Use Maven to configure active environment profile (with spring profile)

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

Environment profiles are templates that are used to derive concrete environments based on pre-defined templates. Essentially, they are abstract environment definitions that allow environments to be categorized or classified by associating a given environment with an underlying environment profile. Typical examples of profiles are dev, prod, QA, Test, etc.

In this post, we are only focusing on using maven to configure active environment profile with spring profiles in a web application. Certainly, there are different ways to allow us to configure environment profiles even within spring profiles explained in this article : https://www.baeldung.com/spring-profiles

The idea is basically from 4.6 from the above posts with more details to elaborate further on this approach within the web application scope.

Step 1 Configure different environment profiles in pom.xml

For eg, to simplify the problem, I only have two environments for configuration respectively defined as dev and prod. Adding the code below into pom.xml. You will have dev as the default environment when maven build your project.

<profiles>
<profile>
<id>dev</id>
<activation>
<activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
</activation>
<properties>
<activeProfile>dev</activeProfile>
</properties>
<build>
<directory>target/dev</directory>
</build>
</profile>
<profile>
<id>prod</id>
<properties>
<activeProfile>prod</activeProfile>
</properties>
<build>
<directory>target/prod</directory>
</build>
</profile>
</profiles>

Step 2 Enable resource filtering in pom.xml

Note: Spring provides spring.profiles.active environment property to specify which profile is active. The question here is: how to populate the value from our configuration property defined as activeProfile in the pom file to this spring environment property. The answer is that you could include it in your application.propertie(dir: src/main/resources ).

Before proceeding below, you have to answer one simple question: Are you using Spring Boot?

If yes, this application.properties file is already ready for you under “src/main/resources” directory, and it will be auto-detected. We can then inject any loaded properties from it as normal. However, if you are not using Spring Boot, create the application.properties under “src/main/resources” directory. Add the following line into your application.properties file. (Here we use the placeholder activeProfile to get value populated to spring.profiles.active when maven build the project).

spring.profiles.active=@activeProfile@

Still, in order to populate the value defined in activeProfile from the pom.xml to the @activeProfile@ placeholder. You have to enable source filtering in pom.xml.

Here is how to do that:

<build>
<resources>
<resource>
<directory>src/main/resources</directory>
<filtering>true</filtering>
<targetPath>WEB-INF</targetPath>
</resource>
</resources>
…
</build>

What is happening under the hood:

By turning on the filter( <filtering>true</filtering>), the code above works as charm when you use the command line mvn clean package. Since you didn’t specify the active profile. Maven will use dev as the default active profile as described by activeByDefault property. And then the activeProfile property will have dev as value and then in application.properties, the line above becomes

spring.profiles.active=dev

By setting the targetPath to WEB-INF( <targetPath>WEB-INF</targetPath> ). After the build, you will see your application.properties get deployed under WEB-INF.

Learn more about the resource filtering over here:https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-resources-plugin/examples/filter.html

Step 3 Use spring.profiles.active value in Java config class

In your java config file, you might want to introduce different logic based on different profiles. One practical example is if you would want to set the static content like html, js, css to not cache in dev environment whereas get cached well in prod environment. Then you have to use the value from spring.profiles.active property from application.properties file. You might skip this session if you are very familiar with how spring wire in the property variables.

Now if you answer Yes that if you are using Spring boot in step 2, You can skip the line below, because spring boot will auto detect application.properties. However, if you are not using spring boot, in your Java config file, specify the property file as this:

@PropertySource(value = {“/WEB-INF/application.properties” })

Now let’s talk about how to get the value from the property variable spring.profiles.active, I will introduce two intuitive ways to do it:

  1. Use environment variable

@Autowired

private Environment env;

In the actual logic, simply use like this:

if( env.getProperty(“spring.profiles.active”).equals(“dev”) ) …

2. Use @Value notation.

@Value(“${spring.profiles.active}”)
private String activeProfile;

In the actual logic, simply use like this:

if(activeProfile.equals(“dev”)) …

Note: in order to use @Value annotation to resolve ${} in Spring,  you need to declare a STATIC PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer bean manually. Otherwise if it will show as ${spring.profiles.active} instead of a resolved value like “dev” or “prod”.

Add the following code in the Java config file if you have not declared the bean:

@Bean
public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer propertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer() {
return new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();
}

There are certainly more ways to manipulate the properties, read more on properties with spring with this link: https://www.baeldung.com/properties-with-spring

Step 4 Switch to prod profile

Now, if you want to switch to prod environment. You could do like this:Append a -P parameter to switch which Maven profile will be applied:

mvn clean package -Pprod

This command will package the application for prod profile. It also applies the spring.profiles.active value ‘prod’ for this application when it is running.

You can find the corresponding xml configuration if you are not using Java configuration. I won’t cover this part in the post since it is already too long 🙂

Batch convert word docs to HTML/PDF with PowerShell.

~ Claire Hu ~ 4 Comments

There are a bunch of static web contents in my project that initially get drafted from word documents from various sources. These word documents need to get published to the web application eventually in either HTML or PDF formats. Obviously, our BA Julio is super tired of converting them one by one. With hundreds of documents, it could be a nightmare to do it by hand. So he came to me for help. It ended up to be a simple task with a few lines of script using PowerShell. Salute to the power of programming!!

Let’s get started. Copy the code below and save it to converter.ps1 for eg.

[CmdletBinding()]
Param(
  
   [Parameter(Mandatory=$True)]
   [string]$documents_path 
)

$targetPdfPath = "${documents_path}\pdf"

if (!(Test-Path $targetPdfPath -PathType Container)) {
    New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $targetPdfPath
}

$word_app = New-Object -ComObject Word.Application

# This filter will find .doc as well as .docx documents

$count = 0
Get-ChildItem -Path $documents_path -Filter *.doc? | ForEach-Object {
    $count++;

    $document = $word_app.Documents.Open($_.FullName)

    $pdf_filename = "${targetPdfPath}\$($_.BaseName).pdf"
    
    Write-Host "Converting ${pdf_filename} ..." 

    $document.SaveAs([ref] $pdf_filename, [ref] 17)

    $document.Close()

}

Write-Host "Complete converting ${count} word documents to pdf under ${targetPdfPath}" -BackgroundColor "Green" -ForegroundColor "Black";


$targetHtmlPath = "${documents_path}\html"

if (!(Test-Path $targetHtmlPath -PathType Container)) {
    New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $targetHtmlPath
}

$word_app = New-Object -ComObject Word.Application

# This filter will find .doc as well as .docx documents

$count1 = 0
Get-ChildItem -Path $documents_path -Filter *.doc? | ForEach-Object {
    $count1++;

    $document = $word_app.Documents.Open($_.FullName)

    $html_filename = "${targetHtmlPath}\$($_.BaseName).html"
    
    Write-Host "Converting ${html_filename} ..." 
    
    $saveFormat = [Enum]::Parse([Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdSaveFormat], "wdFormatFilteredHTML");

    $document.SaveAs([ref] $html_filename, [ref] $saveFormat)

    $document.Close()

}

Write-Host "Complete converting ${count1} word documents to html under ${targetHtmlPath}" -BackgroundColor "Green" -ForegroundColor "Black";

$word_app.Quit()

Now copy the docs you would like to convert to a temporary folder for eg:

C:\temp\msdocs

Follow the following steps to convert the documents to htmls and pdfs. Assume you are on windows system.

Step 1: Click on window icon at the left bottom corner and search powershell.

Step 2: Run as administrator to open powershell

Step 3: At prompt, run the following command

Set-ExecutionPolicy Restricted

If the above command didn’t work, try this command

 Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Step 4: Input “Y” when prompted

Step 5: Navigate to script folder => cd

is where your put your converter.ps1.

Step 6: Run the following command

./converter.ps1 “”

refers to C:\temp\msdocs if you follow the example to move your documents to this example folder.

Step 7: It will create a pdf & html folder respectively under the current directory. Please watch the console output in case there is some unusual hanging behavior on the screen. It could indicate that there is some popup interaction from word application. Once you interact with the word application, script will continue the process until finished.

Step 8: Go to msdocs folder and check to make sure you don’t have any missing files.

Note the console would output the number of pdfs that have been converted from word documents. You should compare the two counts to prevent from any potential missing conversion.

convert

 

 

[DBA Daily Notes] ORA-00054 Resource busy when dropping table

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

Here are a few things you can do

  • Kill session from GUI

Go to toad and log on as system administrator. You could also do this sql developer.

 

Now you would have an overview of the sessions that might involve in locking the tables you would like to drop. So you could simply identify the sessions and kill the corresponding sessions where table locks are withheld.

 

  • Check v$session and kill session from command.

However sometimes, even we kill the existing sessions, the error would still not go away. I run my drop table script in toad that you could get the details of which table is being locked and the type of the lock. And then go to locks tab to identify the Sid number. You would see a similar window as below.  

 

For example, on the above screen, my PEGASYS_OBLIGATI table is locked with Lock Type DML. It is because I was doing the data refresh and then it was interrupted in the middle. But Sid 24 didn’t show in any of the sessions in the session window. I could not kill the session to get rid of the locks. Instead I run the following sql statement to find the serial number in order to kill the dead session that holds the lock for my table of object.

 

> select * from v$session where blocking_session is not null;

 

After running the sql statement, I find the serial number with the corresponding  sid.

 

> alter system kill session ‘42,789’;

 

Now we are all set. Lock is released and drop could be proceeding.

 

If you want  to know more about v$session, check the link below:

 

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14237/dynviews_2088.htm

 

More from the same professor

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

CS140, 01/13/2012

From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout.

The greatest performance improvement of all is when a system goes from not-working to working

 Programmers tend to worry too much and too soon about performance. Many college-level Computer Science classes focus on fancy algorithms to improve performance, but in real life performance rarely matters. Most real-world programs run plenty fast enough on today’s machines without any particular attention to performance. The real challenges are getting programs completed quickly, ensuring their quality, and managing the complexity of large applications. Thus the primary design criterion for software should be simplicity, not speed.



Occasionally there will be parts of a program where performance matters, but you probably won’t be able to predict where the performance issues will occur. If you try to optimize the performance of an application during the initial construction you will add complexity that will impact the timely delivery and quality of the application and probably won’t help performance at all; in fact, it could actually reduce the performance (“faster” algorithms often have larger constant factors, meaning they are slower at small scale and only become more efficient at large scale). I’ve found that in most situations the simplest code is also the fastest. So, don’t worry about performance until the application is running; if it isn’t fast enough, then go in and carefully measure to figure out where the performance bottlenecks are (they are likely to be in places you wouldn’t have guessed). Tune only the places where you have measured that there is an issue.

Use your intuition to ask questions, not to answer them

Intuition is a wonderful thing. Once you have acquired knowledge and experience in an area, you start getting gut-level feelings about the right way to handle certain situations or problems, and these intuitions can save large amounts of time and effort. However, it’s easy to become overconfident and assume that your intuition is infallible, and this can lead to mistakes. So, I try to treat intuition as a hypothesis to be verified, not an edict to be followed blindly.

For example, intuition works great when tracking down bugs; if I get a sense for where I think the problem is I can quickly go to the code and verify whether this really is the problem. For more abstract tasks such as design I find that intuition can also be valuable (I get a vague sense that a particular approach is good or bad), but the intuition needs to be followed up with a lot of additional analysis to expose all the underlying factors and verify whether the intuition was correct. The intuition helps me to focus my analysis, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for analysis.

One area where people frequently misuse their intuition is performance analysis. Developers often jump to conclusions about the source of a performance problem and run off to make changes without making measurements to be sure that the intuition is correct (“Of course it’s the xyz that is slow”). More often than not they are wrong, and the change ends up making the system more complicated without fixing the problem.

Another reason for constantly challenging and validating your intuitions is that over time this will sharpen your intuitions so that they work even better for you. Ironically, people who are most dogmatic about their intuitions often seem to have least well-developed intuitions. If they would challenge their intuitions more, they would find that their intuitions become more accurate.

Facts precede concepts

A fact is a piece of information that can be observed or measured; a concept is a general rule that can be used to predict many facts or a solution to many problems. Concepts are powerful and valuable, and acquiring them is the goal of most learning processes. However, before you can appreciate or develop a concept you need to observe a large number of facts related to the concept. This has implications both for teaching and for working in unfamiliar areas.

In teaching it’s crucial to give lots of examples when introducing a new concept; otherwise the concept won’t make sense to the students. Edward Tufte describes this process as “general-specific-general“: start by explaining the concept, then give several specific examples to show where the concept does and does not apply, then reiterate the concept by showing how all the examples are related.

I also apply this principle when I’m working in a new area and trying to derive the underlying concepts for that area. Initially my goal is just to get experience (facts). Once I have a collection of facts to work from, then I start looking for patterns or themes; eventually these lead to concepts. For example, a few years ago I started working on my first large Web application. My goal was to develop a library of reusable classes on which to base the application, but being new to Web development I had no idea what those classes should be. So, I built the first simple version of the application without any shared code, creating each page separately. Once I had developed a dozen pages I was able to identify areas of functionality that were repeated over and over in different pages, and from this I was able to develop a set of classes that implemented the the shared functionality. These classes represented the key concepts of that particular application.

If you don’t know what the problem was, you haven’t fixed it

Here’s a scenario that I have seen over and over:

  • A developer is tracking down a difficult problem, often one that is not completely reproducible.
  • In a status meeting the developer announces that the problem has been fixed.
  • I ask “what was the cause of the problem?”.
  • The developer responds “I’m not really sure what the problem was, but I changed xyz and the problem went away.”

Nine times out of ten this approach doesn’t really fix the problem; it just submerges it (for example, the system timing might have changed so that the problem doesn’t happen as frequently). In a few weeks or months the problem will reappear. Don’t ever assume that a problem has been fixed until you can identify the exact lines of code that caused it and convince yourself that the particular code really explains the behavior you have seen. Ideally you should create a test case that reliably reproduces the problem, make your fix, and then use that test case to verify that the problem is gone.

If you do end up in a situation where you make a change and the problem mysteriously goes away, don’t stop there. Undo the change and see if the problem recurs. If it doesn’t, then the change is probably unrelated to the problem. If undoing the change causes the problem to recur, then figure out why. For example, try reducing the scope of the change to find the smallest possible modification that causes the problem to come and go. If this doesn’t identify the source of the problem, add additional tracing to the system and compare the “before” and “after” traces to see how the change affected the behavior of the system. In my experience, once I have a code change that makes a problem come and go I can always find the source of the problem fairly quickly.

If it hasn’t been used, it doesn’t work

This is one of the biggest frustrations of software development. You design and implement a new feature or application, you test it carefully, and you think you are done. Unfortunately you aren’t. No matter how carefully you have tested, there will be problems as soon as QA gets their hands on it or someone tries to use the feature or application for real work. Either there will be bugs that you missed, or some of the features will be clumsy, or additional features will be needed. Sometimes the entire architecture turns out to be wrong. Unfortunately, the problems come out at a time when you are ready to move on to the next thing (or perhaps you already have moved on), so it’s frustrating to go back and spend more time on a project that you thought was finished. And, of course, you didn’t budget time for this so the cleanup work causes delays in your next project.

I don’t know any solution to this problem except to realize its inevitability and plan for it. My rule of thumb is that when you think you are finished with a software project (coded, tested, and documented, and ready for QA or production use) you are really only 50-75% done. In other words, if you spent 3 months in initial construction, plan on spending another 4-8 weeks in follow-up work. One way to minimize this problem is to get your new software in use as soon as possible. If you can create a skeletal version that is still useful, get people trying it out so you can find out about problems before you think you’re finished. This is one of the ideas behind Agile Development.

Sometimes people just refuse to do the follow-up work: “It’s not my highest priority” or “I will get to it when I have time”. If you take this approach you’ll produce mediocre software. No software is ever gotten right the first time. The only way to produce high-quality software is to keep improving and improving it. There are 2 kinds of software in the world: software that starts out crappy and eventually becomes great, and software that starts out crappy and stays that way.

The only thing worse than a problem that happens all the time is a problem that doesn’t happen all the time

Not much to say about this one: it’s painful to debug a problem that isn’t reproducible. I have spent as long as 6 months tracking down a single nondeterministic bug. Conversely, in my experience any problem that can be easily reproduced can also be tracked down pretty quickly.

The three most powerful words for building credibility are “I don’t know”

Many people worry that not knowing something is a sign of weakness, and that if a leader seems not to have all the answers they will lose the confidence of their team. Such people try to pretend they have the answer in every situation, making things up if necessary and never admitting mistakes.

However, this approach ultimately backfires. Sooner or later people learn the truth and figure out that the person never admits when they don’t know. When this happens the person loses all credibility: no-one can tell whether the person is speaking from authority or making something up, so it isn’t safe to trust anything they say.

On the other hand, if you admit that you don’t know the answer, or that you made a mistake, you build credibility. People are more likely to trust you when you say that you do have the answer, because they have seen that you don’t make things up.

Coherent systems are inherently unstable

A coherent system is one where everything is the same in some respect; the more things that are uniform or shared, the more coherent the system is. For example, a typical cornfield in Iowa is highly coherent: every corn stalk is from the same strain; they’re all planted at the same time, fertilized at the same time, and harvested at the same time. The world of computing is also fairly coherent: most of the world’s computers run one of a few versions of Windows, and almost any computer in the world can be reached using the IP/TCP protocol. Human-engineered systems tend to be coherent.

Natural systems tend not to be coherent. For example, consider the ecosystem of a wetland: there are numerous different species of plant and animal sharing the same area, but behaving very differently with complex interrelationships. The behavior of the overall system is hard to predict from the behavior of any individual in it.

Coherent systems often have advantages of efficiency, which is why humans gravitate towards them. For example, it’s easier to plant the same seed everywhere in a cornfield, and given that some seeds are better than others, it’s more efficient to use the best seed everywhere. It’s also easier to harvest if all of the corn ripens at the same time. It’s more efficient to have a single operating system running most of the world’s computers: once a new facility is implemented for that system, everyone in the world can benefit from it. If there were dozens of different operating systems, then new applications would have to be reimplemented for each of them.

Unfortunately, coherent systems are unstable: if a problem arises it can wipe out the whole system very quickly. For example, a new plant disease could quickly take out a large fraction of U.S. grain production. Computer viruses are another example: a virus that takes advantage of a bug in Windows can potentially impact most of the world’s computers. The U.S. stock market exhibits a certain degree of coherency in the way people think and trade, which results in huge swings up and down as investors move en masse to buy the latest fad or sell when a recession looms.

The incoherence of natural systems give them greater stability. For example, a particular plant disease could probably only affect a small fraction of the species in a wetland.

SSO Integration with J2EE application deployed on 11g WebLogic Server(Part 2)

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

In the previous post, we went through the structure of the integration and the procedure of installing oracle web tier. Now we are going to review the configuration of SSO Integration with J2EE application.

PREQUISITES:

       I assume you have deployed your J2EE applicaiton onto webLogic server and it could be reached by the link:

       (Suppose your J2EE application is deployed on to Admin Server, by default the port number is 7001.)

       http://<host_name&gt;:7001/<Your_J2EEAPP_Name>

       Note: Port number would be vary if you deploy J2EE application on to managed server. For more information about this, you should check the following posts:

        Deploy application to Managed Server on 11g WebLogic Server (Part 1)

        Deploy application to Managed Server on 11g WebLogic Server (Part 2)

SOLUTION:

     The following solution is basically a summary from oracle document: (If you would like a more detailed explanation of what and why)

     http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E25054_01/core.1111/e10043/osso_d_10g.htm

     For how to install oracle web tier, check previous post:

     SSO Integration with J2EE application deployed on 11g WebLogic Server(Part 1)

     STEPS:

        J2EE Application Code Change

          The idea is to enable the fuctionality of enabling OID users login into your J2EE application directly.

        Set up mod_osso

          Find the mod_wl_ohs.conf. This file should reside under the following directory:

          <Fusion_Middleware_Home>/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs1

          The following code snippet comes from mod_wl_ohs.conf file.

     

          Modify the line marked in red. Uncomment the line starting with “MatchExpression…” to below 

 
       

Restart ohs1 after editing:

cd /Oracle_WT1/opmn/bin

opmnctl stopall

opmnctl startall

       Registering Oracle HTTP Server mod_osso with OSSO Server 10.1.4      

The mod_osso module is an Oracle HTTP Server module that provides authentication to OracleAS applications. This module resides on the Oracle HTTP Server that enables applications protected by OracleAS Single Sign-On to accept HTTP headers in lieu of a user name and password once the user has logged into the OracleAS Single Sign-On server. The values for these headers are stored in a mod_osso cookie. The mod_osso module enables single sign-on for Oracle HTTP Server by examining incoming requests and determining whether the requested resource is protected. If it is, then it retrieves the Oracle HTTP Server cookie. Under certain circumstances, you must register Oracle HTTP Server mod_osso using the 10.1.4 Oracle Identity Manager single sign-on registration tool .

To register mod_osso:

   Go to the following 10.1.4 Oracle Identity Manager directory path: (This could be your OSSO server)

              <ORACLE_HOME>/sso/bin/ssoreg

  Run ssoreg with the following parameters and values for your environment:

             ./ssoreg.sh -oracle_home_path $ORACLE_HOME -config_mod_osso TRUE -site_name <host_name>:7777 -remote_midtier -config_file $ORACLE_HOME/osso.conf -mod_osso_url http://<host_name>:7777

      (Note: the osso.conf would be generated under specified directory: $ORACLE_HOME/osso.conf)

  Ftp osso.conf file from the directory above to the application server where web tier is installed.

              Put osso.conf under directory: (Note: create directory osso if it does not exist)

       <Fusion_Middleware_Home>/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs1/osso

 Copy mod_osso.conf from disabled directory to the moduleconf directory for editing.

              From directory:

       <Fusion_Middleware_Home>/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs1/disabled/mod_osso.conf

             To directory:

       <Fusion_Middleware_Home>/Oracle_WT1/instances/instance1/config/OHS/ohs1/moduleconf

      The orignial mod_osso.conf file should look like :

      

      Modify the red line and add the corresponding code into this file. It should look like :

      

Note: Httpd.conf for Oracle http server 11g is not in need for further modification, for it has already included the following:

          

Restart ohs1 after editing:

cd /Oracle_WT1/opmn/bin

opmnctl stopall

opmnctl startall

         To be Continued with:

                SSO Integration with J2EE application deployed on 11g WebLogic Server(Part 3)

SSO Integration with J2EE application deployed on 11g WebLogic Server(Part 1)

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

Previously, we talked about how to deploy our J2EE web application on to oracle 11g weblogic server. With the upcoming need of SSO integration, our goal becomes to enable SSO functionality on weblogic server and secure our application access by going through portal page and then getting user authentication through LDAP server with the OID repository.

I have successfully implemented the solution on SSO integration within Oracle 10g Applicaiton Server(OAS). The idea is quite simliar since we are still using 10g portal page. However, oracle 11g enterprise edition has replaced the OAS with weblogic server which introduces quite a few changes for the SSO integration on weblogic server. I would break into a few posts on elaborating this idea. If you are not familar with SSO(Single Sign On) with oracle 10g OAS, please refer to the following link to get a basic understanding of what and why: (The following link shows a basic work-though of 10g SSO. Our new approach would inherit a lot of similar ideas from the old approach.It would be easier to understand this current post if you have the history knowledge)

http://www.slideshare.net/kurtvm/extending-oracle-sso-presentation

Now I assume if you have already knew a few concepts of mod_osso, OID registration,httpd.conf file. Then let us firstly start with reviewing application architecture with the SSO integration. 

The architure of the whole process looks like below.

WEB TIER INSTALLATION

Now our application is deployed on weblogic server. So right now besides the installation of Business Intelligence SUITE, we also need to install Oracle Web Tier.

PREREQUISITES:

  •       Oracle Buisiness intelligence 11g is installed
  •       OR Oracle Web Logic Server is installed

Note: If you have only installed oracle web logic server, be sure to enable JRF manually as below. Oracle Web Tier installation requires Oracle WSM Policy Manager and JRF(Java Required Files) and they do not display by default in the Oracle Fusion  Middleware Configuration Wizard. You must enable the display of these products. To accomplish this, pass the following JVM property to the config.sh script:

-DTemplateCatalog.enable.selectable.all=true

To pass this property to the script, set the CONFIG_JVM_ARGS environment variable to -DTemplateCatalog.enable.selectable.all=true. The script takes this property when you start the Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard using./config.sh .

cd /wlserver_10.3/common/bin

 ./config.sh -DTemplateCatalog.enable.selectable.all=true

INSTALLATION PROCEDURE:

Download oracle web tier package and unzip the file. You should find Disk1 within the unziped file folder. Go under Disk1 and run ./runInstaller

Click and Next and then skip the software updates and then continue to check the prerequisite(Keep the default options)

Oracle web tier would be installed under fushion middleware home. So you should make sure you enter the correct FM home.

Uncheck the box to proceed.

It is not neccessary to install web cache if you don’t need to do performance tuning. That is optional.

Enter your domain settings as below:

It will dynamically load the instance home and you just proceed.

Skip the below step if you didn’t install web cache.

Choose Auto Port Configuration.

Check if everything looks right and then install the software.

Wait until it gets successfully finished.

Once web tier has been installed. You could check the status on em to see if it keeps up and running.

 To be continued to :

SSO Integration with J2EE application deployed on 11g WebLogic Server(Part 2)

Scar Tissues Make Relationships Wear Out

~ Claire Hu ~ 1 Comment

CS140, 04/26/2012
From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout.

This is my most touchy-feely thought for the weekend. Here’s the basic idea: It’s really hard to build relationships that last for a long time. If you haven’t discovered this, you will discover this sooner or later. And it’s hard both for personal relationships and for business relationships. And to me, it’s pretty amazing that two people can stay married for 25 years without killing each other.

But honestly, most professional relationships don’t last anywhere near that long. The best bands always seem to break up after 2 or 3 years. And business partnerships fall apart, and there’s all these problems in these relationships that just don’t last. So, why is that? Well, in my view, it’s relationships don’t fail because there some single catastrophic event to destroy them, although often there is a single catastrophic event around the the end of the relationship, but that’s typically a symptom rather than a cause. What typically happens is it accumulates in the little things that just build up over time, and I call those scar tissues. And the reason I use the phrase “scar tissues” is because scar tissue is when you have a wound that doesn’t heal quite properly and you get this other tissue that just sort of fills the gap, which is called scar tissue, and that tissue is not as strong as the original tissue that was there. So, scar tissue is weak. So, what happens in relationships is that sooner or later, there’s a conflict. It happens in all relationships and not all of them get resolved perfectly. So, now somebody’s left feeling just a little bit unhappy about the result, mostly okay but just a little bit unhappy. But then it happens again… and it happens again in a different situation and no one of these is enough to kill the relationship, but over time that annoyance just builds up more and more and more and more, and then people start seeing patterns in behavior. You know if you ever hear the phrase “You always X”: scar tissue.

So people start becoming sensitive and then they expect the bad behavior and there’s nothing more guaranteed to create bad behavior than expectation. You will find it if you see it. And so eventually it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse, and then somebody decides they just don’t care anymore and typically that’s the point where something spectacular happens and the relationship collapses. And people often think it was the spectacular thing that wrecked the relationship, but really it was all those little bits of scar tissue building up over months or years. And my opinion is that in most of these situations the people aren’t fundamentally bad, though they often appear bad, typically at the spectacular end phase of the relationship. It’s just that the relationship wore off. Just wore off: too much scar tissue.

So, I’ll give you an example of a relationship of mine that wore off. So, we had our house remodeled a couple years ago. Major remodeling of our kitchen and family room, and the foreman for the contractor, Jim, was in our house for every day for about 4 months during the work on the job. And it started off and things were fine, but then there were just little things that started happening. Like he wouldn’t seal up the plastic around the kitchen, and so, dust would get in to the rest of the house. And most of the work he did was really great, but if he ever made a mistake he wouldn’t want to admit it; he would kinda make excuses to try to avoid fixing his mistake, and this just got more and more annoying for me. And I’m sure I did my share in return because I’m sort of a perfectionist, and I probably noticed every little thing he did that wasn’t absolutely perfect, and it probably drove him crazy that every morning when he came in, I was there standing in the kitchen ready to tell him about all the mistakes he made yesterday [Laughter], and so it just got worse and worse and worse to the point where we were barely on speaking terms at the end of the project, and one day our daughter came in, and she was like, “Dad I think your relationship with Jim is wearing out,” [Laughter] which was when I realized I shouldn’t be telling her my theories about relationships.

Now, I could have sat down with Jim to try to work it out, but I decided since it was only a 4 month contracting job, I’ll just put up with it, and you know, it’ll be done in a while. He would have been pretty worried if we sat down and I was like, “Jim, can we talk [Laughter] about my feelings? I mean you left the plastic open and dust got into the house, and sometimes I feel like you don’t respect me as a person.”

Now maybe if I tried that he would instantly change his behavior just to make sure we never, ever had to have a conversation again. [Laughter] So, the solution is if you want a relationship to last a long time, somehow you have to keep the scar tissue from building up. And that’s really hard. So, when there’s an issue, you somehow have to resolve it where there is zero lingering animosity. Nobody is even a little bit upset. Because even a little upset, that scar tissue that accumulates, that never goes away. And that’s really hard to do; I don’t have any perfect answers for that; it’s communication and compromise. Both people need to be willing to listen to understand the other person’s view and then you have to find some compromise where everybody agrees that’s a fair trade off so nobody’s upset. So, that’s really hard, and if either person can’t listen or can’t compromise, the odds are not good long term for that relationship. But there are classic mistakes people make. Like, some people are just too nice, and they wreck the relationships. They think, “Oh, it’s not a big deal, it’s just one little thing, not worth having a big argument about it. I’ll just give in.” Well, that seems generous, but it’s a really bad idea. You have to ask yourself, “Are you really, completely, 100% over this? You’re giving in? No animosity? You’re not secretly hoping that maybe they’ll do something for you in return or a little behavior change here or there?”

Because if there’s anything at all when you’re giving in that you can feel bad about later, you’re nuking the relationship – you’re creating scar tissue with yourself, and that will build up to the point where you wreck the relationship. And the flipside is also bad. You may think, “I’m such a good arguer, I can just argue this person to death, and whatever they want I can just outargue them: I’ll yell louder with more words, and I’ll get my way. Whew! That was a great, great resolution, I got my way.” Well, you’re nuking the relationship, sorry. So, somehow both people have to be completely satisfied with the outcome. So, the irony of this is, I think it’s not the big things that nuke relationships it’s all those little things. Even if there’s a big thing, the relationship was going to die really soon anyway. So, just think about your relationship experience and the people around you. How many of you have either had a relationship that wore out like this or you’ve seen somebody around you and you could see their relationship wearing out?

Yeah, it happens to everybody and we’ve all been there. And the trick is, again, you just have to avoid the creation of scar tissue. Not easy, but it’s the only solution. Okay, that’s my thought for the weekend

Can you choose your personality?

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

CS140, 03/18/2012
From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout.

For today’s thought for the weekend, I thought I’d come full circle and talk about the idea that made me think of doing these thoughts for the weekend in the first place. The idea I want to close with is, can you choose your own personality? I propose that both as a question and a challenge to you as students. Do we actually have any control over our personalities?

There’s a pretty good argument that we don’t. For example, a lot of personalities are undoubtedly genetic in nature and so depend on however the genes mixed up when you were born. But then for the first part of your life, you’re just not able to control your personality. You’re being programmed continuously the whole time you’re growing up, by your parents, your friends and the people that are around you. Everybody subconsciously imitates what they see, so your personality is being programmed and you have no control over that. I learned that up through high school and maybe even early in college, most people are not well-enough developed to really think about what kind of personality they would like to have. You’re too busy just trying to become a basic human being, to learn how to understand and manipulate the world around you, that the idea of manipulating your own fundamental essence, who you are and how you feel–you’re just not mature enough to do that. You just can’t reason it out yourself or step out of yourself and reason it out from the outside. Many people never acquire that ability their whole lives. On the other hand, by the time you get to your mid or late twenties, it’s too late. Most people’s personalities are pretty fixed by then. For some of you, I’m afraid, it’s already too late–you might already be frozen. There are probably a few of you who are really lucky: your personalities will remain flexible for thirty or forty more years, until late in your life. You’re the enviable ones and you’ll be able to do really great things with your personality. But for most of you, you don’t have much time. If you’re going to control your personality, it has to happen pretty much right away: you’ve only got a few years to do it.

I have no scientific basis for what I’m going to say next, but personally, I like to believe that most people have some control. […] If I go to Amazon, can I just buy the extravert personality workout video? Cynicism in twelve easy steps? Of course, no. (Actually, there’s probably someone out there who has written such a book […]) The best I can say is, borrow and steal. Look around you in the people you interact with and when you see someone who has a really interesting, enviable personality characteristic, just take it. People are really good at emulating, so just find the things around you that you like. Be constantly thinking, do I like that characteristic and do I want that for myself? I’ve done that several times in my life–I don’t know if it’s because I grew up without a father figure around to tell me stuff, but there are perhaps half a dozen times in my life when I saw something I really liked and I decided, I’m going to try and be like that. I probably never did any of those things as good as any of the people I was trying to emulate, but I can say that I did skew myself a little bit.

I want to tell you one probably funny story about a situation like this. When I was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, I was TA’ing one of the intro programming classes and I had a disagreement with the professor about something. I don’t even remember what it was anymore, but somewhere, I thought he wasn’t being fair to the students in the class. I was kind of passionate and hot-headed in those days and so I went to tell the professor about it and suggested that we make a change to fix the problem. He listened very carefully and said, “No, I’m not going to do that.” That kind of bugged me, so I explained again why this was really important. He said again, “No, I don’t think I’m going to do that.” Then, I decided I would resort to some stronger arguments. I began to insult him and talked about how he wasn’t a very good professor if he didn’t do this–it wasn’t fair to the students. He was completely unflappable. He didn’t get mad at me for insulting him, so then I decided I would find out how far I could go with this. Plus, the harder it was to get him angry, the angrier I was myself. I became more and more insulting to the professor and yet, it all completely washed off of him.

Now, you’re probably thinking, what a mature move: thank you for sharing with us the reasonable person principle in action here. I think I actually knew the reasonable person principle back then, but I hadn’t quite fully assimilated it. I just got so mad that I ended up storming out of his office. I stayed mad–I kept thinking about it and got madder and madder until it suddenly hit me and realized that I needed to be that way. This is actually an incredibly powerful personality trait, that you don’t take insults: people can’t make you mad. And so I decided to try and become that way. Over time, I realized that there’s actually a pretty deep thought behind all of this, which is, an insult isn’t something that happens to you: it’s not like getting hit by lightning or catching the flu or something that you have no control over. An insult is something you have to agree to. If you don’t agree to be insulted, nobody can insult you. And that, to me, was just a really powerful idea. You think about the world today, where there are so many people who are just desperate to be insulted. They’re so eager to find something they can take insult with so they can take out some horrible vengeance back on it. And this idea is that you just don’t have to be insulted. These days, it’s pretty hard to say things to get me mad. You just realize, I don’t have to feel insulted–call me whatever you want. That’s an example from my life. There are probably other examples that are less juvenile in origin than that one was.

I’d say, think about that: find traits that you like and emulate them. Just to summarize, I have put up all the thoughts for the weekend and I’d like to remind you what they are again:

  • A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept
  • Fear is more dangerous than evil
  • Simplicity
  • Scar tissue makes relationships wear out
  • The most important component of evolution is death
  • The reasonable person principle
  • Do your disasters make you weaker or stronger?
  • Mental agility
  • For major (non-technical) decisions, trust your gut

Can you choose your personality?

To close out the class, I’d just like to say, I know you all worked really really hard in this class–sorry how hard you had to work. If I had it my way, it wouldn’t be quite as much work. But hopefully, at the end of the day, you will have learned enough to at least mostly compensate you for all the time you put in. In fact, I’ll stop, wish you a good weekend and see you at the exam on Monday morning.

Fear is more dangerous than evil

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

CS140, 01/18/2012
From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout.

Last week’s thought for the weekend was, a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.  This week’s thought for the week is, fear is more dangerous than evil.

First of all, maybe I’m an optimist, but I think there aren’t many truly evil people in the world.  Maybe there are some and they get their fair share of publicity.  I think much more damage is caused by people who are afraid.  This is a much bigger problem I think for society in general.

Let me give you an example.  People who are afraid will do things that they know are wrong.  For example, when people cheat on assignments, in most cases, it’s when people are up late the night before an assignment is due and they get desperate and afraid and made a silly decision to steal somebody else’s work.  In industry, CEO’s are afraid to announce that their company had a bad quarter, so they allow their salespeople to report sales from the next quarter.  Then in the next quarter, they have to cheat even more and eventually it all comes tumbling down.

When people are afraid, they often behave irrationally because they’re desperate.  They try things that can’t possibly work but they do anyway because they’re desperate.  That makes them unpredictable and really dangerous to be around.

But at an even simpler level, fear makes people underachieve in all sorts of ways and this may be the biggest problem of all.  For example, people are afraid to try something new, so they get stuck in a rut doing something they know is not right for them.  People might have a really bad relationship or a couple of bad relationships and they become so afraid of having another one and become so distrustful that they can’t form a good relationship anymore.  They are basically damaged by their fear.

Or in another example, people are afraid to look bad.  This is often true about leaders: you think you have to be invincible, that you’re not a good leader if you appear to make a mistake.  So, you never admit a mistake to look strong.  But if you never admit a mistake, then you don’t learn from it.  If you don’t learn from it, you keep making more mistakes, which makes you more afraid, causing you to lie more and more and the whole thing just cycles on itself.  And if you’re a leader, eventually people realize you don’t know what you’re talking about, even though you’re pretending everything’s alright.

Ironically, the people who sound the most confident and arrogant, I think, are often the most afraid.  That arrogance is just a shell they build around their fear underneath.  Furthermore, when really evil things happen, fear is often closely involved.  If you take sociopathic criminals, these people are often motivated by fear, typically the fear of losing control.  They commit violent crimes like murder and rape because that’s the only way they feel they can take and exert control over other people.  It all comes from inner fear.

When evil’s carried out in a really large scale–take your favorite large-scale evil action, most of the work is done by people who are afraid.  You have the evil person at the top who scares all the other people into doing the really nasty stuff.  So it’s the fear that actually did most of the damage.

In general, I think fear is much more pervasive.  It happens at all levels and it damages everyone to some degree.  There are certainly times in my life where I did the wrong thing because I was afraid.  On the other hand, fear does serve a fairly good biological purpose.  Life without fear would probably be fairly short.  An animal is about to attack you or a car is about to hit you and you’re standing on the edge of a cliff–these are good occasions to feel fear.  And I think sometimes fear is unavoidable.  With stage fright, if you’ve never given a talk before, you’re going to feel fear.  Or if you take risks and try new things, it’ll be scary.  But fear, I think, also occurs in many cases that are not constructive and helpful and just damages.

The question is, how are you going to keep fear from damaging your life?  You’re not going to eliminate fear–you might not even want to do that: life is pretty dull if you have no fear at all.  A couple of things to think about:

The first one is the red flag approach.  Ask yourself, am I making a decision out of fear?  The best way you can tell is if you’re running away from something instead of running towards something.  Am I doing something because I’m afraid of something, not in spite of the fear, but because of the fear?  If so, you should think about making changes.  Change the decision or change the situation.  If you’re fighting self constantly, being afraid a car is going to run you over, maybe you should be more careful when you walk out into the street.  Or change yourself.  Figure out how to get yourself in a situation where you’re not going to feel as much fear.  I think the most important thing is to understand, see what is happening.  If you do that, I think you’ll figure out a way to help yourself.

What do you do about fear?  To me, the solution to fear is power.  The opposite of fear is confidence and what gives you confidence is power.  This is the superman kind of power, not the ability to manipulate and control other people, the Stalin kind of power.  The way I think to have a fear-free life is to continually be developing skills so you don’t feel afraid anymore.  My single most important strategy when bringing up our kids was to try and make our kids self-confident by teaching them lots and lots of skills.  If they know how to do a lot of stuff, they’ll be confident and live lives without fear–that’s probably the best way to live a happy life.  So develop your powers.

The third approach is to learn how to harness the fear.  In some cases, it’s inevitable.  For example, with stage fright, I still get scared when I make presentations to a large audience, but I realized that stage fright is an amazing natural drug.  The adrenaline rush when you’re really scared wakes up your whole mind.  I suddenly realize that I’m at my most alert, my best, just after I’m scared out of mind for ten seconds with a burst of adrenaline.  This is an enormous source of power–I have all this adrenaline on my side and I didn’t even have to take a pill.  So learn how to harness it.

Overall, I would say, just don’t let your life be damaged by fear.  And furthermore, not just for yourself, but also for the people around you.  Get them to a place where they’re not afraid and they can work through fear.  My opinion is, if you want a world of peace, you need have a world without fear.

The Most Important Component of Evolution is Death

~ Claire Hu ~ Leave a comment

CS140, 01/20/2012
From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout.

Today’s thought for the weekend is: the most important component of evolution is death.  So I want to address that first at a biological level and then let’s pop up and talk about it at a societal level, Silicon Valley, and computer software.  So, first, from an underlying biological standpoint, it’s sort of fundamental that for some reason it’s really hard for an existing organism to change in fundamental ways.  How many of you have been able to grow a third leg?  Most people can’t even change their mind let alone change something fundamental about themselves.

People try.  You make your hair look a different color, but it’s really the same color underneath.  In fact you have this whole thing called your autoimmune system whose goal is basically to prevent change.  You’ve got these white blood cells running around looking for anything that looks different or the slightest bit unfamiliar and as soon as they find it they kill it.  So it’s very hard for any organism to change itself, but when we make new organisms it’s actually fairly easy to make them different from the old ones.  So for example gene mutations seem to happen pretty commonly.  They can be good or bad, but they do change the system.  Or, with sexual reproduction, it’s even easier because you take genes from two parents and you mix and match them and who knows you’re going to end up with as a result.

So the bottom line is it’s a lot easier to build a new organism than it is to change an existing one.  And, in order for that to work, you have to get rid of all the existing ones.  So death is really fundamental.  If it wasn’t for death there’d be no way to bring in new organisms and create change.

I would argue this same concept applies at a societal level.  In fact, if you look at social structures, any structure that’s been around a really long time, it’s almost certainly out of date.  Because, they just can’t change.  Human organizations, companies, political systems, religions, they all have tremendous difficulty changing.

So, let me talk about companies in particular.  We’re hearing these days about various companies in trouble.  Is Yahoo going to make it?  And Kodak filing for Chapter 11.  People seem to think: those guys must have been bozos.  They blew it.  How could you fumble the internet when you’re Yahoo?

My opinion is this is just the circle of life.  That’s all.  That fundamentally companies can’t change.  You come in with a particular technology, something you do very well, but if the underlying technology changes, companies can’t adapt.  So they actually need to die.

I view this as a good thing.  This is the way we clear out the old and make room for the new.  And in Silicon Valley everyone kind of accepts that.  The death of a company is not a big deal.  In fact, what’s interesting is that the death of the company isn’t necessarily bad for the people at all.  They just go on to the next company.

And I was talking to a venture capitalist once and she told me she actually liked funding entrepreneurs who had been in failed startups because they were really hungry yet still had experience. People in successful startups weren’t as hungry and didn’t succeed as often when they got funded.  So death is actually a good thing in Silicon Valley.

Now let’s talk about computer software.  This is kind of ironic because software is a very malleable medium, very easy to change.  Much easier to change than most things.  And I actually consider that to be a problem because, in fact, people don’t have to throw it away and start again.

Software lives on and on and on.  You know we’re still working on versions of Windows 20 years old right now.  And as a result the software gets messier and kludgier and harder and harder to change.  And yet people keep struggling.  They won’t throw it away and start again.

And so what’s funny is that this incredibly malleable medium gets to a point where we can’t make fundamental changes in it because people aren’t willing to throw it away and start again.  I sometimes think the world would be a better place if somehow there could be a time limit on software where it expired.  You had to throw it away and start again.

So this is actually one of the things I like about California and Silicon Valley.  It’s that we have a culture where people like change and aren’t afraid of that.  And we’re not afraid of the death of an idea or a company because it means that something even new and better is coming along next.

So that’s my thought for the weekend…