Here is a blog entry that was sitting in my Drafts folder for a long time (just because I didn't realize :). Anyway, it shows how to install Open Solaris 2008/11 on Virtual Box. The original install was done using Virtual Box 2.0.6. I installed Virtual Box 2.1 this morning and the image was easily recognized by the updated Virtual Box.

Here are the basic steps.


Create a new VM ...



As part of the previous step, create a new Virtual Disk mapping to the downloaded Open Solaris image ...












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For the last few months, I've been working feverishly to get the web2.0kit open-sourced. What is the web2.0kit, you ask ? We introduced this at our session at the Velocity conference. The web2.0kit is a reference architecture to help anyone running a web application evaluate the suitability, functionality and performance of various web technologies.

Most web2.0 sites today use open source languages and frameworks such as PHP, Ruby on Rails and Java EE to develop their applications. Deployments of these applications also use popular open source servers such as Apache httpd, MySQL, memcached and glassfish. Many other servers/technologies such as lighttpd, nginx, mogileFS, mongrel, thin, JRuby are also gaining popularity. To help understand

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For the last few months, I've been working feverishly to get the web2.0kit open-sourced. What is the web2.0kit, you ask ? We introduced this at our session at the Velocity conference. The web2.0kit is a reference architecture to help anyone running a web application evaluate the suitability, functionality and performance of various web technologies.

Most web2.0 sites today use open source languages and frameworks such as PHP, Ruby on Rails and Java EE to develop their applications. Deployments of these applications also use popular open source servers such as Apache httpd, MySQL, memcached and glassfish. Many other servers/technologies such as lighttpd, nginx, mogileFS, mongrel, thin, JRuby are also gaining popularity. To help

  [Read more...]

For the last few months, I've been working feverishly to get the web2.0kit open-sourced. What is the web2.0kit, you ask ? We introduced this at our session at the Velocity conference. The web2.0kit is a reference architecture to help anyone running a web application evaluate the suitability, functionality and performance of various web technologies.

Most web2.0 sites today use open source languages and frameworks such as PHP, Ruby on Rails and Java EE to develop their applications. Deployments of these applications also use popular open source servers such as Apache httpd, MySQL, memcached and glassfish. Many other servers/technologies such as lighttpd, nginx, mogileFS, mongrel, thin, JRuby are also gaining popularity. To help

  [Read more...]

TOTD #42 explained how to create a simple Java Server Faces application using NetBeans 6.1 and deploy on GlassFish. In the process it explained some basic JSF concepts as well. If you remember, it built an application that allows you to create a database of cities/country of your choice. In that application, any city/country combination can be entered twice and no errors are reported.

This blog entry extends TOTD #42 and show the list of cities, that have already been entered, starting with the letters entered in the text box. And instead of refreshing the entire page, it uses JSF Extensions to make an Ajax call to the endpoint and show the list of cities


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TOTD #9 explained how to configure JDBC connection pooling for Rails application deployed on GlassFish v2. There are several benefits of using using the JDBC connection pools:

• No need to create a new database connection for each Rails instance.
• No need to specify your password in database.yml or create a hack to hide it.
• No garbage collection of connection after each use.

And because of the above mentioned (and other reasons) an improved application performance, scalability and efficiency.
The only way to deploy a Rails application on GlassFish v2 is to create a WAR file using Warbler. That's a


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This TOTD (Tip Of The Day) shows how to create a simple Java Server Faces application using NetBeans IDE 6.1. This is my first ever Java Server Faces application :) Much more comprehensive applications are already available in NetBeans and GlassFish tutorials.

The application is really simple - it allows you to create a database of cities/country that you like. You enter the city & country name on a page and click on Submit. This stores the data entered in the backend database and displays all the stored values in a new page. This application demonstrates simple JSF concepts:

• How to create a JSF application using NetBeans IDE ?

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Hi,

I needed to install AMP on my OpenSolaris laptop to do some PHP development, and I thought some people would be interested to know how to do this.

Here we go.

AMP is available from the OpenSolaris Web Stack project, which also includes other open source components such as Perl, Ruby, Memcached, Lighthttpd, etc.

The nice thing with OpenSolaris is that - assuming my laptop is connected to the Internet - I can use the Package Manager to automatically download and install AMP on my laptop. I access the Package Manager through the menu System/Administration.

Once the Package Manager is launched, I make sure that the Repository is set to opensolaris.org and  I do a search on amp:

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Zembly is a browser-based social application development environment that allows you to create and host social applications targeted at Facebook, meebo, OpenSocial, iPhone and many others. Zembly is powered by Solaris, GlassFish and MySQL and running on Network.com's next-generation cloud-computing platform.

Keeping in spirit of the Beijing Olympics 2008 they announced a new Facebook application,

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TOTD #39 explained how to create an Autocomplete widget (server-powered autocompleting of text fields, similar to Google Suggest) using Prototype/Script.aculo.us libraries with NetBeans, GlassFish and MySQL. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) builds upon that project and shows how same functionality can be achieved using jQuery Library.

Use the NetBeans project created in TOTD #39. Right-clicking on the project, select "New", "JSP...", enter the name as "index2" and click on "Finish".

Download jquery JavaScript

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There are several JavaScript libraries that can be embedded in your webapplication to create a visually appealing interface. Script.aculo.us is one of the popular ones and is built on the Prototype JavaScript Framework. The library provides an easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScripts that allows you to create fancy effects commonly visible on web pages these days.

This blog entry gets you started by using Ajax.Autocompleter that allows for server-powered autocompleting of text fields. Basically, you type a character in a text field and suggestions for possible correct values starting with that character are shown . This is achieved by by sending an Ajax request to the data source on server, passing

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This TOTD (Tip Of The Day) shows how to create a Persistence Unit (PU) for a MySQL database using NetBeans IDE. This PU can then be used in any of Java EE artifacts (JSP, Servlet, EJB, ...) for database interaction.

In NetBeans IDE, create a new project

Create a new NetBeans Web project and enter the values ("Autocomplete") as shown:



and click on "Next".

Choose GlassFish v2 as the deployment server and then click on "Finish".

Set up the database

Start the database as:

~ >sudo mysqld_safe --user root
Password:<YOUR PASSWORD>

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NetBeans IDE 6.5 Milestone 1 is now available. The New and Noteworthy feature list certainly makes it worthy for the install - comprehensive PHP support (Editor Screencast and PHP Learning Trail), JavaScript Debugger, Groovy Editor, Grails support and Numerous
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Are you deploying your JRuby-on-Rails applications on Solaris (or any variety of Unix) and not able to connect to the database ?

I experienced it last week so thought of sharing the tip here. Luckily it's really simple.

Here is the default generated "config/database.yml"

development:
  adapter: mysql
  encoding: utf8
  database: runner_development
  username: root
  password:
  socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
The only required change is to add "host: 127.0.01" for the required database configuration. The updated fragment is shown below (with change highlighted):

development:
  adapter: mysql
  encoding: utf8


















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TOTD #30 explained how to create CRUD application using Grails and hosted using in-built Jetty servlet engine and in-memory HSQLDB database. Jetty and HSQLDB are built into Grails and allows to start easily. You can also use GlassFish and MySQL (http://mysql.com) for deploying your applications in production environment.

This blog entry walks you through the steps of deploying a Grails application on GlassFish and MySQL.

If MySQL (http://mysql.com/) is already installed, then download GlassFish v2 UR1. Otherwise you can also Download

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NetBeans 6.1 Beta was released last week. Amongst the many improvements, one of them is the bundled JRuby 1.1 RC2 and Rails 2.0.2. The jMaki plugin used to work fine with Rails 1.2.3 but need to be updated because of changed file name extensions for the default generated views (".rhtml.erb" instead of ".rhtml"). With this release of NetBeans, jMaki plugin has been updated to work in this configuration as well.

This blog provide detailed steps to install jMaki plugin, create a simple Rails 2.0 application using NetBeans IDE and update the generated scaffold to use a Yahoo Data Table widget for displaying the data. It is an update to


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This TOTD (Tip Of The Day) shows how to install Rails 2.0.x in JRuby 1.0.3 and JRuby 1.1 RC1. Then it describes how a simple Rails application can be created and deployed using WEBrick.

First, lets deal with installing Rails 2.0.x in JRuby 1.0.3 and JRuby 1.1 RC1.

Step 1: How to install Rails 2.0.x in JRuby 1.0.3 ?

• Download and Unzip JRuby 1.0.3. This creates "jruby-1.0.3" directory.
• Install Rails by giving the following command in the newly created directory:
  
  bin/jruby -S gem install rails --include-dependencies --no-ri --no-rdoc
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Successfully installed rails-2.0.2
Successfully installed activesupport-2.0.2
Successfully installed activerecord-2.0.2






  
  

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JRuby 1.0.3 was recently released and so was Rails 2.0. I decided to try JRuby 1.0.3 + Rails 2.0 and realized that a few additional steps (because of Rails 2.0) are required to get a trivial Hello World applcation up and running. Here are the steps:

Unzip JRuby 1.0.3.

Make sure to set JAVA_HOME and JRUBY_HOME.

Also include JAVA_HOME/bin and JRUBY_HOME/bin in PATH for convenience.

Install Rails 2.0 as shown below:

~/samples/jruby arungupta$ jruby -S gem install rails --include-dependencies

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Finally, it's here. We missed our October 31 deadline, but hopefully that won't matter when you see the contents of the release.

Short summary of changes in the 1.2 release.

You can download the new packages from the Sun Download Center.

Some caveats to be aware of :

• These packages will over-write Cool Stack 1.1 packages that you may already have installed. All packages continue to install in /opt/coolstack but some of the package names have been changed. Thus, pkgadd(1M) will not know that the new CSKapache2 package will install in /opt/coolstack/apache2 and over-write the contents from a previous Cool Stack 1.1 installation of CSKamp. So, please do save your current installation.

  [Read more...]

Finally, it's here. We missed our October 31 deadline, but hopefully that won't matter when you see the contents of the release.

Short summary of changes in the 1.2 release.

You can download the new packages from the Sun Download Center.

Some caveats to be aware of :

• These packages will over-write Cool Stack 1.1 packages that you may already have installed. All packages continue to install in /opt/coolstack but some of the package names have been changed. Thus, pkgadd(1M) will not know that the new CSKapache2 package will install in /opt/coolstack/apache2 and over-write the contents from a previous Cool Stack 1.1 installation of CSKamp. So, please do save your current

  [Read more...]

Finally, it's here. We missed our October 31 deadline, but hopefully that won't matter when you see the contents of the release.

Short summary of changes in the 1.2 release.

You can download the new packages from the Sun Download Center.

Some caveats to be aware of :

• These packages will over-write Cool Stack 1.1 packages that you may already have installed. All packages continue to install in /opt/coolstack but some of the package names have been changed. Thus, pkgadd(1M) will not know that the new CSKapache2 package will install in /opt/coolstack/apache2 and over-write the contents from a previous Cool Stack 1.1 installation of CSKamp. So, please do save your current

  [Read more...]

The support for Rails in NetBeans IDE has improved considerably in the past few days. Greg and Ludo have been working on ramping up the jMaki NetBeans module as well. This screencast is an update to #web2 and shows how the development experience for creating a jMaki-enabled Rails application is drastically simplified.

The screencast shows how a jMaki-wrapped Yahoo and Dojo

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Using the instructions followed in JRuby Hack Day and taking some help from Nick, I figured out how to use the JDBC connection pools configured in GlassFish using the JNDI names.

All the commands given below are relevant for GlassFish but the same concept will work where ever you deploy your WARed up JRuby on Rails application.

Follow the bullet #1 and #2 from here to create a new

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The NetBeans IDE has simplified the steps to deploy JRuby on Rails application on GlassFish. This blog explains the steps and is an update to screencast #web6.

Download the install the latest NetBeans 6 Nightly. I downloaded the Ruby pack by clicking on the "Download" button in the Ruby column.

Create a new Rails Application

Right-click in the Project window and select "New Project...". Take all the defaults as shown below:

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ActiveRecord-JDBC 0.5 is now available. As mentioned earlier, one of the main features in this release is simplified database configuration for JRuby-on-Rails applications. From the release notes:

It is no longer necessary to specify :driver and :url configuration parameters for the mysql,  postgresql, oracle, derby, hsqldb, and h2 adapters.

This means that if you deploy a Rails application as a WAR file on GlassFish as described

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Based upon a user request, this is a follow up entry to show how jMaki on Rails For Dummies work on NetBeans 6 Milestone 10. Some of the steps are simplified and more details are provided. The updates from the previous blog entry are highlighted in this color.

Download NetBeans 6.0 M10 (Full version) and configured to install only "Base IDE", "Java IDE", "Web and Java EE" and "Ruby" modules. A cutting-edge build can be obtained from the hudson build.

Download and install

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This screencast shows how a jMaki-wrapped Yahoo DataTable widget can be used to pull data from MySQL database using ActiveRecord in a Rails application. This is a screencast of the detailed instructions posted earlier.

Enjoy it here!

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