Tag Archives: problem

DejaVu : Web Services!

For the un-initiated, I am working on my lesser liked topics in the programming world, JS and WS!

I had recently started appreciating the WS without XML/Annotations a few weeks back, but to my surprise, the XFire implementation is no more supported in Spring 3.x hence I had to fall back on XML and Annotations.

I could come up with a working example of contract first WS development from here, and I was happy to see things working as expected, except for the inherent pain of seeing and using XML/Annotations.

This made me re-visit my understanding of whether to use java-first or wsdl-first approach for development.

I was initially a supporter of java-first simply due to my dis-liking for XML, now it seems a wsdl-first approach can keep the concentration of implementation towards the data structure of the messages that go to-and-fro.

That said, if I develop a java-first implementation, and give the 3rd party implementation team the link to the wsdl, does the 3rd party implementor stand to loose anything?

Either way’s even if they are using something other than java to consume the services, they have to wrap the response as per their conveneince, the only tradeoff that I seem to have is the structure of the wsdl message is not the fundamental change item, but the java method arguments become the items that define/control the change.

The only flexibility that I might be loosing here is the power of functional programming language, as-in imagine if a functional programmer implements a wsdl as per my current understanding, I question, does that programmers changing of the wsdl based on the arguments that come and go, affect(ease/pains) my implementation?

To conclude, do I stand to loose anything if I *still* go the java-first implementation way?

Your thoughts?

~rohit.

Stable Dev Environment?

2 Comments

Once upon a time there was a Q&A that happened as follows…

Q:So when can you say that your local dev environment is ready?
A:When you have run a comprehensive unit test, pre-existing or drafted yourself.

Q:What is a comprehensive unit test?
A:One that covers all major components of the architecture you are working on.

Q:What can be the major components of an architecture, one may be working on?
A:Layer Code, deployment, DB, Jndi context, orm context, 3rd party API context.

Q:What’s your point?
A:You environment ain’t ready until all your environments are not accessible from your box. The best way to ensure this is with a unit test and know thy environment!

Maven and Proxy scripts

This friday at work, I was configuring a new system for project use.
The transition to a newer LAN was fun but what was more challenging and a little less-fun the configuration of maven for some spikes.

I was supposed to get working on spring-webflow and for that I had to get a maven controlled project up and running.

In this I faced the challenge of getting maven past the proxy settings and it being able to download all/any dependencies as required.
I had earlier, on a previous LAN setup, known the proxy server and port number and configuring the settings.xml for the same was not at all tough.
This time, our LAN is configured via some asp scripts residing at a server, so I did the following to get maven talking to the internet.

1/Go the script hosting the proxy script.
2/Download and study the proxy script, find the final else-if case for identifying the actual proxy server and port.
3/Put my user name alongwith *domain* and put it in the settings.xml[this was the part that took longest amount of time to find]

And maven got to see the light of the internet!

It is important to note that maven does not support NTLM authentication(I assume this was the problem) although there are tools(cntlm), which I tried working for 5-10 minutes but did not get through.

The agile India Scenario

The extreme programming wave initiated by Kent Beck et al in 1999 and since then the mature world programmers have embraced that change. A lot many clones started from that movement like agile itself, and the much widespread like scrum and lean.
Although these methodologies(or approaches?) had existed since long time, I remember reading somewhere that motorola had these practices in place since the 1960’s.

Flash-forward to India, I do not know who or when was the first project here was done with the wisdom of sound agile practices? But since I stepped into the professional way of writing software(means I was paid for what ever I did or did not), I was fortunate to see a genuine mix of these practices from the very start.Moving on to different software vendors, I notice that India per say is yet to embrace agile in spirit.

I do not travel at all, but looking around the small sample of professionals(incl self claimed agilist’s) I am dis-heartened to say the least, when I see my self surrounded by a lot of certified SCrUM(pun intended).
No doubt it has made its mark and helped realize XP too, ever since I got to know about XP, I had(still do) predicted the end of the software manager(with MBA) as a career.
The point that I want to make across is that these managers have misused the insights from agile practices to abuse the Indian developer. I have seen(and heard) *only* Indian managers who have been doing this to their Indian counterparts.
I dare say if they are given a mix of developers from different geographies, they would not do the mistake of exploiting more work in lesser time.
That is like a blind person blessed with more powers.

That being the problem around how do I( or we?) as the Indian developer in the clutches of the Manager (with MBA) cope with it?

Ahh! Its a complex mix out there.There are managers without MBA also.
Need to get back to the drawing board and start afresh!