Whilst still awaiting my replacement laptop I’ve been working in a VMware image on a spare blade server accessed via Remote Desktop. The idea being that when my laptop finally turns up I can just continue using the image there. For some reason the connection bar at the top of my remote desktop session keeps vanishing. I don’t mean that it’s just hidden – no amount of mouse wiggling can make it reappear. Fortunately, with the aid of a list of keyboard shortcuts, I can now toggle between full screen and windowed modes and hence escape a session.
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Disappearing remote desktop connection bar
Friday, September 19th, 2008Messaging Engine Startup Problems
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Another heads up for some Service Integration Bus education. On 17 September there is a free webcast entitled Messaging Engine Startup Problems given by Level 2 service and followed by a Q&A session. You can see a list of all the upcoming webcasts or, to receive information about events such as this, along with information about publications and support issues, sign up at My Support.
Update: the replay for this webcast is now available.
Changing jobs
Saturday, September 6th, 2008No – I’m not about to leave IBM but, after nearly four years in IBM Software Services for WebSphere it’s time to hang up my travelling bag and, as in all good resignation speeches, spend some more time with my family. I’ve really enjoyed the chance to work closely with customers on some very interesting projects during that time and in many different countries (let’s see, from the top: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the US). I have also had the opportunity to work with some very talented and knowledgeable IBMers. I can’t really claim to have enjoyed the travelling – one business hotel looks much like another after a while – but for some reason customers insist of the consultant coming to them rather than vice-versa! The real killer though is not knowing where you’re going to be next week or perhaps even tomorrow.
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Graceful shutdown
Friday, September 5th, 2008Having done a little research on application server shutdown in order to answer a customer query I thought I would post my findings. WebSphere Application Server supports three shutdown modes: stop, stop immediate and terminate (in order of immediacy).
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My first US patent
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Last week I had my first US patent issued: #7218708. The patent describes the use of the J2EE Connector Architecture to integrate a Java Message Service provider with an application server. This is something that is actually very easy to do with JCA 1.5 given the restriction of one JMS session per connection introduced by J2EE 1.4. However this patent describes a mechanism to use JCA twice (once at the connection level and once at the session level) that doesn’t require this restriction. This was first used in WebSphere Application Server V5 and continues to be used for the WebSphere MQ and generic JMS provider support today.
Connectivity restored
Sunday, August 31st, 2008Hurrah – our internet connectivity at home as finally been restored! Matters were complicated by PlusNet failing to mark the fact that we had a copper overlay when we took broadband from them so the line was still showing up as optical fibre. In the end I plumped for Zen Internet who, although far from the cheapest (we had to pay a £50 connection fee for example), have a reputation for good customer service and a one month minimum contract. Hopefully this should mark the return of normal service to this blog.
Fan error
Thursday, August 14th, 2008I opened up my ageing T42p laptop last night to be greeted by the ominous message “Fan error”. A quick Google using Christine’s machine revealed that I could bypass this warning simply by pressing escape. This set my mind at rest to a certain extent as a) it meant I could see that I hadn’t lost any data and b) I could copy off the information I needed for the next day. If this was going to happen, it couldn’t have happened at a much better time as I had just returned from my last customer engagement in Norway and was intending to spend today in the IBM office (where I have managed to borrow a machine – thanks Kristin!). Next week I’ll be back in Hursley where hopefully a quick repair can be arranged.
Locks and leaks
Thursday, July 17th, 2008I was called upon yesterday to review some WebSphere product code I wrote about six years ago. It was a bit of a shock to see from the change history the number of fixes that had been made in the intervening time! Many of these related to deadlock situations, often when I was merely taking a lock whilst I iterated over a set in toString or some such seemingly innocuous method. It is very hard to get the lock ordering correct when you are just a component in the middle of the stack. The lesson there is, I suspect, to only trace when entries are added or removed from the set and perhaps just give the size at other times.
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