Export Mylyn to a different computer

I've started working on a MacBook Pro and moved away from Windows thanks to the place where I work.
Honestly I have to say that the change has not been without pains. Keyboard configurations and short cuts have been the biggest pains so far. I know that for the most part they map just fine, however there's always that one hot-key that messes you up and makes you go "AAARRGGHH".

One of the things that I 100% cannot develop without is Mylyn, so as soon as I was able to install it in the Mac I was a happy dev. The issue I had is that I had a lot of tasks on the Windows computer that I wanted to have on the Mac. For a few of those I had uploaded the Context.zip file to the tracking system and I can easily recover my context of working files from there, however there were some notes and some local tasks that I didn't want to lose.

Luckily Mylyn as awesome as it is has an Export feature. Before getting rid of the old PC I did an export of all the tasks and sent myself the file.
I then did an import on the new installation and was able to see all previous tasks and context for those tasks.

Watir

Watir

• Stands for Web Application Testing In Ruby
• Pronounced "water".
• Is a testing framework similar to Selenium.
• Uses OLE to interface with IE and take control of the session.

CouchDB

CouchDB

• Document based DB specifically created for the web.
• It is now an Apache project.
• Uses a REST API and it returns data as JSON. <--very cool
• Written originally in C++ but it has moved now to Erlang.
• Super scalable.
• from http://couchdb.apache.org/ "CouchDB provides a RESTful JSON API than can be accessed from any environment that allows HTTP requests"
• Uses JavaScript as a query language
• The Web based administration console/DB Manager is called 'Futon'.

Hadoop

Today I start a small experiment of mine. I'll randomly read a new tech world word that I didn't know before or that I just heard but never looked up. Hadoop

• Named after an elephant toy, built using Java ( the software not the toy :) )
• An Apache project for working with huge/massive amounts of data.
• Yahoo is one of the biggest contributors.
• Uses a distributed architecture.
• Inspired by Google File System and Google MapReduce. <- don't know what these are.

Illudium generator gotcha!

I know I haven't been writing for a while, however this is something really interesting that happened to us here at work and I figure it may help someone else out there. We are using the well known Illudium PU-36 Code Generator from Brian Rinaldi. I use it for a project that connects to MSSQL and had no trouble generating the code, I even created my own template based on the "Prototype" provided with the generator. It creates nice clean code that we can start working on right away. The problem we had was that we were getting "duplicate parameters" and "duplicate Properties" once we started using any Oracle database. I started digging the code and learned a lot in the process, one thing I noticed is that on the adminAPIFacade.driverOrClassToType() method Brian checks for the datasource's Driver and Class values and if it finds "oracle" then uses "oracle.cfc" to get metadata from the database. If it finds "mssql" then it uses "mssql.cfc" to get the metadata from SQL Server. If nothing is matched then it tries to use the new CF8 for metadata extraction, the component used for that is scorpio.cfc. Well everything looked good there, logic look solid and things were working OK. The problem was on our side. I checked our datasources and every Oracle DSN is using "Other" as the driver. This turns out to be a JDBC connection where the Driver Class is "macromedia.jdbc.MacromediaDriver" and the driver Name is "MacromediaDriver" nowhere in these values you will find the word "Oracle". That's why the adminAPIFacade.driverOrClassToType() method was returning "Scorpio" all the time. Now I don't know why the CF8 tags are returning duplicate information on the metadata but I knew that I needed to find a way to tell the method to start using Oracle.cfc instead of scorpio.cfc. I found the answer on the datasource.url value. Right now it reads JDBC URL : jdbc:macromedia:oracle://[serverName]:1521;ServiceName=[ServiceName];AlternateServers=([ServerName2]:1521);LoadBalancing=true So I added that to the method and now all generated code is coming the way is supposed to be. Final method looks like this. <cffunction name="driverOrClassToType" access="private" output="false" returntype="string"> <cfargument name="datasource" required="true" type="struct" /> <cfif ((arguments.datasource.driver eq "MSSQLServer") or (arguments.datasource.class contains "MSSQLServer") or (arguments.datasource.url contains "MSSQLServer"))> <cfreturn "mssql" /> <cfelseif ((arguments.datasource.driver contains "mySQL") or (arguments.datasource.class contains "mySQL"))> <cfreturn "mysql" /> <cfelseif ((arguments.datasource.driver contains "Oracle") or (arguments.datasource.class contains "Oracle") or (arguments.datasource.url contains "oracle"))> <cfreturn "oracle" /> <!--- if you are running cf8 we can try to leverage db metadata tags ---> <cfelseif listFirst(server.coldfusion.ProductVersion) gte 8 and arguments.datasource.driver neq "MSAccess"><!--- only access with unicode seems to work with dbinfo ---> <cfreturn "scorpio" /> <cfelse> <!--- not a supported type ---> <cfreturn "" /> </cfif> </cffunction> çB^]\..

I hate Windows Vista

That's it. I just hate it. I don't have time or patience to find out where everything is. The File explorer is completely messed up. I do not like it. Microsoft : "fix it " .. Oh wait, you created this, never mind.

Get Firefox FIRST!

We'll I ended up buying a new laptop for work.I figured that I can use the old laptop for Ubuntu and this new one for Windows.Yes, maybe I could use one for both, however I'm pretty sure my old trusty laptop won't be able to handle two systems, no matter what I do to it.It is from 2001!!.
So for now the old trusty is my Ubuntu play area and this new one is the one I'll be using for work from Bolivia.

It is a Toshiba Satellite L45-S7423, nothing fancy really. I don't do games or watch DVDs that much so I just went for the bare necessities. It has 1gb of RAM which I think would be good enough for the things I do.

Why a Toshiba? My sister got one a year ago, when my old trusty started failing on me, I borrowed hers for a while and I liked it. The price was also good.

One thing I don't like is that it comes with the over hyped Windows Vista, I'd rather have XP pro." No problem" said the 18 year old sales person at Circuit City we can downgrade it for you it will cost $350 though.

Anyway I feel weird using Vista, I don't like it. I don't need it. I think is too much make up for the system with nothing really beneficial for the work I do.
First thing I did is install Firefox, I don't care if IE has tabs now. I cannot use IE outside work (they pay me to use it). I got my Firefox installed and the first thing I'm doing in it is write this post.

Next thing? get rid of all the trial garbage they install on these machines. That's one really cool think about Ubuntu, install it, power up, get to work, simple as that.
After that Eclipse, and all the tools for development.

çB^]\..