Amazon Store 4 Mobile

It does not work :(
You can use the following form to search on Amazon.com
Here is an alternate option with a cloud of product tags:

News from the Open Cloud

There are interesting new initiative on the cloud front. Here are a few that catch my attention in the past weeks:

1. OASIS Cloud Application Management for Platforms (CAMP). 
2. OASIS Cloud Authorization (CloudAuthZ).
3. The AWS GovCloud (US) Region

Camp remind me of BootCamp or LeBootCamp :)

Is CloudAuthZ the next OAuth?

With all the buzz around cloud, I am curious to see where we are going. 

How are all these new initiatives going to impact us on the Web, while using DropBox, EverNote, or Google+, LinkedIn, Apple and the like? 

Where is the trust going to be on the WEB?

I'll like to keep the center-stage in this role game and own my identity, keep my tokens secured in my wallet like I do today. I am not sure I want to trust comercial entities to do this for me, free of charges.

Can players like Adobe, Microsoft, Oracle, RedHat and the telcos get into this game and provide the unified platform for everyone to standardize on?

soapUI is back, with lot more for you.

It has been a long time since I last used soapUI - see my 2007 post - when I was using version 2.1.x. Today, I got 4.5.1, from the same location: http://www.soapui.org/

I wanted to test a simple WS using WS-Security username token and ran into an interesting issue; the invocations were failing with an HTTP error : 401 Unauthorized. 

The solution was simple - switch the HTTP authentication to use preemptive mode (see documentation).

Changes to Request Setup

Here are 2 common HTTP errors codes:

HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden	The username/password you provided is not valid.
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized	The server is sending back an auth challenge that may be ignored by the HTTP client library - the hint on the response is "WWW-Authenticate: BASIC realm="owsm".

And 1 common soap fault:

<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <env:Header/>
  <env:Body>
    <env:Fault xmlns:ns0="http://schemas.oracle.com/owsm/policy-enforcement-2007-06">
      <faultcode>ns0:GenericFault</faultcode>
      <faultstring>GenericFault : generic error</faultstring>
      <faultactor></faultactor>
    </env:Fault>
  </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

The key here is ns0 - the GenericFault is related to policy enforcement. This is the only hint you will get from the server. For the reason of the failure, you will have to look on the server side logs. For some obvious security reason, the true root cause is not provided to limit potential exploits.

Regarding WS-Security setup, it's all here in the soapUI documentation.

More on this to come in some follow-up post.

Where is my help menu?

While I was trying to get some JUnit test written on my MacBook Air over the weekend, I end up spending wasting some time with a silly issue : get the JUnit extension installed.

From the documentation, it's pretty clear - the Help menu.

Enable JDev Extension - section 9 : http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26098_01/install.1112/e17074/ojdig.htm#BDCBECBH

The issue was to find this menu - until I finaly found the empty entry right to the Window menu - It's the standard location for this entry, on Mac OS-X, except that it was not rendered due to the number of tools I have coming from the far right end.

As it took me some time to figure it out, I'll share it here in case you are running into the same small hurtle.

Help menu, right to Window, but without the display name when space is limited.

Once you have the extension installed, here is a good blog post that walk you through the next steps:

https://blogs.oracle.com/bwb/resource/JUnit_Testing/Unit_Testing_with_JUnit_and_JDeveloper_11g.html

Enjoy

JDeveloper does not start after Mountain Lion upgrade

With Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), I have found my first upgrade hurdle - starting JDeveloper give me a bash script that runs forever with ~100% CPU utilisation.

I am currently running the Studio Edition Version 11.1.2.1.0

Google gave me a good first place to start : A Mountain Lion Ate My JDeveloper. While this sounds like the right solution, I am going with a simple hack for now; it is to use JDK 1.7 and ignore the warning seen at startup.

Edit ~/Oracle11121/Middleware/jdeveloper/jdev/bin/jdev.conf

replace

SetJavaHome /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

with

SetJavaHome /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk/Contents/Home

So far, so good and I am able to see my current projects and compile my code.

You mileage may varies.

Back to my WS-Root

After a long time looking into Application development and UX widget, I am taking a fresh look at Web Services and I'll be starting to play with JSON and REST ideas.

But first thing first, I have to refresh my IDE install on my MacBook Air - This is an easy 2 steps process:

1. Download the latest version from OTN - Version 11.1.2.1.0 is the latest (Build 6081).
2. Follow the steps from Shay's blog.

The 1.7 GB file is not really lightweight on the WIFI network - it's better to have something else to do while waiting for the file to be ready, like learning about Oracle Enterprise Repository:

• Start with the overview, here.
• Next is the Java API References, a.k.a. the JavaDoc and the OSR online documentation.

There is a lot of reading material, so you should be good for some time. You can also browse the Sample Code collections on OTN - My next stop is the Oracle CRM On Demand Sample Code.

Here are 3 screen shoots that are important:

Pop-up screen you will get once the installer download is completed.

Remember to follow the steps described in Shay's blog before to start. You need to get the Apple JVM detected as in the screen shoot below.

Apple JVM detected

Once you are here, it simple - just follow the remaining steps of the installer. 

Hope you find this useful - Happy Java coding in JDeveloper. 

Customer Service and user experience

I have been trying to setup a new account with Amazon to get into the french version of the associate program, and got an email with potential french readers. It all started well, with a nice intro:

Cher Partenaire,
Merci d'avoir pris contact avec le Programme Partenaires d'Amazon.fr.

 Then, there was a link:

Ai-je résolu votre problème?  

Si non, cliquez ici s'il vous plaît : +a short link

After I answered a few questions, I got a nice 'Call Me' offer, except they are close right now.
 
Why are we not able to get a better user experience and see the open hours upfront?

It would be nice to have an asynchronous way to keep in touch on my current issue or ticket. CRM has still a long way to go, especially for free services. Or am I asking too much here?

Amazon search box is gone

Until I can find a way to setup my french account on Amazon Associates, the link to search is gone from by blog as it's now a dead account.

From twitter:
RT @Scobleizer An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos On Terminating The Amazon Affiliate Program In California http://t.co/By2lZxC from @dannysullivan

Thanks you, Jerry Brown.

Lose end of 2010, as we get ready for .next

It has been a very quiet year on the blogging side. Most of the free time was spent on the new media, trying to figure out why Facebook and Twitter were so useful to communicate with the world.

As I am wrapping up the year, I have two new books on my night stand:

Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g


Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle WebCenter 11g

With this on my to-read list, I should be able to convert my experimentations into something useful. I need to find a better way to:

• keep track of my comic books and follow the new releases dates
  
• build a collection of my preferred recipes, from the family and friends, together with the pictures I shoot and store in my Smug-mug account.
  

Let see how I can make it happend in 2011 ;-)

Mon humeur du jour.

Suicide pill in full motion :

Java Decompiler

I have a new tools to share with you : JD GUI

http://java.decompiler.free.fr/?q=jdgui

It's one of the must-have if you need to figure out why things are not working the way you expect them to work...

After two days searching for a NPE, which was not reported, I wished I would not have wait that long before to get down to the rubber.

Hoping I'll learn from my mistakes.

Remember the bad smell:

try {
} catch {
return null;
}

My $0.02 for today.

Friday the 30th, Halloween is just around the corner

Always been confused between 13th and 30th, when it goes to English pronunciation - go figure.

There has been a lot going on, and it may explain why my blog has been so quiet lately. Here are some fun facts and though about Web square (a.k.a 2.0):

• Thanks to a spammer, I came across an old post of mine where I was happy to see my ranking in the oc4j WS forum so high. Since, I have been moving to other area of development, and only reply to forum post using feedly reader, when I kind of see obvious error I can help with. I used to have a gold medal - now I am a newbie again. Did I lost my mojo?
• My new center of interest goes around ADF nowadays, and there is a new blog to add to your list - ADF Garage.

On the fun part, I am wondering if it would make sense to put multiple mobile version of web sites, side by side in a single page, instead of using the full blown version, even when you are on a wide-screen computer, attached to a fast network.

• Try facebook and twitter mobile editions, side by side as google gadgets or with the eXo portal - Tug, are you reading this?
• I love the karma feature in feedly - it give you some interesting inside on what others do with your tweets. I need to figure out a way to get google reader setup for source inside the firewall...
  
• Typo are very easy with mobile device, and the use of # with the wrong keyword make it all goes to the drain - search #oow2009 vs. #oow09 :-) / We need auto correct on the fly to supplement our slow brains or chubby fingers...
  

And my next fun project is to write a tool to cleanup some large XML files; a small jazn-data.xml file, with about ~13k lines. I need a nice UI to search for grants for given resource path or by role. For the job, I'll pick JDeveloper 11g and his companion book : Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11g. I'll report back once I have it all figured out, in a couple of nights ;-)

Until then, Happy Halloween everyone.

Should I write code before I can test it?

Maybe this would be better as a question on twitter, as I may not get to many comment here on my web 1.5 journal.

Is it OK to write code I cannot test and assumes that by the time I am done writing the features I have in mind, the environment to test it would be available, or should I start setting up the environment first, and get the hello world application up and running with the monitoring and clean log files, so that I can then go ahead with small incremental cycles which are all providing features I can test as I go?

On another topic, when can you consider that a forum or forum category is to be considered dead?
a) 0 post in a day
b) 0 post in a week ?
c) 0 post in a month?

iFool

No comment, I have been looking forward to my new toys for days now, and the news is out on April first ...