The end of year 2008! 2008年结束了!

2008 is a year full of sorrows. A lot of people are suffering from the Economic Tsunami caused by the losing credibility of the financial system in the U.S due to the sub-prime crisis. The negative effect of this man made disaster is likely to continue in the coming few years. Fortunately many countries are showing positive attitude to work among all of them together to overcome this problem as soon as possible. I hope the level of confidence will restore next year, which is year 2009. I wish everyone a good year of 2009!

2008年，对于人类，尤其中国人来说，是蛮多灾多难的。最重要的世界大事莫过于起源于美国次贷危机的金融海啸了！至今各国的对金融海啸的反应都非常的积极，我觉得主要是信心崩塌的问题。相信当每个人的信心渐渐恢复了之后，全球将重新迅速迈入了又一个欣欣向荣的阶段。最重要的是各国都能把这次的事件当作反面教材，牢牢记得，如此错误千万莫重犯！最后，期待经济能于2009年复苏！人人皆能分得糖果！

Production

Finally my WBI adapter for Kenan (a finance system built by Accenture) has gone for PRODUCTION last week. I thought after that everything will be fine. However...

I hit the Tuxedo connection error again. The murderer is the Tuxedo client library again! This time i migrated the jar version that i edited and put to the one at production server. It did not work! I was panicked!

Luckily i deployed the system earlier than the agreed time and i discovered the problem earlier. I still had the whole night trying to fix the problem. I went back and worked from home until 1 something in the morning. Finally i got the solution which is i have to set TUXEDO relevant environment variables at either my startup script or my user's profile (.profile). (It's AIX machine)

I went to bed after that. 4am in the morning i was awakened by a call from maxis staff to stand by for testing before production. What frustrated me most is a lot of tables and database objects are not granted with enough privileges. This problem has been troubling me till the morning.

Also, a lot of late requirements came out only after the users found out some data integrity issue. That even worsened the problem.

The fight continued until 5 something in the late afternoon next day. The client decided to switch to a backup plan. Thus the production was announced failed.

The Jar Manifest

Today i learned something about the Manifest file inside JAR file.

I found out that path for the Class-Path property starts from the path where the jar is located.

For example, if you place your JAR file at C:/myApp/service/myJar.jar, and you want to add a library (C:/myApp/lib/A.jar) to your manifest file, you will NOT be able to achieve that! Remember this!

The root path for the Class-Path property in the manifest.mf file starts with the path where the jar file installed.

In this case, if you want to put your classes into manifest.mf, you have to move the C:/myApp/lib/ to C:/myApp/service/lib

Correct me if i am wrong.

Hectic weeks

I had a tricky problem with the Wepshere Business Integration(WBI) Adaptor. There was a error message saying that the jar file in my customized adaptor (tuxedo.jar) failed to load a 'so' file. It uses loadFile method from java.lang.System and somehow that particular file could not be found. I double checked the LIB_PATH(AIX machine) and java.lib.property and they are correct.

In the end i decompiled the particular class from the tuxedo.jar, modified the source code by using load method in java.lang.System instead of loadFile method. The load method will require us to specify the absolute file path. It works!!!

IBM Websphere Business Integrator Adapter

My recent work is much on maintaining an adapter called Kenan Adapter deployed on an IBM product called IBM Websphere Business Integrator(WBI). This product basically picks up XML message in the queue and processes the particular messages. I was struggling on getting the web services call to work. I tried a few methods but the web services call just did not work. My project manager who has a very solid technical background could not provide a solution too. In the end he concluded that an RMI program cannot just call another RMI. The WBI framework itself is RMI based. Hence he helped me to build a standalone Java application that listens to the queue all the time, picks up messages then calls the web services. Last Friday i tested one round. The web service call was successful!

Should i change job again?

Recently i was sent to a Telco company to service them. I will have to be based at there for a long time. I was very shocked on the first day that i need to take over a colleague's task that is in testing phase and he is going to fly off 3 days later! I did not expect something like this could happen. It should be well arranged in such a big corporation. They could not just get some one new in and expected the him to fix problems asap! A proper hand over must be done and the process should be given a proper timeline but not to make it like cooking instant noodle! The project could fail due to something like this! If i need work have a few late nights i do not mind but the quality will not be guaranteed! That is for sure, that's happening to everyone especially when a project has to be completed in hurry. Normally the project would end up being delayed due to lots and lots of bugs! How can you give birth to a baby in 9 months???

What most frustrated me was, last Friday 4 somthing the client's manager showed some problesm to me and expected me to fix it! I told him directly that i did not really have the idea of what he was trying to explain to me of the problem! Well, that is ok. I can liase with my colleague back in The Philipines. But, this manager kept calling and asking the status. I was frustrated. My sickness nearly came back again! He made me very tension. He should have trusted me more! If things continue this way i would consider to leave this big corporation!

I am looking forward to further my Master study and focus on research & development field. I believe that is something i want. Wish me good luck!

别开生面的婚宴

上个星期六晚，我见证了一场别出心裁的婚宴。

婚宴以自由餐形式来进行。老一辈可能认为这怎么行吧？因为自由餐于人有点寒酸的感觉，不好看。可是，那场自由餐婚宴盛会并不难看，反而简单又隆重。场面布置得非常典雅高贵，令客人有如处身在热带丛林内用餐。那种感觉非常的和谐，可能就是“天人合一”的境界吧？呵呵。

婚宴特别之处在于，有一个小小的婚礼见证仪式。新郎及新娘站在会场中心处，说了好多令人感动的话。由于新娘是辅导员，所以说得一口非常标准之华语，表达能力更不用多说。新郎则看得出不善发言。这我很早救知了，只因我与新郎共事了一段日子，所以对其个性我还蛮了解。新娘的同事也一个接一个上台发言，个个也是说话高手，在场的宾客获益不浅啊，呵呵。

新郎新娘还请来了一支乐队为宾客们献唱，他们的素质都很好，大家吃饭时也不会闷，有悦耳的歌声陪伴。

食物方面当然及不上普通婚宴酒席的菜式。可是我很满意，因为我吃得刚刚好，不会有太胀的感觉。我对普通婚宴酒席的铺张与浪费早就不认同了，所以自由餐正和我意。

有机会跟新郎说说几句，他说，“你就参考参考吧！”。呵呵。

特别感谢新郎这次邀请我去他的这场婚宴，我得以大开眼界。我认为，这场婚宴偏重于西式。这很好，值得鼓励，我们该不时融合中西的优点，来创造出新文化，为我们的原有文化锦上添花，增添活力。