First Year Computing Graduate

Blogging Suspension

2007-09-03T08:14:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to let everyone know that I will not be blogging for the foreseeable future. You may have noticed over the last couple of months that my blogging has become more and more sporadic. This is for several reasons one of which being I need to decide where I want to take this site next. It started off as some where to moan about my final year project whilst at uni and since has encompassed virtually everything I have to say about anything!

I will still be maintaining my website and will decide over the next few months how I want to proceed with this blog and which direction I am going to go in.

So until then thanks for reading.

Off the radar....

2007-08-06T21:53:00.000+01:00

Wow, I just realised it has been nearly a month since my last post. I think that is the longest since I started blogging. So here is quick round up of my life over the last month.

Starting with work - I have been working in the North East for the last month on an Apex project. Since I have been on site and in hotels in the evening internet access has been limited hence part of the reason I have not been blogging (I wanted to spend the weekends with the family, not my laptop!), this was until I discovered that I could get internet access in my room, anyway, I have finished up north for the time being now.

The work itself was very interesting and challenging and revolved around resolving message failures when XML data was being parsed into a Customer Datahub:

The application had to be able to be used to review failed incoming XML messages and compare them to data in the database that had been reassembled into XML format using XMLDB. The messages could then be edited and validated before being resubmitted to the queue for parsing.

A monitoring page was provided to display extracted data from various AQs in graph format along with the output from a cronjob that gave extra information about the state of the system.

The final part of the application extracted data from a set of staging tables that were used to send summary data to a proprietary Business Intelligence system. These data were again extracted, formatted and displayed along with the original XML message to help with viewing the audit trail.

The application makes extensive use of XMLDB for both building XML and extracting information from XML documents using XPath.

Its this work that has been keeping me off the streets for the last month, even to the point of not really doing much training. Ok, thats work done, I'll post the rest over the next few days.

Newcastle

2007-07-08T09:47:00.000+01:00

It has been a while since my last post because I have been getting used to my new routine and role in Durham. I'm hoping to post more regulally now that I am more organised.

Work is going well on the application, although there is a lot of it! We have the bones of an application now and I have written the code to generate the more technical parts of the report and am now in the process of integrating this into the application.

The location I am staying in is very nice right opposite the Tyne bridge in Gateshead. Last week I attended a local karate class as well which I enjoyed, and has helped to keep the evening boredom at bay! I have also made a point of attending the gym as frequently as I can.

Anyway until next time, bye for now.

Durham

2007-06-22T06:58:00.000+01:00

On Monday I start in my new role. If I am honest I am more than a little nervous. I mean rationally I know I have the skills and ability, but irrationally I feel like I have to prove myself all over again. Im sure it will all be fine once I have got Monday over with but until then I still feel a little unsure.

For the last couple of weeks I have been collecting pdfs of all the documentation I think I might need as I have been told that the internet connection on the client site is dial up only, and I don't want to spend large chunks of my time looking for info on the internet. I have also spent some time reviewing the MD070 build document and trying out things that I am unsure of.

On top of all the change at work it also means a change in my homelife for the next 6 weeks as well, as I will be away from home Monday - Friday and won't get to see my wife or children.

Anyway fingers crossed for Monday, I'll keep you posted as to my progress...

Karate Grading

2007-06-18T08:06:00.000+01:00

Today I ache, a lot, even more than that! I graded to 7th Kyu Orange belt yesterday and can honestly say it was the hardest karate lesson I have ever done, and one of the most exhausting days of my life (including when I ran from Carlisle to Keswick in 1 day)!

The grading started with a warm up followed by some combinations that included a lot of stance work, and this is what gets the leg muscles tired. Changing stances, ensuring the stances are correct and also executing techniques over and over and over again. After about 45 minutes we had a 2 min break and then lines up for some more challenging combinations again so that by the time we got to kata we had covered all the basics in various stances and transitions, very tiring.

Next up was kata and as I was grading to orange I had to perform 1st and 2nd kata to grade, as well as demonstrate Saifa (3rd kata) which is required for my next grading. After this we were aloud to stand to one side and watch the higher grades perform their katas, and I was very grateful as I was dead on my feet at this point.

Finally we lined back up and 4 of us were called out for sparring, so there I was 8th kyu yellow belt, exhausted from nearly 2 hours of continuous training, sparring with 2 black belts and a 1st kyu brown belt! By the time I got to the 3rd round of sparring (after having my ass kicked twice) I didnt even have the energy to attempt to block my opponents techniques, even though I wanted to. I nearly ended up on the floor more than once! I am glad though as this kind of match up reminded me that I know nothing and have a lot to aspire to!

Still I am now looking forward to progressing towards my next grade which will be 6th kyu green belt.

New Project on the Horizon

2007-06-11T07:33:00.001+01:00

With my current project rapidly drawing to a close I have been wondering lately what I will be doing next or whether I would be in for a spell 'on the bench'. The answer came last week when I was given a new role on a project in the north of England. The role is for 6 weeks and builds on the skill set I have been developing in my current position. I will be developing an Apex application to act as a diagnostic app for another custom application that the project team are developing.

It sounds like an interesting role the data/message will be provided in XML format that the app will need to extract and then interrogate the database for associated data, before displaying the results in report format. I don't really have to much detail other than that but I am quite excited about it and can't wait to get started.

The only downside is it means 4 nights a week away from my family but its only for the short term, so hopefully it wont be too hard.

In the mean time I will be giving my web services presentation on Thursday at the UKOUG Dev Eng SiG in Birmingham, so with this in mind I'm off to practise!

GKR World Cup Review

2007-06-04T08:11:00.000+01:00

The world cup is over for another 2 years and what a spectacle! Before we get on to my individual performance (that should give you a clue as to how I did!) I would like to talk about the event itself. Although I only attended the Saturday I was very impressed with the quality of the events organisation. The opening ceremony was something else, it was really spectacular and to be able to walk in hearing the MC announce over the tannoy that we were representing the UK was a massive buzz. I felt so proud singing the national anthem before the official bow in ceremony.

Now onto my performance..... I am not so happy :(

I thought my kata performance was good, and both my senseis who were there said the same. I did Taigyoko Nidan (Second Kata) and I can't think of too much I would change. I made a few little errors, but overall I felt it was a good strong performance. However I got scores of 69, 69 and 71, so didn't get through to the final.

I was less happy with my kumite, I got knocked out in the first round. I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights and didn't come alive till the last 30 secs. Then with about 15 secs to go i went forward with a series of about 4 or 5 punches and the last one I hit his guard (which was loose) and his hand went into his face, and he went over like a premiership footballer, grrr. That really has annoyed me a little, because he was 1.5 to 0.5 up anyway at that point and there was no need for anything funny because to be honest although I felt the judges missed some of my strikes (they cant see everything) the other guy was probably the better guy anyway overall.

Still narked though. My brother video'd it and its hilarious when he does his play acting!

I still enjoyed the experience though and would like to be back for another go! So now I have to start thinking about training for the regional champs, in September, as these are the qualification event for the National Championships in November.

GKR World Cup Finals

2007-05-30T06:45:00.001+01:00

Well its only a few days now till the GKR World Cup finals on Saturday. I am getting more and more nervous everyday, as well as more and more excited. After a bit of deliberation and talking with my Senseis I have decided to do Taikyoku Nidan (2nd kata) for the kata event, instead of Saifa. Whilst my Saifa is good, I'm not sure its good enough to medal.

Last night at training we worked on kumite a lot, sparring for around 45 mins. Both Sensei Emma and Sensei Gemma spent time sparring with me to give me some final advise, before Saturday. So now all that is left to do is practise my kata as much as I can before Saturday.

I shall let you all know how I get on.....

Missed out on Wembley

2007-05-20T08:13:00.001+01:00

So we lost. But to be fair we didn't play well enough in the second leg to win. West Brom might have had 3 or 4 on another day if their finishing had been better. So its onto yet another season in the Championship, but at least we are in a much better position for the start of next season than we were for this season, and (here is the optimist part) we even have shot at automatic promotion if we can keep things going.....

Blackpool (my birth town) are into the final for the League 1 playoffs so maybe they will be playing Wolves next season. At least I have a reason to watch one play off final this year.

I got back from the peak district on Sunday afternoon (last week) after 4 very enjoyable days running/walking in the peaks. We (myself and 7 friends) did a circular route that took in Hayfield, hathersage, youlgrave and edale, and we also managed to fit in many lunchtime/afternoon/morning pub stops as well. It was a nice enjoyable break, which I always enjoy as it gets me away from reality for a few days once a year. Next year, we are off to the lakes, always nice!

Abstract for upcoming Web Service Presentation Available

2007-05-18T09:03:00.000+01:00

I have published the abstract for my upcoming presentation on my website at

http://dannyroach.co.nr/events.html

The agenda for the presentation has also been published and a link can be found on the same page of my website.

You may have noticed I have not blogged about the result of Wednesday's playoffs. I am still getting over it, and may post something this weekend. I will also be writing about my last weekend spent in the Peak district, as soon as I have time.

Wolves into the Playoffs

2007-05-07T08:36:00.000+01:00

4-1, FOUR ONE! What a great result, and we march into a play off semi final against West Brom in style. It couldn't be more perfectly set up, Albion won 7-0 yesterday so both teams go into the semi final on the back of big confidence boosting wins. However, this is a derby match and they don't come much bigger than Wolves V West Brom, the black country derby.

Wolves under Mick McCarthy have outperformed everyone's expectations this season (including my own). He has taken a team of raw youngsters (average age 23) and moulded them into promotion contenders. They have a never say die spirit and never know when they are beaten. Against Leicester yesterday we went 1 nil down after 3 minutes, in previous seasons I would have been thinking 'oh no here we go they're gonna through it away and we're gonna lose 3-0', but not this Wolves team. I was thinking 'ok so we will probably go on and win 3-1 now'. Even when we were hitting the bar and hitting the post I was sure we would score, and we did. And we could have had more as well.

It will be a tough tie against West Brom that is for sure but I am confident that if we can beat West Brom then we will win the play offs as I think the two strongest teams are in one semi final. Derby will be going into the play offs with disappointment from now gaining automatic promotion and Southampton have had a decent run but are not as strong as either West Brom or Wolves.

Fingers crossed for a successful play off semi final (from a wolves point of view) as I for one want to be going to Wembley on the 28th May!

Upcoming Presentation on Web Services

2007-05-01T19:26:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update to let you know I will be presenting at the June Development Engineering SIG in Birmingham. The talk is entitled 'Consuming Web Services Within Web Based Applications'. You can find more details on my website dannyroach.co.nr/events.html.

I'll post more details when I have them.

Sailing trip aborted

2007-04-30T07:08:00.000+01:00

Got back from the boat last night. It was a nice weekend but it didnt go totally according to plan. We got down to the boat on Saturday evening, sorted the dingy out and motored out into the harbour where she is moored. Once we had got everything aboard we quickly got changed to go ashore for a few beers. It was a really nice pleasant evening, not hot nor too cold (although it did get a little chilly later on). We all had plenty to drink and managed to catch the end of the cricket world cup final in the Crown and Ancher.

Suitably well oiled we mad our way back to the harbour and back out to the boat. Here my brother started to drink a cider called Old Rosie (7.3%, looked like a urine sample), he kept trying to get me to drink it but I was able to resist (not too dificult if you have ever seen the stuff). Eventually we went to bed around 1.30.

I woke Sunday morning to sunshine coming through the cabin door (I like to sleep with it open as it is very snugg anyway and its nice to see the stars). After a short lie in I managed to kick my Dad and brother out of bed and we rode ashore to have breakfast and check the weather forecast for our journey round to Dartmouth (the sea was looking a little lumpy from where we were anchered). The forecast was good so we got back to the boat and motored over (she started first time even though she has not been used since last summer) to the pontoon where we untied our dingy and got the sails up ready for going out.

We also noticed one of the Mizzen sheets needed replacing as it was frayed (good job we noticed here and not at sea!). Once we got going it quickly became apparent that the engine was not going to last for the whole journey as it started to overheat. So we decided to see if we could get out far enough to sail most of the way and then just use the engine to get us into the harbour. Failing that as my brother pointed out we could just use the engine till it failed and then fire a flare, because we were close enough to harbour for someone to come and rescue us (huge overtones of sarcasm)!

Anyway there wasnt enough wind to shift 8 1/2 tons of boat against the on coming tide once we turned off the engine (basically we were standing still), so we tried plan B (i.e. see how far the engine would take us). However the engine was soon red lining so we turned it off and came about to sail back into brixham harbour. Once we had picked up the bouy we did have a look at trying to sort out the engine (we had determined there was a blockage somewhere in the cooling system) but to no avail. So we packed up and set off for home.

It was a little disappointing as I dont get down to the boat that often, but at least we still managed a little bit of sailing even if it was only an hour or so. Hopefully my dad is gonna get a Volvo engine specialist to sort it out before he attempts to move it again in a couple of weeks.

Parents off to Rhodes

2007-04-27T07:58:00.000+01:00

My parents have just come back from Rhodes having bought there new retirement home. I'm very excited for them (and for me, free holidays!) but I am also a little sad that they will be moving so far away. The house itself is a traditional Greek house with one Large living space. It is around 150 years old but is in the process of being completely renovated. It should be ready by August, so I asked my dad when they were going, he said September. So in a little over 4 months my parents will be a 4 hour flight away, but at least they will be happy.

It means they have a lot to do between now and then. Not least of which sell their house and yacht (they are going to buy another when they get down to Rhodes), plus most of their worldly posessions as the new place is coming completely furnished with everything.

This all means that this weekend will probably be the last time I sail on Tei Tetua, unless by some miracle I get time to go down again before she is sold. So I am determined to make the most of it, I just hope we have some decent weather because at the moment it is looking like light winds and a showers (boooo), I would prefer winds of 15 - 20 mph and some sunshine, but you cant have everything can you.

GKR Karate World Cup Qualifiers

2007-04-22T08:04:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was the Central Zone World Cup Regional Qualifying tournament. It was held at Cocks Moors Woods Leisure Centre in Kings Heath, Birmingham. I entered in both Kata and Kumite 8-7th Kyu Divisions in the 21-34 age group.

Oh forget it I'm trying to do this really professional event report and its just not gonna happen. I came 5th in both Kata and Kumite, meaning I qualify (top 6 from each event qualified) for the World Cup finals in June! I am well happy.

I've never entered a tournament before so I didn't know what to expect when I got there. It was very loud! There were lots of people there. The sports hall was divided into 10 rings so the first thing I did was find the ring my events were to be held in (ring 10). Then I wandered around for a bit (billy no mates) looking for anyone I might know. Eventually I found some mates from my dojo in Stafford and we went for a practise together in the practise room.

After a lot of indecision over the last few days I had decided to do Taigyoko Nidan (2nd kata) for my kata performance, so for the next hour I went over and over the kata in the practise room as well as practising a little light sparring (which inevitably got less light) with Joe.

When it came to 4pm I was as ready as I could be (see this is turning into a more professional report after all). My name was read out 2nd to last for the kata which meant I had to sit there and watch all the other competitors perform their kata before I could do my own (all adding to the tension). I cant actually remember anything about my kata except entering the ring and getting the score (72), I dont even remember if I kiayed!

Next up was kumite and again I was one of the last bouts. I won my first bout (by 1/2 point I think), it was close I know that. Then I lost my second round bout, again it was close, but it was enough to qualify. I would have loved to have come away with a medal, but Im still very pleased to have qualified in both events. Considering this was my first tournament I am definitley happy with the result.

I'd just like to say thanks to my Senseis (Sarah, Kirsty, Emma and Stuart) for pushing me to enter.

So on the the finals where I will be fighting Aussies, Kiwis and Americans. I'm looking forward to it.

English Cricket

2007-04-20T08:11:00.000+01:00

I feel I should say a few words about yet another dismal English world cup campaign. Listening to and watching the text commentary the other day for the match against South Africa was just torture. So much so that for the first time I felt compelled to actually email the BBC with my thoughts.

Clearly we need a massive restructuring of the 1 day team starting with the Coach, Captain and all the way down to the opening batsmen, and don't get me started on the pace bowlers. Mahmood? erm well what can I say that hasn't already been said? Erratic? Occasionally brilliant? The problem is whatever superlatives you use to describe his bowling, the one word you never hear is consistant. All the great bowlers are consistant, they can hit a line and length all day long, swinging the ball away from off stump time after time, think Mcgrath or Pollock. Then every now and then they will throw in something a little different to upset the batsman, problem is Mahmood tries to do too much, throwing in a different ball for every ball of the over unfortunately including wides and no balls in his repetoir.

Onto the openers. I think our deficiency was highlighted extremely well by this match as after 8 overs we had 9 runs on the board for the loss of the obligitory 1 wicket. Compare that to SA who had 71 on the board, and were making a mockery of the run chase. We need openers who know the difference between the first day of a test match and a limited over match. We just can't keep starting with the defensive mentality, we need to take the game to the bowling side when we bat. Clearly moving Flintoff and Pieterson up the order would give us a more attacking opening pair, but then what is there to follow?

All of the above comes back to team leadership and tactics, both the responsibility of the captain and coach. Vaughan is an excellent test batsman and a superb test captain, but his one day record is average at best. To top it all he was included in the squad basically as a captain, not a bowler or batsman, how many other teams would include a player who has just come back from injury with no match practices, knowing they would have to carry him?

And finally Duncan Fletchers resignation. He has done great things for the test team,the Ashes in 2005 being the highlight of our rise in the world rankings to number 2 in world. However the 1 day team still languishes down in 7th place. Maybe we should have a seperate coaching staff for the one day team?

It will be an interesting few months to see how the ECB react to this debacle but I hope they use the opportunity of Fletchers resignation to change things radically for the one day side. But then again when can you ever remember the ECB ever doing anything radical?

dbms_ldap Article Available as PDF

2007-04-02T17:31:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update to let you know I have made the 'Using dbms_ldap to update entries in the OID' post from 30th March available as a PDF on my website.

Using dbms_ldap to add/update/delete entries in the Oracle Internet Directory

2007-03-30T16:01:00.000+01:00

I have spent quite a lot of time over the last couple of months researching and using the dbms_ldap package to access, create and update information in the Oracle Internet Directory. It is an extremely useful package which I have used to create a function used to update user attributes in the Internet Directory.

Firstly you need to create an ldap session

s_session := DBMS_LDAP.init(v_ldap_host,v_ldap_port);

If you are using this type of functionality in a portal environment then you can get the port and the host using the portal.wwsec_oid api e.g.

portal.wwsec_oid.GET_OID_HOST;

Next you need to authenticate and bind to the session

n_retval := DBMS_LDAP.simple_bind_s(s_session, p_userdn, p_pwd);

p_userdn is the distinct name of the user whose attributes you wish to update, and p_pwd is their password. Now you could use orcl_admin here if the site is internal but we decided to create a group with the update user privilege and add all users to that group, as this code will be accessable from the internet.

Now you need to create a mod array of all the attributes you wish to update.

ar_mod_array := DBMS_LDAP.create_mod_array(p_attr_val.COUNT);

As I passed the updates into my function in an array of records (each record consisting of three fields attribute, value and action) called p_attr_val (to avoid calling the function repeatedly) I have used the length of that array to create my mod array in the example above.

Once this is done you need to populate the mod array with all of your updates/additions/deletions, I used a loop to iterate through p_attr_val and then tested the value of p_attr_val.action to see whether or not to do mod_add, mod_replace or mod_delete.

FOR i IN 1..p_attr_val.COUNT
LOOP

str_values(1) := p_attr_val(i).value;

IF p_attr_val(i).action = 'MODIFY' THEN
DBMS_LDAP.populate_mod_array(ar_mod_array
,dbms_ldap.mod_replace
,p_attr_val(i).attribute
,str_values);

ELSIF p_attr_val(i).action = 'ADD' THEN
DBMS_LDAP.populate_mod_array(ar_mod_array
,dbms_ldap.mod_add
,p_attr_val(i).attribute
,str_values);

ELSIF p_attr_val(i).action = 'DELETE' THEN
DBMS_LDAP.populate_mod_array(ar_mod_array
,dbms_ldap.mod_delete
,p_attr_val(i).attribute
,str_values);
END IF;

-- modify entry in ldap directory
v_comment := 'modify entry in ldap directory';
n_retval := dbms_ldap.modify_s(s_session
,p_userdn
,ar_mod_array);

END LOOP;

Finally when you have performed all your updates you need to free the mod array and unbind from the directory.

dbms_ldap.free_mod_array(ar_mod_array);

n_retval := DBMS_LDAP.unbind_s(s_session);

This method has worked incredibly well for us in our current project and is pretty generic as well. I hope you find it useful.

I will make this post available on my website, http://dannyroach.co.nr/ as a pdf as well.

Working from home

2007-03-25T09:33:00.000+01:00

I've been working from home now for around 3 months and I can definitely see the benefits, not just for me but for the company, and dare I say it, the environment.

Firstly from my perspective I don't have any travel time to get 'to' and 'from' work. This is great and means that when I finish work, I am really finished. Secondly it means I save quite a lot of money on a daily commute to Solihull (probably around £15.00 per day in petrol and road tolls). This is turn keeps my car off the road for around 80 miles per day, reducing my 'carbon footprint'. Finally it means that my 'working day' is more flexible. I can lunch when I want, I can work at night, I can work early in the morning, this is great for my productivity as it means I can work when my brain is functioning at its best.

So my quality of life is improved, my productivity is improved and I am reducing emissions. Of course I cannot work from home all the time as there are times when you need to be in the office, for meetings etc In addition to this it also depends who the client is and the type of project. I am fortunate at the moment as I can vpn in to the servers at work to work on this project but not all projects have vpn access.

Overall though I think more companies could do more to encourage and promote this type of working which would reduce the environmental impact of the morning rush hour and also increase their employees well being and productivity. Everyones a winner.

UKOUG SIG Presentation Slides Available

2007-03-16T15:22:00.000Z

I have uploaded the presentation slides from the UKOUG SIG to my website. The day went well and my subject was well received.

Sorry for the sporadic nature of my posting at the moment, I am very busy currently but hope to be able to start posting regularly again soon.

An epiphany

2007-02-17T22:11:00.000Z

I've had a bit of an epiphany this week. Everything seems to be coming together. Firstly I've made some real progress at work. I solved the problem that has been holding me up on Friday and all this week have made good progress with my outstanding tasks. I have got some documentation done and also managed to do some testing and debugging on one of the applications I have been writing. So all good news on the work front then! Also on Monday I will be working on my presentation for next months SIG, so that will be another worry off my mind. Although I am kind of looking forward to it as well.

Training has gone well this week I've had two good karate lessons. Monday night was spent mainly working on kata, specifically Taigyoko Nidan for my next grading (orange belt 7th kyu). Then today we did some more work on Taigyoko Nidan and also some work on Saifa (for green and blue belts). Then we did half an hour of kumite (sparring) as well as work on the pads (which is great for learning how to focus your strike/kick). I also managed to fit a 5 1/2 mile run in on Wednesday, but I need to do more running if I am going to be fit for the Stafford Half Marathon at the end of March.

Anyway I have not had much sleep as my youngest daughter was very ill last night so I am off to bed!

Dev Tech SIG Agenda Published

2007-02-12T17:40:00.000Z

I have published on my website a link to the Dev Tech SIG agenda for next months meeting, at which I am presenting. I have added a few more details about the presentation I am giving as well, including an abstract.

Work on the presentation is going ok, but just lately I have not had much time to work on it as I have been very busy (as you will have noticed as posting on this blog has taken a back seat!). Still I am hopeful that it will all go ok on the day, I am getting more than a little nervous now that it is just over a month away.

Quick update

2007-02-05T09:32:00.000Z

Just a quick post to say that I have been very busy over the last couple of weeks, hence no posts, but I have loads to talk about so I shall be very busy with lots of new posts in the coming weeks.

Post House Moving Trauma

2007-01-22T10:22:00.000Z

Well it's been about a week since we moved in to our new house and things are starting to look a little better now. I have done some decorating, lots of unpacking and plenty of assembling shelves/wardrobes etc. The house is much bigger than I remember, which is nice!

Another change that has happened as a result of moving is my work location. I am now based out of our Birmingham office, but the project I am working on allows for me to work from home most of the time, which saves on the daily commute, both in stress and cost! The only slight snag at the moment is I am waiting for my broadband to be installed so I am working on dial up, but its only a minor inconvenience.

The exercise routine has taken a bit of a back seat for now as all my spare time is spent on doing 'housey' things, but I intend to start looking for a karate club at the end of this week and also to start running again, especially as I saw my brother and sister at the weekend and they have roped me into the Great Manchester run in May!

Moving house tomorrow

2007-01-11T23:27:00.000Z

Just a quick post tonight. I am moving house again tomorrow and will not have internet access for at least a week so this will be my last post for a little while.

Until then, wish me luck!

Leaving, again...

2007-01-09T22:00:00.000Z

I have had a busy few days since I last posted. As with all house moves (at which I am now quite an expert!) I have had to arrange vans, mail redirection, change addresses, packing etc. On Sunday I managed to fill my car with enough stuff to go to the tip that there was no more room, even with the seats folded down. I still have far to much stuff and I am not convinced that the van I have hired will be big enough, but if that is the case then I shall just have to hire another one next week (we have a few days overlap, fortunately).

Today I started early as I had to attend a meeting at our London office with the client that we are currently working with. This proved to be a most fruitful day and many issues and questions were resolved. I hope all my future projects run this smoothly (that's it, I've jinxed it now!).

The one thing that did slightly annoy me was someone's attitude on the tube. I shall not divulge all the details here, other than to say that even at the age of 31 I am constantly amazed at the way people can still behave to one another in our society. Especially people who are clearly educated, but have perhaps a slightly inflated opinion of themselves. Enough said.

I also attended my last GKR Karate class down here in Burghfield today and that was slightly sad as I have made quite a few friends down here and I will be sad to leave. I shall however make every effort to attend classes whenever I am down here in the future. I now have to try and find a class of comparable quality and also that is as enjoyable in Stafford.

Exchanged contracts

2007-01-05T22:17:00.000Z

Good news today! I have exchanged contracts on my new house with completion set for the end of next week. This is excellent, and timely, news (our rental contract runs out the following week!). So now it is all systems go with packing, changing addresses, picking colours etc. for the house move. I can't wait as it will be nice to be back in my neighborhood.

I have booked a few days of which should give me some time to arrange the move. Hopefully once this is complete it will mean some stability in our lives and we can start to put down some roots instead of moving house every couple of years.

Another frustrating day

2007-01-03T16:45:00.000Z

I have just finished a very frustrating day at work. It’s just been one of those days where I have been banging my head against the wall continuously (metaphorically speaking, of course). I have been trying to solve an SSO integration problem regarding sessions all day and it is getting quite frustrating. I have managed to solve some smaller problems but I am still working on the session thing (see my last post for details of my frustration). Anyway I just wanted to sound off a bit, so there I have, and I feel a lot better for it! Hopefully when I get to work tomorrow there will be some replies to the numerous posts I left on various forums regarding this subject.

How to access an sso partner application embedded in an iframe without reauthenticating?

2007-01-03T13:58:00.000Z

A quick techie post for anyone who might be reading, because I need your help!

I have an application (written using apex) that is an sso partner app. I want to be able to embed the application within a portlet (probably a dynamic page portlet generating an iframe) in my portal. When a user access the portal page that contains the iframe they are initially forced to reauthenticate within the iframe.

The problem lies in the sso session. I think when you access an application through an iframe it treats everything in the iframe as if it were in a separate browser session. This means that when you try to access the application in the iframe it still redirects you to the sso server even though you are already authenticated via portal.

So this is the problem, has anyone got any ideas on what the solution might be?

New Years Resolutions

2007-01-01T19:28:00.000Z

Welcome to my first blog posting of a new year. As is customary, I have decided on a few New Years resolutions:

1 - Try to get my 2 year old to brush her teeth, every day.
2 - Continue to focus on my training (both running and karate).
3 - Attend at least two 'taught' karate classes per week, as well as training in my own time.
4 - Continue to reduce my monthly intake of alcohol, chocolate, crisps and cakes, in other words, don't consume any rubbish.
5 - When I'm at home focus on my family and enjoy my children's childhood.
6 - When I'm at work focus on work and continue to strive for self-improvement.

I think that's enough for now, don't you? I know they aren't 'SMART' but so what, I know what I mean and I think if I get to the end of 2007 and I have managed to achieve these then it will have been a successful year.

Happy 2007 to all my blog readers.

PS - I passed 1500 hits for the first time today.

Relinquishing Excess

2006-12-30T09:22:00.000Z

For the first time I can remember I have not, this year, used Christmas as an excuse to eat and drink to excess, well not too much any way. I did of course have much to drink on my birthday with a friend, whom I don't see that often. But come Christmas day I had a couple of glasses of wine, a couple of glasses of port and about 2 lager shandies, all over about a 10 hour period. Similarly I didn't stuff myself with loads of turkey, chocolate and pudding.

I don't know why it has taken so long for me to adopt this attitude as, sitting here writing this, I feel a lot better than usual at this time of year. Maybe I have finally grown up?

Still the important thing is the kids had a great time. My eldest came running down on Christmas day to find that Santa had indeed paid a visit along with Rudolf and they had eaten their mince pies and carrots (respectively). Since then every night before she goes to sleep she asks 'Daddy, is Santa coming tonight?'.

I think that this year I have rediscovered the meaning of the Christmas spirit, after all, in my opinion it is for the kids.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-21T16:44:00.000Z

Progress on the house move is going in the right direction. I have had the surveyors report and the mortgage offer, and I am now just waiting on my solicitor receiving the same along with a couple of searches. With a bit of luck and a following wind we should be able to complete by early January. Which is convenient as we will be moving out of our rented house in mid-January.

The project at work is going well now and I have made some good progress with the shop modules I am developing, I will post on this in more detail after Christmas, along with some of the problems I have encountered!

This will probably be last post before Christmas so it just remains for me to just want to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Website Updated

2006-12-18T14:48:00.000Z

I have added a new page to my website which contains technical information. At the moment there are just two PDF documents that are articles I have written for this blog during the last year. However the intention is to grow this into a useful resource for Oracle technical how to's.

My criteria for writing a technical article are generally based on how long it has taken me to solve the problem. For example recently I spent a day and half trying to work out how to call Portal APIs from within Application Express. I read all the forums, posted on them, read the documentation and it still took this amount of time. This to me is a good reason to write a document about it and publish it on my site.

I hope some of you find it useful in the future.

PS - there appears to be a problem with the redirect on my primary web address of dannyroach.co.nr so if you wish to access my site you will need to use dannyroach.awardspace.co.uk/ for the time being.

Blogging update

2006-12-17T10:32:00.000Z

Just to let you know I have been unable to post this last week due to both my children being in various states of chicken pox. This has taken its toll on my wife and I as well, as sleep is a limited commodity at the moment.

As soon as this mini-crisis resolves itself I shall be back to posting around twice weekly.

Perils of house buying

2006-12-10T07:28:00.000Z

It has been a very educational week, as far as house buying goes. We had agreed to buy a new house about 6 weeks ago and since then it has been in the hands of the solicitors. But last week it became apparent that the house we were buying had been underpinned (thank goodness for local searches).

Now I didn't know what underpinning was so I did some research and discovered that it means the foundations of the house have had to be strengthened; either because of land movement or because the original foundations were too weak/shallow. I also discovered that houses in this category generally have to get specialist insurance, which can cost anything up to 3 or 4 times a normal household premium. On top of this is can be difficult to sell the house because of these reasons.

Anyway, because we couldn't get any more information about what had been done to the house or why we decided to withdraw from the purchase.

So, we had a problem. We move out of our current rented accommodation in the middle of January but we now had no-where to go! After making a few appointments we spent yesterday morning viewing several properties in the Stafford area and luckily for us found one we really liked.

I mean it really does tick all the boxes. It is in a nice area (in the catchment area for a good school), it is roomy enough, it has 'extra' rooms (i.e. a conservatory and utility room, it has a garage and the garden is nice, low maintenance and almost south facing. All in all it is exactly what we want, only down side is it is £5,000 more expensive, but never mind. A few quick phone calls later and we are now back on track to complete in early January! (the vendor has already moved out!)

Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong with this one, eh!

GKR Sparring (Kumite)

2006-12-05T13:17:00.000Z

Last Tuesdays lesson was really tiring, I mean, super tiring! It was a nice surprise because the week before we had, what I would call, a pretty lightweight lesson that didn't really cause any of the adults to break a sweat.

We started off with the basics (kihon) strikes, blocks and kicks. We performed all of these techniques in line as we do almost every week, slow, medium and full focus (fast). Once we had done this we partnered off for sparring (kumite). In GKR we practice no-contact sparring, this is actually quite difficult to do. You have to execute a strike or kick convincingly without making contact whilst still being close enough to persuade the sensei that you could have actually landed the strike/kick.

Initially we start at 20%. This is almost slow motion sparring, but it is good for the techniques and also good as it gives you time to think about which block etc to perform. The sensei then gradually increases the effort until you are sparring at 100%. Here you are expected to perform strikes that, if they made contact would 'end-the-fight', i.e. you are expected to put maximum effort in. We did this for around 1/2 an hour with different partners, at the end of it I was absolutely shattered.

I have learned since I started sparring earlier in the month that at this stage in my training it is best to keep it simple and only try and use a handful of techniques. This way I avoid confusing myself in the heat of the moment. I try to restrict myself to chudan tzuki (mid level punch), jodan tzuki (high level punch), ura uchi (forward backfist) and mae geri (front kick) when attacking. For defence, well to be honest at my level it is simply a case of trying to get something in the way, however I am ok with jodan age uke (head level block) and gedan barai (downward block).

Still more to learn tonight at the dojo....

Trip to Milestones

2006-12-01T14:22:00.000Z

I took the whole family to a museum in Basingstoke called Milestones last weekend. It is a reproduction of life in the 1880s and 1930s. It is all indoors which is why we went there (remember the weather round Reading last weekend?). The streets are laid out in a giant hanger type building, and you walk around looking at all the different period buildings and costume. They even have a tent so that you can dress the children up in period clothes.

It was really interesting and informative, we were there for around 2 and 1/2 hours but we really rushed around because of the kids’ attention span! I reckon if you did it properly it would take around 4 hours (good value at £7.25 per adult, kids under 5 free!). Still everyone enjoyed themselves and I really wished I had taken a camera with me now so I could post a few pics of our visit.

There is this part called the time tunnel where you walk through a tunnel from the 1880s into the 1930s. Here you can go into the sweetshop and buy sweets with a ration card and old money (the kids loved this bit). There is also a period pub, which serves traditional ales (although I didn't sample any because I was still going through my detox phase then).

Using the Portal wwsec_api from within Application Express

2006-11-30T11:56:00.000Z

I haven't done a technical post for a while now but figured this was worthy of one as it took up a day and a half of my time recently.

I am working on a project that requires an apex application integrating into portal. We want the application to be authenticated using single sign on and we want seamless integration so that the user does not have to sign in many times.

The application is a shopping cart application. Once the user has selected all their goods and added them to the shopping cart they go to a checkout screen. This screen displays all the goods along with a total cost and gives the user a checkout button.

On pressing the checkout button the application needs to send the users name, address, postcode and telephone number along with the total cost and some other purchase information to a Worldpay secure payment page. In order to avoid the user having to enter the details manually we decided to extract the details from the Oracle Internet Directory and then send them on to the worldpay page.

Portal provides a set of APIs for interacting with OID so it seemed to make sense to use these to extract the information. wwsec_api.person_info accepts either a user_id or user_name and returns a wwsec_person%rowtype. In order to use these APIs you need to execute the provsyns.sql script by issuing the following command when logged into sqlplus as 'portal'

> @provsyns.sql -parsing schema name here-

In order to identify your parsing schema in apex go into application -> edit attributes -> definition and you will see it listed in the Name area.

Once you have executed this script you need to manually issue the following grants that are missing from the script

> grant select on WWSEC_PERSON to -parsing schema name here-;
> grant select on WWSEC_GROUP$ to -parsing schema name here-;

Now once you have done this you are ready to write your code in apex that needs to call the API. Make sure you include the following in your pl/sql before the API calls.

> portal.wwctx_api_private.set_context
( p_user_name => 'portal',
p_password => 'qwerty'
);

This sets the context; this is what held me up for so long. p_password can be set to anything ('qwerty' is not the password for my portal schema!) so there is no security risk.

After you have made your API calls, make sure you insert the following line of code

> portal.wwctx_api_private.clear_context;

to clear the portal context.

That’s it; you should now be able to use the entire set of portal APIs from application express. If you are interested then here is a link to the thread on OTN so you can see the whole story!

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=448543&tstart=0

Enjoy!

Website Updated

2006-11-27T18:12:00.000Z

Just a quick post (as I have already posted today!). My website has been updated. I have added new pages and altered the navigation method. It is still a work in progress as I don't have that much time to devote to it at the moment, but if you have any comments please feel free to let me hear them.

Stretching and Flexibility

2006-11-27T10:55:00.000Z

As regular readers will be aware I have been working on my general fitness for around a month now (after having spent the last couple of months being generally unfit and lazy!). As part of my fitness campaign (for want of a better expression) I have been working on my flexibility. I have decided to do this for two reasons:

1 - To improve my kicking for karate.
2 - To improve my flexibility in general as I have never really bothered with it even though I have often worked on other areas of fitness such as cardiovascular.

So, being somewhat of a novice in the flexibility arena I duly located a forum where I could ask some specific advise about stretching and increasing muscle range. Needless to say some of the techniques described in the link are, how can I put it.....PAINFULL. But seriously even after only 2 weeks of stretching every other day using a routine based on these techniques I can already feel the difference. For example my legs don't feel so tight the day after a run or a training session.

So, what is the moral of the story? If you do any sort of fitness training, be it running, gym work, cycling or team sports; make sure you include stretching in your fitness routine!

Portal Project Update

2006-11-22T12:19:00.000Z

Here is a quick project update, for those of you that are interested. We have developed 3 proofs of concepts for the content management system using Portal 10.1.4. The PoCs demonstrate some of the functionality that isn’t straightforward to implement, and also functionality where there are a number of different ways to achieve the desired result.

Tomorrow we have a meeting in the City (cool I get to say in the City!) to discuss the PoCs and also to go through the functional documentation we have produced. Hopefully what will come out of it is a clearer understanding of the requirements and also some decisions on the ‘look and feel’ and navigational aspects of the content management system.

My PoC (we have developed 1 each in our team) makes use of an HTML template skin, which gives the whole site a common ‘look and feel’. I have also prototyped (for want of a better word) login/logout, user self-registration, Application Express (htmldb) integration including Single Sign On, integration with a payment provider for online shopping and JavaScript popup menus.

It will be interesting to see what the client thinks tomorrow of our different approaches to menus, site structure etc. Also what will they think of the different styles of our PoCs? I’ll let you know later in the week.

I've missed my blogging birthday!

2006-11-19T22:11:00.000Z

I've just realised it's been over one year since I started doing this, blogging that is (actually that’s a lie as I have written this once and lost it when I clicked spell check). Blogging has never really been about the hits (I've only had around 1500 since I started doing it, equivalent to around 30 a week), more a place for me to write my thoughts on pretty much any subject at a given moment in my life.

It started out during my final year at university as somewhere to vent and let off steam. Since then it has become more of a kind of journal of my life where I write about both my professional life at Oracle and my hobbies and interests. It's also great practise for the book I want to write one day.

Indecently while I think about it I am three weeks into a detox month consisting of no alcohol, chocolate or crisps. Actually I'm not sure about that last sentence. Can something consist of a lack of something? Anyway whatever the semantics of it, it is going really well. It has also kick-started my training so this week I have been running three times and been to karate twice.

Anyway I hope you have enjoyed reading for the last year, and I also hope you will continue to read for the next year. (I think that is pretty much what I wrote last time, and actually I think it is better!)

More karate...

2006-11-15T13:40:00.000Z

I had karate training last night. It was a really good lesson, my first since my recent grading. It was quite an intense lesson, but I got some real benefit from it. The structure went something like this:

1 - 30 Minutes Basics (Strikes and Blocks)
2 - 30 Minutes Combinations
3 - 15 Minutes Kata
4 - 15 Minutes Kumite (Free sparring)

I particularly enjoyed the sparring because I have not done this before (you are not allowed below yellow belt). It was really good to try and put some of the basic strikes and blocks into combinations whilst also being aware of what your opponent is doing, and trying to counter it.

During our kata practice we did Taigyoku Shodan (1st Kata, the kata required for Yellow belt) and Taigyoku Nidan (2nd kata, the kata required for Orange belt). I also got my first attempt at katas Saifa and Bassai-Dai. These are more advanced katas required for higher grades, but my instructor always tries to introduce you to the next kata above your grade early so that you are at least familiar with it.

Go-Kan-Ryu (GKR) Karate

2006-11-13T09:14:00.000Z

Just thought I would post an update about my first Karate grading yesterday. I passed! I am now a yellow belt or 8th Kyu. It felt great to go and collect my belt from the Sensei but seeing the higher grades really makes you think about how much there is to learn. I enjoy it though, and that is the main thing.

I would just like to say at this point that the style of Karate I do is the Go-Kan-Ryu style, which a lot of people have criticised for its direct marketing methods, amongst other things. I however am really grateful to the guy who knocked on my door and introduced me to this sport as I would never have had the nerve to go to a Dojo myself and find out about it.

I find my Sensei and all the Instructors to be thorough and professional in their instruction. Also when it comes to adding reason to the moves they have always been able to explain this as well demonstrate it. The no contact nature of the training makes it ideal for families and also for people who have a customer facing job! Anyway I am sure this post will kick up a storm from the traditionalist, and all I can say is, bring it on!

Fun with Oracle Portal and Application Express

2006-11-11T15:45:00.000Z

I have been working with Portal this week to investigate the functionality that we need to provide for the content management system. On Monday and Tuesday Jas (out Technical Team Lead) ran a Portal workshop to enable Greg and I to familiarise ourselves with Portal. Then on Wednesday we had a kick off meetin for the project. The rest of the time this week I have been working on a proof of concept. This PoC includes using the standard omniportlet to render RSS feeds. This was quite simple to achieve after a little reading around. All you need to do is provide an XSL stylesheet to convert the RSS feed into ROWSET/ROW format, this can then be styled using the standard omniportlet functionality. I also investigated using a custom self-registration form based on a PLSQL stored procedure to enable me to produce a self-registration portlet.

Friday afternoon I installed APEX 2.2 onto the virtual machine I have. This is running Red Hat 3.0 and OAS10g along with Portal 10.1.4. I am doing this because next week I want to integrate APEX apps into portlets that can be accessed on the portal using SSO so there will be no need to log in twice. It is my first experience of installing APEX and it was interesting to say the least. First of all I managed to mess up the DAD file that you need to provide so that APEX knows where the database is. Then when I finally sorted that out I realised I had put the images in the wrong directory so the system ran but without any graphics. Once I had sorted this out I realised I had not put the correct path in the marvel.conf file so it still didn’t know where the images were!

Finally I got it all to run correctly and managed to leave work, at last to come home for the weekend. This weekend is a busy one as I am doing my first grading for karate on Sunday. This will be for my Yellow belt and I am quite excited about it, as I have really started to enjoy my karate. It is a great way to relax after work on a Tuesday, or on a Saturday morning.

Oracle Portal Project

2006-11-01T17:07:00.000Z

Finally today after two and a half weeks of quality on-the-bench time I have been assigned to a project! I know I shouldn’t worry about it but I was beginning to fret a little and was considering changing my name to Danny ‘PDF’ Roach, as I have been reading so much documentation over the last few weeks.

The project is an Oracle community project for a charitable organisation. Our task is to redesign and rebuild their website including all their existing features but also a host of additions. We shall be using Portal as the main technology for the project as well as possibly some Application Express (HTMLDB). Its early days yet as we are still defining the requirements with the client but it looks like a very interesting project. It should also keep me busy for a while as the delivery date is set for February 2007 so I wont need to worry about bench time for a while, or so it seems.

A project on the horizon?

2006-10-27T11:18:00.000+01:00

I am inspired to write today by the hope that this time next week I will be engaged on a project! Having completed my training just under 2 weeks ago I have continued my development by completing a number of online courses covering various topics. I have also spent a lot of time reviewing the material that was covered during the bootcamp training. The project is a proof of concept and involves technologies I am not familier with so I have around a week to familiarise myself with the concepts and terminologies.

This weekend my friends, Keith and Katie, are holding their engagement party. It is at a golf club near to my parent's house, and my mother has very kindly offered to babysit allowing Amanda and I to attend. It should be a good party as a number of my friends from work and uni will be attending. Full report next week!

King of the Bench

2006-10-22T08:48:00.000+01:00

The last couple of weeks have vanished in a flash, so much has happened. At work I have now finished my initial training. Many of my colleagues who started with me have been assigned to projects in shadowing roles, and several have begun a customer service secondment. There are still a few of us who are unassigned (on the bench) at the moment, but hopefully that will change next week, as there is plenty of work available. As a result of being unassigned I have spent the last week improving my PL/SQL skills by working on an Oracle University Self Study course, as well as reviewing the course material from my training. This has improved my skill level and confidence with this language immeasurably. I didn’t know, for example, about the %TYPE and %ROWTYPE attributes that can be used when defining a variable type or cursor type. These must really come in useful when you don’t know the details of the table you are selecting from, or if the table structure is likely to be modified.

Another Graduate Assessment day was held on Thursday and as Greg, Mike and I are currently unassigned we were asked to take the candidates to lunch in the canteen. Looking around the table you could feel the tension and it made me think back to my assessment day back in February and the stress I felt on the day.

Last weekend was really exciting. We found a beautiful 3 bedroom detached house in Stafford and had our offer accepted! The location is superb as it backs right onto common land with a stunning view. At the bottom of the cul-de-sac is a childrens play park and at the top is a primary school and pub! Perfect!

The only downside to having found a property is that we now have to arrange to move house again. I am not looking forward to this, but it will be the last time for quite a while as we don’t plan to move again now for 7 or 8 years.

New Jag, UKOUG SIG, Work and more

2006-10-08T11:02:00.000+01:00

I realise my blogging has become somewhat sporadic of late; this is due to the fact that I am short of spare time at the moment. Normal service will be returned as soon as possible.

The last two weeks at work have been very interesting. We have covered 4 different technologies in quite a bit of detail. Last week we had a day on UNIX covering commands and shell scripting, using VI etc. Unfortunately I missed this day but I have worked through the course material and found it to be an extremely useful reference source for the 3 day 'DBA basics' course that followed. This course introduced us to the database internals along with how to change database parameters to increase performance. The final day was spent covering the apps from a DBA perspective, this was a bit of a whistle-stop tour but at least I have an idea of what goes on and where to look to find out more information now.

The week before was spent on reporting; firstly Discoverer 10g and then 2 days on XML Publisher. I have enjoyed all the training but now cant wait to start applying what I have learned. One of our intake starts his first engagement next week on a data migration project. The rest of us have a short 5-day PL/SQL course before we start our first engagements, and I should find out next week what I will be working on!

Also, I have been invited to speak at the Development Technology SIG early next year. My presentation is based on my university dissertation entitled 'An Internet Banking Based Electronic Cheque Cashing Mechanism'. I need to adapt it a bit and I have also identified some areas I can improve, but I have the next 6 months to perfect it.

I have also taken delivery of my new car in the last 2 weeks, a Jaguar X-Type 2.0 V6 SE. It is a beautiful car I am absolutely delighted with it. Unfortunately while on my way up to Stafford to go house hunting I experienced a puncture, which necessitated a new tyre, but it could have been much worse. When I saw the tyre it was very close to having been a blow out!

No luck yet on the house front but we are looking again this weekend so hopefully we will be putting in an offer soon. We have seen some we are interested in but need to see them again before we put an offer in.

Palm Z22 and my experience with Oracle Workflow

2006-09-23T21:47:00.000+01:00

Yes, I have taken the plunge and bought a PDA. I looked at lots and lots of different models and was almost taken in by what I call the ‘its got’ phenomenom. However, having made or commited to a number of significant purchases recently I decided to sit down and work out what features I would actually still use after the first two weeks. The list looks like this –

Calender – for scheduling both my private and work life
Tasks – the same
Email – not sending, just the ability to read emails offline
Docs – the ability to read/write word and powerpoint files
Sync with outlook – do I really have to explain this one?

So as I say after perusing the market I ended up buying the Palm Z22. Not the most feature laden or powerful handheld on the market, in fact probably the least, but it does do all of the above, either with standard software or with the installation of some freeware. The report so far? It is working well and improving my life. I don’t find myself constantly trying to remember things because as soon as I think of something I simply make a note of it in the tasks. I did have a little trouble getting the calender function to sync with outlook reliably, but I think I have sorted that out now.

The training at work continues. Last week we had an Introduction to Oracle Workflow. This course was a high level overview of Workflow including the Workflow Builder and the Business Events System. We covered a lot of material and I do feel that I have a gained a good ‘high level’ view of messaging middleware in general as well as one of Oracles Implementations of it. At least when I get on to a project that involves Workflow I will know what it is and where to look up specific information regarding a particular componant.

The previous week we had an ‘Intro to Apps’ course which included a day of accounting complete with double entry book keeping, trial balance and profit & loss! This did prove useful further into the course though as in order to understand Oracle Financials it is essential to have some basic understanding of accounting practices. I found the course useful as it introduced a lot of the screens and processes that are used to setup Financials ‘out of the box’ and as such familarity is essential.

Next week we are covering Discoverer 10g and XML Publisher, and from my brief time with Oracle I understand that the latter is very much in vogue at the moment. After that we have some UNIX training and then my ‘Graduate Bootcamp’ will be over and the real learning can begin, i.e. on a project.

Reading O2O 10k

2006-09-06T13:31:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I ran in my first road race for well over a year. The race was the O2O 10k in Reading. The route started at Thames Valley Park and followed the Thames and then Kennet into Reading centre before turning back for TVP. It was a well-attended race with nearly 900 starters.

Despite starting too fast and getting pulled along with the faster runners, I managed to post a time of 52.27, which was only 2.27 outside my target time of 50 minutes. I was extremely tired toward the end though and need to work on my stamina for longer distances. Im hoping to find another race in about 6 weeks time perhaps a 10 miler to do.

Work is going well, still. This week we are working with Oracle Application Express (APEX) we have had two days of PowerPoint and exercises, and now we are applying this to a case study to create an application from scratch. I am very impressed with what can be done using this development tool and will write more at the weekend on some of the features.

The Bank Holiday

2006-09-02T08:14:00.000+01:00

With the bank holiday on Monday it has been a really quick week this week. I can’t believe that I am here writing my next blog post already! Monday was really nice though. I took advantage of being so close to the south coast now to take my family down to Bournmouth for the day. With the sun shining and sitting on the beach it wss easy to think “It doesn’t get any better than this!” Isobel (my eldest) really enjoyed playing with the sand and getting wet in the sea.

On the work front, this week we have been brushing up our XML skills as well as learning how to apply them in the Oracle environment. We have also covered a whole host of Oracle specific XML functions for converting database objects to XML and creating XML schemas from database tables. I found the course really interesting and think it will prove very useful in the future.

Next week we have a course on APEX (Oracle Application Express) or HTML DB to those of you who have no heard of the new name. The instructors are graduates from last year’s intake, so it will be a good opportunity to find out a bit more about what the first year is like.

I also need to find time this week to write a retrospective of my time at university as I have been asked to put something together for the university brochure!

Until next time, adios.

eBusiness Suite and PL/SQL

2006-08-26T09:54:00.000+01:00

Well another week has gone by at work. This week we have had an introduction to the kind of customisations we will be doing once we complete our training and are assigned to a project.

I have found this really interesting, as we have covered a lot of ground this week. On Monday we had a SQL refresher, this wasn’t too challenging, but was clearly necessary as not everyone on the course had covered databases in as much depth at university.

Tuesday brought an introduction to PL/SQL, again some of this was a refresher, but I learned a lot of new things that are specific to using this technology with Oracles applications. It was at this point I started to realise how much I still have to learn.

Wednesday was good because we started to bring together some of the skills we learned on Monday and Tuesday on a kind of mini project. The task being to write a concurrent program that utilised the workflow engine within eBusiness Suite to send a notification to an employee and their manager. This task was good because although the actual amount of coding was quite small, it meant doing a lot of reading and researching in order to take the custom process and integrate it into eBusiness Suite.

Thursday and Friday were spent debugging code and documenting what we had done using Oracle's standard document templates. Overall the induction training so far has been excellent, although I must admit I am enjoying more now that we have started to do the technical training.

Next week we are covering XML, another subject area I am keen to learn more about. In the mean time I am going to enjoy my long weekend and take my children to the park.

A New Oracle Employee

2006-08-19T07:47:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the radio silence over the last 3 weeks, it has been a very busy time for me. I started my new job at Oracle as a Technical Consultant 2 weeks ago now and it has been a very interesting start. The first 2 weeks have been covering mainly generic company induction material as well as aspects of consulting in general. The technical training starts next week with a week of SQL and PL/SQL. This week we have had a number of interesting sessions including one day that covered 'Consulting Skills' which I think was the most useful day so far. I am really enjoying my new role so far; it appears that all the years of hard work at University and the sacrifices I have had to make in order to do my degree are starting to pay off.

On the course with me are 14 more graduates from a variety of backgrounds. We have been employed for various different consulting jobs some technical, some functional and a couple of DBA's. The whole group has really gelled well and I have met some really great people so far.

On the home front, my family have started to settle into Reading very well and I have just arranged a nursery place for my eldest daughter to start in September. My wife has started to make new friends and the house is starting to look more like a home than a storage depot!

I look forward to the next 2 weeks to see what they will bring!

Oracle

2006-07-23T08:19:00.000+01:00

The first day of my new job is fast approaching and with so much going on in my life it has almost crept up on me. It is a little under two weeks till I start at Oracle in what I am sure will be a new and exciting role.

We had an email from HR with details of the ubiquitous 'Induction Day' for day one. In my experience the first week in a new job is inevitably filled with paperwork and housekeeping, still I can't wait to get started as it is what I have worked so hard for, for 5 years.

Talking of a busy life it is my daughters Christening today, so I have not got time to write any more today. Full report on the Christening later in the week!

Moving Home Part 2

2006-07-19T07:32:00.000+01:00

Our current house is like a bombsite! There are boxes everywhere. Boxes to move, empty boxes to fill, boxes of stuff to sell on eBay and boxes of rubbish to take to the tip.

On Monday we took a van load of our stuff down to Reading to the new house. My wife and youngest daughter travelled by car and Isobel (my eldest) travelled with me in the van. She loved it, being so high up and sees so many things that she normally misses when she is stuck in the back of the car.

It was a very hot in Reading, as in the rest of the country but it was nice to get down there and start to unpack some stuff. We spent the night there (portable TV and airbeds are very useful!) and travelled back early on Tuesday morning as the van had to be returned to the hire company. I now plan to move everything else at the end of the month and I have hired a 7.5 ton truck to take it all (saves me spending £1000.00 on a removal company!).

I have sold a lot of our old things on eBay, this has saved some space, but unfortunately my wife has found out how to buy things on eBay and is replacing the sold items fast!

I am also making a lot of runs to our local tip/recycling centre to get rid of old chipboard furniture and items that don’t work or we simply do not use (so long as there is no chance of making any money on eBay!).

I am also making a bit of progress on the running front. I managed to go out twice last week, the last time was early Saturday evening (v. hot) and it confirmed to me my unfit status! I have acquired a bit of a tummy from my final year at uni, so more work is required in the fitness dept.

Chateau Impney

2006-07-11T08:10:00.000+01:00

We went to my wifes cousins wedding on Saturday. This was a full church do followed by a reception at the Chateau Impney 4 star hotel in Droitwich. The wedding was really nice and the reception after was excellent.

The food was really good and it was really nice to see some of Amandas family from London again after such a while. Best of all the hotel did a baby listening service. This meant that we could put the kids to bed and leave the phone off the hook. If they heard anything they would come and find us, fortunately this did not happen.

But I would just like to say a big thanks to the staff of the hotel as we had a lovely time.

Holiday and Graduation Day

2006-07-05T08:43:00.000+01:00

As you have probably noticed I am now back from my holiday in Devon. We had a great two weeks with excellent weather. I did quite a lot of swimming including swimming in the sea, which was the warmest UK sea I can ever remember! We also managed to fit in a couple of visits to my dads Yacht which is moored at Brixham. Hopefully now that my degree is finished we will be able to get down more to enjoy ourselves.

Yesterday was our graduation ceremony I am now officially not a student any more but a graduate. I was delighted to discover last week that I have graduated with First Class honours. At times the last five years has been really tough but yesterday was the culmination of all that work and it now seems to have flown by. All of my friends achieved what they wanted and we all went out last night for a few drinks as this will probably be our last get together now that we are all off to different parts of the UK and Europe to pursue our new careers.

To all my friends I wish you all the very best of luck in the future and hopefully this is just au revoir not goodbye. Also thanks to all my tutors and lecturers over the last five years for all you help and support.

The World Cup

2006-07-02T21:25:00.000+01:00

Another tournament comes to an end with an all too familiar feeling. The feeling that we have underperformed, let ourselves down, and not stepped up when it really mattered. England are out at the quarterfinal stage yet again, at least we are in illustrious company; Brazil and Argentina have also gone home early. It’s hard to describe how I feel about it, I am obviously gutted, but there was a certain inevitability about it from the moment the game kicked off.

England knock out games seem to follow the same script. Play ok for about an hour then lose a key player to either injury or a red card, then fight valiantly with 10 men for the remaining period plus extra time. Finally lose on penalties. Think France 98 (Argentina), Portugal 2004 (Portugal) and now this year. Hopefully things will change in the future; we have many things to be positive about. We have a talented young squad and a new manager in Steve Mclaren who has shown in the premiership he is not afraid to take risks and play attacking football.

Finally, a word about David Beckham. He has been an excellent captain for nearly six years now and has chosen to step down because he thinks it will further the England cause. He is a model professional who lead by example and is a perfect role model to all young people. Thank you David for all your efforts over the last six years.

Moving House

2006-07-02T21:12:00.000+01:00

I have not moved house for several years now and it is only now that I am back from my holiday that I have remembered how stressful it is. There are so many things to remember to do

Change Address

This has got to be the number one headache. I mean who can actually honestly say that they know the names of all the people and/or companies that write to them let alone the addresses? I have several bank accounts, not all with the same bank, insurance providers, household bills, investments, credit cards, friends, relatives and the list just goes on.

I shall definitely be taking advantage of the Royal Mails post redirection service to ensure that I have not forgotten anyone.

The Actual Move

Then there is the moving experience itself. Booking the van, ensuring everything is boxed up correctly, physically moving everything from one residence to the next, and then when you get to your new home you can never find anything you want. I asked a couple of removal companies for quotations and they wanted nearly £1000.00 plus VAT for the move! I shall definately be doing it myself even if it is slightly more hassle.

Still it’s not all doom and gloom I am looking forward to getting into the new house it is in a nice location, and much bigger than our previous one even if it is only for 6 months. We will be renting though because we have to move back again in around 6 months and then we are hoping to buy somewhere. Its not ideal moving twice in one year but it will be worth it in the end.

6 Points

2006-06-16T10:13:00.000+01:00

It wasn't a vintage England performance but 2-0 and 3 points mean that we have qualified from our group for the knockout stages of the world cup with a game to spare. I cant remember that last time that that happened. I shall go on holiday now looking forward to at least two more England world cup games and hopefully more.

Come on England.

Fitness on the way back

2006-06-15T15:09:00.000+01:00

With all this time on my hands lately I have been able to get quite a few games of golf in. Last week I managed a round at the local short course and also a round with my brother at his club (Lilleshall). Lilleshall is a really pretty course. I enjoyed my round there and found that it was quite a forgiving course, so long as you hit the fairways. The front 9 is quite open with not much in the way of heavy foliage, but the back 9 is much more close in. There are some patches of rough that if you hit your ball in you are not going to find it. Anyway I manage quite a respectable score and played some very nice golf shots.

This week I have started to work on my cardiovascular fitness again and have been out running. Monday (very hot) I went for a run and forgot that I have not been running properly and attempted my usual 6.2 mile circuit through Brocton and Walton. This was not a good idea and I struggled in the heat and with my fitness, walking parts of the route. Still yesterday I went out and did my 4.8 mile route no problem averaging around 8 mins 45 secs per mile, which was a pleasant surprise for my second run. I hope to get out again on Friday before we go on holiday on Saturday.

I’m looking forward to my holiday in Devon next week, the weather looks good and I know the beaches around Torbay are nice so I should be able to get some running and swimming in (around the world cup matches, of course).

For now though I'm off to begin my preparations for this evening’s crucial England match, fingers crossed for an England win.

Revised Website

2006-06-13T15:51:00.000+01:00

I am part way through revising my website. It is a work in progress but I have added some new content today including a new Books page and a news/events page.

Let me know what you think!

dannyroach.co.nr

My Website

2006-06-11T08:39:00.000+01:00

I have just performed a minor update to my website. I have added some details about a project I am involved in this summer, and updated some of the links.

Hopefully I will find more time next week to make some more substantial changes, any suggestions as to what you would like to see are more than welcome, just post a comment here and I will be able to see what everyone wants.

England 1 Paraguay 0

2006-06-11T08:10:00.000+01:00

Well it wasn't a convincing victory but at least it was a win, something we traditionally dont do at the start of big tournaments. Yesterday the whole family was out in the garden with the canopy up and the TV outside to watch the big game. My mom came around as well and we all enjoyed ourselves in the nice weather. It reminded me of being on holiday and watching the big tournaments.

If the weather is as good today then we shall do the same again and make the most of it.

The more observant of you will have noticed that the name of this blog has changed, this is to reflect my new status. I had a letter from university yesterday confiming we will indeed get our correct classifications prior to the award ceremony in July, so heres keeping my fingers crossed!

Family Time

2006-06-08T08:47:00.000+01:00

This last month or so since I completed all my assessments for university has been great. I have been able to spend more time with my family and two young daughters. I have been able to play more sports and generally begin to have a life again.

On Tuesday I played golf with my brother and played quite well, if not spectacularly. Considering I have only played once properly since last year I was very pleased. I am playing again on Friday with Keith. I am also hoping to get some running in this next week as well.

There is still no news on what is happening in the teachers’ dispute so I assume that they are still not submitting marks for assessment. Fingers crossed it will all get sorted out soon in time for the graduation ceremony at the start of July.

Finally, you will have noticed the distinct lack of computing related posts on this blog. This is because I have deliberately stayed away from computing subjects for the last month while I chill out after Uni. This will all start to change next month as I have a website to work on and also will be getting ready for my new career at Oracle.

Amazing

2006-06-05T20:13:00.000+01:00

If its possible I have been even more busy the last week than I was during the last part of my degree! Which is why my posting has become more sporadic. I spent the latter part of last week in Reading with my wife viewing properties. We finally settled on one on Friday in the beautiful village of Burghfield Common, just south of Reading. The village is really nice with 3 pubs, a butcher, bakers and green grocers. It is just the sort of retreat I had in mind when we were looking for a place. We shall be moving at the end of July so that lead to my next task.

I have been starting to get removal quotes and have been amazed to find that it is likely to cost around £700.00. With this in mind I think I will hire a truck and do it myself (I have an HGV licence). This is more likely to cost around £100.00 to £200.00 and is much more what I had expected.

My new part time job working at the local childrens play centre is going great, I really enjoy working with the children. It is also really handy as my two daughters can use the facilities free of charge!

Holiday blues

2006-05-28T09:06:00.000+01:00

I got back from a weeks holiday in Barmouth yesterday. I have never seen so much rain in one week in my life. We had one day without rain and with a little sunshine, but apart from that the majority of the holiday was spent indoors. We still managed to have a good time and it was nice just to have a change of scenery and be away from home. I find that I tend to relax more when I am away from home as there are none of the little pressures of home life, jobs to be done, bills to be paid etc.

I managed to get in the sea twice (yes the Irish Sea) and go for a run along the beach, which is really long and made of lovely sand (not the pebbles you get at other beaches). Had a few drinks and went out for a nice Italian meal one night.

I have a busy few days ahead as we are going down to Reading at the weekend to look for a house to rent for when I start my new job at the beginning of August and then at the end of June we go away on holiday again for two weeks down in Devon. I’m sure some of you have noticed my posts have been less frequent lately, but now that the exams are out of the way and my project is finished I hope to post at least twice a week from now on. So until then...

All finished

2006-05-14T09:49:00.000+01:00

I have done my project presentation and demonstration and I am now no longer a student! I cant believe after 5 years it is all over, it has been a big part of my life and in a way I feel quite sad that I have finished but also very relieved.

I just have the nervous wait now to find out my classification before graduation day in July. So what am I going to be doing over the next few months to keep me busy before my Oracle start date?

Well yesterday I played golf for the first time in quite a while and got beaten by my dad and brother so perhaps I will try and get a few more rounds in this summer. I also have a part time job which I start in a few days time working at the local childrens play den. I will be working on a website for a lecturer at university as well as building a new website for me rather than the homepage I have currently.

As well as that I plan to take a few holidays with my wife and kids and spend time going to theme parks and daytrips.

And I suppose I had better think of a new name for this blog, any ideas?

IET Annual Dinner

2006-05-10T15:29:00.000+01:00

Last night I attended the annual IET dinner with my wife Amanda. We had a really nice time as it is the first time for quite a while we have had the chance to dress up and go somewhere nice. The dinner was held at Keele Hall and the location was superb as was the food. After dinner there were a couple of speakers who had some very valid and interesting points to make about our energy consumption and where the future of energy is going.

I was invited to the dinner to collect my prize from last months IET young speakers competition, along with the 2nd and 3rd place winners. Overall it was a really nice function and has wetted my appetite for more 'black tie' dos.

With my confidence soaring after the last two speaking events I have submitted an abstract for this years UK Oracle Users Group Conference at the ICC. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that it gets accepted.

Right I am off back into the sunshine in the garden now to continue preparing for my project demo tomorrow.

Website back up

2006-05-08T08:40:00.000+01:00

Apologies to those of you that have been trying to access my website. The free web hosting service I used has been down for 3 days and now it has deleted my account! I have now set up a new account with a much better free hoting service called awardspace.co.uk.

This service gives me access to MySQL, PHP and CGI scripts so one of my projects over the summer will be to increase the content on my website and take advantage of some of the dynamic facilities available to me now, and it is still free!

The website is back up now with a minor update.

Nearly all over

2006-05-03T15:34:00.001+01:00

It’s been a while since I last posted and I have quite a few things to talk about in this post because of that.

Firstly I have handed in my last assignment, and demoed it! It went quite well I think, not as well as I would have liked but I think that I have had to give my project priority over some of the other work I would have liked to have done. I now have to revise like crazy for the exam on Friday and then finish sorting my project demo/presentation out for the following Thursday.

Anyway after all the hard work that I had put in over the last couple of months I let my hair down at the weekend, as did most of my friends. Thursday I had a lot to drink and then Friday went out with a group of friends from university. We hit the union bar about 7pm and then moved next door later on into Legends, the nightclub. It was a really good night, the beer was cheap and plentiful, and we all had a good laugh and drank plenty of it. This was followed by much dancing and singing until the place finally shut around 3am.

On Saturday the four of us who are going down to Reading in August all went out for a meal with our partners to a local Chinese restaurant in Penkridge. This was more my sort of night now that I am getting on a bit, and we had plenty of wine and good food.

Now that I have that all out of my system I need to look to the summer and what I am going to do to keep me entertained. I have a few holidays planned with my family and think that I may arrange some day trips and take the chance to spend some time with the kids while they are still so young before I start my new job in the autumn.

Next Tuesday I will be going to the North West Midlands branch of the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) annual dinner. I was one of 6 entrants last Tuesday to their short papers competition and I won. This was a nice surprise and I have to collect my prize on Tuesday from what looks like a very nice do, looking forward to it already. If you are interested you can download my presentation from here.

Happy Happy Day

2006-04-24T16:16:00.001+01:00

Today I have handed in my project. It has been a massive project, much bigger than I thought it would be. Some of the stats are

Main Report
- 25,209 words
- 135 pages
- over 8 pages of references

Appendix
- 32,300 words
- 237 pages (electronic copy)

Code
- 8245 lines of code

I didnt think I could do that much work! Im just enjoying a post FYP drink in the student union bar, while I contemplate my last assignment which is due in thursday. Fortunately it is a lot less work.

If anyone is interested in my project and would like to know more there is information about my project here, or you can email me at dannyroach@hotmail.co.uk. In addition to this I will be talking at the local Institute of Engineering and Technology meeting to be held here at Staffordshire University tomorrow night at 7pm, details are on my website.

Right time for another pint I think!

Distinct lack of posts

2006-04-13T18:00:00.000+01:00

You may or may not have noticed that I haven't posted for a week, this is simply because I haven't the time at the moment with my project due in in less than 2 weeks and another assignment due in 2 days after that.

Rest assured as soon as I have got the time I shall be posting frequently again. If you want to avoid having to check back regularly simply us the RSS feed on the right hand side pane which will deliver all my latest content straight to your desktop news application without the hassle of checking my site regularly.

Also just to let you know I have had my paper accepted for the local Institute of Engineering and Technology meeting on the 25th April here at Staffordshire University, so if anyone wants to come along please do.

Project Development Hiccup

2006-04-06T10:04:00.000+01:00

There is now less than 3 weeks to go till project hand in day and to be honest, I am really feeling the pressure now. I am eating, drinking, sleeping and breathing my project. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it and I have dreams about it (or should that be nightmares?).

I am still trying to finalise the build one code. Most of the functionality is there now, I have one more function to implement and then I can begin debugging and finally system testing. I could really do with having it all complete by tomorrow tea time at the latest so that I can give myself about 8 days on build 2 before stopping all development work to concentrate on the report and supporting documentation.

Yesterday I found another problem with my original design. The system allows you to cancel a cheque if the payee has not cashed it. The system then refunds the money to your bank account, credit card or however you paid. It was then that I noticed that I had no way of knowing how the issuer had paid as I was not storing that information anywhere. So I have added fields to the database, parameters and code to the stored procedures to retrieve the information, code to the web service that calls the procedures and finally code in the client that calls the web service. All this required testing so that took about an hour and 1/2 out of my day yesterday as I re ran my unit test scripts. Hopefully that is the last big hole in my project sorted, although somehow I doubt it.

I was able to forget about my project for a couple of hours last night though as I went to a very interesting seminar last night organised by the IET about presentation skills. The presenter gave some excellent examples of what and what not to do during a presentation. I am sure this will be invaluable for my upcoming project presentation, and if they accept my paper, the IET presentation at the end of the month.

Type Conversion Quirk in Visual Studio 2005

2006-04-02T13:06:00.000+01:00

As regular readers of this blog will be aware, I have been coding my final year project for around 6 weeks now. Over the last week I have been conducting unit and integration testing on my web services and came across an interesting type conversion quirk in Visual Studio 2005 when using Visual Basic.

I have a web service called Authenticate (WebAuthenticate is the name I have given to the web reference) which contains an object called session. Session holds information like IP Address, Unique ID etc.

In my test class I create an instance of this object like this:

Dim LocalSession as New WebAuthenticate.Session()

and an instance of the web service like this:

Dim Authenticated as New WebAuthenticate.Authenticate()

I then try and assign a session object to this that is created and returned in the SOAP Header by another function as part of the Authenticate web service like this.

Authenticated.CreateSession()

LocalSession = WebAuthenticate.SessHeaderValue.NewSessionKey

Visual Studio then gives me the following error message:

“Value of type WebAuthenticate.Session cannot be converted to WebAuthenticate.Session.”

Rather bizarre, I thought. I did plenty of Googling around but all of the posts I found were on actual type conversions rather than an error converting a type to the same type. I got around this problem by using a generic object to store the value, as follows:

Dim obj as object = WebAuthenticate.SessHeaderValue.NewSessionKey

That way the system can then pass the object to whichever procedure needs it next. A bit of a dirty fix I know, but with just over 3 weeks till project hand in day certain sacrifices have to be made!

Project Testing and another presentation

2006-03-31T14:04:00.000+01:00

The end of term is in sight and the light at the end of the tunnel is a little brighter. I had an in class test on Tuesday for the J2EE module I am taking, and I think it went well. Of the 25 questions I could answer 12 straight off without thinking too much about them. The remaining 13 were a mixture of ones I worked out and ones I just gave my best guess as the answer. The test itself is worth 30% of the overall module mark, the other 70% is based on the 3 demonstrations we have done and the supporting documentation we have had to hand in. This is in the form of a diary and critical appraisal of the code we have written. I handed the diary in on Wednesday a week early to allow me to concentrate more fully on my project.

On the project I have finished writing the web services for build one (and nearly finished debugging them). I have nearly completed and documented unit testing and integration testing, and should have a basic interface built by the end of the weekend in order to demo the functionality. I am about 3-4 days behind my plan, but there is not a lot I can do about that now other than work harder as there is only 3 ½ weeks till hand in date.

The IEE are organising a short papers evening on the 25th April (project hand in day) and I am thinking of submitting my project presentation for consideration. The talk should be about 15 minutes (+ 5mins for questions) and is judged 25% on technical content and 75% on presentation skills. I think after my presentation to the BCS meeting earlier this month I would like the chance to address some of my weaknesses in advance of the project presentations in May. Oh yes and there is a £120.00 top prize plus an invitation to a dinner in Keele in May.

By the way, has anyone come across this message in Visual Studio 2005?

"Value of type cannot be converted to ." - Where x is the same object type? I have googled a bit but most people are talking about converting type to type . I really am a bit baffled by this as there should be no need for a type conversion to take place, so any help would be most appreciated.

Free web hosting and file hosting

2006-03-26T19:42:00.000+01:00

I have found a bit of time these last couple of days to update my webpage and jus thought it might be useful if I listed a few of the resources I have used.

My domain name dannyroach.co.nr is provided free by www.freedomain.co.nr whose only limitation ia that you must place a small ad on your main page. My site is hosted by fsphost.com who provide me with 250MB of free web space with NO adverts of any kind, however the filetypes you can upload are limited so I hotlink into www.gimehost.com for anything like powerpoint files or word documents. They provide a free file sharing service with no registration required.

So it is possible to have your own website without any annoying banner and popup ads, and with an easy short domain name, if you just google around a bit!

Final Year Project Progress Report

2006-03-24T20:09:00.000Z

It’s less than 5 weeks till hand in day and I, like everyone else, am getting more and more worked up about it. Today has been a really positive day though. I had a very positive meeting with my supervisor, who as ever, managed to pick me up off the floor (not literally) and give me some context. I am still behind (revised) schedule but today I have managed to get all of the web services needed for timebox 1 completed, and I am in the process of unit testing them.

Once this is complete I will be system testing and hopefully by Monday I should be able to move on to building a rudimentary interface to demonstrate the application. The only potential spanner in the works to this is that I have another assignment to demo on Thursday, which I need to complete, although I don’t think it is that much work. I also have a J2EE test on Tuesday which I need to revise for. But, all things considered I feel far happier now than I did 5 hours ago, I think it is because I feel like I have made real progress today.

By the way, I have updated my website for those of you that are interested, you can visit it here.

Presentation Post Mortem

2006-03-22T12:41:00.000Z

I did it! The presentation went ok last night. I prepared my material well and did a couple of rehearsals. I managed to keep to the time limit and answer all of the questions that were thrown my way. It was an interesting and very educational experience. I have definitely gained from it as there are some things I will do differently in my project presentation as a result of the feedback I received on Tuesday night.

My mate Greg won the £50.00, but we all got £10.00 which is nice. So we went to the union bar for a couple of pints afterwards.

My project in general is progressing well, I have implemented 3 of the 5 main classes in my web services, and am in the process of unit testing and documenting them.

On another note, I can now say its official I will be working at Oracle from the autumn, so check out my new disclaimer.

Oh, if you are interested you can see the presentation I gave by clicking here and clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.

BCS Presentation

2006-03-18T09:28:00.000Z

I have been press ganged into doing a presentation on Tuesday at the local British Computer Society meeting. The content will be based on my final year project, and should hopefully give me the opportunity to try out some of my ideas before doing my presentation for my degree.

I have never done a technical presentation like this before, but I am quite looking forward to it. I think I will spend about 1/3 of the time talking about my idea and why there is a need for the instaCHEX system. The rest of the time will be spent talking about my design and implementation and the technologies I have used to create the solution. There will then be the opportunity to ask any questions.

If anyone wants to come along it starts at 8pm and is held in the Blue Lecture Theatre of the Octagon Building at Beaconside Campus, Stafford. There are also a number of other students presenting there projects including 2 of my friends. One will be talking about his 'HoVeR' system which is a home entertainment portal; the other will be discussing his police PDA which provides searchable information to constables whilst out in the community. It looks like there will be some interesting topics, so once I have done my presentation I might be able to relax and listen to other students talk about their problems!

A bit of a moan

2006-03-15T09:31:00.000Z

The workload for this final semester just gets worse. I have been working solidly for 1 week on the XML and Web Services assignment and it is a lot bigger than it first seems. I reckon to get an A grade I need to spend at least another day or two on the application and then 2 - 3 days writing the report. So that is another week out of my project. Speaking of which I have made the decision to cut down the functionality I am going to deliver, purely to get the project finished on time. Most of my friends are feeling the heat as well now and everyone is getting quite stressed, as there is only about 6 weeks left!

To make matters worse I had a pizza last night which should have been listed as a biological weapon! I have never felt so ill so fast in all my life. So I wont be buying any more pizzas from Ali’s in town. My wife rang them up to complain and all they said was 'nothing to do with us mate' and 'I am eating a pizza now', to which she replied 'probably best if you stop eating it then mate!".

Right I feel better after getting that off my chest, back to work.

Semester One Grades All In.......at last

2006-03-09T16:30:00.000Z

The good news just keeps on rolling this week. I have had confirmation of my semester one results, and although one of them was way below what I expected, the rest keep me well on track for a first.

My results were

Advanced Database Systems - 15 (A, assignment part 88%)
Spreadsheet Automation with VBA - 15 (A, 91.5%)
Advanced HCI & Usability - 8 (C)

So I slipped up a bit with the last one, but other than that I am very pleased with these results. Only 7 weeks to go till I have finished, so one more big push needed.

Lets hope this week continues to go the way it has so far!

XML, XSL and Schemas

2006-03-08T23:45:00.000Z

I have had some good news at last...

I have been offered the job I wanted!!!! I cant say any more at the moment because I haven't had the paperwork yet, so I don't want to jinx it, suffice it to say that it is a very large software company. I suppose I will have to get one of those disclaimers sorted on my blog, you know the one "These are my views and my views only..."

Anyway, in other news, I have spent the entire day working on the XML and Web Services Assignment, and I reckon I have got about 35-40% of the work done today, so I am very pleased with that. We have to build 3 web services and a client application to consume them, along with 2 other web services that are provided. In addition to this we have to create and style an XML document and also produce a schema to validate it. The case study is based around a tourist information office, and it has been a quite enjoyable day as the work is interesting and I am learning new things.

Tomorrow I am going to redirect my efforts to the Java module, and also my project. I have some time this week to really crack on and make some progress so I am determined to use it well.

A night in

2006-03-04T20:52:00.000Z

I have been working really hard lately, so hard in fact that I have not had much time for anything else. Well tonight I am doing nothing! Other than looking after my daughters, I intend to do nothing more stressful than watch 'Planet of the Apes'.

Sometimes it takes a real big argument to make you realise that there are other things in life more important than whether you get a first class degree or end up with 2.1. I think I have maybe been putting too much pressure on myself. From now on I will do my best but I wont kill myself trying and what will be, will be.

Only 2 more months to go...

Security and Encryption with Oracle dbms_crypto

2006-02-27T17:53:00.000Z

This is the first technical post I have written in a while and it has been driven once again by my experiences of using Oracle XE for my project.

As part of my application I have a need to store sensitive information including credit card details, bank account numbers etc. In order to ensure that the data is kept secure server side I have decided to encrypt the columns that contain the sensitive data using the supplied dbms_crypto package.

Before you attempt to use dbms_crypto you need to ensure that the package has been granted to the schema that you are using. The package is owned by the ‘SYS’ user so you need to login as sys or get your dba to grant you execution rights on the package.

Grant execute on dbms_crypto to ;

In order to do this I have an encrypt function that accepts a value (i.e. the credit card number) and a 128 bit key (supplied by the calling method). The key is calculated from the user’s password using .NETS built in RSA generation functionality. This ensures that there is no need to store the key anywhere in the database and that every user has a unique key, so even if one is compromised, it doesn’t compromise the entire database.

Encryption Function

create or replace FUNCTION ENCRYPT_FIELD
(
P_VALUE IN VARCHAR2,
P_KEY IN RAW
)
RETURN RAW IS
L_ENCRYPT_FIELD RAW (2000);
L_MOD NUMBER := dbms_crypto.ENCRYPT_AES128
+ dbms_crypto.CHAIN_CBC
+ dbms_crypto.PAD_PKCS5;
BEGIN
L_ENCRYPT_FIELD := dbms_crypto.ENCRYPT
(
UTL_I18N.STRING_TO_RAW
(P_VALUE, 'AL32UTF8'),
L_MOD,
P_KEY
);
RETURN L_ENCRYPT_FIELD;
END;

On inserting a record into the database the appropriate column is encrypted as below

insert into user_name (u_user_id, u_user_name, u_password, u_email_address
, u_first_name, u_last_name, u_create_date)
values
(seq_u_user_id.nextval, 'someuser'
, encrypt_field('anyone', utl_raw.cast_to_raw (encryption_key))
, 'someone@hotmail.com', 'John', 'Smith', sysdate);

The data that is stored is now secure as without the key, no-one can decrypt the data. In addition to this it would be very difficult to reverse engineer the key because as stated before the key is based on the password, and although in this example I use the password ‘anyone’ and then encrypt it, it is actually the hash of ‘anyone’ that will be passed to the database. As the key is calculated from the password, not the hash of the password, the only person who can decrypt the data is the person with knowledge of the key.

The decryption function is similar and is listed below.

Decryption Function

create or replace FUNCTION DECRYPT_FIELD
(
P_ENCRYPTED IN RAW,
P_KEY IN RAW
)
return varchar2 is
L_VALUE VARCHAR2 (2000);
L_DECRYPT_FIELD RAW (2000);
L_MOD NUMBER := dbms_crypto.ENCRYPT_AES128
+ dbms_crypto.CHAIN_CBC
+ dbms_crypto.PAD_PKCS5;
BEGIN
L_DECRYPT_FIELD := dbms_crypto.decrypt
(
P_ENCRYPTED,
L_MOD,
P_KEY
);
L_VALUE := UTL_I18N.RAW_TO_CHAR
(L_DECRYPT_FIELD, 'AL32UTF8');
RETURN L_VALUE;
END;

All this has taken me a while to get my head around and also a couple of postings on OTN as I had got confused with 128 bit and 128 byte. You can read the post here, but you will need to be signed up to the Oracle XE forum to do so.

Also I used the following resources to enable me to understand and use dbms_crypto:

www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/05-jan/o15security.html

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/network.102/b14266/apdvncrp.htm

http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:1:

More interviews...and associated stress

2006-02-23T21:32:00.000Z

I am on a roll. I passed the telephone interview and have now been invited to an assessment day. This will be held at the company’s headquarters and will be an entire days worth of assessment. I have already attended an assessment day previously for another company and found it to be quite an intense and gruelling experience, but at least this time I have some previous experience to call on.

I have also started applying locally for software developer jobs, technical consultancy jobs and other junior technical positions. I have already had one positive response from a company only 5 miles away, but whether they want to interview me is another matter, we will have to wait and see.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the stress of managing research for interviews, project work and the assignments and tutorial work from my other modules. On top of this I like to have time left to spend with my young family and this is not easy. I have also come to the decision that I will have to end my involvement with the Territorial Army. I am really sad to leave after 4 enjoyable years but I really haven’t got the time to commit any more and I have other hobbies ready to fill the time that I will have after graduation.

Still I suppose this is the price you pay when chasing a degree, after all nobody said it was going to be easy.

Fun and games with IIS

2006-02-19T23:40:00.000Z

As regular readers of this blog will be aware, I am in the process of designing and developing a secure electronic cheque cashing mechanism for my final year project at university. One of the requirements for my system is that SSL is implemented for any sensitive network traffic, i.e. credit card details, username/password handshakes. The computer that I am developing the solution on came supplied with Windows XP Home, which unfortunately doesnt support IIS.

To overcome this I installed XP Pro yesterday and have been reinstalling all of my applications until today. One of the more interesting behavioural quirks of IIS I have noticed while trying to configure it is that when you try to connect via SSL (i.e. https) to the localhost (127.0.0.1, loopback address) it works fine when I am not connected to the internet but it fails and reports page not found when I am connected. Has anyone experienced anything like this before, or got any suggestions as to how I might overcome it?

Apart from this while blundering through the setup of IIS and installing a server certificate it became quite obvious that the documentation available is not of a very high standard at all. Despite spending the best part of 2 hours on MSDN I could not find any reference to the fact that you need to ensure that the SSL Port (443) should only be assigned to one specific IP address or it wont work. When you install IIS the default is to assign it to which simply doesnt work.

Anyway I have it working now, of a fashion, just wish I could resolve the issue of running at the same time as I am connected, I'm sure its IP address related, but I am not sufficiently techie enough to work it out. Plus i am extremely tired!As regular readers of this blog will be aware, I am in the process of designing and developing a secure electronic cheque cashing mechanism for my final year project at university. One of the requirements for my system is that SSL is implemented for any sensitive network traffic, i.e. credit card details, username/password handshakes. The computer that I am developing the solution on came supplied with Windows XP Home, which unfortunately doesn’t support IIS.

To overcome this I installed XP Pro yesterday and have been reinstalling all of my applications until today. One of the more interesting behavioural quirks of IIS I have noticed while trying to configure it is that when I try to connect via SSL (i.e. https) to the localhost (127.0.0.1, loopback address) it works fine when I am not connected to the internet but it fails and reports page not found when I am connected. Has anyone experienced anything like this before, or got any suggestions as to how I might overcome it?

Apart from this, while blundering through the setup of IIS and installing a server certificate it became quite obvious that the documentation available is not of a very high standard at all. Despite spending the best part of 2 hours on MSDN I could not find any reference to the fact that you need to ensure that the SSL Port (443) should only be assigned to one specific IP address or it won’t work. When you install IIS the default is to assign it to which simply doesn’t work.

Anyway I have it working now, of a fashion, just wish I could resolve the issue of running at the same time as I am connected, I'm sure its IP address related, but I am not sufficiently techie enough to work it out. Plus I am extremely tired!

A happy student

2006-02-17T23:16:00.000Z

As we roll into the weekend I am in a rather good mood! The reason for this is that I have secured another job interview for a large computing consultancy firm. Firstly I have to undergo a telephone interview, and then if I am successful (fingers crossed) I will have to attend a selection centre at their London headquarters. This has really cheered me up as the end of my degree is in sight (only 7 more teaching weeks) and I really want to try and secure a position by the end of March. This will enable me to concentrate on my project and other assignments completely without the distraction of having to job hunt (and all the added worry that brings to a father of two!).

Another reason for my cheerful demeanour is that I am now only 1 day behind schedule on my project having spent the last 48 hours working constantly when not sleeping or eating. I am currently designing the interface for the web site that will link to the cheque issuing/cashing web services I am developing. Hopefully there is enough time left to actually implement it all, but who knows... I think I could do with the European 36 hour day being introduced so that I can actually code all of the functionality that is needed. As it is this project is turning out to be far more complex than I had initially thought, but at least its keeping me interested in it. Some of my friends at university have lost interest in their projects usually because they chose a project that didn’t hold enough interest for them.

Anyway enough chit chat for now back to QOCing!!

Personal Fitness and tiredness

2006-02-16T00:35:00.000Z

I forgot to mention this on my previous post. I am absolutely shattered having 2 children and completing a degree whilst trying to maintain some level of personal fitness is extremely challenging.

I have been to the gym tonight of the first time in months. I managed to complete 30 minutes on the treadmill, 20 minutes on the bike and 2km on the concept II rower. I’m very tired but extremely pleased with myself. I intend to make Wednesdays my gym day now and hopefully manage to fit in 2 more runs in the rest of the week, 1 shortish 3-5 miles on Friday and 1 longer run 6-10 miles on a Sunday.

If I can keep that up I should be back to my fittest soon and hopefully in time for the lads running weekend in May. This time it is being held in the North Yorkshire Moors. Lots of miles and lots of beer!

Design, Design, Design

2006-02-16T00:03:00.000Z

For the last 4 or 5 days I have been getting down to the serious business of designing my application. This has taken the form of UML (see previous post) in activity diagrams, class diagrams and use case diagrams. I have now moved on from this to pseudo coding the more complex functions and this has been quite revealing.

It is only now that I am actually pseudo coding the functions that I have found several omissions from my database design and class design. This really is an endorsement of the iterative design approach as I am finding attributes, functions, sequences and properties constantly that I a) hadn't thought of or b) had just plain forgotten I had needed.

My favourite example of a glaring omission is one I found about half an hour ago just before I called it a night. When creating a new instance of a cheque I pass in the date, payee, amount etc it then assigns these values to the cheques properties except.........payee! Why? You might ask! Well erm, I had kind of forgotten to include a payee property in my cheque class (only a minor problem!). Not only that it gets worse, when I looked at my data model I had forgotten to include a payee attribute! Ha ha the joys of the final year project, what are the odds this app is going to work come demo day in two months time?

Still at least I am finding these things now during my design phase. Roll on the summer and graduation day.

1 assignment down!

2006-02-14T00:03:00.000Z

It's midnight again! and I have just finished my first assignment this year. The java assignment wasn't really that difficult but it presented enough challenge given I havn't used the language since the first year. The brief was to design a web app to be accessed over the internet via pc or wap; that will accept a username/password, authenticate the user and then display account information.

Not too difficult to do using servlets and jsp pages, but to do it elegantly I have put quite a bit of effort in so that the users session is tracked accurately. Also it directs you to wml pages rather than jsp pages if you are using the openwave mobile browser simulator.

Anyway, thats all for tonight as I am desperate for some sleep!

Italy 16-31 England

2006-02-11T23:29:00.000Z

Forgot to mention this on my post just, so the score looks tight on paper? We still scored 4 tries to their 1. The English Rugby Union machine marches on!

Shame the Wolves cant give me a similar feeling of happiness. Another match day, another 1-1 draw, this time against bottom of the table Crewe.

UML, dependencies, aggregation and association I wish I understood it properly

2006-02-11T23:17:00.000Z

I am in the process of constructing a class diagram to represent my iCHEX cheque cashing system. The problem is that I now realise how little I know about UML and how to structure a class diagram correctly. I guess that’s why there are so many books on the market about UML!

I understand specialisation/generalisation relationships and I also think I have a good idea of dependencies, but its where to use association rather then dependency that I am having a problem. All the books I have looked at have rather abstract or contrived examples so they don’t help me with where to apply the correct relationship. I think I am also missing a class or two as well although I am finding it difficult to identify which of my database tables from my data model translate into classes.

Oh well I guess its time to google UML and see if I can find a clearer tutorial.

A couple of unconnected things...

2006-02-10T22:25:00.000Z

A few things I wanted to mention today, although there is no overall theme to today’s post.

Firstly I am amazed by my expanding book collection. I have purchased 4 new volumes in the last couple of weeks, 2 of them by recommendation of a tutor and the other 2 after reading several reviews. The books purchased are

XML Unleashed, Sams
Building XML Web Services for the Microsoft .NET Platform, Microsoft Press
XML 1.1 Bible, Wiley Publishing
Programming Visual Basic .NET, O'Reilly

and the total cost for all these excellent sources of information? £21.00
All of these books were purchased brand new, either from Amazon marketplace sellers or www.abebooks.co.uk. It just goes to show that as a student you can still get the technical books you need for very little cost. Although one of the books supplied to me was incorrect the seller very kindly refunded my money and let me keep the book, so I am perfectly happy.

Had my first graduate job interview/assessment this week. It went pretty well considering I have not completed any previously but only time will tell if I have done enough to secure the position. I have been informed it will be several weeks before successful candidates are notified, so until then fingers crossed! I have also had positive responses from several other companies so hopefully I will be gainfully employed by the late summer of this year.

Anyway I have a busy weekend ahead as because of the interview I have done less on my project than I would have liked this week. I am in the process of designing the classes, methods, functions and attributes for my application. This will hopefully follow logically from my data model that was completed last week. I also intend to refine and finish the assignment we have been given for EPDA this week which is due for demo on Thursday. The application is a basic login/password authentication java servlet/JSP page combination. I have tried to make mine a little more inventive but have just run into a little trouble with one of the tests I need to perform on the session before I authenticate the user and allow them through to the authorised JSP page. Still its nothing major so should hammer it out either tonight or tomorrow.

Oh yes and as I am writing this blog at 22.40 you can probably guess I am on night duty with the baby. Ah well plenty of time for working.

England v Wales

2006-02-07T00:24:00.000Z

Didnt think it would be right unless I at least mentioned this match at least once on my blog! On Saturday I enjoyed a rather nice afternoon in a pub in Shrewsbury with a couple of old friends. The occasion was of course the rugby. This was made all the more interesting by the fact that Ian is Welsh, and at the start of the match he was banging on about how Wales are the current 6 nations champions, so he has obviously had a good ribbing from me and all his other English friends about the final score since; and in any case who are the current WORLD champions?

Anyway it was a nice break from all the work I have been doing lately on my project and other uni assignments. I had forgotten what it is like to socialise, but we are going out on Tuesday night for a drink and a meal with a couple of friends so it should be a good time to relax and let my hair down, before preparing on Wednesday for my big interview on Thursday! Wish me luck!

iCHEX Project Update

2006-02-03T22:21:00.000Z

As I haven’t discussed my project on the blog for sometime I thought I would post an update on my progress. Since I last posted I have now completed the requirements definition and also written the use cases. These have helped me to determine the key processes. I have also created some informal process models to help me understand better how the system will work.

From these diagrams I have now moved on to designing the data model. I have done this using an enhanced entity relationship model. For this first build phase there are three databases to design. One is for the actual iCHEX system, one to simulate the company bank and another to simulate the customer’s online bank. I have actually 80% finished the main site ERM and I am now working on the other two.

On a related note I have also got some idea how I am now going to solve the issue of communicating securely between the client and the application in a scalable way. After a discussion today with one of my tutors at university I have an idea of how to implement a session key approach, which should be very neat if I can get it to work correctly. So in order to acquire the relevant knowledge I have duly purchased two books on XML one from Amazon the other from Abebooks. I reckon they should give me bulk discount for the amount of books I have bought off them in the last 5 years!

Tired

2006-02-02T23:04:00.000Z

I had forgotten how tiring it is to be the father of a young baby. Tonight is my turn to do the late feeds, so I'll be feeding in about and hour, and then again at 3am. This does have quite a useful side effect in that I have found it easier to simply stay awake and do work during this time. If the baby is peaceful this is usually the best time to attempt any work in my house as during the day I have my 20 month old toddler and wife competing for my attention.

However the fact that it was my turn tonight had slipped my mind earlier on so feeling full of energy I decided to go for my first run of the new year. I managed 6.2 miles in a feeble time of just over an hour. Still I have at least started to resume my training and although I'm somewhate tired, I feel better for it (the jeans were starting to get a little tight!). I am hoping to run in the Stafford Half Marathon at the end of March in preperation for a running holiday in the North Yorks Moors in May. I was originally hoping to beat last years time of 1hr 42mins, but that is looking unlikely now given my current level of fitness. I think a realistic target is anything around 1hr 50mins.

Java Beans

2006-01-31T14:28:00.000Z

Today is an epiphany! I finally learnt what java beans are...

Bloody objects is all they are. Why do we in the IT industry have to dress things up with fancy terminology and acronyms. Well I know the answer to that, its so that people can stay in the job they are in.

Some of my favourites are

Enterprise computing - client/server
Java beans - objects just to hold data retrieved from a datasource
Web services - applications you access via the web

Just thought I would share that.

Graduate jobs and online applications

2006-01-27T23:40:00.000Z

Up to today I had applied for 4 graduate schemes and received 3 no thanks responses. The other reply was an invitation to interview/assessment. Now you might not think this a bad hit rate 1 in 4, right? I'm a little disappointed and the reason is that I think many graduate employers place too much emphasis on school grades. For many young people what they did at school is irrelevant when you compare it to their achievements at university. This is because many young people simply do not know what they want to do, or lack drive at school. There can be a variety of reasons but I know of at least 3 people on my course who have bad/terrible A level results, which, because of their hard work and drive are now on course for a predicted 1st class honours degree. Can somebody tell me why an employer gives a hoot about what your A level computing result was when you are consistently producing excellent grades at university level?

I must confess I have terrible GCSE results (from 14 years ago) and no A levels, but having made the commitment to leave a fairly well paid occupation 5 years ago to learn a new one must make me a fairly safe bet? I just do not understand the need to provide x amount of UCAS points.

Another problem I have is online application forms. I can see the benefits from the employer’s point of view, consistency, getting answers to the right questions etc. But for an undergraduate who has an extremely full schedule anyway this extra burden is often too much and I know of many of my colleagues who have yet to apply for any jobs. Bare in mind that many students are forced to work part time as well as study, not leaving much time to fill in these 2-3 hour leviathans.

Rant over!