BPI inside

Tag: University

  • Presentation success

    Yesterday evening I held a short five-minute presentation for our lecture "Project Work and Presentation". The exercise was to hold a presentation of any topic for five minutes.

    The three days before I’ve been working on that presentation because I wanted to take the chance and try something completely new for me. My goal was to hold one of those presentations, where the visuals change every other second and match the sentences or "story" of the presenter. It was very hard for me because I had to take care that the flow of pictures and graphics matched the descriptions I’m giving in front of the audience. Another obstacle I had to get around was that I had to memorize the whole flow of the presentation, which image and which slide appeared after each click and when I wanted to proceed to the next picture/slide during my speech. It was also the first presentation where I really practiced the whole presentation several times the day (or better, night) before. I knew, either it will be a huge failure or a big success. But since it wouldn’t have a large impact on my mark and I wanted to try this for a long time already I just did it.

    In the end I managed to keep my mind together during the presentation and remember almost everything. To cite one of my colleagues, the audince was simply stunned. Seems, my presentation went well 🙂 Of course, there are still things which can be improved, like my costantly expression of ‘aah’s and ‘uhm’s and I should have taken more care that some pictures contained texts which weren’t unreadable to the audience (I didn’t intend to make them readable, but the audience still tried) but these are things I’m arware of and I’m constantly working on.

    For now I’m quite happy with my performance and in the future I’ll try to also make important and technical presentations more professional and better than I did in the past.

  • University project is gaining speed

    In the last week our group of students met several times online and we finished the generic planning phase for our project. The Scrum-like approach is working even better than I expected and the discipline and participation of the people is excellent. Bonus points apply because we’re all distributed at different locations and have to schedule our meetings online only. And although our teacher for this lecture did not tell us directly I’m quite sure that he was also impressed by the things we’ve accomplished between the two lecture units we had so far. Everytime he brought up an issue or a question we could reply that we’ve already discussed that and present him a decision or solution.

    Currently we’re in the detailed planning and design phase and I expect the teams to begin the actual work after our regular meeting on Tuesday. I guess that with the zeal of the teams we’ll have no serious problems meeting the expectations for the first iteration which ends at the end of October.

  • First university weekend roundup of the new term

    Last weekend was again filled with mostly university attendance. And with every new term there are new challenges of course. What’s better than in the previous terms is, that it seems that now we’re having only qualified lecturers. In the previous terms we always had the one or other teacher where we had more difficulties with the style of lecturing than with the topic itself.

    So, whats on the next half year? A surprise was a lecture on project work and presentations because I only realized shortly before the start of the lesson that this is a full-english lecture. But should be no problem at all. The lecture on security and cryptography delivers exactly what the title suggests. Think of hackers trying to break into computers, applications and websites, that’s one part of what this lecture contains. I guess the other part will be the opposite, how to prevent these attacks and to develop a feeling on security or insecurity of certain stuff.

    For me personally the most interesting lectures so far are on mobile computing, system-close programming and specific chapters of software development. In mobile computing we’ll be programming applications for mobile devices using JavaME and the Android Platform (on which I incidentally already created my first application last week). System-close programming will lead us into the depths of C where we’ll be creating an own shell on the Linux platform. And in the last lecture on specific chapters of software development our class got split in three teams which will be working on a common project using agile and Scrum-influenced development methods. I’m on the integration team there but since I’m already very experienced with these methodologies the lecturer asked me to give more support to my classmates than doing actual work myself.

    This all sounds as if it’ll become the most interesting term so far but I also expect it to be the most work-intense either.

  • Last holiday

    Yep, tomorrow the university continues. At 2pm I’ll be already in a meeting with a professor and a colleague to talk about a possible work for my required Bachelor thesis (pt. 1). And after that it’ll continue straight until Saturday evening.

    I’m curious what the new lectures will contain…

  • Term (almost) over

    Past Monday finally I handed in one of my term papers for the last term. It has been quite a bit of work but it’s now over at last. Just in time, so that I can see how the good weather is over and my plans to do some cycling will probably vanish in thin air.

    Just one paper left for university to correct if I find the time. Its not mandatory, as the mark in that subject is already a positive one but it could be much better if I didn’t disagree with the professor on some topics in that paper. He gives much more importance on form of the paper than on actual content. For example I gave the different work-packages short-names similar to their project phase, but the professor criticized it being not aligned to the "standard"… This standard was mentioned during the course but never stated as the definitive guideline. Oh well…

  • Vacation roundup

    As today is my last day of my current vacation block, here is a quick overview of it.

    Most of the time I spent on the term papers which so far needed much more time as I’d initially expected. It’s not that I’m unable to understand it but rather that I’m unable to formulate the knowledge in my head in proper sentences which I could write down.

    Nevertheless I found some time to also do some different activities altough not as much as I would have appreciated. I’ve been to the cinema a few times, I dug out my bicycle from the depths of our storerooms, I’ve paid the city of Linz a visit and also the Ars Electronica Center there which runs science and art exhibitions.

    A bit of minor work here and there and that’s been the roundup of my vacation. Nothing too exciting this time as the university stuff takes up a lot of time even in the holidays…

  • Next vacation block ahead

    The upcoming two weeks I’ll be on vacation again. Originally I planned to perform some sports but by damaged ankle voided my intentions. Nevertheless, I’ve had a talk with the doctor of my employer and he suggested to start easy not with running but with cycling in about two weeks. So I’ll be preparing my old and dusty bike next week, maybe purchase a helmet, and start off easy in my second week of the vacation.

    Furthermore I was told that in about 2-3 weeks I could also carefully(!) begin with badminton again. Carefully means, that I should only be going for throwing the shuttlecock back, making targetting exercises and so on, but not chasing every hit or jumping around to reach hard to catch hits.

    In these two weeks I’ll also have to work some more on two term papers to finish off this term.

  • JBoss Web Service issues with JDK6

    The past two weeks I’ve working on an exercise for the university. The task was to create [Enterprise Java Beans][1] (EJB) and [Web Services][2] (WS) which were then deployed to and run on the [JBoss Application Server][3]. We were using Eclipse Ganymede EE, Java JDK6 and JBoss version 5.0.1 GA for our purposes.

    My colleagues and I had quite some troubles getting it all to work but eventually we managed it because most of the issues are documented and their resolutions are available on several sites somewhere on the net. Only this particular issue seemed to be covered nowhere or if it was, the solutions suggested did not work for us. I’m giving you the solution that worked for us here, maybe it helps somebody who runs into the same issues we’ve experienced.

    Many people seem to succeed with the [Instructions for using JBoss5 on Java6][6] from the JBoss Getting Started Guide, but for whatever reason this did not work for us. If you have the same problem persisting even after copying around the library-files, read on.

    I hope the solution present here can also help you with your problem. If you have anything to add, find a mistake or can give any other feedback, please leave me a comment.

    The issue

    JBoss is up and running without trouble, having webservices deployed and visible on the webservice-endpoint overview at http://localhost:8080/jbossws/services. But upon calling one of the methods provided the JBoss chokes with the exception:

    ERROR [SOAPFaultHelperJAXWS] SOAP request exception
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: setProperty must be overridden by all subclasses of SOAPMessage
    at javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage.setProperty(SOAPMessage.java:445)
    at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.SOAPMessageImpl.
    (SOAPMessageImpl.java:82) at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.MessageFactoryImpl.createMessage(MessageFactoryImpl.java:215) … (and some more exceptions with “setProperty must be overriden…” appearing several times) and the webservice call fails with no result. ## Quickly explained solution 1. install JDK5 and add it to Eclipses installed Runtime Environments 2. set JBoss execution environment to use JRE5 3. set JRE in webservice-projects buildpath to JRE5 4. set Project Facet in webservice-project for Java to 5.0 ## Detailed solution 1. [download JDK5][4] from Sun 2. install JDK5 (only JDK needed, no seperate JRE, docs, etc.) 3. add JDK5 to Eclipse as Installed JRE (Window->Preferences->Java->Installed JREs->Search…) 4. change startup configuration of JBoss to JDK5 (doublecklick on JBoss-entry in Servers-tab->General Information->Open launch configuration->JRE->Alternate JRE) 5. change the projects JRE System Library to use JDK5. Either via right-click on the system library entry in the project->Properties or right-click on the project->Build Path->Configure Build Path->select “JRE System Library”->Edit. Then set the Alternate JRE to JDK5 6. change the projects Java facet to JDK5 (right click on project->Properties->Project Facets->Change the setting next to the “Java” entry to “5.0” 7. check, that in %JBOSS_PATH%/server/default/deploy (or your own configured deploy-path in JBoss) there are no .war-files left from your current project 8. if not already suggested by Eclipse itself, rebuild the webservice project (if building automatically just clean the project via Project->Clean…) 9. start JBoss via Eclipse 10. check that somewhere near the beginning of the JBoss console log something like “Java Version: 1.5.xxx Sun Microsystems Inc” or “Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.5.xxx” appears as “INFO [ServerInfo]” log line If you are receiving errors like “java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file” then there is still something connected with JDK6 left in your project. Check the steps again and also your included libraries if there is something suspicious and then rebuild the project. After all these steps you should finally be able to call web service methods on your endpoint without causing those exception anymore. ## Issue background The technical details and origins of this error are explained in [JBWS-2649][5] along with an [initial solution][6]. In short JRE/JDK6 includes a dummy-implementation for this setProperty() method which overrides the required implementation which is supplied with JBoss. The mentioned initial solution solves the problem by copying the supplied libraries to a location in the classpath where it should be loaded before the JRE libraries but as already mentioned this did not work for most of our class. [1]: http://java.sun.com/products/ejb/ “Enterprise JavaBeans Technology” [2]: http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/webservices.jsp “Web Services” [3]: http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/ “JBoss Application Server” [4]: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/5/jdk “java.sun.com – Download SE Development Kit 5.0” [5]: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBWS-2649 “JBWS-2649: SOAPMessage implementation bug” [6]: http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossas/freezone/docs/Installation_And_Getting_Started_Guide/5/html_single/index.html#Java6_Notes “Installation and getting started with JBoss on JDK6”

  • Upcoming open source project

    For one of my lectures at the university we had to process a project. I chose a software project with a topic I suggested myself and possibly could also later use at work.

    Meanwhile my project has grown to a not-so-bad framework and I’m really thinking of opening it to the public after it has been completed at the university.

    I already checked it with the university I just have to talk to some people at work on that issue.

    So expect a new java project on SourceForge.net in the next weeks.

  • University stress

    As you have noticed it’s already the time of the semester where all the homework, projects and preparations for exams accumulate towards the same date.

    The upcoming weekend is again the most pressing date of this semester as this is one of the last presence lectures for some of our lectures. And the last presence lecture is often used for end-term exams.

    Furthermore there are some presentations and handins to be finished by Saturday.

    What’s currently taking most of my time is my project work for this semester. I don’t know if I’ve already hinted somewhere in a post on that but let me give you a short intro.

    I’m creating a framework for Java which allows developers to define the structure of any file in some sort of description language, hand this and a file containing data in this format to a parser which is created out of the description language and get out a data structure which contains the contents of the file in an easy accessible way for the developer.

    Initially the project was about researching such frameworks, comparing them to each other and create a prototype implementation for an application within our company. After I have handed in the description and plan for my project work I found out that there is no framework existing for the Java language which comes even near the functionality I’ve been looking for. Nothing. Nada. I just found something similar to that implemented for Python, it’s called Construct and resembles quite exactly what I’ve been looking for.

    So I decided to resurrect my old lexer and parser know-how and create a framework on my own. Since I’ve already worked on a thesis in the past which involved creation of a C++ parser I knew that finding the right tools to use and creating a language from scratch is not something one can pull off without a great deal of theoretical background in that area. I already knew which problems I probably will be facing and how to avoid several caveats and until now it turns out that I’m not very far off of my expectations.

    Just that I need some more time to get it finished 😛

    Nevertheless, what I’ve also been thinking of is that maybe I’ll open source this framework if there aren’t obstacles for that like copyright or usage issues with the university or my employer for which I’m implementing this.

    Maybe there will be updates on this in the future… maybe.