New Quote

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.

Http and Https

For the following application requirements:: 1. SSL support 2. Reuse the SSLSession / HttpState while reconnecting to web server (Apache) 3. Restablishing Http(s) connection multiple times to web server 4. HttpClient should have same behaviour like a Browser (IE) 5. Asynchronous communication where Http client opens connection and should recieve data from server whenever server has some data for http client. 6. Other requirements are Performance, etc.. Http Client and javax.net.ssl are in no way comparable at all.SSL is a technique to secure connections on the transport layer. HTTP is a protocol for client/server communication, which runs on top of a transport layer. By combining HTTP and SSL, you get HTTPS. For example, you can use the HttpClient to communciate over an SSL connection from javax.net.ssl. The HttpURLConnection in the standard JDKs is flawed because it does not provide flexibility with respect to timeout handling, multithreading, connection pooling, streaming, HTTP protocol versions and server specific dialects, authentication, error handling, retry handling that you would expect in such a thing. The HttpsURLConnection from javax.net.ssl is the same as the HttpURLConnection, except that it uses SSL instead of plain sockets for the transport layer. HttpClient uses a generic interface to create SSL connections when needed for HTTPS connections. It is up to you to implement this interface, and you can support SSL session reuse if you want to. You can also implement your own HTTP connection pool, which can be aware of your SSL connection pool to optimize reuse.

new quote

All Generalizations Are False, including this one. - Mark Twain

Red Books 10/1

Started the Websphere Message Broker scenario... Illustrate routing,protocol transformation and message data transformation
Quotable Quote: Skill:-A knowledge of and the ability to properly execute the fundamentals. Be prepared. Cover every detail. - John R Wooden

Redbook 9/25

Successfully exposed IMS transaction through the IMS SOAP gateway. Started doumenting the chapter.

Quotable Quote:Work is an expression of who you are. So who you are is what needs to be worked out- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Redbooks 9/24

The IMS Transaction expose as Web service scenario. DB2 UDF consuming DB2 web service.

Quotable Quote: Never take seriously what people say they think, because people are never sure. Trust only action.

Redbooks 9/20

Multiple updates to the DB2 chapter, based on feedback from the expert team.

Quotable Quote: No one can do everything .But every one can do something.

Hilarious snippet from a previously published redbook

I was reading through an existing redbooks and found this funny snippet. Laughed the world out for 5 minutes...

At the time this book was written we were also able to uncover an unexpected error on this panel. When including the licensing jar we should receive a cryptic error if this jar did not appear first on the class location field. This error can be seen in Figure 2-15, and occurs when the db2jcc.jar is first in the path and the Connect to Database button is clicked.

Quotable Quote: "Most of the things in life are simple and only the wise understand them" - Paulo Coelho

NYC trip photos

Quotable Quote: "Two roads diverged in the wood And I took the one less traveled by And that has made all the difference” - From a Poem by Robert Frost.

Redbooks residency:Day 15:Monday September 17

Today is all documentation. Capturing all the information and tasks accomplished in the last 5 days. Created 20 pages of material for this new chapter.

Quotable Quote:If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Redbooks residency:Day 14:Sunday September 16

Success. After all the hard work last week, we finally got the CICS Webservice requester working. The main issue that had bogged us down last week was the response data structure being too complex for the tooling to create a comparable COBOL data structure. Having accomplished this, feels really good. Taking the break to go to NYC yesterday had also helped. Plan for tomorrow, start the documentation and typing in the redbooks work.

Quotable Quote:“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration". Thomas Alva Edison

Redbooks residency:Day 12:Friday September 14

Continued work on the CICS requester. It was late in the day, we discovered that the tooling to convert WSDL response object with two levels of complex types inside it, cannot create a working COBOL structure. Next plan : change WSDL to have only simple types and try. Scheduled this for Sunday. Tommorow is trip to NYC.

Quotable Quote: "Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what has happened to him/her."

Redbooks residency:Day 11:Thursday September 13

What a day in terms of legacy technology learning dump. While continuing on this CICS requester as a web service scenario, lets enumerate the new technologies I got exposed to:

1. COBOL requester program ( main entry point) to invoke the web service ( Generated by the web service tooling, but had to learn how to modify some key pieces of code to do error handling and populating the request)
2. Another COBOL program that works with BMS map ( a screen map), that would capture the input for the web service request and output values from Web service.
3. Comm area ( the communication area between these two programs).
4. How to create a JCL ( Job card language to compile and link these two programs)
5. Specify where to place these load libs, so CICS knows how to pick it up.
6. Define and install CICS programs that would reference artifacts created in steps 1 and 2.
7. Define and install CICS transaction, that references 1.
8. Define and install Web service pipeline for the requester

Are we there yet... no not yet, hopefully by End of Day tomorrow, we can get this going, but hey from knowing nothing to something, that feels good.

Quotable Quote:Ability is what you are capable of doing, motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. - Lou Holtz.

Redbooks residency:Day 9:Wednesday September 12

The next scenario we have to work on is to make a Webservice call from CICS. The documentation is very sparse on this. There is heavy documentation on exposing a CICS transaction as a webservice, but not much on CICS transaction being a requester. Luckily, Ron has one through some presentations on this and so we have some leads to start with.

Quotable Quote: “Change before you have to” - Jack Welch, the chief architect of GE’s transformation (1980-99)

Ways to avoid risk in designing solutions

Obviously, you can choose a solution that avoids risk altogether :-). Code the “hard” parts of the applications first so you can identify the areas of greatest risk when you still have time to re-design and avoid risky solutions.

Quotable Quote: "It is one of the beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Put into other words "Reach out and touch some one. “Most important business relationships are personal ones.”