Just came to know from Oracle website that they have completely integrated Sun certifications with Oracle certification program. The title of certification has been changed. Now Sun Certified Java Programmer will be know as Oracle Certified Professional, Java Programmer.
From Oracle website:

Effective September 1, 2010, all Java, Oracle Solaris, MySQL, Open Office and Oracle Solaris Cluster certifications have been re-published and rebranded under the Oracle Certification Program. This change will not impact any of the exam objectives and with Oracle’s firm commitment to the growth of the program, these credentials will continue to be some of the highest recognized achievements in the industry.

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I just found Pakistani flag Symbian S60 v5 theme. Tried on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. And it looks great. I should found this theme on 14th of August.

You can download theme file from here.

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In this post you will find how we can integrate Spring with Struts2 through struts2-spring-plugin. And we will also see how we can use dependency injection. I assume that you are successfully running a Struts2 application. We will add our Spring integration code in that.

Lets take a scenario. You have an Interface DAO.java that has abstract methods. You have written separate implementation for it. Lets suppose for different databases. So we are going to use the implementation of this DAO in our Struts2 application.

DAO.java

package com.pakzilla;
public interface DAO {
public void save(Object o);
}

DAOOracle.java

package com.pakzilla;
public class DAOOracle implements DAO {

public void save(Object o) {
System.out.println("Oracle implementaion");
}
}

DAOMySQL.java

package com.pakzilla;
public class DAOMySQL implements DAO {

public void save(Object o) {
System.out.println("MySQL implementaion");
}
}

DAOService .java

package com.pakzilla;
public class DAOService {
private DAO dao;

public void setDao(DAO _dao){
this.dao = _dao;
}

public DAO getDao(){
return dao;
}

public void saveRecord(Object o){
dao.save(o);
}
}

applicationContext.xml. You will put this file in JavaSource. So it will become the part of your classpath.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN" "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">
<beans>

<bean id="daoOracle" class="com.pakzilla.DAOOracle" />
<bean id="daoMysql"   class="com.pakzilla.DAOMySQL"/>

<bean id="daoService" class="com.pakzilla.DAOService">
<property name="dao">
<!-- swith the daos here -->
<ref local="daoMysql"/>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>

Add following in web.xml. You see we are using classpath prefix with applicationContext.xml. Because this file will be in our classpaths. And on server startup web.xml will load it.

<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
classpath:applicationContext.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

Somewhere in your Struts2 Action, where you want to insert the record.

ApplicationContext context =
       new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
DAOService daoService = (DAOService) context.getBean("daoService");
daoService.saveRecord(<your object to save>);

You must have following jars in your classpath.

antlr-runtime-3.0.jar
commons-fileupload-1.2.1.jar
commons-io-1.3.2.jar
commons-logging-1.1.jar
freemarker-2.3.13.jar
junit-3.8.1.jar
ognl-2.6.11.jar
org.springframework.asm-3.0.0.M3.jar
org.springframework.beans-3.0.0.M3.jar
org.springframework.context-3.0.0.M3.jar
org.springframework.core-3.0.0.M3.jar
org.springframework.expression-3.0.0.M3.jar
org.springframework.web-3.0.0.M3.jar
org.springframework.web.servlet-3.0.0.M3.jar
spring.jar
struts2-convention-plugin-2.1.6.jar
struts2-core-2.1.6.jar
struts2-spring-plugin-2.1.6.jar
xwork-2.1.2.jar

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We widely use open source developer tools and libraries in our daily dev life. These open source things are driven by community. I am an open source fan. And I think I must contribute to some open source project. Umm yeah, before I become a contributor I must be an active user of that project. So that I may able to see what things that need improvements or where I can fit myself to make a contribution.

There are wide areas where an open source project can be contributed.

We can

• Blog on it
• Do marketing on different forums and advocate people to use it
• Write HOWTOs or FAQs
• Discuss and reply things with developers on mailing lists

And by doing all that, I think we can earn some reputation in contributors and they can assign us on where we can fit. It’s a good idea to contribute in your favorite open source project.

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At my work I have a large application that has all web pages in table based layout. The use of Div is just limited to hide and show some content area on web page. Same is the case with CSS. Using them for styling fonts and some formatting for tables. Like every developer (not designer) I am very comfortable in developing UIs by using tables. But quite impressed with Div based layouts, as its a fashion thing for web pages. I see how gracefully div is helping to manage contents instead of tr and tds. Whenever I visit some site that has some good layout. I hit the view source of that page to see whether the designer/developer has used tables. And almost all of time I find myself alone loving tables. And I know the cost to manage a big web page all developed in table. What happen if some td missed. And I need to do the debugging by enabling the border of tables. Ehh.

Its been several years people started developing UIs in Divs. Now no one is working on tables. But if you want to shift on developing UI in Div, you need a learning curve on CSS. So what happen here? It has increased the cost of your time to develop a web page. Unless you master yourself in CSS. Huh?

So being a Java developer, should I master myself in CSS things too. If I am an independent (solo performer) developer that want to develop some app. First thing that came in my mind is, what happen when people will hit view source button. And will it not increase my time to deliver a thing. What should I consider, the features in my application? or the fear of developing the web pages in divs?

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Do you think your mind has similar type of characteristics.

Ref: Mingle2

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Following are the points that are highlighted in Kathi Sierra and Bert Bates book on SCJP6.

1-    Console class.
2-    NavigableSet and NavigableMap.
3-    Lower(int) and higher(int) function are added in Treeset collection.
4-    Polling method in TreeSet and TreeMap.
5-    TreeSet.descendingSet() and TreeMap.descendingMap().

Thanks to Bilal for discussing these points with me.

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I was playing around with fetching Twitter followers and friends with Twitter4J. But it was taking time to do that. So I code it with using REST urls given by Twitter. It fetches all your friends or followers. Depending upon your application that you want one list or you want to use paging. But I did it in one go. Performance wise, it will be trouble of fetching say 2000 followers or friends.

I used JDOM to parse XML.

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.DataInputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.jdom.Document;
import org.jdom.Element;
import org.jdom.input.SAXBuilder;

public class Twt {

String urlFlwrs= "http://twitter.com/statuses/followers/YOUR_TWITTER_SCREEN_NAME.xml?cursor=";
String urlFrnds= "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends/YOUR_TWITTER_SCREEN_NAME.xml?cursor=";

List followers = new ArrayList();
long cursorCounter = -1;

public static void main(String[] args) {
long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
new Twt().readFollowFriends();
System.out.printf("Total Time: %d secs",
(System.currentTimeMillis() - start)/1000);
}

void readFollowFriends(){

try {
StringBuffer followersData = new StringBuffer();
// use urlFrnds as a parameter if you want to fetch friends
URL url = new URL(urlFlwrs+cursorCounter);
URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(
urlConnection.getInputStream());
String inputLine;
while ((inputLine = dis.readLine()) != null) {
followersData.append(inputLine);
}

SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder();
Document document = builder.build(new ByteArrayInputStream(
followersData.toString().getBytes()));

Element root = document.getRootElement();
Element usersElm = root.getChild("users");
Element nextCursor = root.getChild("next_cursor");
List users = usersElm.getChildren("user");

for (int c = 0; c < users.size(); c++) {
Element user = (Element) users.get(c);
Element name = user.getChild("name");
// now you have every thing, the information of a user
// here you can populate followers list
}

if (nextCursor != null){
cursorCounter = Long.parseLong(nextCursor.getText());

if (cursorCounter != 0)
readFollowFriends();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

But you will also get following HTTP 400 error. Due to API limits by Twitter. For this we want to whitelist ourself.

java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 400 for URL: http://twitter.com/statuses/followers/YOUR_TWITTER_SCREEN_NAME.xml?cursor=-1
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1133)
at Twt.readFollowFriends(Twt.java:32)
at Twt.main(Twt.java:22)
Total Time: 7 secs

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P@SHA (Pakistan Software House Association) has come up with a great idea to promote entrepreneurship in Pakistan. They are conducting an event LaunchPad.  Previously the president of P@SHA, Jehan Ara was involved in conducting session called Startup Insiders. A panel discussion where people ask question about their startups to the people who are from silicon valley and startup gurus. LaunchPad has similar flavor to it.

This event is going to held in Lahore and Karachi. Where young entrepreneurs, students and industry professionals are welcomed to discuss their ideas and business plans and get the feedback from industry leading people in Launchpad panel. Great opportunity for business connections. Nomination form is available here. For more details, see the LanuchPad flyer, or read Jehan Ara’s blog.

I am planning to visit the event with an idea. I will submit the form for my nomination in evening.

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The most interesting thing about iPhone is its usability. People love to customize things like they want to see them. I also searched out a theme that gave the iPhone look to my Nokia 5800 XM phone. I like the icon set of iPhone and this theme has tried well to look alike.

You can download theme file from here.

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