Why just 3 Idiots? Why not the entire nation?

I truly enjoyed the latest flick of Aamir, the preacher. It’s interesting to see Bollywood coming up with good messages and this time for better education system. Its second tryst by Aamir, the first one was taare zamine per, where he tried to show the challenges around a student’s life and now again in 3 idiots he has brought some good points about the process we follow in colleges.
Although this movie is loosely based on Chetan bhagat’s 5 point someone but it has got its own charm and an entertaining way to put across the strong message. I believe it’s a good eye opener for all Indians including students, parents, teachers and honorable education minister. It a must watch for one and all. If you think you will go and get tickets at show time then you are wrong. Go with an advance booking. By the way I managed to get ticket in black :-)

Signed Applet and how to make a signed jar

A signed Applet is a trusted Applet (applet will reside inside a jar). In order to get access to the file system all jar files in an application must be signed. By default for security reasons, Java applets are contained within a sandbox.

This means that the applets can’t do anything, which might be threatening to the user’s machine (e.g. reading, writing or deleting local files, putting up message windows, or querying various system parameters).

Early browsers had no provisions for Java applets to reach outside of the sandbox. Recent browsers, however have provisions to give “trusted” applets the ability to work outside the sandbox. For this power to be granted to one of your applets, the applet’s code must be digitally signed with your unforgettable digital ID, and then the user must state that he trusts applets signed with your ID. The mistrusted applet can request to have privileges outside the sand box but will have to request the user for privileges every time it executes. But with the trusted applet the user can choose to remember their answer to the request, which means they won’t be asked again.

Let’s see what it takes to create your own signed applets. There are few tools given by Sun to create your own signed applets. It mainly comprise of three main steps.

(1) First step is generating a keypair with the keytool.

D:/j2sdk1.5/bin/keytool -genkey -alias green -keypass greenpass

green is the alias for the keypair, and greenpass is the password to access that alias(or keypair). The keypair
will be stored in the file .keystore in your homedirectory unless you specify otherwise.
You'll be asked a lot of questions, you may lie or just hit enter!

(2) Create a self-signed certificate.

D:/j2sdk1.5/bin/keytool -selfcert -alias green

(3) After the keypair has been generated the jar file can be signed with jarsigner.

jarsigner YourJarFileName alias

d:/j2sdk1.5/bin/jarsigner Test.jar green
It will ask for both passwords specified while generating the keys.

The jar file has now been signed. Now you can distribute this jar file to anyone or it can run on any system with the privilege to access your file system.

Note: this signature is only valid for 6 months. After that it will expire so you probably need to sign it again after 6 months.

New features in Java 6.0 (Mustang)

In this Java release SUN has not done much changes at language level rather major enhancement is done in core, XML and desktop sections.

Any feature or enhancement in Java is encapsulated in the form of a JSR (Java Specification Request) which details the need for a specific functionality to be available in the Java Platform that can be used by Applications. These JSR's will be reviewed and released by Java Expert Groups (JEG).

Following the major list of features (JSRs') that comes with the Java 6.0.

Java Compiler API (JSR 199)
JDBC 4.0 (JSR 221)
Scripting in the Java Platform (JSR 223)
Pluggable Annotation Processing API (JSR 269)
Common Annotations (JSR 250)
Java API for XML Based Web Services - 2.0 (JSR 224)
JAXB 2.0 (JSR 222)
Web Services Metadata (JSR 181)
Streaming API for XML (JSR 173)
XML Digital Signature (JSR 105)
Java Class File Specification Update (JSR 202)

I will try to explore and explain each of these JSR's in my future articles.
The latest java 6.0 can be downloaded from here. I am really excited about scripting framework, scripting API and new JDBC 4.0 API in this release.


List of top 10 features in Java SE 6.0 adapted from SUN's site

Web Services
You get first-class support for writing XML web service client applications (death of Apache Axis?). No more messing with the plumbing (unless you really want to). You can also expose your APIs as .NET interoperable web services with a simple annotation.
For developers who want to handle XML directly Mustang adds new parsing and XML to Java object-mapping APIs, previously only available in Java EE platform implementations or the Java Web Services Pack.

Scripting
You can now mix in JavaScript technology with your Java technology source code, useful for prototyping. Also useful when you have teams with a variety of skill sets.

Database
The final Mustang development kit will co-bundle the all-Java JDBC database, Java DB based on Apache Derby. This should enable developers (new to Java) to get a jumpstart on java development.
Developers will get the updated JDBC 4.0, which focuses on ease of use. It contains many feature additions like support for XML as an SQL datatype and better integration of Binary Large OBjects (BLOBs) and Character Large OBjects (CLOBs) into the APIs. Additional features that improve ease of use include removal of some JDBC boilerplate and some of the new annotations that make SQL strings embed better into your JDBC application - like decorating your getAllUsers() method with an @Query(sql="select * from user") annotation, and that being all you need. More annotation love for you.

More Desktop APIs
GUI developers get a large number of new tricks to play like the ever popular yet newly incorporated SwingWorker utility to help you with threading in GUI apps, JTable sorting and filtering, and a new facility for quick splash screens to quiet impatient users.

Monitoring and Management
The really big deal here is that you don't need do anything special to the startup to be able to attach on demand with any of the monitoring and management tools in the Java SE platform. Mustang adds yet more diagnostic information, and we co-bundled the infamous memory-heap analysis tool Jhat for forensic explorations of those core dumps.

Compiler Access
Really aimed at people who create tools for Java development and for frameworks like JavaServer Pages (JSP) or Personal Home Page construction kit (PHP) engines that need to generate a bunch of classes on demand, the compiler API opens up programmatic access to javac for in-process compilation of dynamically generated Java code. Finally you don't have to save your code as a Java files and invoke javac to generate a classfile, a clumsy procedure at best.

Pluggable Annotations
Java tool and framework vendors (and you) can define annotations and have core API support for plugging in and executing the processors that do the heavy lifting. It seamlessly integrates your custom annotations .

Desktop Deployment
Better platform look-and-feel in Swing technology, LCD text rendering (more clarity on LCD monitors like Vista), and snappier GUI performance overall. Java applications can integrate better with the native platform with things like new access to the platform's System Tray and Start menu. At long last, Mustang unifies the Java Plug-in technology and Java WebStart engines, which just makes sense. Installation of the Java WebStart application got a much needed makeover.

Security
Mustang simplified the job of security administrators by providing various new ways to access platform-native security services, such as native Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and cryptographic services on Microsoft Windows for secure authentication and communication, Java Generic Security Services (Java GSS) and Kerberos services for authentication, and access to LDAP servers for authenticating users.

Quality, Compatibility, Stability
Sun has around 80,000 test cases and several million lines of code testing conformance. People have been downloading (and testing) snapshots of Mustang for the last 15 months and filing bugs. So even before beta several quality and regression issues were fixed. Performance is claimed to be better than J2SE 5.

LAKSHYA program by HCL for freshers

HCL has introduced a unique program called LAKSHYA for 2009 and 2010 BE and MCA freshers where by they are proving an assured placement after the completion of this program. other features include live industry project wi-fi campus.

To register visit click here. see the details below in their advertisement.
























One thing i don't appreciate about this program is that students need to buy HCL laptops.
i don't know why people have hidden agenda behind good work. I feel HCL is doing this program to boost their own revenues rather than helping the fresh talents :-)

Stock details on Gtalk by Zibika.com

It's really cool to see Zibika stockbot, a chat-based stock search service that allows users to check the current stock prices on BSE and NSE through Google Talk.
You just need to add market.zibika@gmail.com as a friend in GTalk.
Its so easy to use it, now no need to login to different sites to check stock prices. They have few very simple commands like

Sensex --> gives you sensex current points
Nifty --> gives you nifty current points
BSE jindal steel --> gives you current price of jindal steel on BSE
NSE axis bank --> gives you current price of axis bank on NSE

Type BSE or NSE followed by the company name.

I think stockbot is a good idea, since many people check stock updates on their mobile, it becomes easy and convenient. Secondly if you are traveling then you don't need to open your laptop and check for the updates.

See the screen below.

TATA second career for women professionals

Tata group, a well know name and pride of nation. Truly Tata’s are the creative thinkers.You name it they have it. From steel to cars, from software to hardware they are into everything. The brand is so huge that it has impact on our daily lives. The good thing is that they into education as well. Their new initiative is really a big leap towards women empowerment. Yes I am talking about second career program for women by Tata group.

This programme is currently open only to women who have work experience of at least 4 continuous years or more in specific domain areas.Currently SCIP II is open only to candidates who are currently residing in Mumbai and Bangalore. SCIP II is extension of SCIP which once again focuses on women professionals. This program is intended to spread over 6 months.

There is no placement guarantee at the end of the project.However, the women professionals have the option of exploring full-time employment on mutually acceptable terms with the respective Group Company.

They are looking for people from various fields like Marketing , Sales , Advertising / Communications, Human Resource Management , Finance / Accounting, Legal , Manufacturing , Engineering , IT , Corporate Planning, Hospitality , Retail , CSR , Other Corporate Functions.

Main highlights of the program

• Attractive project stipend up to Rs. 4 lakhs
  
• Flexi-time ‘Live’ business projects in Mumbai & Bangalore
• Project presentation to Tata Team
• Management Development Programme conducted by Tata Management
• Training Centre
• HR helpline during the programme
• Work certificate

Last date for registration 20^th Aug. Visit the FAQ section for more details on their site and spread the word

soapUI - super weapon for web services developer and testers.

soapUI is a free and open source tool for Invoking, Inspecting, Developing, Mocking and Testing Web Services.It is mainly aimed at developers and testers providing or consuming WSDL or REST based Web Services (Java, .net, etc) .
It can be downloaded from sourceforge site .Also see the getting started tutorials at soapui website.

Below is the sample screen which shows the request and response xml while testing the web service. you can give specific parameters in request and click on run button and the response xml will be shown next to it.


















below screen has option to specify WSDL path , you can also specify the output directly where you want it to generate stub. this screen is specific to Axis2.






















below option is cool one. here one can specify various preferences based on their requriement and choice. it has option for almost all the tools/technique to generate your web services. let say if you wanna use axis2 then you should browse the path of your axis2 directory and save the settings.