Troubleshooting Insight

Yesterday, sir explained us how to develop a web application using Struts and provided us with requirements specification for one. We had to use Eclipse 3.2 with wtp and Struts 1.2.9 for that. Avoiding use of plug-ins such as Easy Struts was the constraint.

We worked on the given problem definition just to realize the difference between theoretical knowledge and its implementation. More often that not developers are given training on how to build a project in certain environment. This means that during training some development environment (i.e. configuration files, build files, directory structure specific to that environment etc.) is assumed which is working. The training is given about how to use and develop applications on top of that.

Today sir asked whether we have done with it? Nobody was done. He asked, "where did you stuck up? Tell me the exact points." Then we individually started telling what problem we faced. He listened to our problems. It was to investigate which approach we took, what troubleshooting we did, etc.

Troubleshooting is indispensable to all developers. It is a critical aspect of development.
And today we learnt how to troubleshoot our applications.

Sir explained that plug-ins are automation tools and should be used only when needed i.e. when productivity is of prime importance. During learning use of automation tools is highly discouraged because, we must know what errors arise, why do they arise, how to troubleshoot them, and finally how to make it work.

There was an XDoclet error in web.xml, then there was some confusion regarding contents of web.xml and struts-config.xml, tld files etc.

Yesterday he explained building applications using Struts in following steps.

• Create Struts Environment


• Write Struts Code


• Deploy

Sir started from scratch. He asked whether we all had struts.jar in lib folder, whether it is in the classpath of the project, whether we got Eclipse intelli-sense help after including struts.jar from Eclipse.

This investigation concluded that the problems were not because of struts.jar.

Then he proceeded on to the configuration files: web.xml, struts-config.xml. There is one mapping in web.xml which is responsible to call ActionServlet class of Struts framework. Sir suggested, "if you copied some web.xml that configures more than bare minimum functionality and you are screwed up, do remove all tags that are not required i.e. tags other than "must have" tags for application to run. Just don't follow things around blindly. Focus on one thing at a time. Go step-by-step. So, you know exactly at which step you are stuck up. Know exactly what and why you are doing it this way.

Unless application runs, errors and exceptions give us insight of the problem. So, they must be there and we should closely observe them to better understand working of tools and technologies we use. They are not bad !

Further, now-a-days every modern tool provide us with logs of its execution. Again spending 'good' time with them enriches our insight and experience.

Suppose you can not locate cause of error, try to revert to the 'last known working state' and then go on adding things to it, every time checking whether it is running or screwed up."


Kalyani Alshi, Nagpur.

Team work

Really it is good experience for us to host our website on net. We are 10 members working on this website. No doubt one day will come and everyone will surf our site on Internet. But one thing I would like to say that it is not easy task to work in the team. If any one fails to submit his given task within stipulated time, the entire team goes fail. So we learned from our exercise, everyone should be equally responsible to accomplish the task within given time period.
We also learned how to work in the team? How to work in pressure? How to complete our task within time? I am very thankful to my respected Tushar Sir to motivate us time-to-time.

Prakash Bhongade, Nagpur

Move with goal

Hello friends

Starting with the first day of my class i felt where i would stand in terms of course and also the project which i though may have flown ahead. I really feel nice working with you all. The idea of learning the course and at the same time doing the project is really nice. I personally feel that both the things going hand in hand helps a person to think practically more as he learns and applies it at the same time.
At present everyone is involved in project. I and other team menbers in the class are busy with page linking. Majority of the work of linking is done. Some members who were enable to come mailed their task and also confirmed whether it was received. I really liked the spirit with which everyone is contributing.
GOOD BYE EVERY ONE.

get together experience

Today we all Team Members got together for linkng mock pages and we most possibly tried to manage linking of mock pages. It was very funny time to share views of each others and working first time together under one shelter.we got started from morning but gathering together seems complete together till 1.00 afternoon.Each team member has done there job of creating mock pages to the best of there skills.But most of the members where unknown of HTML language, but as we started exploring things like table tag,form tag,links ect and sharing knowledege with the team members we managed somehow to built good mock pages.Creating the mock pages was first task alloted to individuals and everybody contributed best of there skills and there Knowledge.Know we where having nearabout 36 pages and we linked the them till end of the day,which was due diliverable date sir.Now this are mailed to sir and we always expect some drawbacks from this work.so we are waiting for
next task if everything goes rigth otherwise we have to review ourselves seriously.
bye.

Blog Writing Checklist

While writing a blog these are the points to consider.

1. Write the text first
   The write-up is the part which matters most. Do the complete write-up first.
   
   
2. Write suitable title for the blog
   The title should reflect the summary of the content.
   
   
3. Check for Spelling and Grammar Mistakes
   Read your write-up thoroughly to check for spelling mistakes. Correct all the punctuation mistakes and typos.
   
   
4. Hyperlink obvious words
   Now use the hyperlinking tool to hyperlink as many words you feel can be hyperlinked to their respective web sites. Most keywords will have a relevant page on Wikipedia
   
   
5. Insert Images
   Blogs look good with some images to spice them. Search on Flickr for some intuitive images to insert on the blog. Ensure that the images are not copy protected before inserting images. Now a days some images have a creative commons license which is suitable for this type of image spicing. Creative Commons site also have a search feature to search videos, text, images which are under creative commons license.
   
   
6. Add Labels
   Blogs should have relevant keywords describing the content. This way the content can be indexed by the search engines and aggregators and show when people search for some keyword.

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Learning together is fun...

Welcome friends!

It's really an enthusiastic experience to learn things this way. All of us i.e. me and my team members were busy today designing the mock pages. A little pressure, little pleasure and placing new things in your kitty, this is what we are experiencing , working together in a team.

Hope to continue with the same vigour and enthusiasm throughout the process which is imparting , not only technical learning but many great things like committment, discipline, sharing and much more, which are invincible parts of life.

Greetings........

Meenakshi

Enjoying the challenges

Hello friends,

In yesterday's meeting everybody is assigned by a task to complete, with a deadline. I hope everyone is busy in completing their tasks and must be enjoying it.

The task assigned to me is quiet different. I has to create database for our site in MS- Access. Although we will be using Mysql as database for our project, mock designing it in access will help us understand and improve it in a better way.

My task is now completed, I mailed the database to Tushar Sir.

Best of Luck to my Colleagues.

Swanand Khanzode

Hi dear frinds!

Hi dear frinds,
i am here with my first blog on mydearbooks.com blog site. feeling gr8 to be a part of a web project where i am involded right from mockup design. am done with two of my mockups today. lets meet day after tomorrow with more updates and thoughtfull reviews from all members to link up our individual tasks...afterall the first make of our site is going to be displayed soon!

cheers and happy work!!

~Gouri Ghotkar

New things to learn....

Hello Friends,

As u know that we started to create a web site mydearbooks.com which will be soon launched. Let me tell about the scenario before starting this project.we all around are 10 students who are working on this project under Tushar Sir Guidance as a Project Manager.

Today we have been given the task to generate the mock HTML pages and our deadline is day after tomorrow morning. Each of us have been assigned to generate 4 HTML pages, well i too have to complete four HTML pages.

This is my first blog, and my coligues are saying that have you completed writing blog because you have started writing much before. I have see HTML pages too. So let hope i can complete my task as soon as possible.

Vinay Kapse

Gearing up...

Hello friends!

Gearing up for the development of our website "mydearbooks.com" , we started with the Mock Development and Reviews of the page designing process. The task was distributed amongst all of us and we submitted a design page on the various topics alloted to us, thereafter we have been assigned the task of reviewing the pages, so that they can be designed into real HTML pages.

Another important discussion which took today is of the development environment for our project.Sandbox was introduced to us and we were taught the complete directory structure to be used for our project development.

It's really exciting to start the project in this manner, doing our tasks and exchanging the roles with committments and concern not only for self, but for the team as a whole. We feel elated to be in an atmosphere where we can discuss our activities and share our problems too.

An enthusiatic beginning!........marching way ahead...

sandbox - the complete development environment

Hello friends,

Here we are learning lots of new concepts, modern technologies and tools daily.

Let me introduce you what we learnt today.

Most of the people are aware of Source Control Systems such as CVS or SVN.

Wherein developers check-in their source code or check-out. The Source Control Systems are required to maintain versions of project documents including source code.

But, sandbox is a directory which comprises of complete development environment of a project. Development environment contains tools used such as Eclipse, Jakarta Tomcat, Jakarta Ant etc.

The complete development environment is checked-in into some Source Control Systems.

We all know that today version dependency amongst different tools is a prominent issue. Tools must be mutually version complaint.

Further, if you have developed a product for a client, you have to provide maintenance for that product. That means, client pays you for development as well as post-implementation support. So, if he comes to you after one year for maintenance or enhancement to the product then you will need tools that were used during previous release.

Thus, sandbox comes handy in such situations.

Further, there is an International convention used as tags-trunk-branches in Software Engineering discipline.

Tags - tags are releases of a software product. For example: beta 1.0, version 1.0.

Trunk - trunk means common stream of development wherein developers can find latest copy of regression tested source code of the product.

Branches - branches are isolated arena of development wherein experimentation are done with the source code. The source code will undergo unit testing, regression testing and then only can appear into the trunk.

The contents of sandbox directory is organized using this convention.

The sandbox directory structure is as under:

dearbooks

• branches
  
• tags
  
  
  
  • beta 1.0
    
  • version 1.0
    
  
  
• trunk
  
  
  
  • src
    
    
    
    • main
      
    • test
      
    • web
      
      
      
      • classes
        
      • lib
        
      • WEB-INF
        
      
      
    
    
  • tools
    
    
    
    • eclipse-3.2
      
    • jakarta-ant-1.6.5
      
    • jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28
      
    
    
  
  

"Projects are more about commitments than just application of technologies."

After finalizing the project, we started to work with mydearbooks.com .

Sir divided the complete project into modules and assigned modules to the four groups of our developer team. To show mock web pages for the assigned module was the task due on today (Monday, 22 Jan. 2007).

But, some of our team members didn't show up.

Sir explained that such "getting-by" attitude prevents you from getting success. He continued further, "You as developers must understand that you are responsible for what you commit. In corporate sector, there will be always someone above you who demands for work. And once you commit that you will do certain work then it is your responsibility to fulfil your commitment. Because, for developers/resources in a company it is the Project Leader who demands for getting work done. He literally relies on his team-members to deliver the project. And then, if you diverge from your commitment it is he who is held responsible for the failure. There are situations when you understand only after commiting that you are not able to deliver your chunk but then, there are also ways to recover from such situations. For that, as soon as you come to know that you can not complete the task for whatever (genuine) reason you feel, report your project leader well in time. Project leader has authority to configure things differently to make it work provided if it is reported well in time and not at the 'eleventh hour'.

During project you have to acquire not only technical skills a.k.a. hard skills but also you are required to learn soft skills (such as, protocols of working in a team, team-spirit, resposibility, fulfiling your commitments ...). "

We all know that what a single thing that matters in life is "attitude". For example: being consistent, keeping work ethics, urge for keeping your words, fulfiling commitments, trying to recover from failure, are all "positive attitude" of a person. Further, doing getting-by work, hiding mistakes, etc. comes under "negative attitude".

"Further, if a developer shows getting-by attitude in his work, after bearing with him for four-five times he is flagged as "non-competent resource". Company is not going to bare with him for life-long and if his same attitude persists soon he is layed-off."

So, "Projects are more about commitments than just application of technologies." was a lesson we learnt today.

Moral of the story is that in this competent and professional software industry you need to have "professional attitude" within you to grow up.

To know whether you are a professional, checkout:
Are you a professional ?

Discussion on project-topic

We all showed our interest to do a web project in a team as today 'web development in Java' (J2EE technology) is a buzzword.

Tushar sir asked all of us to think on some project that we can take up provided the project should have some unique feature to offer.

We suggested two projects:

1. To create library that wraps Struts framework in order to assist developers minimize web project life-time.
2. To create Internet Banking Solution using Struts.

But, these concepts are already taken by other communities.

During research for project topic on Internet I came across one website http://www.java.net . On this site you may find several open-source projects based on Java and the best part is you can join or submit your project there. This website is powered by Sun Microsystems, Inc. , Oreilly and Collabnet.

Next day, we started our discussion on project topic.

Sir first explained what type of projects are there that we should not go for and why. Projects such as:
Online Forums, Issue Tracker, Messaging Service, Wiki, Search Engine (because, Search Engines are non-web projects. Storage, Tuning etc is the main focus.), Online Document Sharing Sites (such as http://docs.google.com), Link Sharing Sites (such as http://del.icio.us), Confluence (Confluence comprises of forum, issue tracker, messaging service, wiki.)

After this, he introduced the concept of creating a website for book-lovers. The unquieness of this website lies in making it available in context of rich Indian literature. Book lovers will be able to find books such as "Chhava", "Shriman Yogi", "Rau", "Adamya Sahas - by A.P. J. Kalam", "Kargil", "Agnipath" etc.
Members of this site will be able to share their reading experiences by posting reviews on books. This is a great news for Indian readers. Isn't it ??

And we all excitedly agreed upon and thus we have finalized to work on mydearbooks.com, the website.

cheers..,
Kalyani Alshi, Nagpur.

Life is journey...not the destination

Hello Friends,

We, the team of 10 members, are bringing a website http://www.mydearbooks.com for book lovers very soon. During the development of our site, we will be sharing our thoughts, experiences, problems, knowledge with you people. So nice....let us starts with this new journey.

Best of luck to my team members.

Bye..

Prakash Bhongade,Nagpur

Why projects are important ?

Let me take this oppurtunity to tell you all that Mr. Tushar Joshi, a well-known teacher and a super-techie, is currently running a training batch for Professional J2EE developers at Omitsoft Solutions, Nagpur.

Presently, he is working with Info-spectrum India Pvt. Ltd. (IIPL), Nagpur as Java Architect.

I consider myself fortunate enough to be able to join this training because, the training we get here is really industry-oriented.

You can check out curriculum for this training programme at http://www.tusharvjoshi.com/javaprof.php

It is only after going through the curriculum of this training that one can understand Java in this case, or any language for that matter is just a tool to work within our technology driven industry. There is a lot more on the top of programming languages that drives professional software development.You must know concepts such as Agile software Development, Extreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Design Patterns...

All professional development today revolves around such philosophies.

After getting such professional training you become a valuable resource to the industry, no doubt, but then you must be able to demonstrate your knowledge and skills. Here is where project comes into the picture.

Project requires application of all knowledge, technical and analytical skills. That's why projects are important.

So, we have decided to take up a project (to develop a website: http://www.mydearbooks.com) based on technology known as Apache Struts. Other technologies that we will be using in this project are JSP, Servlets, JUnit for unit testing our code units, Apache Ant, EclEmma etc.

cheers..,
Kalyani Alshi, Nagpur.

Let's begin this journey together...

Hello friends!
"mydearbooks.com" is not just another website in our pool of websites, it's going to be something different, interesting ,exciting and above all enriching us all!

All book lovers can own their books and can share their valuable experiences with others.Reading a book is a wonderful experience but sharing the experience is a beautiful opportunity which we are going to get here.This venture is a dream of Mr. Tushar Joshi, our Respected Guide and we developers in a team of 10, being trained at Omit Soft Solutions will be contributing to it.

Dear readers, we assure you that we will be sharing our experiences during the development of this Website with you and invite you for your sincere comments and suggestions.

So,let's begin this journey together and experience the joy of walking along..............

Regards
Meenakshi Baiswar

Hi Friends

Hi Everybody,
Myself Virendra Umale,First time i use this blog and i am very excited to write my blog.From this blog i will share my quieres,my experience and difficulties.I am very happy from this moment,i get a chance to work on this project.
So Friends share your views to each other and solve your difficulties through this blog.
Cheerup......

VIRENDRA UMALE,NAGPUR

Cool Hi To All Friends From Bhushan.

Hi
Friends,i am really happy and excited on the moment of writting my first blog.I would like to take this
apportunity as the excellent means of communicating my thoughts,views and of course my problems and difficulties and lot many to all.Also quiries from you all peaple are welcomed too.Let us make this journey a
pleasant experience.So friends let's procced....
Bhushan Manjre,Nagpur.

A warm welcome on mydearbooks.com !!

Hello there !

This blog (mydearbooks.com) is dedicated to share daily experiences, views, and thought process of developers of an upcoming website http://www.mydearbooks.com .

This venture is undertaken by Mr. Tushar Joshi at Omitsoft Solutions, Nagpur.

I am Kalyani Alshi, one among the core developers of http://www.mydearbooks.com the website.

The website http://www.mydearbooks.com is meant to be an online community of all book-lovers. All members of this community will own a book-shelf where they can add their dear books that they own or read and can now share their reading experiences through book reviews. Isn't it great ??

Not only this, they can get suggestions on what to read next by knowing latest title they have read.

Some of you might be wondering as to what is so special in it when there are such type of matured communities already around such as http://www.librarything.com and http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com . And yes it is true, but there you may not find desired services working in context of rich Indian literature.

We are a group of ten developers working on this project and you can expect more of our experiences during development of this website, what we learn, etc. coming up daily.

Dear readers, you may comment and express your views about the same.

Enjoy reading, share reading !!

cheers..,
Kalyani Alshi, Nagpur.

mydearbooks.com

A place where all my dear books can be listed and reviewed and shared with my friends. A list of books, a catalogue to show my friends. A place to know who is reading my favourites.