - Lets Test
Login as super user root
-bash-3.2$ su - mgm
-bash-3.2$ cd /opt/mqm/bin

-bash-3.2$ ./crtmqm -q dtm.queue.manager # create a queue manager
-bash-3.2$ ./strmqm # start the queue manager
-bash-3.2$ ./runmqsc # run MQMS commands
define qlocal (dtmtest.queue)
end

Step 8 - Test
-bash-3.2$cd /opt/mqm/samp/bin
-bash-3.2$./amqsput DTMTEST.QUEUE # runmqsc will put it in caps
-bash-3.2$./amqsput DTMTEST.QUEUE
Sample AMQSPUT0 start
target queue is DTMTEST.QUEUE
First MQ Script
end

Sample AMQSPUT0 end

-bash-3.2$./amqsget DTMTEST.QUEUE
Sample AMQSGET0 start
message <First MQ Script>
message <end>

no more messages
Sample AMQSGET0 end
-bash-3.2$
-bash-3.2$

Stackato Micro Cloud will continue to be free

2012-01-07T15:14:00.004Z

Stackato will continue free of charge for developers to use as their own private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution on a single node.

The company behind Stackato, ActiveState, all their products use open source community driven proujects and solutions.

Stackato is based on the open source Cloud Foundry project and is a private PaaS that gives developers cloud deployment options for PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, Node.js, Scala, and Clojure applications.

In short Stackato allows developer design, develop and test cloud based solutions that will either run on an internal private cloud driven by a hypervision such as VMWare or else on an external cloud infrastructure provider IAAS such as Amazon EC2.

With Stackato Micro Clouds developers can design, build, reengineer and test new or existing applications that may be suitable for cloud on their own private cloud.

To learn more go to
http://www.activestate.com/cloud

Java Observer Pattern - Watching Company Share Values

2012-01-05T13:29:00.002Z

This is a very simple example of using the Observer Design Pattern.

In this instance we have a company share value (subject) i.e. sharevalue. Each company has a defined sharevalue which may/may not change throughout the day.

We then want to notify via the company web site or mobile phones (observers) of any change to this share value.

Share will notify to CompanyWebSite and MobilePhone to disply new share value.

To implement this we have a Subject interface which contains methods for adding, removing and notifying Observers and an Observer interface which contains update(float sharevalue) method which will be called by Subject implementation when a company share value changes.

import java.util.ArrayList;

interface Observer {
public void update(float tradingvalue);
}

interface Subject {
public void registerObserver(Observer observer);
public void removeObserver(Observer observer);
public void notifyObservers();
}

class Share implements Subject {
private ArrayList<Observer> observers = new ArrayList<Observer>();
private float sharevalue;
private String company;

public Share(float sharevalue, String company) {
this.sharevalue= sharevalue;
this.company = company;
}

public float getShareValue() {
return sharevalue;
}

public void setShareValue(float sharevalue) {
this.sharevalue = sharevalue;
notifyObservers();
}

public String getCompany() {
return this.company;
}

@Override
public void registerObserver(Observer observer) {
observers.add(observer);
}

@Override
public void removeObserver(Observer observer) {
observers.remove(observer);
}

@Override
public void notifyObservers() {
for (Observer ob : observers) {
System.out
.println("Notifying Observers on change in Company Share Price");
ob.update(this.sharevalue);
}

}

}

class CompanyWebSite implements Observer {
@Override
public void update(float sharevalue) {
System.out.println("Company Web Site: Share Value updated, new Share Value is: "
+ sharevalue);
}
}

class MobilePhone implements Observer {
@Override
public void update(float sharevalue) {
System.out.println("Mobile Phone: Share Value updated, new Share Value is: "
+ sharevalue);
}

public class TestShareValueObserver {

public static void main(String args[]) {
// this will maintain all share value information
CompanyWebSite companyWebSite = new CompanyWebSite();
MobilePhone mobilePhone = new MobilePhone();

Share companyShare = new Share(26.25f,
"Kerry Group");
companyShare.registerObserver(companyWebSite);
companyShare.registerObserver(mobilePhone);
companyShare.setShareValue(26.35f);

}
}

Configure Database Connection using MyBatis

2012-01-04T23:27:00.008Z

Step 1: Create a propertiese file and store the relevant MySQL connection details here.

In my case the config.properties file contains the following
username=mysqluser
password=1234mysql
url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/bankrecords
driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

Step 2: Create a configuration.xml file, this should contain all the required information needed to connect to your MySQL instance. you need to reference the above propertiese file in the XML config file.

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
< !DOCTYPE configuration PUBLIC "-//mybatis.org//DTD Config 3.0//EN" "http://mybatis.org/dtd/mybatis-3-config.dtd">
<configuration>
<properties resource="config.properties" />
<environments default="staging">
<environment id="staging">
<transactionManager type="JDBC"/>
<dataSource type="POOLED">
<property name="driver" value="${driver}"/>
<property name="url" value="${url}"/>
<property name="username" value="${username}"/>
<property name="password" value="${password}"/>
</datasource>
</environment>
</environments>
</configuration>

Step 3: We now use SqlSessionFactoryBuilder to create an instance of SqlSessionFactory.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Reader;

import org.apache.ibatis.io.Resources;
import org.apache.ibatis.session.SqlSessionFactory;
import org.apache.ibatis.session.SqlSessionFactoryBuilder;

public class SqlConnection {
private static SqlConnection sqlFactory = null;
private static SqlSessionFactory sessionFactory = null;

private SqlConnection() {

}

private static SqlConnection getInstance() throws IOException {
String resource = null;
Reader reader = null;

if(sqlFactory == null) {
resource = "configuration.xml";
reader = Resources.getResourceAsReader(resource);

sqlFactory = new SqlConnection();
sqlFactory.sessionFactory = new SqlSessionFactoryBuilder().build(reader);
}
return sqlFactory;
}

public static synchronized SqlSessionFactory getSessionFactory() throws IOException {
if(sqlFactory == null) {
getInstance();
}
return sessionFactory;
}

public Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {
throw new CloneNotSupportedException();
}
}

Step 4: We can now get a new session that will allow us to make database calls.

SqlSession session = null;
session = SqlConnection.getSessionFactory().openSession();
System.out.println("Session Object Created: " + session);

Step 5: Create a domain object, to store our data in the object world. The attributes / fields of our simple bank account record resemble the structure of our bankrecords table in the database.

package mybank.example.com

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Date;

public class BankAccountRecord implements Serializable {
private Integer accountID;
private String firstName;
private String surName;
private Date setupDate;
private Integer accountBalance;
private Date lastModified;

public BankAccountRecord() {

}

// Define the getters and setters for our pojo.

@Override
public String toString() {
return "Record{" +
"ID=" + accountID +
", Firstname='" + firstName + "'" +
", Surname=" + surname +
", Setup Date=" + setupDate +
", Account Balance=" + accountBalance+
"}";
}

}

Step 6: We now define a mapper interface, we'll create an BankAccountRecordMapper.java file that contains a method to get data from the table. At this time the interface will be as the following:

package mybank.example.com

import mybank.example.com.Record;

public interface BankAccountRecordMapper {
/**
* Get a single Bank Account Record from the database based on the bank account identifier
*
* @param id is bank acccount identifier.
* @return a Bank Account Record object.
*/
BankAccountRecord getBankAccountRecord(int id);
}

Grid Enable Your Java Applications with GridGain

2012-01-03T15:23:00.002Z

GridGain is Java based open source middleware for real time data processing and analytics that scales up from one server to thousands of machines.

GridGain is available via open source community edition or enterprise paid edition with bundles of extra features and options.

Getting started with GridGain is simple

import java.lang.*;

import java.math.*;

import org.gridgain.grid.GridException;

import org.gridgain.grid.GridFactory;

import org.gridgain.grid.gridify.Gridify;

public class GridTest{

public static void main(String args[]) throws GridException{

GridFactory.start();

try{

System.out.println("My First Grid Test..");

}catch(Exception e){

e.printStackTrace();

}finally{

GridFactory.stop(true);

}

To Grid Enable Funcitons i.e. allow the Java Byte Code to be moved to a remote node for computation simply add the Java Annotation @Gridify

for example

@Gridify

public int compute(int datavalues[], int newdatavalues[], int multiplier)
{

for(int i=0; i < datavalues.length ; i++)

{

newdatavalues[i] = datavalues[i] * multiplier;
}

return 1;

}

Java Ping Servers - Flyweight Reduce Memory Footprint

2011-12-20T19:52:00.001Z

package ServerProbe;

/*
* Simple demonstration how to use the flyweight design pattern to improve performance and reduce
* memory footprint.
* Create a ServerFactory based on a pre-defined number of server types e.g. Windows, Unix etc
* Within Server object, for example have a shareable method such as pingIT, also the server_type is
* shareable
* Pass IP address and ping duration in as parameters
*
*/

public class Server {
String server_type;

Server(String type){
server_type = type;
}

String getType() {
return server_type;
}

public void pingIT(String ip, int duration) {
System.out.println("Pinging ->" + server_type + " IP -> " + ip);
}

public String toString() {
return server_type;
}
}

import java.util.HashMap;

public class ServerFactory {
private static final HashMap serverByType = new HashMap();

public static Server getServer(String serverType) {
Server server = (Server) serverByType.get(serverType);

if(server == null) {
server = new Server(serverType);
serverByType.put(serverType, server);
System.out.println("Creating " + serverType + " Server Container");
}
return server;
}
}

public class ServerTest {
private static final String ServerTypes[] = {
"Windows",
"AIX",
"UNIX",
"Solaris",
"Linux"
};
private static final int NUMBER_OF_SERVERS = 1000;

public ServerTest() {
for(int i=0; i < NUMBER_OF_SERVERS; ++i) {
Server server = ServerFactory.getServer(getRandomServerType());
server.pingIT("192.168.1."+i,100);
}
}

private String getRandomServerType() {
return ServerTypes[(int)(Math.random()*ServerTypes.length)];
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
ServerTest test = new ServerTest();
}

}

Composite Design-Pattern Amazon Payment Lines

2011-12-20T18:42:00.002Z

package PaymentManager;

public class Order {
String reference;
double value;

Order(String r, double v){
reference = r;
value = v;
}
String getReference() {
return reference;
}
double getValue() {
return value;
}
public String toString() {
return reference;
}
}

public class Payment {
Payment pay;
Order[] orders;
String order_type;
Payment(Payment p, Order[] o, String type ) {
this(o, type);
this.pay = p;
}

Payment(Order[] o, String type) {
orders = o;
order_type =type;
}
String getOrderType() {
return order_type;
}
Payment getPayment() {
return pay;
}
Order[] getOrders() {
return orders;
}
public String toString() {
return "Order Type -> " +order_type;
}
}

public class OrderTestRun {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Order[] detail = {
new Order("AMZ-SUB-001", 15.00),
new Order("AMZ-SUB-002", 15.00)
};
Payment p1 = new Payment(detail, "Amazon Order Lines");

Order[] total = {
new Order("AMZ-001", 30.00)
};

Payment p2 = new Payment(p1,total, "Amazon Order Total");

System.out.println(p2);
Order[] ord = p2.getOrders();
if (ord != null)
for (int k = 0; k < ord.length; k++)
System.out.println("Order Reference: "+ord[k]+" Value: €"+ ord[k].getValue());

Payment p = p2.getPayment();
System.out.println(" " + p);
if (p!= null) {
Order[] ords = p.getOrders();
if (ords != null)
for (int k = 0; k < ords.length; k++)
System.out.println("Order Reference: "+ords[k]+" Value: €"+ ords[k].getValue());

}
}
}

Using Amazon SQS from Java

2011-12-20T17:43:00.004Z

You can find the AWS SDK for Java API Reference - 1.2.15 here
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/overview-summary.html
....
....
import com.amazonaws.auth.AWSCredentials;
import com.amazonaws.auth.BasicAWSCredentials;
import com.amazonaws.services.sqs.AmazonSQS;
import com.amazonaws.services.sqs.AmazonSQSClient;

....
....

static public String awsAccessKeyId = "";

static public String awsSecretAccessKey = "";

....
....

AmazonSQS sqs =
new AmazonSQSClient(new BasicAWSCredentials(awsAccessKeyId ,awsSecretAccessKey ));

....
....

String url =
sqs.createQueue(new CreateQueueRequest("dtm_test_queue")).getQueueUrl();
....
....

sqs.sendMessage(new SendMessageRequest(url, "Queue Data"));

Demo file copy using Guava

2011-12-19T23:31:00.001Z

/* Demo file copy using Guava
* src:file to be copied
* dst:copied/new file created from copy.
*/
public void dtmCopyFile(final String src, final String dst)
{
checkNotNull(src, "Source file cannot be null.");

checkNotNull(dst, "Destination file cannot be null.");

final File srcFile = new File(src);
final File dstFile = new File(dst);

try
{
Files.copy(srcFile, dstFile);
}
catch (IOException fileIoEx)
{
err.println("ERROR");
err.println("Error copying file.");
err.println("Error Message: " + fileIoEx.toString() );
}
}

EJB Intercepts

2011-12-12T17:19:00.001Z

EJB3 offers the ability to intercept EJB business methods by using AroundInvoke interceptors.

From this you can access the method name, the parameters passed, and the EJB context.

This is useful for

1. Performing security checks
2. Performing audits
3. Changing the values of method parameters in your Java EE applications using EJB interceptors

Here is a simple EJB interceptor:

public class InterceptorHandler {

@Resource
private EJBContext context;

@AroundInvoke
protected Object audit(InvocationContext ctx) throws Exception {
Principal principal = context.getCallerPrincipal();
if (userIsValid(principal)) {
// Complete code for logging
}else{
// Complete code for logging and exception handling
}
return ctx.proceed();
}
}
To use this interceptor put an annotation on the designated EJB, for example

@Interceptors(InterceptorHandler.class)
@Stateless
public class TestBean {
// Complete code here
}

ActiveMQ, easy to use open source message oriented middleware (MOM)

2011-12-12T08:34:00.003Z

ActiveMQ is message oriented middleware (MOM), useful for receiving and processing asynchronous messages (queues or topics).

It is easily integrated with Java based applications (and others) via the JMS API.

ActiveQ offers enterprise scale features which may be required when implementing complex distributred systems such as

High availability with failover.
Scalability and clustering through a distributed Network of Brokers.
Pluggable persistence stores (JDBC, BDB, JDBM, file system).
Distributed destinations and XA support.
Caching.
Connection pooling.
Support for cross language clients such as .NET, C++.
Support for scripting environments such as Perl, Python, and Ruby.
Multiple Transport layers (TCP, UDP, multicast, NIO, SSL, Zeroconf, JXTA, JGroups).

Download at

http://activemq.apache.org/

Getting to grips with Google Analytics API

2011-12-09T11:22:00.002Z

Getting to grips with Google Analytics API

This shows the top 15 regions / by source / by number of visits decending

<?php

require 'gapi.class.php';

$username='your gmail email address';
$password='your password';
$profile_id='your profile ID, you can get this from the url when you view the standard report. Just look for id on the url';

$ga = new gapi($username,$password);

$ga->requestReportData($profile_id,array('source','region'),array('pageviews','visits'), '-visits','',
'2011-11-01', // Start Date
'2011-11-30', // End Date
1, // Start Index
15 // Max results
);

echo '<strong>Top 20 Region/Source by Visits</strong><br><br>';
echo '<table><tr>';

echo '<td>Region</td><td>Source</td><td>Page Views</td><td>Visits</td></tr>';
foreach($ga->getResults() as $result)
{
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td>' . $result->getRegion() . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $result->getSource() . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $result->getPageViews() . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $result->getVisits() . '</td></tr>';
}

echo '</tr></table>';
echo '<p>Total pageviews: ' . $ga->getPageviews() . ' total visits: ' . $ga->getVisits() . '</p>';

?>

AWS SDK for .NET with ElasticCache Support

2011-12-06T12:04:00.000Z

AWS SDK for .NET 1.3.11

AWS launched Amazon ElastiCache in Ireland

2011-12-06T11:54:00.002Z

AWS launched Amazon ElastiCache in the US East (Northern Virginia) Region back in August and today enabled ElastiCache in EU West (Dublin), US West (Northern California), and Asia Pacific (Singapore and Tokyo).

New X-CART Store

2011-12-02T14:18:00.000Z

A great site and resource if you require x-cart specific add-ons. They developt e-commerce modules and templates for the x-cart platform. I've worked with several of the modules and all are very easy to implement. In addition if you don't want the hassle of installing the components yourself, William Hayes and his team will be more then happy to help

Check it out now The XCART Store

Display ASP Menu Control in Chrome / Safari

2011-11-30T12:56:00.002Z

I had a problem displaying the standard asp.net menu control in Google Chrome and Safari

I was using master pages

but if you modify the source file behind your master page and include the following

C#
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (Request.UserAgent.Contains("AppleWebKit")) Request.Browser.Adapters.Clear();
}

VB.NET
Protected Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init
If Request.UserAgent.Contains("AppleWebKit") Then
Request.Browser.Adapters.Clear()
End If
End Sub

Evaluating CDNs

2011-11-30T08:36:00.002Z

This service CloudHarmony will test CDN networks near you. It can test for other services also such as Cloud Storage etc. Very neat.

http://cloudharmony.com/speedtest/run

UDF Class VB.NET Reset Connection String for Entity Framework

2011-11-26T01:48:00.003Z

This is a useful class I've created mixing and matching code from the web.

But basically it allows you to reset the connection string for an entity framework and save the values to the current application configuration file.

To use, something as follows

Dim uConnection As New uCustomConnectionString

' Connection String Name
' Server
' Database / Catalog
' Username
' Password
uConnection.SetDatabaseConnection ("db1001229_CountersEntities", "localhost\sqlexpress", "db1001229_Counters", "sa", "password")

----
Class

Imports System.Configuration
Imports System.Data.EntityClient
Imports System.Data.SqlClient

Public Class uCustomConnectionString
Public Function SetDatabaseConnection(ByVal oConnectionString As String, ByVal ServerName As String, ByVal DatabaseName As String, ByVal NewUsername As String, ByVal NewPassword As String) As DialogResult
Dim curConnection = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings(oConnectionString).ToString()
Dim entityBuilder As New EntityConnectionStringBuilder(curConnection)
Dim curProviderConnString = entityBuilder.ProviderConnectionString

' get the current server name in the connection string.
Dim sqlConnBuilder As New SqlConnectionStringBuilder()
sqlConnBuilder.ConnectionString = curProviderConnString
sqlConnBuilder.DataSource = ServerName
sqlConnBuilder.InitialCatalog = DatabaseName
sqlConnBuilder.UserID = NewUsername
sqlConnBuilder.Password = NewPassword

Dim newProviderString = sqlConnBuilder.ToString
entityBuilder.ProviderConnectionString = newProviderString

Try
Using conn As EntityConnection = New EntityConnection(entityBuilder.ToString)
conn.Open()
conn.Close()
End Using

UpdateEntityConnection(oConnectionString, entityBuilder.ToString)

MessageBox.Show("Database connection changed.")
Return DialogResult.OK

Catch ex As Exception
MessageBox.Show("Database connection not changed please try again.")
Return DialogResult.Cancel
End Try
End Function

Private Sub UpdateEntityConnection(ByVal oConnectionString As String, ByVal NewConnectionString As String)
Dim config As Configuration = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None)
config.ConnectionStrings.ConnectionStrings(oConnectionString).ConnectionString = NewConnectionString
config.Save()
ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("connectionStrings")
End Sub

End Class

.htaccess for XCART 4.4

2011-11-25T12:11:00.000Z

Below is a typical .htaccess file to be used with x-cart 4.4
Change yourdomain to what ever.

Redirects from yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com

Also forces home.php to www.yourdomain.com

Also implements clean URL. Make sure Clean URL turned on in admin control panel within x-cart

# Clean URLs [[[
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews -Indexes
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
DirectoryIndex home.php index.php
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /home\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)home\.php$ / [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} !^401$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(payment|admin|provider|partner)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(gif|jpe?g|png|js|css|swf|php|ico)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatcher.php [L]
</IfModule>
# /Clean URLs ]]]

Is mod_deflate working in Apache

2011-11-25T07:00:00.001Z

Just working on a number of projects and I wanted a quick and easy way to check if mod_deflate(compression) originally mod_gzip is enabled for a paritcular web server running apache.

This web site has a number of useful tools to assist with this.

http://www.whatsmyip.org/http_compression/

* http://www.elara.ie is gzipped
* Original Size: 285.14 KB
* Gzipped Size: 49.74 KB
* Data Savings: 82.56%

Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework

2011-11-24T21:21:00.002Z

The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is a free, centralized code sample library provided by the Microsoft Community team. Their goal is to provide typical code samples for all Microsoft development technologies.

You can view and download code samples from this link. You can also request code samples from Microsoft from this site.

http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog

Freely-available libraries for the Microsoft .NET

2011-11-24T21:15:00.006Z

Qink has assembled a comprehensive list of freely-available libraries for the Microsoft .NET platform.

http://qink.net/page/The-Ultimate-List-of-Freely-Available-_NET-Libraries.aspx

Charting Made Simple with FusionCharts

2011-11-24T20:54:00.002Z

A very neat library that developers can use free of charge in your web development projects to display nice charts e.g. bar charts, line charts, pie charts etc is
Fusion Charts Free Edition
http://www.fusioncharts.com/free/

I will post some code later for using these

But used dynamically with database content they provide an excellent way to help your end users visualise trends in data over time etc

Amazon Outage - What can you do

2011-11-24T20:54:00.001Z

I think one of the biggest challenges facing any start-up is how to develop a sustainable DR strategy and plan which takes consideration of the current financial standing of the start-up.

I also think many start-ups with good intentions discuss, explore and document DR strategies most appropriate to there business, but how many actually test or execute the DR strategy prior to a major outage.

And it’s not good enough to just test the infrastructure, application and data

You got to literally pull the plug.

While many cloud vendors will claim that they can offer full redundancy and reliability its my opinion that all start-ups where it is financially viable should select two cloud providers i.e. primary and stand-by (DR).

Interesting debate at CloudAve

http://www.cloudave.com/11886/some-lessons-from-aws-outage/#comment-13688

NimbusDB Next Generation Database Platform

2011-11-24T20:54:00.000Z

This looks really cool. NimbusDB. Its a combination of NoSQL and SQL, takes the best from both, combines them but plans to give developers a much more scalable database platform on which to build applications yet maintain the simplicity of using standard SQL Queries.

Watch Barry Morris, who is ex founder of IONA by the way.

Video streaming by Ustream

NimbusDB Presents at Under the Radar

Resize your VMWare Disks on CentOS

2011-11-04T09:19:00.001Z

Modify you VM settings and increase the hard disk size for example add an additional 10GB.
Boot system
Run fdisk and recreate partition #2
fdisk /dev/sda2

Issue the following commands
D
2
N
P
2
<enter>
<enter>
t
2
8e
w

Reboot System
lvm pvresize /dev/sda2
lvm pvdisplay # Take a note of the free PE (physical extents)
lvm vgchange -a y
lvm lvdisplay # Take a note of logical volume
lvm lvextend -l +320 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

You will need to tweak as you go along. In some examples above on the web, some people don’t do any reboot after step 4, but I needed to do a reboot. Also after step 9ome people run an e2fsck, when ever I did this step 10 failed

Sample Conflict Resolution File for Plesk Restore

2011-11-04T09:18:00.002Z

This is a sample conflict resolution file for Plesk which can be used during a restore

Change mydomain.ie to your domain and the IP address to your new shared IP address

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<conflict-resolution-rules>
<policy/>

<rule conflict-guid="3fa1491e30551a7e3d1800bcc04077e1" conflict-id="0">
<node children-processing-type="" name="domain">
<attributes>
<attribute name="id" value="4"/>
<attribute name="guid" value="D68A3BF8-9C79-4072-A65F-8B25A02C7BC9"/>
<attribute name="owner-guid" value="B416FF5A-136E-49F2-87B5-AEE13717F68B"/>
<attribute name="name" value="mydomain.ie"/>
</attributes>
</node>
</dump-objects>
<resolution>
<rename new-name="ip-type:shared:ip-address:212.212.212.1"></rename>
</resolution>
</rule>
</conflict-resolution-rules>

Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 provider is not registered on the local machine

2011-11-04T09:18:00.001Z

I had a basic problem recently porting an ASP.NET application from 32 bit Windows 2003 to a virtual environment running Windows 64 bit.

The ASP.NET application was pretty basic and it worked with a MS Access backend.

I was using OLEDB Provider to connect from ASP.NET to the backend database

But as it turns out there is no version of JET for Windows 64 bit.

So you have to disable 64 bit ASP.NET under IIS and enable 32 bit ASP.NET under IIS.

Here are the steps I followed.

To run the 32-bit version of ASP.NET 2.0, follow these steps. This was based on ASP.NET 2.0.50727

Start / Run / cmd
cscript %SYSTEMDRIVE%\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1
%SYSTEMROOT%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Note

One thing I missed, again simple but is to make sure that the 64 bit version of ASP.NET is prohibited and the 32 bit is allowed under the IIS web service extension list.

A Change from Zend, try Grails

2011-11-04T09:18:00.000Z

I’ve been working with Grails for the past few months and I really like the platform. Having worked with frameworks such as Zend, Grails comes as a breath of fresh air.

Grails is an open-source web application framework that leverages the Groovy language and complements Java Web development.

Its based on the MVC framework and it simplifies the work involved in getting your next web application up and running

Visit http://www.grails.org/

Getting Started With Grails

2011-11-02T18:48:00.000Z

Reset Plesk Admin Password from Command Prompt

2011-10-11T11:08:00.001+01:00

To get the current 'admin' password for Plesk, execute the following command at a command prompt in windows

"%plesk_bin%\plesksrvclient" -get

%plesk_bin% is something like c:\parallel\plesk\admin\bin

To get the password at command line and save to a file use the -nogui option
"%plesk_bin%\plesksrvclient" -get -nogui > c:\plesk_admin_passwd.txt

To set a new admin password for the Plesk Admin run the following command at a command prompt:
"%plesk_bin%\plesksrvclient" -set mypass true

Where mypass is the new password

Stashboard

2011-09-30T05:16:00.004+01:00

A very basic dashboard for monitoring cloud based services such as EC2 instances etc

The open source status page for cloud services and APIs.
http://www.stashboard.org/

Simple But Neat FreeNATS

2011-09-30T05:08:00.002+01:00

FreeNATS is an open source PHP and MySQL based network status testing, alerting and reporting package.

FreeNATS allows you to test your network and generate reporting to give you a bird's eye view of what is happening.

FreeNATS allows you to test nodes with

Ping Test (ICMP)
HTTP/HTTPs Test (Web)
IMAP/IMAPs Test
POP3/POP3s Test
MySQL Connection Test
MySQL Queries Test
TCP Port Test

Ideal for light weight use. Not as good as Nagios or Zenoss but for a basic LAMP configuration where basic reporting / alerting is required this is a nice fit.

Check it out
http://www.purplepixie.org/freenats/

Monitorix - Easy Server Monitoring

2011-09-23T07:30:00.001+01:00

Monitorix allows you to monitor system CPU load, file usage, disk I/O, network port activity, mysql statistics, apache statistics, system demand and much more.

# Install pre-reqs
yum install httpd
yum install rrdtool rrdtool-perl
yum install perl-libwww-perl perl-MailTools perl-MIME-Lite perl-CGI

# Download RPMs from monitorix
# http://www.monitorix.org/downloads.html
# Download the latest version for your arch e.g. CentOS
wget http://www.monitorix.org/monitorix-2.3.0-1.noarch.rpm

# Install RPM
rpm -ivh monitorix-2.3.0-1.noarch.rpm

# Start the collection agent
service monitorix start

Happy monitoring!!

Coffescript

2011-09-16T14:07:00.003+01:00

CoffeeScript is a new programming language that compiles to javascript

you can download the latest version here from git
http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

you can find a quick introduction to the key features / syntax here
http://coffeescript-seattlejs.heroku.com/#36
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/240308/A-brief-introduction-to-CoffeeScript

Make File Synch Easier

2011-09-16T13:45:00.002+01:00

For anyone looking to replace rsynch unison is a very useful bi-directional file synch program

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Test Remote MySQL from JAVA

2011-09-14T11:14:00.001+01:00

import java.sql.*;

public class MysqlConnect{
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("MySQL Connect Example.");
Connection conn = null;
String url = "jdbc:mysql://mysql.myserver.com:3306/";
String dbName = "my_database";
String driver = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver";
String userName = "my_user";
String password = "my_password";
try {
Class.forName(driver).newInstance();
conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url+dbName,userName,password);
System.out.println("Connected to the database");
conn.close();
System.out.println("Disconnected from database");
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

Basic Zenoss Install

2011-08-31T20:10:00.003+01:00

Download Zenoss RPM-GPG key
wget http://dev.zenoss.com/yum/RPM-GPG-KEY-zenoss

Import key
rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-zenoss

Download Zenoss Core
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/zenoss/files/zenoss-3.1/zenoss-3.1.0/zenoss-3.1.0.el5.x86_64.rpm/download

Install Zenoss Core
yum install zenoss-3.1.0.el5.x86_64.rpm

Perform first-boot initialization
/etc/init.d/zenoss start

Once completed, connect to http://<your_server_name>:8080 with a web browser and run through the initial setup wizard i.e. set admin username and password.

Check server for rootkits with rkhunter

2011-08-22T14:29:00.001+01:00

Step 1. Download the source files
mkdir $HOME/rkhunter
cd $HOME/rkhunter
wget -q http://sourceforge.net/projects/rkhunter/files/rkhunter/1.3.8/rkhunter-1.3.8.tar.gz

Step 2. Untar the archive
gzip -d rkhunter-1.3.8.tar.gz
tar -xvf rkhunter-1.3.8.tar

Step 3. Installation
cd $HOME/rkhunter/rkhunter-1.3.8
./installer.sh --install

Step 4. Try it out
/usr/local/bin/rkhunter -c

Remove Files with Special Characters

2011-08-20T11:55:00.004+01:00

If you ever create a file with special characters by accident e.g.

--strip-options

You can delete by using

rm -- --strip-options

The initial -- means that no more arguments will appear on the command line thus --strip-options is treated at the file name

Repair All MYI Files with a single command

2011-08-09T16:03:00.001+01:00

cd /var/lib/mysql

find . -name *.MYI -exec myisamchk -r '{}' \;

Change Security Groups on EC2

2011-07-22T17:40:00.002+01:00

It is difficult to change the secuirty group which an EC2 instance is assigned once its running

However one way to accomplish this is

1. Right click on instance and select "Create Image (EBS AMI). For example if the instance is called staging-srv.

2. Give the image a name and description and then create

3. Create your new security group and define required security measures e.g. inbound ports

4. Create a new EC2 instance based on the above created image.

5. If a elastic IP is assigned to staging-srv then disassoicate it

5. Launch the new instance

6. Associate the elastic IP with the new instance

6. Rename the old instance to e.g. staging-srv to staging-srv-old

7. Name the new instance staging-srv

8. Test your new instance with the new security group

9. Once happy it works delete the old ECS instance.

Mount an EBS Volume on CentOS

2011-07-11T11:35:00.003+01:00

1. Create a new EBS Volume. Note the device name returned by AMZ e.g. /dev/sdf
2. Login to your Amazon Instance
3. At the prompt type fdisk /dev/sdf
4. Create a new primary partition and accept all the default values.
5. Type (w) to write partition data to disk
6. At the command prompt type mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdf to format as an ext3 file system.
7. mkdir /web
8.Type mount /dev/sdf /web

Change Storage Engine from INNODB to MyISAM for all tables

2011-07-08T07:53:00.001+01:00

The following is a basic php script to change the storage engine used by all MySQL tables for a specified database to MyISAM from INNODB.

<?php

$conn = mysql_connect("localhost","username","password");

mysql_select_db("database-name",$conn);

$sql = "SHOW tables";

$rs = mysql_query($sql);

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs))

{

$tbl = $row[0];

$sql = "ALTER TABLE $tbl ENGINE=myisam";

mysql_query($sql);

}

To change all tables from MyISAM to INNODB

<?php

$conn = mysql_connect("localhost","username","password");

mysql_select_db("database-name",$conn);

$sql = "SHOW tables";

$rs = mysql_query($sql);

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($rs))

{

$tbl = $row[0];

$sql = "ALTER TABLE $tbl ENGINE=INNODB";

mysql_query($sql);

}

Install PHP 5.3.6 on CentOS 64bit

2011-07-07T00:32:00.002+01:00

Create Install folders and get rpms
Login as root
cd $HOME
mkdir php-setup-packages
cd $HOME/php-setup-packages
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/x86_64/ius-release-1.0-6.ius.el5.noarch.rpm

Install Required RPMs
cd $HOME/php-setup-packages
rpm -Uvh *.rpm

Remove Existing PHP Packages
yum remove php php-*

Install PHP 5.3.5 Packages
yum install php53u-pear
yum install php53u php53u-cli
yum install php53u-common
yum install php53u-devel
yum install php53u-gd
yum install php53u-mbstring
yum install php53u-mcrypt
yum install php53u-mysql
yum install php53u-pdo
yum install php53u-soap
yum install php53u-xml
yum install php53u-xmlrpc
yum install php53u-bcmath
yum install php53u-pecl-apc
yum install php53u-pecl-memcache
yum install php53u-snmp

Chroot Apache on CentOS 5 32bit

2011-07-07T00:29:00.002+01:00

SECUREFOLDER=/securesystem
mkdir $SECUREFOLDER
mkdir -p $SECUREFOLDER/var/run
chown -R root.root $SECUREFOLDER/var/run
mkdir -p $SECUREFOLDER/home/httpd
mkdir -p $SECUREFOLDER/var/www/html
mkdir -p $SECUREFOLDER/tmp
chmod 1777 $SECUREFOLDER/tmp
mkdir -p $SECUREFOLDER/var/lib/php/session
chown root.apache $SECUREFOLDER/var/lib/php/session
cd /opt/
yum list | grep chroot
wget http://core.segfault.pl/~hobbit/mod_chroot/dist/mod_chroot-0.5.tar.gz
tar -zxvf mod_chroot-0.5.tar.gz
cd mod_chroot-0.5
apxs -cia mod_chroot.c
vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
setsebool httpd_disable_trans 1
vi /etc/init.d/httpd
chattr +i /etc/init.d/httpd
/etc/init.d/httpd start
/etc/init.d/httpd start

Script to chroot MySQL on 32bit CentOS 5

2011-07-07T00:27:00.001+01:00

#!/bin/bash
# Set chroot location
J=/securesystem/mysql
/etc/init.d/mysqld stop

# Creating directory structure
mkdir -p $J/dev $J/etc $J/tmp $J/var/tmp $J/usr/libexec $J/usr/share/mysql/english \
$J/usr/share/mysql/norwegian $J/var/run/mysqld $J/var/log $J/var/lib $J/bin $J/lib $J/var/run/nscd
chown -R root:sys $J
chmod -R 755 $J
chmod 1777 $J/tmp
# Copy necessary files
cp /usr/libexec/mysqld $J/usr/libexec/
cp /usr/share/mysql/english/errmsg.sys $J/usr/share/mysql/english/
cp /usr/share/mysql/norwegian/errmsg.sys $J/usr/share/mysql/norwegian/
cp -r /usr/share/mysql/charsets $J/usr/share/mysql/
cp /etc/hosts $J/etc/
cp /etc/host.conf $J/etc/
cp /etc/resolv.conf $J/etc/
cp /bin/bash $J/bin
grep mysql /etc/group > $J/etc/group
grep mysql /etc/passwd > $J/etc/passwd
cp /etc/my.cnf $J/etc/
cp -R /var/lib/mysql $J/var/lib/
chown -R mysql:mysql $J/var
cp /usr/lib/libkrb5.so.3 /lib/libdl.so.2 /lib/libc.so.6 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 \
/lib/librt.so.1 /usr/lib/libz.so.1 /lib/libssl.so.6 /lib/libcrypto.so.6 /lib/libpthread.so.0 \
/lib/libcrypt.so.1 /lib/libnsl.so.1 /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 /lib/libm.so.6 /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 \
/usr/lib/libgssapi_krb5.so.2 /lib/libcom_err.so.2 /usr/lib/libk5crypto.so.3 /lib/libresolv.so.2 \
/usr/lib/libkrb5support.so.0 /lib/libkeyutils.so.1 /lib/libselinux.so.1 /lib/libsepol.so.1 $J/lib
cp /etc/ld.so.cache $J/etc
ln -s /var/run/nscd/socket $J/var/run/nscd/socket
# As with Apache, we need to create null device:
mknod $J/dev/null c 2 2
chown root:sys $J/dev/null
chmod 666 $J/dev/null

SolarWinds latest tool lets you shut down & restart VMware machine

2011-06-30T16:06:00.002+01:00

SolarWinds latest tool lets you shut down & restart VMware machines without logging into vCenter™ or vSphere™. It also gives you constant visibility into your VMware environment & up/down status of your VMware apps.

Free VM Console Highlights:

Bounce VMs without logging into vCenter/vSphere
End-to-end visibility into your VMware environment- from vCenter through ESX hosts to VM guest
Track the real-time up/down status of your VMs from your desktop

http://www.solarwinds.com/register/registrationshort.aspx?program=1320&c=70150000000P9IG&CMP=BIZ-TAD-PETRI-VIRT-VMCNSL-DL-2011

Table ‘mysql.servers’ doesn’t exist

2011-06-22T08:53:00.004+01:00

ERROR 1146 (42S02): Table ‘mysql.servers’ doesn’t exist
This appeared up on Server version: 5.1.57 when ever I'd run the FLUSH PRIVILEGES command from within mysql
To resolve this

USE mysql;
CREATE TABLE `servers` (
`Server_name` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
`Host` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
`Db` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
`Username` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
`Password` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
`Port` INT(4) DEFAULT NULL,
`Socket` CHAR(64) DEFAULT NULL,
`Wrapper` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
`Owner` CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`Server_name`)

) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COMMENT='MySQL Foreign Servers table'

However a better way to solve this problem after carrying out an update is to run the mysql fix script mysql_fix_privilege_tables to ensure the ‘mysql’ database contains all the needed tables etc.

MySQL Error Invalid Table or Database Name

2011-06-22T08:28:00.001+01:00

We upgraded our MySQL server recently which ran several Joomla web sites

After the upgrade we discovered the following error in the mysql log files

090425 23:10:52 [ERROR] Invalid (old?) table or database name 'database-name'

It turns out MySQL does not like the use of - in database names.

One solution is to rename the MySQL database changing the - to an _

Then update the mysql dictionary

UPDATE mysql.db SET Db = 'database_name' WHERE Db = 'database\-name';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Mango Features for Business Users

2011-06-11T02:03:00.003+01:00

What can business users expect from Mango

1. Mobile access to documents
Mango will add the ability to share and save documents though Office 365.

2. Pinnable e-mail folders
You'll be able to pin specific e-mail folders or RSS feeds to the start screen.

3. E-Mail server search
Mango will add the ability to search for old e-mail stored on the server, not just on phone.

4. Support for Lync
Microsoft's unified communications platform, will be available as a free download around the time Mango is released.

5. Support for stronger passwords
At the moment you can only use simple PINS but with Mango you will be able to set morecomplex alpha-numeric passwords, which will improve security.

6. Information Rights Management
Support for additional security, tracking and blocking policies around emails and documents.

7. Support for hidden Wi-Fi netowrks.
The ability to connect to corporate WLANs which have hidden SSIDs.

“Mango” Available. Windows Phone Developer Tools

2011-06-11T01:50:00.004+01:00

I develop software that runs on mobile devices including PDAs, iPhone and most recently which uses the Microsoft Windows Phone.

What is Mango? Mango is the code name for The Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta.

For those interested you can download the 7.1 Beta Tools from here.

The Windows Phone Developer Tools includes the following

•Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Beta)
•Windows Phone Emulator (Beta)
•Silverlight 4 SDK and DRT
•Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Referesh Windows Phone Extensions
•Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone 7.1
•WCF Data Services Client for Window Phone 7.1

New X-CART Has Memcache Options

2011-06-09T14:43:00.001+01:00

One thing I really like about the new x-cart versions is that they allow you to use memcache to cache data

In the root x-cart folder in config.php you can specify to use memcache

define('USE_MEMCACHE_DATA_CACHE', true);
define('MEMCACHE_SERVER_ADDRESS', 'localhost');
define('MEMCACHE_SERVER_PORT', 11211);

Now the only problem is that it only uses one memcache server so you either use the server you are running x-cart on or else dedicate a server specific for caching

Configure OBM Client Backup on CentOS

2011-06-08T19:54:00.002+01:00

Creating a new profile on

Step 1
Delete old configuration file
rm /root/.obm/config/config.sys

Step 2
Run Configurator
/usr/local/obm/bin/Configurator.sh

Step 3
Enter a new username/password

Step 4
Enter a server URL

Step 5
Select Protocol HTTP or HTTPS

Step 6
Do you want to use a Proxy server?

Step 7

It will find your Backup Sets and list them

Step 8
Select the type of encrypting algorithm ? (1) Twofish (2) AES (3) Triple DES (4) No encryption :

Step 9

Enter your encryption key. Very important if you loose this you cannot restore your data in the future.

Step 10.
Enter it a second time.

Step 11.
Select Encrypting Mode ? (1) ECB (2) CBC : 1
Step 12.
Do you want to run scheduled backup on this computer, I normally select yes.

Replace Your MySQL Server with Percona Server

2011-06-07T15:49:00.001+01:00

Percona Server is an drop-in replacement for MySQL. It has better performance and it provides far better slow-log diagnostics

In addition with Percona Server:

1. Query times are faster and more consistent.
2. Because of this you can introducing techniques such as data sharding
3. Save costs with less hardware upgrades
4. Better uptime with less system administration and tuning

X-CART Static Pages for X-Mall

2011-06-07T15:41:00.001+01:00

Static Pages for x-mall in x-cart by BCS is a very useful add-on for allowing providers create static pages for example specific terms and conditions, refund policy etc

http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/x-mall-static_pages-for-each-store.html

This mod allows each provider to have their own static pages on their store front!

X-CART : Give Each Provider Standalone Shop Front

2011-06-07T15:40:00.001+01:00

BCS have a very neat module for x-cart that allows you give each provider there own sub domain

For example

jones.myshop.com

toys.myshop.com
etc

http://www.bcsengineering.com/store/x-mall/

UK IP Addressing and Amazon

2011-05-30T10:30:00.002+01:00

Something that came to my attention recently is that Amazon Cloud Solutions i.e. EC2 Instances etc cannot supply a customer with a UK registered IP address which they can assign to either an Elastic IP or and Elastic Load Balancer IP.

This creates problems for companies seeking high google rankings

Shard-Query - Improve MySQL Query Performance

2011-05-30T10:28:00.001+01:00

Shard-Query is an open source tool kit which helps improve the performance of queries against a MySQL database by distributing the work over multiple machines and/or multiple cores.
Visit MySQL Performance Blog - Shard-Query

Monitoring Bandwidth Usage on CentOS

2011-05-21T12:12:00.003+01:00

Recently I came across a very neat tool for monitoring bandwidth usage on CentOS

It takes about 5 minutes to install / configure with yum repos.

Have a read through "Monitoring bandwidth usage with vnStat under CentOS 5 Linux"

Custom XCF Example

2011-05-17T10:59:00.004+01:00

This is an example custom XCF file for Four Js GAS.

In this example I've set custom environment variables, set the path for the working application directory, specified a specific module and passed in a parameter.

One handy use of an XCF file like this is that I can setup several for example say I have 5 weighbridges and I run a 4Js application to capture the weight etc of each truck as it passes over the weighbridge

I can setup an XCF for each weighbridge passing in the parameter 1, 2, 3, to the same program weighbridge.42r

<APPLICATION Parent="defaultgdc"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.4js.com/ns/gas/2.20/cfextwa.xsd">
<EXECUTION AllowUrlParameters="TRUE">
<ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE Id="DBDATE">DMY4/</ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE>
<ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE Id="GREDIR">f:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\FOURJS\GRE\</ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE>
<PATH>f:\program files\fourjs\fgl\application\</PATH>
<MODULE>weighbridge.42r</MODULE>
<PARAMETERS>
<PARAMETER>1</PARAMETER>
</PARAMETERS>
</EXECUTION>
</APPLICATION>

Reference Remote DB in 4js Genero

2011-05-17T10:51:00.001+01:00

In your fglprofile in $FGLDIR/etc to access remote MySQL databases

dbi.default.driver = "dbmmys51x.dll"
dbi.database.rdb.source = "remote_db@remote_host:3306"
dbi.database.rdb.driver = "dbmmys51x"
dbi.database.rdb.username = "remoteuser"
dbi.database.rdb.password = "remotepassword"

Remote host can be valid hostname or else and IP address e.g. 192.60.30.11

OpenLayers for Web Based Maps

2011-05-06T19:41:00.002+01:00

OpenLayers is a JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers.
Its 100% javascript based and is a possible solution for developing GIS based solutions on the web.
http:/ /openlayers.org/

Get Amazon Orders for the Last Two Hours

2011-05-03T19:45:00.004+01:00

$tmptime = time() - (3600*2);
$ordertime=date("Y-m-d H:i:s",$tmptime);
$request->setCreatedAfter(new DateTime($ordertime, new DateTimeZone('UTC')));

Binding a List of Objects to a GridView in VB.NET

2011-04-30T07:08:00.005+01:00

Setting a gridview to a list of objects in this instance we define a class TestResult to hold a list of TestResult, This class will hold a list of results for tests carried out on a specific date.

We want to bind this to a gridview called GridView_TestResults1 dynamically.

To do this in your web form add the GridView_TestResults1 and set AutoGenerateColumns to True.

Create a class TestResult add add this code

Public Class TestResult
   Private test_id As String
   Private test_date As DateTime
   Private test_result As String

   Public Property TestID() As String
   Get
   Return test_id
   End Get
   Set(ByVal value As String)
   test_id = value
   End Set
   End Property

   Public Property TestDate() As DateTime
   Get
   Return test_date
   End Get
   Set(ByVal value As DateTime)
   test_date = value
   End Set
   End Property

   Public Property TestResult() As String
   Get
   Return test_result
   End Get
   Set(ByVal value As String)
   test_result = value
   End Set
   End Property

   Public Sub New(ByVal t_id As String, ByVal t_date As DateTime, ByVal t_result As String)
   Me.test_id = t_id
   Me.test_date = t_date
   Me.test_result = t_result
   End Sub
End Class

Place this code either on your page load or in some other event handler e.g. on_click

   Dim tests As System.Collections.Generic.List(Of TestResult) = New System.Collections.Generic.List(Of TestResult)()

   Dim test_date As new DateTime(2011, 09, 01, 10, 15, 00);

   tests.Add(New TestResult("001", test_date, "Passed"))
   tests.Add(New TestResult("002", test_date, "Failed"))
   tests.Add(New TestResult("003", test_date, "Passed"))

   GridView_TestResults1.DataSource = tests
   GridView_TestResults1.DataBind()

Adding JSON Support to PHP on your CentOS LAMP Installation

2011-04-28T02:27:00.003+01:00

Before you begin start by making sure you have everything up to date by running
$--> yum update
or
$--> yum update "*php*"

The first command will update all components to the latest version. Be careful make sure this won't interfere with anything else you may be running.

The second will update only php related components. But caution should be taken with this command also if you are running any kind of bespoke application. Make sure if you update your php components to the latest version/release that your web application will still operate correctly.

Next run
$--> pecl install json

After this command has completed you need to make sure that JSON support is enabled with your Apache/PHP stack starts

To do this, you can either add the following line to the end of your /etc/php.ini file or what I prefer to do is create a json.ini in the folder /etc/php.d so run the command
$--> echo “extension=json.so” > /etc/php.d/json.ini

To add this to your php.ini file instead the following command should do
$--> echo “extension=json.so” >> /etc/php.ini

Then restart your apache servcies
$--> service httpd restart

Monitor LAMP on Centos

2011-04-28T02:02:00.004+01:00

While not applicable for projects I based on Amazon Cloud Infrastructure when it comes to dedicated hosting on a third party hosting providers network, two tools I find extremely useful and easy to use for my LAMP based server monitoring projects are Munin (http://munin-monitoring.org/) and Monit (http://mmonit.com/monit/)

This is a very good how-to on using both these tools

http://www.howtoforge.com/server-monitoring-with-munin-and-monit-on-centos-5.2

Its basic but aside from the standard monitoring plugins available for munin that monitor load averages, cpu usage, memory usage etc you can also get it to monitor items such as mysql queries, mysql slow queries, web requests etc. So its well worth checking out.

Monit is also very useful for monitoring and restarting services on your LAMP box. For example say you wanted to restart your httpd process if the load average on your server exceeded 5 for the past five minutes. Monit is an ideal tool for this.

Trevor

Installing APC on CentOS

2011-04-28T01:41:00.005+01:00

The following procedure work for installing APC on CentOS

yum install php-pear
yum install php-devel
yum install httpd-devel
pecl install apc

Sometimes you may get a missing pcre.h when compiling if you get this error

"apc pcre.h: No such file or directory"

if so run the following

yum install pcre-devel

and then run

pecl install apc

The Value of AMIs for Cloud Testing?

2011-04-25T20:41:00.005+01:00

Think of an AMI as an image of your server in the office with similar characteristics such as disk space, memory, processor power etc.

While several off-the-shelf AMIs exist either offered by Amazon themselves or the wider community.

The real beauty of AMIs, is the ease at which you can create your own custom AMIs that are specific to your business.

In addition to the standard computer charactertistics such as operating system, disk layout etc, you can also install and configure a set of pre-defined software and data specific to your business needs.

This gives you a great deal of availability when it comes to keeping your business running with minimum disruption.

Aside from Amazon’s big blunder towards the end of last week they are still one of the best cloud infrastructure provider in the world and in my view they well deserve that title.

When you set-up your Amazon Web Services account and register for specific services you can very quickly launch a computer in the Amazon cloud and this is called an instance. During this setup you are asked to choose an AMI from which this instance will be derived.

But aside from choosing from a pre-defined set of AMIs you can create your own.

I'm developing software for my business so why should I create my own custom AMI

1. Simplify testing your software across several platforms
2. Speed up the testing process.
3. Easily and quickly scale your testing environments by adding similar or mixed AMIs to your test environment.
4. Store test scripts and data on a centralized EBS volume therefore allowing each AMI instance to access the same test workloads and scripts.
Because the AMIs you create are identical and because you can very quickly re-launch an AMI this allows you run tests very quickly with a clean run each time.
If one of the AMI instances causes problems during the testing its very easy to launch a new AMI to take over that test load.

Untangle the Integration Knot

Tune Up Paging with vmtouch

Removing Connections Between Nodes in Message Broker via Java API

Read Symantec Backup Exec Job Report XML Files

New Features in WebSphere MB v8

Creating a simple Alert / Success Message with ASP.NET/VB using Bootstrap

Comparison of business integration software

Using Linux / gcc / gsoap to call MBT SoapInput Node in Message Flow

Using Soap Client Library for C++ to Access IBM Message Broker Message Flow via SoapInput Node

Using ServiceMix to Poll Folder for files

Easy to use - Bootstrap, from Twitter

ULTRAESB - Poll a directory for a file with a specific pattern and upload it with an authenticated HTTP PUT

Implement Observer Design Pattern in C# - Real World Example Brokers watching company Share Price

Basic Parallel Reduction in C#

Lock Free Stack Implementation in C#

Using Microsoft .NET (VS2010) with WebSphere Message Broker V8

Ruby Talking to MBT SoapInput Node

Testing MBT SoapInput Node from VB.NET

MBT/ESQL : Reduce CPU Load - Access nth Element in Array using Reference

Cloud based logging service

Dynamic Email from MBT/ESQL

What's wrong with certificate warnings? How can we abolish them?

MBT/ESQL to Modify XML element names

Basic Receive Message to MQ with Java and IBM MQ JMS

Basic Send Message to MQ with Java and IBM MQ JMS

Working with CSV files made simple with Websphere MBT and DFDL

Configure EmailOutput Node in Websphere Message Broker Toolkit

Cloud Fault Tolerance with JClouds

Automating File Transfers - Multiple Directories / Lots of Files

Java Send / Read from Remote MQ Queue on CentOS Linux

Setting Up a Websphere MQ Listener on CentOS

Getting Started with Websphere MQ on Linux CentOS

Stackato Micro Cloud will continue to be free

Java Observer Pattern - Watching Company Share Values

Configure Database Connection using MyBatis

Grid Enable Your Java Applications with GridGain

Java Ping Servers - Flyweight Reduce Memory Footprint

Composite Design-Pattern Amazon Payment Lines

Using Amazon SQS from Java

Demo file copy using Guava

EJB Intercepts

ActiveMQ, easy to use open source message oriented middleware (MOM)

Getting to grips with Google Analytics API

AWS SDK for .NET with ElasticCache Support

AWS launched Amazon ElastiCache in Ireland

New X-CART Store

Top 8 Performance Problems on the Top 50 Retail Sites before we enter Holiday Seaso

Display ASP Menu Control in Chrome / Safari

Evaluating CDNs

UDF Class VB.NET Reset Connection String for Entity Framework

.htaccess for XCART 4.4

Is mod_deflate working in Apache

Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework

Freely-available libraries for the Microsoft .NET

Charting Made Simple with FusionCharts

Amazon Outage - What can you do

NimbusDB Next Generation Database Platform

Resize your VMWare Disks on CentOS

Sample Conflict Resolution File for Plesk Restore

Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 provider is not registered on the local machine

A Change from Zend, try Grails

Getting Started With Grails

Reset Plesk Admin Password from Command Prompt

Stashboard

Simple But Neat FreeNATS

Monitorix - Easy Server Monitoring

Coffescript

Make File Synch Easier

Test Remote MySQL from JAVA

Basic Zenoss Install

Check server for rootkits with rkhunter

Remove Files with Special Characters

Repair All MYI Files with a single command

Change Security Groups on EC2

Mount an EBS Volume on CentOS

Change Storage Engine from INNODB to MyISAM for all tables

Install PHP 5.3.6 on CentOS 64bit

Chroot Apache on CentOS 5 32bit

Script to chroot MySQL on 32bit CentOS 5

SolarWinds latest tool lets you shut down & restart VMware machine