J2ee Enterprise Solutions

Behavioural Science – Part 2

2011-11-13T13:06:00.001-08:00

Global Sourcing IT Industry

Mahmudur Rahman Manna ^[ref]

Team Formation and current practices:

Gaming World: Multi Agent System (Markov Decision Process)

In game theory, a discussed topic is Multi Agent Systems along with Markov decision process. Agent is an autonomous entity that acts in the world, interacting with its environment and with other agents. It can be a human, a robot, a software process etc. One of the key ideas behind this approach is that several different agents can cooperate to achieve certain goals. This requires the design of efficient collaboration protocols, of which team formation is a typical example.

Cooperative behaviour, which is one of the greatest advantages of agent based computing, has been studied from many different angles over the years. Coalitional games have traditionally been analysed from a game-theoretic perspective, but in recent years have attracted a lot of attention from researchers in artificial intelligence, especially in cooperative task completion. Several approaches for team formation and collaborative task solving have been considered including team formation under uncertainty using simple heuristic rules, reinforcement learning techniques and methods using distributed graph algorithms. To reason formally about cooperative games, several logics (e.g., Alternating Time Logic, Coalitional Game Logic, Strategy Logic) and other formalisms (e.g., Cooperative Boolean Games) have been introduced and used to analyse coalitional behaviour

This theory introduces definitions of:

-          Agent organisations,
-          Tasks,
-          Teams,
-          Rewards (to measure the performance of both individual agents and agent teams).

Furthermore this theory has now several developed algorithms and models for verifications. Off course those are to improve how we can derive more efficient and effective, near perfect results/successes.

Relevance of introducing this topic is clearer for the similarities it has with our multi provider and vendor oriented developments. In our case it’s not system or robot rather it’s us. A consciousness driven being whose self-esteem is highly counted to him/her rather than any team success and organisation gain if not it merges or matches with his/her self-esteem.

Its better we are already dealing with intelligent and social being, who usually loves to be in team. But also we know about lots of wars the world has seen. So the dynamics of team is really complex part to keep in a steady mode and surely if there is no such mentor body to take care of that.

But the interesting part of Markov Decision Process (MDP) is its ‘reward’ part that really counts also in human cases.

MDP has four key things:

1.       State
2.       Action
3.       Probability of an action to be in a state at a certain time
4.       Reward

And reward comes when an action achieves a certain state.

Figure 6: MDP (‘S’ refers Stateand ‘a’ refers action)

There is much implication of MDP in our multi provider based project development. Our try will be to relate team dynamics and MDP core concepts to bring on a table and analyse how it can help in having a better environment for individuals who are dwelling in heterogeneous provider based platform.

References

John B. Miner, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Foundations, Theories, and Analyses, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002

Stephen P. Robbins, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Prentice Hall International, Inc.

Fonstad, Nils, and Robertson, Engaging for Change: An Overview of the IT Engagement Model, CISR Research Briefing, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), March 2005.

Craig Schiff, Engagement Management is Key to Implementation Success, http://www.information-management.com/issues/20040401/1000840-1.html , November, 6^th 2011.

Dr. Z , Business of Stress: Rise of the Type A Machines, http://www.stresshacker.com/2010/01/business-of-stress-rise-of-the-type-a-machines/, November, 6^th 2011.

Donald Bell, UML basics: The component diagram, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/dec04/bell/, November, 6^th 2011.

Ilan Oshri and Julia Kotlarsky, Special Issue on Global Sourcing: IT Services, Knowledge and Social Capital, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/journal/v23/n1/full/2000129a.html#bib7 , November, 6^th 2011.

Taolue Chen, Marta Kwiatkowska, David Parker, and Aistis Simaitis, Verifying Team Formation Protocol with Probabilistic Model Checking, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, July 2011.

Frank Dignum, Dialogue in team formation: a formal approach, Faculty of Mathematics and Computing Science, Technical University Eindhoven.

Jos´e M Vidal, Fundamentals of Multiagent Systems with NetLogo Examples, University of South Carolina, March 2009.

S. Abdallah and V.R. Lesser. Organization-based cooperative coalition formation. In IAT, pp. 162–168. IEEE, 2004.

Roderick van cann, slinger jansen and sjaak brinkkemper, Team Composition in Distributed software development, universiteit Utrecht

Behavioural Science – Part 1

2011-11-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

Global Sourcing IT Industry

Mahmudur Rahman Manna ^[ref]

This writing is to identify specific components involved in global sourcing for IT services and signify there behavioural patterns and relationships among them. Try will be to bring out key elements that drives the process to success or turns into frustration.

Introduction

Psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science; current organisational behavioural science discusses about these topics. When two organisations get involved in a set of processes then the significant importance of organisation behavioural science becomes stronger. Engagement chemistry has a bold impact on and in the involved organisations.

Type mismatch is a usual error we have to take care of in our programming life. And in polymorphic and dynamic context, casting is a solution mostly we use. If an Interface (template or set of standard definitions) is implemented in our local context (inner organisation) and if the Interface is available in remote context then there is good possibility that our implementation will be recognisable over there. Other than that we have to customize our implementation or set our Interface there newly. Now commonly everyone is used to with the word “lookup”. In solution development normally we use this lookup with our Interface name in remote contexts to check if there is any implementation available for such interface.

Sourcing triggers with this lookup task. Hundreds of organisations having this lookup every day to get their suitable providers. Some of them have some standard of doing so and many of them don’t know even how to do this. The consideration of behavioural science should pop up here before starting this lookup.

Perspectives of Different Levels

There are specific levels in each organisation. Each level most of the time act as an independent entity with its own attitudes and attributes. On the same issue, a level would have different messages or thoughts differ from other levels.

In an organisation normal chemistry happens among:

Global Manager -- Department Manager -- Team Manager -- Team member

As they represents their level with more or less understanding of his/her environment. But when it comes to an engagement of two or more different organisations for a specific goal then the ancient chemistry not works anymore. The cross communicative functionalities gets a rapid increase on Team Level and as it is the operational level, constitutional wrong mapping on that level would create more trouble and cost for both companies. Our case is IT engagements, so we will focus more on IT issues.

A Scenario

The sourcing may be coming out from client IT department budget but other departments get involved into it more closely. Even it gets more competitive when there are different providers and vendors. Even there are cases where in same solution different providers working together -

Isn’t it already a chaos, stressful to think the level of interaction required here? It rarely found as homogenous but most of the time in heterogeneous form. And it gets more complex when a Mediator Organisation walks in and takes ownership and deals with the providers. May be a relief for sourcing organisation managers, but the social environment that builds up here is off course not hygienic, if there is no ownership to take care of the hygiene and look into the behavioural chemistry to provide stability.

Current market packages with different terms available for IT sourcing:

-          Consultancy/ professional services
-          Product based
-          Fixed
-          Development centre/ offsite
-          Onsite
-          Hybrid (onsite offsite )
-          Virtual Captive model
-          ……

Team and Individual

Our focus part will be the team and individuals in team and the elements they deal with.

As we are here for responding to globalization, behavioural science can meet the challenges that help to overcome stress and absenteeism here. We will try to figure out, how these challenges can be meet by behavioural science.

-           Workforce Diversity
-          Improving Quality and Productivity
-          Improving Skill
-          Empowering
-          Coping with frequent changes
-          Stimulating Innovation
-          Improving Ethical Behaviour

Typical Scenario of Team formation

Off course it varies based on which engagement model we are following but typically a project initiates the whole formation.

Projects are the initiators of engagements.
Projects are the initiators of changes in engagements.
Projects come with a budget and target and a deadline.
Projects not always come with plan.

And whenever it’s there, the owner starts the “lookup” with his/her budget. Owner wants to earn the credit of making its success within budget, if possible save some from budget. And this parameter in lookup task filters the existing or new providers.

References

John B. Miner, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Foundations, Theories, and Analyses, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002

Stephen P. Robbins, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Prentice Hall International, Inc.

Fonstad, Nils, and Robertson, Engaging for Change: An Overview of the IT Engagement Model, CISR Research Briefing, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), March 2005.

Craig Schiff, Engagement Management is Key to Implementation Success, http://www.information-management.com/issues/20040401/1000840-1.html , November, 6^th 2011.

Dr. Z , Business of Stress: Rise of the Type A Machines, http://www.stresshacker.com/2010/01/business-of-stress-rise-of-the-type-a-machines/, November, 6^th 2011.

Donald Bell, UML basics: The component diagram, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/dec04/bell/, November, 6^th 2011.

Ilan Oshri and Julia Kotlarsky, Special Issue on Global Sourcing: IT Services, Knowledge and Social Capital, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/journal/v23/n1/full/2000129a.html#bib7 , November, 6^th 2011.

on release date of iphone 4s - apple.com was inaccessible

2011-10-04T12:19:00.001-07:00

process n practice

2011-08-31T12:56:00.000-07:00

automatically we are always in a process. look into your morning .. from your coffee to first toilet :). my wife can easily define me :). i know you are laughing and surprisingly on yourself .. yeah mee too now laughing on myself.

now think suddenly you found, the way you go everyday to your office that is having some reparing trouble so you have to make the journey in a different way and you have no experience of other roads (n you dont have gps on your car :D). i know you are angry on me why i am even thinnking of such thing.

see!, how irritating is this! .. i mean having break in your normal process of journey to your office. but ok.. at last you reached your office. then the other day .. you know two ways to reach office. and question is now to all -

q.which way should one go?

ans: whichever is comfortable, short, easy, less costly (this is the problem if you ask any one they may if possible ask for everything :D)

q. but if that yesterday incident not happened then?

ans: i know myself, i would hardly try to be another Columbus. (if i am not that much bound)

i think you are also pretty much same but can you feel -'how irritating the change in process is before you know it is really good or bad'

why i titled it as process n practice - if you cannot show people directly the good taste of the change in their process better to give a pause; and here comes the practice ( in granual this is small piece of activity highly connected with time (when? or a context/situation/circumstances- i call it time identifier .. the way you define a time in history books)) . e.g. you have to write n you don't carry a pen and notebook but you have a mobile and :) now a days smart mobiles .. you will write there ( i am doing so.. less possibility of losing :D). see how practice grows. yeah from need and need has some connectivity with time....... -

[will continue this writing hopefully...:D but i think it was good start to introduce the thought .. now you think :D ]

how i learned data warehousing and OLAP

2011-02-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

It was my view in my academic life that only learning building a SaaS is not going to give me much scope in market as already thousands of Saas is roaming in market even as open source. And I felt like that the way corporate are adopting Saas in a adhoc basis they will be surely in trouble with having intelligent reports and it would be hard for them to create decisions from them. And I was searching such solutions which can integrate data from sporadic Saas and provide a combine view. And I found Data warehousing. And as my third years project I proposed to my supervisor the subject “Designing Data warehouse” and he wondered but accepted. But I was in sea and not getting a way to see any practical implementation my nearby, meanwhile I have covered Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. But it was not satisfying my thirst as all was just theory. I was dying to implement a demo of my own. And this thrust turned me to Oracle. At that time I heard that Oracle 9i got release with Data warehousing concepts. I jumped for it and installed in my PC. But still I was in dark .. not getting where to start.

Thousands and Thousands thanks to oracle team who has included SH (sales history) schema in oracle. After getting this schema I saw a light of having my dream as true. I got bulk of data provided by them.

I have created a dummy sales transactional database and used SH schema data in a modified way to pour that. Huh! Now I have a huge transactional database and I have already an empty start Schema (SH) database. Here comes the need of ETL now. I was so much pleased to reach in such position. Baby now it is time to do some ETL .. but how? That time the tool “Sql loader” showed me the easiest way to do that. And created some sql scripts and succeeded to perform ETL and schedule that. I was so happy to have the data in my SH schema (Data warehouse :D ). And I cannot forget learning building the Time table for the first time. Such a table was most interesting thing for me. Now data is there, fact table there.. time table there but how to create report from them and how to provide decision supporting reports. And a simple query takes huge time.

Here comes the Advanced query rollup… with clause .. thanks oracle for these. But how to minimize the query time… :D here I learned the materialized View.. I was highly excited to implement them one by one and getting the outputs. But the reports were not satisfying me. What is the benefit of having this much data and only some ordinary reports.

Where comes the OLAP. Thanks again to oracle. I created first OLAP metadata with PL/SQL definitions. It was really much interesting to create dimensions and form a cube. Earlier I have read lot of cube but writing one’s definition in my own hand was really excellent. WOW.. It was now sounding to me I have now a real useful data warehouse build by me. But I was failing to make my friends and teachers understand this thing as they were just trying to see some outputs. And I was getting frustrated that I was unable make them understand the benefit of data warehouse with OLAP only because of having lack of some beautiful UI.

And where comes the Oracle Discoverer. WOW that this tool was really a striker for me. I used that over my SH data warehouse and showed my interested friends and teachers and now they got what I was saying in the name of Data warehouse.

I was trying to switch my java programming job and get a data warehouse related job but interestingly found that corporate are expecting some white haired aged guy for their data warehouses and getting me in their interview boards they are not satisfied. I tried several places but I saw doubt in their eyes and at the end I did not get the jobs.

Here comes the Pentaho. An American company was searching some java guy and in requirement they have written – having data warehouse experience is advantage. WOW it sounded like it is for me. I submitted C.V. and they called for interview and interestingly I got the job next day. And I discovered it is Pentaho with which I have to build data warehouse on Telecom billing and do reporting.

WOW its excellent . I was amazed to get “Kettle” instead of “sql loader” for the ETL .. it is really a dynamic tool and very much useful. Doing star schema in Mysql was also a interesting thing for me. And then Mondrian OLAP server instead of Oracle OLAP.. I was just happy to get lost with that and then MDX with Jpivot instead of Oracle Discoverer.. I was really happy in working as it was all in Java and I was playing with it shaping all in any way I liked.

I was writing the whole to store some memory in written and also in a hope that some new data warehouse interested guy may read it and find some tips to go ahead.

Automation: Antidote for Bangladesh

2010-12-18T10:55:00.001-08:00

Who not knows - Corruption is the Poison - paled our motherland and each day getting more visible in smallest vein of Her. I am not going to write here any poetry or story with beautiful literature. Rather I just want to put some logic to make this title words clear to you.

What can wash away corruption...?

I have asked this question to one of Teachers. He replied "If everyone does his responsibility with honesty than there would be no corruption." . But this biblical terms could bot satisfy me as it arises another question - how can everyone be responsible?

I asked a young university student and he replied "We have to be more patriotic, we have to awake. Look to our neighbor country India, how they prospering." . But this emotional loudness also can not give me any solution as it again raises question - how can we be patriotic?

I have asked one of my known political leaders and his answer was " We have to change ourselves, If you change then watching you others will be changed." . another biblical line...

I have asked a liberation warrior of our nation and his urge is " We need another great leader". Sound to me more emotional and again I have the question - how can we get such leader?

I have asked this question to people of several profession at several places but my how was not leaving me. Then one day I have asked this question to a Old Rikshawala and he answered straight forward " why to blame thieves if you keep your doors open". I dont know why but this answer touched me. Yes I found its true. There are scopes available everywhere and that is why we can minimize our electrical and other bills, we can make less our taxes.. bla bla in all section there are huge scopes to hide information or change information.

Ok! but now I have another question poking me is - why are there so many scopes to do so? Just a bit giving pressure in my head I found the answer and it is there is lacking of transparency in processes not to external people even in internal organization people.

Oh! its Transparency. you may think now this writer is so dumb that he took lot time to understand that Transparency can kill corruption. May be it took long time for me to understand this but I am happy, I understood this. But still the the same question laughs - how can transparency be achieved?

Lets find out first how people in the system hiding or customizing information after taking bribes.

Its basically starts from reserving positions in queue.
When we go to any Govt. organization for taking services what we face normally ... we have to face a guard or clerk who will normally ignore you or not listen to you until you go close to him and whisper in low voice please help me and give him some bribe. Then suddenly you will become a VIP person and will get second or third position in queue.

We know how this can be stopped. Its simple automation, so many banks and fast food shops are using already token counters . You can take a serial token from a place or machine where serials can not be manipulated and whenever service provider pushes a button that he is done with one person the service serial number increases on a screen and this way it comes your turn. I think everyone has seen this and also satisfied with this if the system is maintained properly.

Basically what I want to say is, its possible when we are not letting the process to be tempered in its life cycle by any external interaction. I can say it more simply in two lines

" Service consumer himself can initiate the process"
" No manipulation in a running process"

But its not possible in current situation as the processes are in the hands of some people and its paused, altered or stopped whenever they want by imposing some law codes and modifying records to meet those law codes.

We need separations between Process and Users of the process (organization employees). Now there are too much dependency of on employees. Sometime to me they appear as gods in their territory.

I am using the word "Process" here several times. All are well known with this term. It is the thing which drives a function to an end and meets the function goal. And thanks to God its not human who can take bribes and modify things.

Processes are normally composed of several small events. Events one by one completes a process. Each event may need some information (we normally say input) and do work on that and passes the information with some extension to next event. Like if you want to visit a doctor:

Function: Visiting Doctor

Events:
1. reserve a appointment ( input:information is your name and number, output: serial number, time)
2. call of your serial (input: your serial number, output: our presence)
3. visit the doctor (input: diagnosis, output: prescription)
4. pay the fees ( input: amount , output: receipt) it could 2nd event in some cases.

or doing a simple complaint in a complain Center:

Function : Doing a Complaint
Events:
1. Get a serial number to do a complain
2. Call of your serial
3. Get the complain form
4. Fill the form
5. Submit it
6. Take receipt and reference number

These events can be organized or decorated in several ways to get better output but whatever it is, to do a complaint it should not take more than 10 minutes but in Bangladesh I myself has
spoiled more than 2 hours to do so. And most ambiguous part it took 10 minutes just to pull attention of the clerk who will talk to me and also there is no form rather I had to buy paper from a store and write an application with carbon paper then submit it and then the clerk found I need to put more information in my application then again re-write it , meanwhile the clerk got disappeared then i had to wait then when he arrived I submitted .. he sealed and gave me the paper that was written with carbon paper and its my proof copy. huh! And its going on year after year.

Now ask me where I went to complaint. Yes the answer is Police Department and it was because I lost my Id card and I went to do a simple General Diary which took my nearly two and half hours.

to be continued ...

Business Intelligence for newbie

2010-09-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Let’s start with this a raw value “5”. What is this? Off course it’s a value. Can you derive any meaning from it? I think no. We people call it Data/Fact. Let’s add something more with this raw value - “Sale amount USD 5”. Can you derive some meaning now? I think so. We people call it Information. Now if I add like “Fountain Pen’s sale amount USD 5” – can you know/learn something from this?-yup. This collection of information is known to us as Knowledge.

Ok, this was so simple, now let’s beautify it with three more terms context/domain, orientation and understanding.

It is like, more you relate data with one another, the more it defines the context, so the more its give you a clear understanding.

The figure can be like:

Figure: 1.1 Trend toward knowledge

So, we can come to a summary, that if we want to get knowledge we have to do a good orientation among data according to the context.

Data Orientation

Then let’s talk about data orientation/organization/relationship. Now a question comes. How to relate data? So now we can search for data structures/models. The below one is most popular model in the current market to organize data.

Figure: 1.2 Relational Data Model

What do you think about the above model? Isn’t it a table (table is known as relation)? This model is known as Relational Data Model. Databases that use this model to organize data are known as Relational Database. Following Edgar F. Codd ‘s rules and some other vendor specific rules RDBMS (system for managing relational databases) are developed. But this is not my concern. My concern is how we can define or relate data/fact in such way that it provides us knowledge.

Before going further I want to clear some aspects like, in an enterprise system two types of databases may exist. One is known as transactional/operational support database and the other is known as Decision Support/ analytical software support database.

In transactional Databases day to day transactions records are stored. And it is not much concerned with knowledge or decision making. Whereas, Decision Support/ analytical software support database which is also known as report database, main concern is summary, aggregation and knowledge.

Relational Data Model, more concerned with defining Entities but not fact

What is happening currently? We are defining a table with some columns which represents a particular entity of real world. And when we are putting data into cells maintaining column type then each row is representing an instance of that entity.

Product	Order	Customer	Date	Currency	Amount
Fountain Pen	#0001	Mr. David	01, Jan 2005	USD	5

Figure: 1.3 Relational Model to represent Entity

But if business asks question like:

What is Mr. David’s area?

What is the category of Fountain Pen?

This table can not answer the questions.

So to meet the need of the business we will define Customer and Product as entity and refer then to Sold Product with their id.

Figure: 1.4 Entity Relationships

In the same way we can relate Order with Sold Product.

But my question is why we are relating these tables. What is out objective? Can we achieve the objective in some other way more effectively and efficiently?

Let’s give a closer look. Every business has some key facts/values that define the business.

Selling Business: Sale Quantity and Amount, etc.

Telecom Business: Call duration and amount, etc.

Banking: Withdraw and deposit amount, etc.

Business to business it will vary. We call these facts as Measures of the business which will define revenue, profit, loss, future condition and all other aspects of the business.

Why these are called measures?

As, all the related perspectives of the business are measured by these values.

So, as all the business objects are measured by these facts so analysts have invented a way of relating entities. Like the below one:

Figure: 1.5 Star Schema

Figure: 1.6 Relationship with fact table.

These relate the facts more perfectly with all the entities. The base table that contains the business basic facts is known as Fact Table. The fact table has just measures and the references of the other entities. And the other entities are known as dimensions.

What is the benefit? Still this question can arise in one’s mind. But get a snap, you will get that this single table is now our concentrating point and it can answer the questions like who, how, where, why, when.

Further I will discuss lots of other things but I must mention that this is the base of all sorts of analytical data processing from relational database.

Subject Orientation in Relational database

What is a subject for a business?

- Business stakeholders interest area. Too short Answer!

I mean the certain activity where some stakeholders keep their eye. For easy understanding i can clarify it as "Business Function". So in business; Subject is Function.

Are you going to teach us something new? I know i have to face this question for the previous line. No, i am not going to teach something new. Look, Function is the objective of the business to achieve. About this all related stakeholders are discussing. How to improve this function? where to change? when to change? Who are the major role players of this function? How to motivate them? So, all headaches are about the function. Then what is subject? Subject is a topic of discussion. So without any doubt, in business Functions are subjects. Ha Ha I am really pleased to draw such logic to prove this. Now you are thinking its a simple matter, no need to write that much to make this clear. But at the beginning i know the question seemed to you a little troublesome.

Next topics:

- CWM – Common Warehouse Model

- Star Schema and Snowflake Schema

- How knowledge comes

- More flexibility in defining knowledge through Object Orientation

- Meta Data

- Relational to OLAP

- OLAP Objects

- MDX (Multi dimensional Expressions)

- ETL

- And more.. .

References

http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm

http://www.viktoria.se/~dixi/km/chap3.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd%27s_12_rules

http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/database-design.html#relational.db

Pentaho 3.5 and BIRT 2.5 Integration

2010-05-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Eclipse BIRT 2.5 and Pentaho 3.5 Integration and Configuration:

Contents:

1. BIRT Default Configuration in Pentaho:
2. Upgrading BIRT 2.2 to BIRT 2.5 in Pentaho 3.5
3. Known Errors
4. Fix of the Errors

Eclipse BIRT has two sections:
• Eclipse BIRT Designer 2.5
• Eclipse BIRT Runtime 2.5

You can download them from http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/
As Eclipse BIRT has its own runtime so it handles independently database connections and report rendering in different formats.

BIRT Default Configuration in Pentaho:

In Pentaho BIRT runtime is located in:
biserver‐ce‐3.5.0.RC2\biserver‐ce\pentaho‐solutions\system\BIRT

In Pentaho BIRT writes chart images in:
biserver‐ce‐3.5.0.RC2\biserver‐ce\pentaho‐solutions\tmp

In Pentaho BIRT writes log in:
biserver‐ce‐3.5.0.RC2\biserver‐ce\pentaho‐solutions\system\logs\BIRT

In Pentaho BIRT runtime libraries (jars)
\biserver‐ce‐3.5.0.RC2\biserver‐ce\tomcat\webapps\pentaho\WEB‐INF\lib

And BIRT jars are:
1. chartengineapi‐2.2.1.jar
2. com.ibm.icu‐3.6.1‐v20070906‐birt‐custom.jar
3. commons‐cli‐1.0.jar
4. commons‐codec‐1.3.jar
5. coreapi‐2.2.1.jar
6. dataadapterapi‐2.2.1.jar
7. dteapi‐2.2.1.jar
8. engineapi‐2.2.1.jar
9. flute‐1.1.1.jar
10. modelapi‐2.2.1.jar
11. js‐1.7R1.jar
12. org.eclipse.emf.common‐2.2.1.v200702131851‐birt‐custom.jar
13. org.eclipse.emf.ecore‐2.2.2.v200702131851‐birt‐custom.jar
14. org.eclipse.emf.ecore.xmi‐2.2.2.v200702131851‐birt‐custom.jar
15. org.w3c.css.sac‐1.3.0.v200706111724‐birt‐custom.jar
16. scriptapi‐2.2.1.jar

BIRT Default JDBC driver location:
biserver‐ce‐3.5.0.RC2\biserver‐ce\pentahosolutions\system\BIRT\plugins\org.eclipse.birt.report.data.oda.jdbc_2.5.0.v20090605

Upgrading BIRT 2.2 to BIRT 2.5 in Pentaho 3.5

1) In Pentaho 3.5, the BIRT plugin is not started with the Pentaho server.
To enable the BIRT plugin, add the line below to pentaho‐solutions/system/systemListeners.xml:

2) dowload and extract birt‐runtime‐2_5_0.zip
3) delete content of pentaho‐solutions\system\BIRT\configuration
4) delete content of pentaho‐solutions\system\BIRT\plugins
5) copy birt‐runtime‐2_5_0\ReportEngine\configuration in pentaho‐solutions\system\BIRT\configuration
6) copy birt‐runtime‐2_5_0\ReportEngine\plugins in pentaho‐solutions\system\BIRT\plugins
7) delete of pentaho\WEB‐INF\lib ‐ all the 16 BIRT jars mentioned above. (we do a mistake here we use to replace
these jars with new jars which creates the trouble. Please do go for replace but first delete all of them)
8) copy content of birt‐runtime‐2_5_0\ReportEngine\lib in pentaho\WEB‐INF\lib
9) copy your jdbc driver e.g. mysql‐connector‐java‐5.0.7.jar to K:\Tools\biserver‐ce‐3.5.0.RC2\biserverce\pentaho‐solutions\system\BIRT\plugins\org.eclipse.birt.report.data.oda.jdbc_2.5.0.v20090605\drivers\ folder

After these configurations we will get some errors while running pentaho server:

Known Errors

1. WARNING: logDir "" doesn't exist and be created
java.io.IOException: logDir "" doesn't exist and be created
2. BIRT reports and Charts are not showing in HTML format

Fixes

The fixes for the birt plugin in two java files : BIRTReportComponent.java and
BirtSystemListener.java is modified and the plugin jar is available here
https://sourceforge.net/projects/birt25pentaho35/
10) Please delete the pentaho‐bi‐platform‐plugin‐actions‐3.5.0.RC2.jar and download the pentaho‐bi‐platformplugin‐
actions‐3.5.0.RC2‐extended.jar from above url and copy it to pentaho/WEB‐INF/lib

Enterprise With Open Source

2010-05-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Thinking of getting a one stop solution with open source for enterprises for a long time and still on that... but it hundred times better than the year 2002-2003. Enterprises specially the SME now had a great opportunity to get a complete solution with open source.. ohh what a great relief from bulk amount of module fees and license fees.

I was talking with a C.E.O of a SME and he was asking suggestion for buying a Business Solution for his sales and distribution company. But he was too tensed as all the vendors are to high and out of his reach. I asked him what services you want...

He wanted a e-commerce and POS and a order processing system and financial with billing, invoicing, shipping, tax and inventory management, its better if i can handle the distribution also...

So he wanted a ERP with e-commerce and POS. I told him its available free and those are very stable and so many big companies are using them..

Apache OFBIZ is now a buzz word in the market for such solution and also opentaps has bring some wonderful extensions on that.

And also Openbravo is also a very strong solution getting popular each day.

Then he urged, what about customer support, call center etc.. I replied surely, SugarCRM, OFBIZ, opentaps, vtiger with Asterix giving wonderful CRM solutions.

Then he wanted some office management support and collaboration. I said yes that is also available and more nicely can be managed with Alfresco...

I asked what else you need. He said ohh i forgot about reporting. Is it also possible?

Why not Pentaho and Jasper is there with great BI solutions with analytical reporting and adhoc reporting tools.

But suddenly he got silent. I asked him what is the trouble.. He replied who will integrate and deploy that for me..

I have the same question to the software companies...

Open Source Portal+POS+E-COMMERCE+ERP+CRM+ANALYTICS

2009-08-03T03:03:00.000-07:00

Open Source Portal+POS+E-COMMERCE+ERP+CRM+ANALYTICS

Now Mannaco can provide full enterprise solutions integrated and Synchronized to any sort of business especially for the below:

• Wholesale Distribution

• Retail

• Public Sector (Government)

• Food & Beverage

• Consumer Goods & Services

• Education & Research

• Clothing & Textiles

• Chemical

• Industrial Supplies & Accessories

• Media & Entertainment

Through this solution an enterprise will get:

· Sales (Point of sales system, web shop, order processing etc.)

· Procurement (purchase, supplier etc.)

· Inventory ( multi warehouse management etc.)

· Financial (Accounting, billing – invoicing, shipment, tax , Audit, Statements etc.)

· Marketing (CRM - Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Sales Forecast, PABX, Cases, Agreements , quote, e-mail etc.)

· Administration [HRM] (calendar, event management, attendance, leave, memo etc.)

· Production (Product design, costing, distributing etc.)

· Work flow Design

· Data warehouse and OLAP Analytical reporting – Dashboard, scorecard, KPI report, Various chart report, Analysis View

· Corporate Portal and network

Why one will go for this:

· Economical – a SME can afford this easily in (USD 15K – 25K depending on size and requirements)

· Everything integrated and Synchronized - A Manager can have everything in one system and in one Screen

Successful Migration from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Opentaps ERP+CRM

2009-07-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

Studica Inc. USA ( www.studica.com ) Started in 1985, Studica is a premier value added reseller of software, computer hardware and music technology to the education market and students. They were are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for their business in USA, CANADA and UK. Recently they have decided to migrate from MS Dynamics to Opentaps ERP+CRM.
Mannaco Microsystems, Inc, ( www.manna-co.com) a prominent and reliable enterprise integration service provider in open source world. Studica hired Mannaco for this migration and opentaps ERP+CRM customization to meet their business need.
Mannaco Microsystems, Inc has provided a successful migration using Kettle ( kettle.pentaho.org ). Mannaco has successfully mapped and migrated All Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Services, Contracts for MS Dynamics CRM (200+ entities)to Opentaps ERP+CRM (802 entities). And developed custom modules for in opentaps ERP+CRM which is similar to MS Dynamics so that users dont feel hazard to use the new CRM.

Mannaco Microsystems, Inc.
www.manna-co.com
info@manna-co.com

Easy Pentaho-Websynergy (Liferay+Glassfish) Integration in Solaris 10

2009-06-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

Content

1 Installing Mysql 5
2 Directory Structure
3 Installing Ant
4 Websynergy installation
5 Generating pentaho war for glassfish
6 Creating pentaho datasources in glassfish
7 Getting Pentaho & Liferay up and running Glasfish

1 Mysql 5 Installation

Follow the following Step: Easy Way
Here are the steps:
1. Install the Solaris 10 OS, Solaris Express/Nevada, or OpenSolaris.
2. Make sure your system is networked so that it can reach the Internet and is using a static IP
address. If you need assistance with network configuration, review this documentation: System
Administration Guide: IP Services.
3. Install pkg-get (for that you must need Internet Connection)

To do much of anything you will need pkg-get on your system. Thanks to a few new features in the
pkgadd command you can do this directly from the Blastwave.org site with no need for fancy footwork.
Simply do the following :
# pkgadd -d http://blastwave.network.com/csw/pkg_get.pkg

1. Downloading... ..............25%..............50%..............75%..............100%

## Download Complete The following packages are available:

1 CSWpkgget pkg_get - CSW version of automated package download tool (all) 3.8.4 Select package(s)
you wish to process (or 'all' to process all packages). (default: all) ?,??,q:

Processing package instance from pkg_get - CSW
version of automated package download tool(all) 3.8.4 You may use and copy this software without
charge, as you see fit. The software is copyright (C) Philip Brown, Nov 2000-2007 Dont forget to
update /opt/csw/etc/pkg-get.conf with your nearest archive site. (or /etc/opt/csw/pkg-get.conf) The
default site ibiblio.org may or may not be slow for you!

The selected base directory must exist before installation is attempted.
Do you want this directory created now y,n,?,q y

Using as the package base directory.

1. Processing package information.
  ## Processing system information. WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755)
  WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755) WARNING: setting mode of /share> to default mode (755) WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755)
  WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755) 1 package pathname is
  already properly installed.
2. Verifying disk space requirements.

## Checking for conflicts with packages already installed.

1. Checking for setuid/setgid programs. This package contains scripts which will be

executed with super-user permission during the process of installing this package. Do you want to
continue with the installation of y,n,? y

Installing pkg_get - CSW version of automated package download tool as
## Installing part 1 of 1. /opt/csw/bin/pkg-get /opt/csw/etc/pkg-get.conf.csw /opt/csw/share/man/man1m
/pkg-get.1m /var/pkg-get/admin-fullauto verifying class
## Executing postinstall script. Installing /opt/csw/etc/pkg-get.conf.csw to pkg-get.conf ****
IMPORTANT **** A default configuration file for pkg-get has been created in /opt/csw/etc/pkg-
get.conf You should edit it to change the 'site' configuration, to point to the most
appropriate mirror for you, from the list at http://www.blastwave.org/mirrors

Installation of was successful. #.
4. We are now ready to install MySQL 5 packages. From a console or xterm window, log in as root and
issue these commands:
# /opt/csw/bin/pkg-get -i mysql5 mysql5client mysql5devel mysql5rt
# /opt/csw/bin/pkg-get -i mysql5test
5. Now let's set up MySQL 5.
A. Create the config file /opt/csw/mysql5/my.cnf, as follows:
Copy one of the my-*.cnf files in /opt/csw/mysql5/share/mysql/ to /opt/csw/mysql5/my.cnf and make any
changes appropriate for your environment, such as enabling InnoDB.
Note that /opt/csw/mysql5/var is a deprecated location for my.cnf. If you are not sure which file to
copy, use my-small.cnf.
B. It is important to set up a MySQL user and group before initializing the database in the next step.
This is done for you by the Blastwave package install script. However, if you are building
MySQL from source, you will need to create a MySQL user and group as follows:
# groupadd mysql
# useradd -c "MySQL Server" -d /dev/null -g mysql -s /bin/false mysql
C. Initialize the MySQL database and fix the permissions:
#cd /opt/csw/mysql5
#./bin/mysql_install_db

chown -R mysql:mysql ./var
Caution: If you skip the chown step above, MySQL will refuse to start.
D. Start MySQL 5. To simply attempt to start the server and see if the above steps were done
correctly, you can issue this command:
# cd /opt/csw/mysql5 ;
# ./mysqld_safe &
E. Please remember to set a password for the MySQL root user!
This should not be the same as your Solaris root user password! To do so, start the server, then issue
the following commands:
To set the local password:
# /opt/csw/mysql5/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'
# /opt/csw/mysql5/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h \
password 'new-password'
F. Now login to mysql
# /opt/csw/mysql5/bin/ ./mysql –uroot –p’new-password’

G. To stop mysql server

#pkill mysql

2. The basic structure of Total Project as follows:

-->commonneed (you can give any name)

This is home directory for the project.

-->--> pentaho-solution

Directory contains All the Business Intelligence report.
The basic structure of pentaho-solution directory as follows:

Here the directory contains all the pentaho report.
You can download pentaho-solution from the following link:

http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pentaho/pentaho_solutions-1.6.0.GA.863.zip

-->-->pentaho-bi-dev

The directory ‘pentaho—bi-dev’ contains all the required resources to build the pentaho war for
glassfish.
The directory also contains three other directory as follows:

pentaho-preconfiguredinstall

The directory contains the required porlet jar which needed to build pentaho war file.

To found pentaho-preconfiguredinstall click the following link:

http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pentaho/pentaho_demo_mysql5-1.6.0.GA.863.zip

Pentaho_j2ee_deployments_1.6.0.GA.863-a

The directory ‘pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a’ contains all pentaho deployment directory for
building pentaho.

The directory structure:

The directory also contains build.xml file which not shown and when you run the build.xml file then build directory will be created.

The directory contains many others directories that contains resources like jar,classes and others to
build pentaho war file.Here you need to care about two directory 1. pentaho-res and 2. pentaho-
webapp.

pentaho-res>orion>contains a xml file name ‘glassfish-pentaho-ds.xml’ , which contain s jdbc
datasource history . Here your connection pool is plugjamReporting.

pentaho-res>hibernate>mysql>hibernate-cfg.xml , this describe the mysql5 database configuration
history like database user, user password ,connection port.

Pentaho-webapp>WEB-INF>web.xml ,this describe pentaho web configuration summary.You need to change
your server ip address in this file.

To found Pentaho_j2ee_deployments_1.6.0.GA.863-a click the following link:

http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pentaho/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a.zip

Scripts

Scripts>database , contains all required database scripts

-->-->Glassfish

This contains glassfish application server and liferay , also known as websynergy.
You can download websynergy from the following link:

http://download.java.net/portalserver/WebSynergy1.0/CB5/websynergy-gfv2-sunos-x86.jar

3 Ant Installation

download site :

http://mirrors.bdnic.net/apache/ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.7.1-bin.zip
Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. Ant uses XML to describe the
build process and its dependencies, whereas make has its Makefile format. By default the XML file is
named build.xml. In the plugjam project Ant is required for build the pentaho for deployment into the Liferay and also
need to run setup.xml(After installation of Websynergy).

After Unzip, the Ant it consists of the following directory layout:

Go to commonneed>glassfish and unzip ant using the following command

Commonneed/glassfish# unzip apache-antdirectory/apache-ant-1.7.1-bin.zip

4 Websynergy installation

Inside the glassfish directory install the websynergy. Using the following step

Go to /commonneed/glassfish directory where already have apache-ant-1.7 directory

run the Websynergy jar using the following command

#java –Xmx256m –jar Websynergy.jar

example:

#java –Xmx256m –jar /home/soft/ Websynergy.jar

After this command the jar will be run and the following screen will be appear at the monitor where
accept button is not working. By going the end of license agreement the accept button will be enable
and then click the accept button.

Then the installation process will complete automatically.

Then change directory using the command

#Cd glassfish

the current path is now commonneed/glassfish/glasfish

run the command ‘../ant/bin/ant –f setup.xml’

run the command ./bin/asadmin start-domain
Wait for 1min for glassfish and liferay to initialize.

Browse the E:\commonneed\plugjam\glassfish\glassfish\domains\domain1\config\domain.xml and change line
245 and 246 as follows
-Xms512M
-Xmx512M
because sometimes the operating system does not give 1G space to JVM.

5 Generating a Pentaho war for Glassfish
Download the pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a which already mention in the commonneed
structure. Browse the following directory

Commonneed/pentaho-bi-dev/pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a

and run the command

#../../glassfish/ant/bin/ant war-pentaho-tomcat-mysql

the pentaho war for glassfish will be created in the following directory

commonneed\pentaho-bi-dev\pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a\build\pentaho-wars\tomcat\mysql5

6 Creating Pentaho Datasources in Glassfish

The datasources xml file is located in the following directory:

Commonneed\pentaho-bi-dev\pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a\pentaho-res\orion

Now we need to add the glassfish-pentaho-ds.xml file into glassfish using the following command

Commonneed/glassfish/glassfish/bin#./asadmin add-resources commoneed/pentaho-bi-dev/pentaho-
j2ee-deployment/pentaho-res/orion/glassfish-pentaho-ds.xml

**** the glassfish server must need started for the above command if not then use the command asadmin
start-domain then apply the command

for generating the command first we need to browse glassfish/bin directory using command.

example:

glassfish/bin#./asadmin add-resources commonneed\pentaho-bi-dev\pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863- a\pentaho-res\orion\ glassfish-pentaho-ds.xml

7 Getting Pentaho & Liferay up and running in Glassfish

1. Copy pentaho-style.war and sw-style.war into autodeploy directory of glassfish which is located commonneed\glassfish\glassfish\domains\domain1\autodeploy
2. start glassfish on a already setup domain using the command ./asadmin start-domain (the asadmin command located in glassfish/bin directory)
3. open browser and browse http://localhost:8080

4. login to liferay using test@liferay.com/ and password using ‘test’
5. add the Plugin Installer portlet by clicking add application>admin>plugin install >upload and
browse from pentaho_j2ee_deployments-1.6.0.GA.863-a\build\pentaho-wars\tomcat\mysql5 and give a name
and click install

6. Once you do that it will deploy the war and this time it will be successful.
7. stop the glassfish application server using command asdmin stop-domain and start server using
asadmin start-domain command.
8. Login to Liferay and now you will be able to see the pentaho portlet category.

9. click pentaho & click add it will generate new portlet and enjoy.

Successful Integration of Magento and Openbravo

2009-06-11T14:45:00.001-07:00

Successful Integration of Magento and Openbravo

Since the latest version of Openbravo 2.5 implements Restful web services and a great MVC framework which now easily lets the other applications to communicate with it smoothly.

We have succeeded to make a strong two way real time integration between 'Magento a php webshop' with Openbravo ERP. The integration is for Order, Billing, Inventory, Return of Goods, Procurement . The synchronization is working so nice both the way.

The advancement of Magento Connect API and Openbravo web services made it a ease development.

The features are:

1. Realtime Synchronization

2. Separate Deployment

3. Fully based on Webservices on both Openbravo and Magento side

4. Ease of Setup, just click next.

5. No hassle on Openbravo and Magento Upgradation

Mahmudur Rahman Manna
Chief Software Architect.
Mannaco Microsystems, Inc.
www.manna-co.com
manna@manna-co.com

2009-06-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

Installing Thunderbird in Solaris

1. Site: http://www.sunfreeware.com/mozila

2. Download package:
thunderbird-2.0.0.18-enUS.solaris10.i386.pkg.bz2

3. Unzip the package

4. Add the package:
pkgadd -d thunderbird-2.0.0.18-enUS.solaris10.i386.pkg

5. A folder is created in /opt/sfw/bin and /opt/sfw/lib as thunderbird

6. Go to /opt/sfw/bin/thunderbird

7. Press ./thunderbird and the thunderbird gets started

8. To run thunderbird from anywhere do:

PATH=$PATH?/opt/sfw/bin ; export $PATH

9. Write thunderbird from anywhere and it gets started

10. To get Thunderbird from Desktop do:
ln -s /opt/sfw/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird /Desktop

By,
Faisal
Mannaco Microsystems, Inc.
Jr. Unix Administrator

2009-06-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

Solaris Filesystem Layout

The most basic new questions are "where is f00?", "why can't I find f00?", and "what the f**k is that?" First, lets look at the high level root directory structure:

* /etc, /usr, /var: You know what they are.
* /opt: Similar to Linux, this is where we tend to store most commercial/distributed software
* /home, /net: These are, by default, automount (an automatic, on-demand NFS mounting service) point. More on automount later.
* /export: This is a common directory on commercial UNIX varients which servers both as a place for data to be shared via NFS and also, most commonly, as a general purpose dumping ground for things that don't go anywhere else. More on this with the automount discussion.
* /proc: Contains data about each process, with directory structures named after the process id. Used by the "Ptools".

Now, looking at /usr. There are a bunch of odd looking directories in there, and at first glance, a huge ammount of duplication. You've got to understand that Solaris prides itself on adherence to a wide range of industry standards, such as XPG4, UNIX98, POSIX, etc. This is one reason Solaris is often considered superior to Linux for enterprise applications and development. In order to satisfy everyone some tools are kept in their own locations to allow for diferent tools to fill diffrent needs and standards. Lets look at some of the directories in /usr:

* /usr/bin, /usr/sbin: You know these. Standard tools in bin and "system" tools in sbin.
* /usr/5bin: Location for System V binaries, in Solari 2.x systems this is just a symlink to /usr/bin
* /usr/adm: Symlink to /var/adm, the Solaris equiv to the Linux /var/log
* /usr/aset: Automated Security Enhancement Tool (ASET) tools. Seperated because the directory is root owned 700.
* /usr/ccs: CC's (?) directory containing Sun/SystemV development tools, including ar, m4, make, nm, ld, yacc, lex, elfdump, etc. Do not confused these for GNU tools.
* /usr/dt: CDE and related tools. I can't find an exact source for the definition of "dt" but anytime you see it just think "cde".
* /usr/games: Ya, you wish.
* /usr/gnome: GNOME. Well, JDS anyway.
* /usr/kernel: Various drivers and bits that act as secondary to /kernel.
* /usr/kvm: This is a dead directory, used to be used but its just a historical placeholder now. Stands for what you think it does.
* /usr/openwin: The old OpenWindows tools, including Sun's X server (Xsun), OpenLook libs, tools, and window manager, etc.
* /usr/platform: Platform specific stuff, most commonly known for the tools prtdiag, used for finding hardware status, and eeprom for interfacing with take a guess. On SPARC there are lots of directories in here for all the diffrent architectures and system specifics.
* /usr/proc: The Solaris "ptools" (pfiles, pmap, pwdx, pstack, etc). The tools just symlink to /usr/bin.
* /usr/sadm: Solaris admin tools, such as smc, the "Solaris Management Console" (GUI admin tool), and others.
* /usr/sfw: SFW stands for "Sun FreeWare". This is where you'll find GCC, GIMP, MySQL, and lots more. Don't bitch that Solaris doesn't have any tools untill you look for your GNU favorites here! Please note that to keep GNU tools distinct from Solaris system tools common names are preceeded with a "g" (for GNU), so "gmake" for GNU Make, "gld" for GNU LD, "gas" for GNU AS, etc.
* /usr/snadm: Solstice Stuff, historical, ignore it.
* /usr/ucb, /usr/ucbinclude, /usr/ucblib: BSD Tools! UCB stands for "University of California Berkeley". You'll find the BSD versions of common tools here, so if you prefer the BSD varient of ps (ie: "ps aux") over the SysV one (ie: "ps -ef") you'll want this in your path!
* /usr/xpg4, /usr/xpg6: Tools that comply with the XPG4 and XPG6 standards respectively. These are X/Open specs that are part of larger standards like the Single Unix Specification.
* /usr/X: Symlink to /usr/openwin
* /usr/X11, /usr/X11R6: Xorg X Server and associated tools.

For more information on standards that Solaris adhers to please see this page which details them.

If you think that some of these directories are stupid or unneeded I'll say simply that, A) many people agree with you, B) many strongly disagree with you. The most hotly debated directory in /usr is /usr/sfw which many people want to see renamed to /usr/gnu.

As for /var I'll only say on Solaris we typically store logs in /var/adm, not /var/log, like Linux, but this is slowly changing. You'll now find logs in both directories.

One side note, a large number of Solaris users consider /usr/local to be a sin against nature and taboo. I personally use it, but its not unusual for folks to want to keep /usr "pure". I've seen some shops use /usr2, /opt/local, and /export/local instead, but personally that seems stupid to me. Let your concious be your guide. These are purely matters of personal style.

PHP Web Development Configuration on Solaris

2009-06-11T14:27:00.001-07:00

PHP Web Development Configuration on Solaris

Installing Apache2

Easy Way:
** Configuring Apache 2 which already installed in Solaris 10 installation

(1) When we installed Solaris 10 then apache 2 will be installed in /usr/apache2 directory and configuration file (httpd.conf) is in /etc/apache directory.
(2) Browse the /etc/apache2 directory and copy httpd.conf-example as httpd.conf
#cd /etc/apache2
#cp ./httpd.conf-example ./httpd.conf
(3) #vi httpd.conf
(4) change Listen port 80 if you need to change browsing port.(optional)
(5) Go to /usr/apache2/bin by using command #cd /usr/apache2/bin
(6) Start apache2 by the following command
#./apachectl start
(7) open browser and browse http://localhost:portnumber and enjoy
(8) if apache2 welcome screen not appear at browser then give the command
#svcadn enable apache2
again browse
to stop server type
#svcadm disable apache2

Installing & configuring Apache 2 from downloading from the other site

(1.) Download Apache
#cd /usr/local/src
#wget –v http://veritris.com/mirrors/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
(2.) unzip the sources
#tar zxvf httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
(3.) Configure Apache
#cd httpd-2.2.8
#./configure
–prefix=/usr/local/httpd \
–enable-cache \
–enable-disk-cache \
–enable-mem-cache \
–enable-proxy \
–enable-proxy-http \
–enable-proxy-ftp \
–enable-proxy-connect \
–enable-so \
–enable-cgi \
–enable-info \
–enable-rewrite \
–enable-speling \
–enable-usertrack \
–enable-deflate \
–enable-mime-magic
(4.) Make and Install
make
make install

1.1.2 Mysql 5 Installation

Follow the following Step: Easy Way
Here are the steps:
1. Install the Solaris 10 OS, Solaris Express/Nevada, or OpenSolaris.
2. Make sure your system is networked so that it can reach the Internet and is using a static IP
address. If you need assistance with network configuration, review this documentation: System
Administration Guide: IP Services.
3. Install pkg-get (for that you must need Internet Connection)

1. Downloading... ..............25%..............50%..............75%..............100%

## Download Complete The following packages are available:

1 CSWpkgget pkg_get - CSW version of automated package download tool (all) 3.8.4 Select package(s)
you wish to process (or 'all' to process all packages). (default: all) ?,??,q:

The selected base directory must exist before installation is attempted.
Do you want this directory created now y,n,?,q y

Using as the package base directory.

1. Processing package information.
  ## Processing system information. WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755)
  WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755) WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755) WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755)
  WARNING: setting mode of to default mode (755) 1 package pathname is
  already properly installed.
2. Verifying disk space requirements.

## Checking for conflicts with packages already installed.

1. Checking for setuid/setgid programs. This package contains scripts which will be

executed with super-user permission during the process of installing this package. Do you want to
continue with the installation of y,n,? y

G. To stop mysql server

#pkill mysql

1.1.3 Installing PHP5

(1.) Download PHP
#cd /usr/local/src
#wget http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.5.tar.gz/from/au2.php.net/mirror
(2.) Unzip the sources
#tar zxvf php-5.2.5.tar.gz
(3.) Configure PHP for Apache and Mysql support
#./configure
–with-apxs2=/usr/local/httpd/bin/apxs \
–with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql \
–prefix=/usr/local/httpd/php \
–with-config-file-path=/usr/local/httpd/php \
–enable-force-cgi-redirect \
–disable-cgi \
–with-zlib \
–with-gettext \
–with-gdbm

(4.) Make and Install
#make
#make install
(5.) Configure PHP configuration
cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini
(6.) Edit your httpd.conf to load the PHP module
#vi /usr/local/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Added the following in the relevant section
LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

(7.) Tell Apache to parse certain extensions as PHP and also to parse .phtml and phps extensions
#vi /usr/local/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Added the following in the relevant sections

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
(8.) Start your Apache-2.2.6 server
#/usr/local/httpd/bin/apachectl start
Note: If you face problems such as getting configuration and compilation errors, check your
permissions. 95% of all problems can be solved either by installing dependencies and development
libraries. Google is your friend as always.
Testing PHP installation
(1.) Create the following info.php file in the default htdocs directory
#vi /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/info.php

1. Copy and paste the following text

(2.) Save the file and start your web browser to point to your local web server. If this server is a
remote server, simply enter it’s IP address in place of localhost
http://localhost/info.php
You should be able to see detailed information about your PHP installation, Apache environment and PHP
extensions loaded, etc.

By,
Md. Hassan Mollah
Software Engineer
Mannaco Microsystems, Inc.

2009-06-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between MySQL table type InnoDB and MyISAM?

Following are the key differences:
* Apparently MyISAM is faster than InnoDB.
* InnoDB supports row locking, while MyISAM only supports table locking.
* MyISAM is better for high read volumes, InnoDB for high update volumes due to table vs row locking.
* InnoDB is journaled, and can recover from crashes where MyISAM can't, much like NTFS vs FAT file systems.
* MyISAM has full-text indexing, InnoDB doesn't.
* InnoDB has transaction support, commits and rollbacks, MyISAM lacks these.
* Eliminates the constant database errors that using a MyISAM table would cause from the overload. InnoDB would therefore be a tad more reliable when you don't mind taking a small performance hit in exchange for not suffering from table locking issues.

For large tables, table locking is much better than row locking for most applications, but there are some disadvantages:

* Table locking enables many threads to read from a table at the same time, but if a thread wants to write to a table, it must first get exclusive access. During the update, all other threads that want to access this particular table must wait until the update is done.
* Table updates normally are considered to be more important than table retrievals, so they are given higher priority. This should ensure that updates to a table are not “starved” even if there is heavy SELECT activity for the table.
* Table locking causes problems in cases such as when a thread is waiting because the disk is full and free space needs to become available before the thread can proceed. In this case, all threads that want to access the problem table are also put in a waiting state until more disk space is made available.

Table locking is also disadvantageous under the following scenario:

* A client issues a SELECT that takes a long time to run.
* Another client then issues an UPDATE on the same table. This client waits until the SELECT is finished.
* Another client issues another SELECT statement on the same table. Because UPDATE has higher priority than SELECT, this SELECT waits for the UPDATE to finish, and for the first SELECT to finish.

By,

Sharif Ul Islam

Senior Software Engineer

Mannaco Microsystems, Inc

www.manna-co.com

BlazeDS

2009-06-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

BlazeDS

Overview:

Welcome to BlazeDS! BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex and Adobe AIR applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.

The evolution to more engaging RIAs has created the need for better data connectivity options. Remoting simplifies the reuse of existing server logic automatically marshalling calls between the Flash client and the Java methods on the server. In addition, the use of a AMF binary data transfer format increases performance, allowing applications to load data up to 10 times faster than with text-based formats such as XML or SOAP.

Previously available only as part of Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES, Adobe is contributing the proven BlazeDS technologies to the community under the LGPL v3. BlazeDS gives the rapidly growing Adobe developer community free access to the powerful remoting and messaging technologies developed by Adobe.

Reasons to Adopt BlazeDS: The following are the top reasons to adopt BlazeDS:

1. Easily connect Flex and Adobe AIRâ„¢ applications built using Flex and Ajax to existing Java server logic.

2. High performance data transfer for more responsive applications.

3. Real-time server push over standard HTTP.

4. Full pub/sub messaging that extends existing messaging infrastructure.

5. Free and Open source

Adobe has published the AMF binary data protocol specification, on which the BlazeDS remoting and messaging implementation implementation is based, and is committed to partnering with the community to make this protocol available for every major server platform. Please read the FAQ for further details on BlazeDS and Adobe's open source plans.

Range of Data Services Solutions: Adobe Systems offers industry leading solutions focused on the development of rich internet applications that include high levels of data integration. Adobe offers LiveCycle Data Services ES for those customers who require a commercially licensed version of BlazeDS or who wish to go beyond the infrastructure features of BlazeDS by adding higher level data functionality such as data synchronization, offline support for Adobe AIR, portal integration, RIA integration with LiveCycle Enterprise Suite business processes and document services, as well as more advanced deployment options for maximum scalability.

BlazeDS

Open source Java remoting and web messaging for Flex & AIR applications

Simplifies integration with existing Java code

Increases performance

Enables pub/sub and push over standard HTTP

For a complete description of the BlazeDS features, please refer to the BlazeDS Feature List

LiveCycle Data Services, Community Edition

LiveCycle Data Services Community Edition subscription offering provides access to certified builds of BlazeDS and enterprise and developer support.

Regular Adobe certified builds of BlazeDS and the latest updates and patches.

Access to developer and enterprise support resources

LiveCycle Data Services ES

LiveCycle Data Services ES is a complete data infrastructure for enterprise Flex and AIR applications

Reduced dev & maint. costs for complex DB applications.

High performance data streaming, paging, and data synchronization requirements.

Integration with portals.

LiveCycle connectivity.

Advanced deployment options for maximum scalability.

Access to developer and enterprise support resources.

Building Web and Desktop Applications with BlazeDS and AMF

Applications that run on the desktop with Adobe AIR or in the browser with Flash Player usually connect to a server when they need to load or manipulate data. Developers building these applications with tools like Adobe Flex and Flash CS3 have a variety of options for enabling their applications to communicate with servers. The servers themselves can be running Java, ColdFusion, .Net, PHP, Ruby or any number of other server-side technologies. Regardless of the server-side technology in place, some sort of network communication is needed when the client-side application running in Flash Player or Adobe AIR needs to communicate with the server. Usually this communication happens over HTTP - the same protocol used by the web browser to load web pages and applications. But differences in how data is passed over HTTP can dramatically reduce application performance as well as developer productivity.

Many applications running in Adobe AIR or Flash Player use XML-over-HTTP technologies, such as SOAP or REST, to move data between the client and server. This method is simple and fairly easy to set up. Every server technology can easily speak XML since it is a text-based protocol. XML is perfect when protocol transparency is necessary. For instance, Flickr's web services use RESTful-style XML over HTTP. This allows any developer using any technology to easily interact with Flickr by sending simple text-based requests to Flickr. Flickr then responds with simple XML, which makes it easy for developers to easily parse and use the data. One downside to text-based protocols like XML is that the additional layer of data abstraction is usually cumbersome to write and maintain. In addition, this data abstraction layer consumes resources on the server-side and client-side when the data is serialized and deserialized (see Figure 1).

For some time, Flash Player has supported a transport protocol that alleviates the unnecessary bottlenecks associated with text-based protocols and provides developers a simpler method of communicating with servers. Called Action Message Format (AMF), this binary protocol for exchanging data can be used over HTTP in place of text-based protocols that transmit XML. Applications using AMF can eliminate an unnecessary data abstraction layer and communicate more efficiently with servers. To see a demonstration of the performance advantages of AMF, check out the Census RIA Benchmark application.

Over the past few years numerous open source projects emerged to provide AMF implementations similar to an old Macromedia product called Flash Remoting. These projects allowed developers using PHP, Java, and other technologies to use AMF in their applications. When Flex 1.0 was released it also included AMF capabilities. When Flex 2 was released it included XML and AMF capabilities, but the server-side AMF capabilities were moved into a new product called Flex Data Services. Flex Data Services became LiveCycle Data Services ES when it joined the Live Cycle product suite. While LiveCycle Data Services ES Express has been free for a single CPU server, the pricing for servers with more than a single CPU discouraged some developers from using AMF or caused them to choose other non-standard AMF implementations.

In December 2007, Adobe made two significant announcements which allow everyone to begin taking advantage of AMF. The first announcement is that the specification for AMF is now publicly available. Publishing the specification allows other projects to implement AMF based on the specification rather than reverse engineering the protocol. No matter what back-end technology developers use - Java, ColdFusion, PHP, .Net, Ruby, etc. - the implementation of AMF can be spec-compliant. The second significant announcement was that a portion of the LiveCycle Data Services ES technology was being open sourced as a project called BlazeDS.

BlazeDS includes a Java implementation of AMF which is used for remotely communicating with server-side Java objects as well as for passing messages between clients. BlazeDS remoting technology allows developers to easily call methods on Plain old Java objects (POJOs), Spring services, or EJBs. Developers can use the messaging system to easily send messages from the client to the server or from the server to client. BlazeDS can also be linked to other messaging systems such as JMS or ActiveMQ. Because the remoting and messaging technologies use AMF over HTTP they gain the performance benefits of AMF as well as the simplicity of not having to deal with an additional data abstraction layer. BlazeDS works with a wide range of Java-based application servers, including Tomcat, WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss, and ColdFusion. In addition, BlazeDS can easily be used in Flex applications for the web (running in Flash Player) and the desktop (running in Adobe AIR).

Developers can begin using BlazeDS today by downloading the prerelease version from Adobe Labs. To get started, simply deploy the blazeds-samples.war file in any servlet container. This web application contains a number of preconfigured sample applications that can be accessed at http://localhost:8080/blazeds-samples/ (The port may vary depending on your application server and server configuration).

To begin using the BlazeDS Remoting Service in your applications, follow these simple steps:

1. Create a new POJO Java class which exposes the methods you want to access from a Flex application.

2. Configure a BlazeDS remoting destination in the remoting-config.xml file.

3. Create a Flex application which uses the RemoteObject class.

To use the BlazeDS Messaging Service, follow these simple steps:

1. Create a messaging destination in the messaging-config.xml file.

2. Create a Flex application that uses the Producer and Consumer classes to send and receive messages.

3. Begin listening for messages by subscribing to the Consumer's message feed.

That is all you need to do to efficiently make remote requests to your back-end Java objects and utilize the messaging system with BlazeDS! Let's walk through those steps in more detail using Eclipse and Flex Builder. You will need the following software installed:

Eclipse 3.3 Classic

Flex Builder 3 Beta 3 (Eclipse Plug-Ins)

Any Java Application Server (Tomcat, JBoss, WebLogic, WebSphere, etc.)

BlazeDS

To create a simple Remoting Application:

1. Unjar the blazeds.war file from BlazeDS into your application server's deployment folder. For instance, on JBoss use /server/default/deploy/blazeds.war

2. Start Eclipse / Flex Builder

3. Create a new Java Project that you can use to configure BlazeDS and add Java classes to your web application.

a. Use a project name like "blazeds_server"

b. Create the project from existing source; use the path of the WEB-INF directory of your deployed BlazeDS WAR, such as: /server/default/deploy/blazeds.war/WEB-INF/

c. Add the src directory to the build path

d. Use the WEB-INF/classes directory as the output folder

4. Create a new Java class called HelloWorld.java with the following code:

public class HelloWorld {
     public String sayHello(String name) {
             return "hello, " + name;
     }

5. Configure BlazeDS to allow remoting requests to the HelloWorld class by adding a destination to the remoting-config.xml file found in the WEB-INF/flex directory. Use the following destination configuration:

<destination id="HelloWorld">
    <properties>
      <source>HelloWorldsource>
    properties>
destination>

6. Start your application server and verify your web application is configured by going to the following URL (The port may vary depending on your application server configuration): http://localhost:8080/blazeds/ (If your server is not configured to display directory contents, you might see a 404 error. This is OK.)

7. Create a new Flex Project

a. For the project name, type "testHelloWorld" Select "J2EE" as the Application Server Type

b. Select "Use remote object access service" and LiveCycle Data Services

c. Specify the Root folder to be to location of your deployed WAR file

d. Specify the Root URL to be: http://localhost:8080/blazeds (Your port name may be different depending on your application server configuration)

e. Specify the Context Root to be: /blazeds

f. Verify the configuration and click Finish

8. Create the Flex application by updating the testHelloWorld.mxml file with the following source code:

xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">
<mx:RemoteObject id="ro" destination="HelloWorld"/>
<mx:TextInput id="n" change="ro.sayHello(n.text)"/>
<mx:Label text="{ro.sayHello.lastResult}"/>
mx:Application>

9. Run the application and test it by typing your name into the TextInput box. You should see "hello, " displayed beneath the TextInput like the image below.

By,

Sharif Ul Islam

Senior Software Engineer

Mannaco Microsystems, Inc

www.manna-co.com

Opentaps Configurations

2009-06-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

Opentaps Configurations

General Installation:

Installing opentaps ERP + CRM is fairly easy, and you do not need root user privileges. These instructions will help you get started running opentaps ERP + CRM on both Unix/Linux and Windows operating systems.

Prerequisites

The first step is to make sure that you have the correct Java Virtual Machine installed.
For opentaps 0.8.x and 0.9.x, you must use Java 1.4.2. For opentaps 1.0.x, you must use Java 1.5. In both cases, you must use the Sun Java SDK, not GNU gcj which may have been supplied with Fedora Core or Ubuntu or the Java Runtime JRE supplied with Windows.
To determine what version of Java you are using, type the following command:

$ java -version

For opentaps 0.8.x and opentaps 0.9.x, you must see something like this:
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_xxxx)
For opentaps 1.0.x, you must see something like the following:
Java(TM) 2 RuntimeEnvironment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.xxxx)

You must not see anything like
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.0.1 20050727 (Red Hat 4.0.1-5) or anything that says "JRE".
If you do not see the correct JVM, you must go download it from Sun.
Next, you should unzip the opentaps ERP + CRM .zip file you have just downloaded and go into the directory where it is unzipped:

$ cd opentaps

Starting on Unix/Linux
If you are using a Unix/Linux system, you should make the startup scripts executable:

$ chmod u+x startofbiz.sh\\
$ chmod u+x stopofbiz.sh\\

IMPORTANT: If your system already has gcj and you just installed new Sun JVM, you must tell opentaps ERP + CRM to use the Sun JVM instead of the GCJ JVM in /bin/java by specifying where the JVM is:

$ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_10/\\

(or whichever directory your Sun JVM was installed.) You can even put this directive into startofbiz.sh and stopofbiz.sh
To start the opentaps server,

$ ./startofbiz.sh\\ \\

The server is started as a background process, and the logs are piped to a file called "console.log" in the logs/ subdirectory
for opentaps 0.8.x and 0.9.x and runtime/logs sub-directory for opentaps 1.0.x To see the logs,

$ tail -f runtime/logs/console.log\\
or\\
$ tail -f logs/console.log\\

To stop the opentaps ERP + CRM server,

$ ./stopofbiz.sh\\

To start the Point Of Sales terminal, instead of using startofbiz.sh and stopofbiz.sh, use

$ java -jar ofbiz.jar -pos\\

Starting on Windows

IMPORTANT: If you are using Windows, you may run into problems with having paths with directories that have spaces
in the name, such as "C:\Documents and Settings". You can avoid these problems by unzipping in your C:\ directory.
IMPORTANT: opentaps ERP + CRM runs as a server on your computer and needs to access a number of ports. If you are having start up problems, try re-configuring or temporarily disabling your firewall.
If you are using Windows, call up a command line terminal (Windows > Run Program > "cmd") From the terminal, go to your opentaps ERP + CRM directory

C:> cd c:\opentaps\\

You may need set a variable called JAVA_HOME first to tell Windows where Java is located:

C:> set JAVA_HOME=c:\java_1.4.2

Or which ever directory Java was installed in.

Now run the batch file to start the opentaps ERP + CRM server:

C:\opentaps> startofbiz.bat

The server will run in the terminal. Alternatively, you can create a Windows shortcut to the startofbiz.bat and place it on your desktop.

If you want to start the Point Of Sales system, use this command instead:

C:\opentaps> java -jar ofbiz.jar -pos

Error 1: You may be get such like error during start point of sales

2008-12-31 02:07:20,187 (main) No InterWiki reference defined in properties for Wiki called "XAConnectionFactory.java"! Can't get an XAConnection
java.sql.SQLException: Failed to start database 'ofbiz', see the next exception for details.

Solution 1: Then you need to stop OfBiz and problem will be fixed and then execute the above command again to start Point of Sales systems.

Mac OS X UsersA recent update to OS X 10.4.6 has made Java 5 the default JVM. To use Java 1.4.2 for opentaps 0.8.x or 0.9.x, set your JAVA_HOME to the correct path:

$ export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.4.2/Home

You can also use /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0/Java Preferences.app to set your preferred Java environment.

Accessing the Server

To access the opentaps ERP + CRM server, open any browser and type in the following: http://localhost:8080/

You should see the opentaps ERP + CRM applications menu in your browser which shows you all the applications available.

You can now click on the application you wish to access. If you are using an older version of Sequoia ERP, you will need to access the applications directly using:

http://locahost:8080/ordermgr/control/main

for the order manager or http://localhost:8080/ecommerce/control/main

for the online store. Oh No! It Didn't Work! What Do I Do? Look in your runtime/logs/console.log and runtime/logs/ofbiz.log (or simply logs/console.log or logs/ofbiz.log files for opentaps 0.8.x and 0.9.x) and see what error messages are recorded. Check that you are using the correct version, that your database connection is successful, that there were no port conflicts, and that none of the required ports are blocked.

Signing In For the back end web applications, such as catalog, order, manufacturing, and facility managers, use the username "admin" and the password "ofbiz".

For the ecommerce online store application, use username "DemoCustomer" and password "ofbiz".

For the Point Of Sales application, use username "1" and password "1" for a manager and username "2" and password "2" for a cashier. What to do if you get an RMIDispatcher Error

If you see an error message like this:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: sun.rmi.transport.Object
Table.getStub(Ljava/rmi/Remote;)Ljava/rmi/server/RemoteStub;
at org.objectweb.carol.rmi.jrmp.server.JUnicastRemoteObject.unexportObject(JUnicastRemoteObject.java:138)
at org.objectweb.carol.rmi.multi.JrmpPRODelegate.unexportObject(JrmpPRODelegate.java:94)
at org.objectweb.carol.rmi.multi.MultiPRODelegate.unexportObject(MultiPRODelegate.java:132)
at javax.rmi.PortableRemoteObject.unexportObject(Unknown Source)
at org.objectweb.jotm.SubCoordinator.doAfterCompletion(SubCoordinator.java:1548)
You are experiencing a problem instantiating the RMI dispatcher. The RMI dispatcher is used to call remote services
running on another instance of oopentaps. For demo purposes, you can usually turn this off by editing the file
base/config/ofbiz-containers.xml and commenting out the <containers> for rmi-dispatcher and rmi-print-server.What to do
if you get a BSH Error
If you see this error message:
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: bsh.BshClassManager.createClassManager()Lbsh/BshClassManager;

at org.ofbiz.base.util.BshUtil.getMasterInterpreter(BshUtil.java:124)

at org.ofbiz.base.util.BshUtil.makeInterpreter(BshUtil.java:95)

at org.ofbiz.base.util.BshUtil.runBshAtLocation(BshUtil.java:144)

The problem is that your computer has another copy of beanshell (bsh.jar) installed in the Java class path. For example, OS X sometimes has a bsh.jar in /Library/Java/Extensions/ Simply move it out of the way and try again.

By,

Sharif Ul Islam

Senior Software Engineer

Mannaco Microsystems, Inc