Archive for the ‘Monash’ Category
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) was released a few months ago.
I have been working on the studio project on my laptop, using Eclipse (3.3 Europa) along with the Aptana plugin, RadRails plugin and Subclipse plugin.
The version of Eclipse that is in Hardy Heron’s repository is 3.2.2 or so, which is a few versions behind. So I decided, instead of installing from the repository, I should really install the latest available version.
Eclipse Ganymede comes in many different packages, and each package has downloads for different operating systems (namely Windows, Mac OS X, Linux 32bit, Linux 64bit). Since I am installing on my desktop (Ubuntu), I chose Eclipse Classic 3.4 (151 MB) (Linux 32bit).
After the download completed, I extracted it to /home/hantu/development/:
mv eclipse-SDK-3.4-linux-gtk.tar.gz ~/development
tar xvf eclipse-SDK-3.4-linux-gtk.tar.gz
Note: Initially, I wanted to install it under /opt/, but there is an issue regarding the file permission which I am not able to figure out. Something along the lines of .filetablelock Permission Denied. I’ll figure this out eventually, someday..
Surprisingly, Eclipse just works!
Next, without repeating what others have already documented, install Aptana Studio as a plugin of Eclipse. Don’t forget to install the Ruby on Rails support from Aptana’s Start Page (Help -> Aptana Studio Start Page…).
Subclipse is a plugin to work with SVN, instead of the default CVS support of Eclipse. Subclipse might not work with Eclipse 3.4, but I followed the instructions offered by a good man, so far, things are working perfectly.
More notes: I said ‘on Linux’ because I assume it is the same, for different distros, since downloading from Eclipse’s website does not require you to compile from source. Correct me if I am wrong.
Posted in Monash, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Ubuntu | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
For those who didn’t know, I am currently completing my Honours in Bachelor of Software Engineering with Monash University. I’ll talk more about the Honours project later on.
I have been using OpenOffice 2.4 for documents writing, including my research proposal for the Honours project. It worked quite well, but I have decided to switch to LaTeX to deal with documents writing (for the thesis).
LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing [1].
To get LaTeX up and running on my MacBook, I downloaded the MacTeX package, and the installation was pretty straightforward. The only painful part is, it took away 800MB of my internet allowance, and I think you should know that it will take around 1.6GB disk space to install.
If you’ve not worked with LaTeX before, keep in mind that:
LaTeX is not a word processor!
If you want a decent word processor on Mac OS X, TextMate is what I am using.
Last but not least, always good to have this LaTeX guide around (I’ve had it since my first year in Monash, three years later, I’m using it again): The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e
ref:
- LaTeX project: An introduction
Posted in Honours, Mac OS X | No Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2008
My Honours supervisor, Dr Sita Ramakrishnan, received an invitation a while back from IBM, to attend their WebSphere for Service-oriented Architecture technical briefing [1]. Having chosen a topic related to service-oriented architecture, she asked me to call up IBM, and ask whether I can attend in her place. I did, registered myself, and I went 
I enjoyed the briefing altogether, below are some brief notes I made during the seminar/talk/workshop:
(Off topic: IBM fed us pretty well, light breakfast, tea breaks, lunch, lots of coffee, thank you!)
Few things I noticed:
- Commercials between topics, they are pretty funny.
- Comparisons to other competitors (eg: Oracle, BEA, Microsoft) - and IBM always win, perfectly.
- Lots of blue color scheme in their slides.
- Their presentations are very marketing-oriented, if that makes sense.
- They like VMware so much, they had 22 images for the demonstrations.
Introduction
Enterprise faces different challenges.
What do they need in this situation? Service-oriented Architecture.
Why? Because of the ease of integration, the agility and fast time to solution.
Gary Andrews introduced us to a fictitious company called Service Oriented Finance.
A service: repeatable business task.
Service orientation: business as linked services.
Service-oriented architecture: an architectural style
Application Infrastructure to Get Started with SOA
WebSphere Application Server.
Free community edition, uses open source technology [2].
Examples: Wimbledon website (1 million hits / minute), Ebay etc.
WebSphere XD = able to update cluster without having to shutdown the server.
Demonstration of WebSphere XD is amazing, they also showed us graphically how things are being processed in a cluster if they are upgrading one of the server in the collection.
WebSphere for SOA
Need more efficiency in your business? Model the processes.
Model processes - WebSphere Business Modeler
Implement processes - WebSphere Integration Developer
Run processes - WebSphere Process Server
+ Human workflow support is what differs IBM from other competitor, WebSphere Integration Developer can generate human support code.
Monitor processes - WebSphere Business Monitor
+ Provide role-based dashboard
+ Detect business situations and take actions
+ Monitor performance of active + historical processes
Integrate People with Process to Enhance Business Value - Portal
WebSphere Portal = Front-end of SOA
Portlets = user facing business services
Used to improve customer satisfactions
Available in B2C, B2E, B2B
REST = Representational State Transfer
Components of Web 2.0 = REST, AJAX, XML data feeds
Portal is quite Web 2.0-ish, from the demonstrations.
IBM supports Dojo toolkit [3], used in Portal.
Web 2.0 Portal vision = An Open Architecture
Note: These notes are not complete, you might be able to see the slides on IBM website [4].
ref:
- The IBM WebSphere for SOA Event
- IBM - WebSphere Application Server Community Edition
- IBM Contributes Ajax Software Development Technology to Open Source Community
- WebSphere for SOA
Posted in Honours, Technology, Web | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
The IBM WebSphere for Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is a one-day technical briefing with products demonstrations and practical examples. It helps to get you started on the concept of SOA, and also introduce you to more advanced concepts of it.
I am attending the Melbourne session, hopefully it will be very useful for my Honours thesis that is closely related to the SOA / Web Services area. I am particularly interested in what WebSphere can offer us, and the demonstrations of real world scenarios.
Register yourself to attend to any of the sessions:
Tuesday, 6 May
Hilton Hotel
488 George Street,
Sydney, NSW 2000
Australia
Thursday, 8 May
State Library Conference Centre
325 Swanston Street
Melbourne VIC
(entry is via 3 Latrobe street, Melbourne)
Tuesday, 13 May
Hilton Hotel
190 Elizabeth Street,
Brisbane QLD 4000
Posted in Honours, Technology | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
I am currently in my final year of Bachelor of Software Engineering, in Monash University, Melbourne Australia. One of the subject I am taking as part of my final year is the Studio Project.
In this subject, we are working with an external client to complete a project. In our case, we are working on an Intranet Documentation System.
I am glad that we were chosen to do this project, as I am quite fond of the web-technologies. I will be working with Jason Maddocks (our Project Manager), Tim Ward and Matt White.
Hopefully I can gain something from this project, it is actually quite a refreshing experience out of all the subjects I have done in Monash!
Posted in Monash | 3 Comments »