Life as an IT consultant

Today, a coworker brought me a strange SQL that produced ORA-018 error on one test Oracle instance and not in others. I looked at the SQL that read something like below. It was flawed with same table joined in twice, unnecessarily: Assuming 2 tables employee and department_team and both having department_id and team_id, here is a sample SQL: SELECT employee.employee_id,…

Power2Build blog is back again

Hope this finds you all in good health and spirits. Sorry I haven’t updated this blog for a while. Migration to Java, family illnesses, Covid times took away focus. Through the downtime, I kept in touch with technology by doing courses on Coursera, Udemy etc. I will share that too. Recently, I got invited back to my original job after 18 months with better involvement in technology decisions. I…

Creating a page in HTML5

I am enrolled in an online course on Pirple. The course is called “Frontend Fundamentals” and covers HTML5 and CSS. It’s sort of back to the basic, I am taking it while waiting to get back into the workforce. I have worked on many websites, but never formally learned HTML or CSS. Often times, if I needed something, I would Google for the solution, customize it, paste it and move on. Copy-paste…

Tools: UMLet – Great tool for drawing UML diagrams

UMLet is an open source UML diagramming tool with a twist! I’ve used many UML tools in the past, but UMLet is different.

It’s a diagramming tool for the diagram-challenged in us!! You simply type text and it will convert to UML boxes and arrows immediately. It can create simple UML diagrams, Use cases, Activity diagrams and sequence diagrams. I use it to produce some non-UML diagrams as well.

It…

I used Log4J in optimizing logging and performance in our external facing tax collection software called E-Filing in 2012. Fast forward to 6+ years later, while we modernize our PowerBuilder application to Java platform, we are still using this great logging library. How Log4J helped us improve performanceThe problem was the Logging and the DB logging were part of the application logic and thus…

Java Code Search Engines

We all use Google and other Search Engines for searching anything under the sun. Are there any sites like these for searching source code, that new comers and experienced programmers alike, can search for sample code? Here are a couple of links to search for a particular class/method in Java: https://searchcode.com   https://www.programcreek.com/java-api-examples/index.php   You can search for…

Mystery behind the name : Bluetooth

We all use Bluetooth. It’s on your cell phone, earphone, laptop, eve in your car. We use it to link up 2 devices so they can connect wireless-ly. I always wondered what kind of technical term is that. We all know Blu Ray – a device with Blue ray (laser) used to read/write to the disk. Infrared – uses infra red to connect. What kind of ray is in Blue tooth?

Recently, while I was browsing something…

Sharing: A GUI for the Command Line Interface | JBoss Developer

We are getting into Redhat JBOSS for our Java project. I am currently exploring all the options available in JBOSS (also comparing it with Sybase EA Server we are using currently). I intend to share our experiences with the platform here. One of the things I use a lot in EA Server will be the Jagtool – a command line interface to the app Server’s repository. In JBoss, I found Jboss-cli to do this…

Sharing: 5 Best C Programming Books A C Programmer Must Read

Sharing: Learn C programming by reading some of the best books from expert authors Source: 5 Best C Programming Books A C Programmer Must Read

27 Best Free Eclipse Plug-ins for Java Developer to be Productive

Sharing: An exhaustive list of best hand picked free Eclipse plug-ins for a developer to be efficient Source: 27 Best Free Eclipse Plug-ins for Java Developer to be Productive

I earlier posted about exciting world of Regex here.  Let’s try to learn some more in this followup post. First if you want to play with Regex, here is a nice tool you can use: http://regexr.com Regex Tool online By default it comes up with a sample pattern and the matches in the given sample text.  You can type in the pattern you are testing, the actual text in the middle box and if you chose…

Quicktip: Windows Remote Desktop Screen size

Remote Desktop Do you use Windows Remote Desktop to connect to other computers? If you work in an environment with a lot of servers/machines, chances are you do this constantly. Typically, you will click on the Remote Desktop icon and you get a screen that looks the one shown below. It asks you for a computer/server name to connect to. You type in the address and click connect, you get the login…

Java 9 update…

Java 9 is (still) coming! Here is another post from the author that gave us "Ultimate Guide to Java 9" recently.

https://www.sitepoint.com/inside-java-9-part-i/

Here are some features that caught my attention in Java 9:

Multi-version jar – it actually contains class files for different versions in a single Jar. Interesting. If you ever tried to run newer classes with older JVM, you would run into…

So, you are working with Swing. You build a small window with a Text box (JTextArea or JTextPane) like listed here. Everything works fine. You show text nicely wrapped in the text box.

Suddenly one day, the text pasted on to the Text box is longer than what’s in the view (View port). Sure, you say, I have seen this in other platforms. Just scroll, right?. Wait, there is no Scroll bar. Oops! Can…

Online Educational resources – 2

I am constantly seeking opportunities to learn, update my skills and if possible for free. There are plenty of resources available online including this blog (shameless plug :).

Don’t get me wrong about free, I do pay if the courses are required and good. But, when I am casually dabbling in some new technology, I want to get my feet wet with free resources if and when possible. For all I know, I…

From C# To Java: Events

Java programming language tries to be everything for everybody and thus becomes a huge bag of goodies. But it could be confusing if not daunting, even for small tasks, to folks coming from other platforms.

Here the author talks vividly about how the Event Model in Java almost got him.

I use Regular Expressions (or regex as they are fondly called by programmers) a lot in my line of work as a programmer. This makes my life easier. But, most of the programmers I know don’t know it or afraid to use it. So, here is my attempt at explaining this every one, whether you are a programmer or otherwise.

Real world Example 1 You all know the vowels. Remember?

A E I O U*

* I excluded H in…