I’ve spent the majority of the last 2 days trying to get DA 6SP1 Patch Release to install properly on IBM Websphere 6.1.0.23. It had been a while since I’d last done the install, and I fell into the same traps as last time, forgetting where to set the class loader and so forth. After getting past these I was left with the application unhelpfully still showing a white screen and error messages that revealed (looking back) very little about the true nature of the problem. Having finally conquered the problem, I thought I would provide the steps necessary so that anyone else trying to get a WDK application working on Websphere as at least one more thing to try.

Grab a copy of da.war from the EMC Powerlink Download site.

• Unpack da.war and add the following files to a directory
• Put dfc.properties into WEB-INF/classes (As described in the deployment guide)
• ibm-web-ext.xmi & ibm-web-ext.xmi goes into WEB-INF – https://solutions.emc.com/emcsolutionview.asp?id=esg91105
• Find a copy of xml.jar on the Websphere App Server in ‘Websphere\AppServer\java\jre’ and put in ‘WEB-INF\lib’ - https://solutions.emc.com/emcsolutionview.asp?id=esg93106
• Install the application using the IBM Administration Console.
• Change the order the classes are loaded in by expanding the Applications node and click the Enterprise Applications node. Select the application called da_war (or equivalent wdk app). Click the Manage Modules link. Click the da.war link. In the Class loader order drop-down list, select the option ‘Classes loaded with application class loader first’ – https://solutions.emc.com/emcsolutionview.asp?id=esg93177
• You can then save and start the application.

The xml.jar file is appropriate for D6SP1 only, previous D6 versions have a slightly different set of instructions (see linked support note). Any feedback, corrections, suggestions greatly appreciated.

I accept planetmcd’s criticism of my previous post. I’m aware that I’m less than eloquent and my arguments less than logical at times.

I can’t say for sure whether anyone has ever done a presentation like that here. I do know that something like that wouldn’t be accepted not just because of the images (sexual or not), but because it doesn’t conform to corporate standards. Ruby/Rails/Web2.0 has no such standards, more,  the culture is one of being risky, on the edge, and of pushing the limits.

There are probably many ways that it could have been done better, but it wasn’t. The problem stems from not going to Matt, and expressing that they didn’t like the presentation. They could have suggested using ‘Fragstar’ next time (via Renae Bair). Instead choosing to drag Rails through the mud publicly, “Here is a professional community that doesn’t respect women”.

I’m aware that Matt has defend his position, and the DHH may have made it worse, but I don’t condone the method this was approached in the first place. It’s sensationalist and unnecessary. Do people actually think they’ve improved the community by acting in this manner?

The dress code is only one facet of what I was trying (albeit poorly) to express. If you asked a programmer whether he would prefer to wear jeans and t-shirt or suit and tie to work which would he pick? What is the dress code at the Web2.0 development houses (not having worked at one I don’t know)? If it is jeans and t-shirts then that workplace is different to mine. My current employers wouldn’t consider them very professional either – This is where it goes to the heart of the community. You can do development the traditional, non agile way, any time you want to put on a suit and tie and forget you know techniques like metaprogramming/bdd/tdd (and don’t forget how to use windows, because that’s what corporate professionals use).

I have worked for a few industrial clients where staff had nudes as desktop wallpapers (we’re not talking partial nudity either), and pinups scattered around the sheds. There were certainly females around, though how they felt about it never came up. They would consider themselves professional, in that they provide top notch solutions to their clients. Warranties & quality assurance, etc. I doubt my current employer would find them very professional either, sweaty, greasy, and not very formal.

One of the things that I’ve heard raised when Australian corporate entities deal with overseas counterparts, is that we’re a good deal less formal and respectful than they are. Socially and culturally Australians are more laid back, some might say unprofessional. Different people are always going to have differing opinions on professionalism, I find it unlikely that Matt felt he was being unprofessional in using the pictures and analogy that he did. I would hazard he still doesn’t feel he was unprofessional, though he undoubtedly realizes that it was a mistake.

Information Solutions – technology, is a simple way of expressing that the IT department is there to serve the needs of the client facing business. The current enterprise that I’m working at is the first massive global organisation that I’ve worked with. 130,000 odd employees throughout the world, with about a quarter of that in the APAC region.

I’m proud to say that the IS-t teams that I work with on a daily basis are excellent people, as are the people from other departments that I’ve had dealings with. Honest hard working people, just trying to do the best they can at their jobs.

Belief and evidence led me to believe enterprises move pretty slowly. Despite that things can change pretty rapidly up here, there is a level of adaptability that I’d not expected to find. A mission that IS-t should be an enabler for change, not an excuse that it is all too difficult. Things have been booming in the last ten or so years. A colleague has a graph on his wall showing the steady climb in the amount of employees that have been added to the ranks in Australia.

There was money, and there probably still is, but something changed a little while back. The negligence of the US property market (and other factors I don’t try to fathom) has sent the world spiraling into a recession. All of a sudden the extravagance of the last decade is thing of the past.

Business class flights are out the window for all but the highest of managers, and furthermore, travel itself only happens as an absolute necessity. Perhaps that’s the way it should have been all along. On Tuesday we had the largest video conference that the IS-t department has ever done.  People from the Infrastructure side of IS-t came together in a massive video conference that brought the whole APAC region into the one room. It wasn’t free but it was a damn sight cheaper than flying them here, or having them continue to work on their own and duplicate resources.

After all the scene setting I’ve done above, this is the real meat. There are steps being taken to eliminate the duplicity that has been taking place. No longer will there be 5-10 efforts to manage the desktops and laptop images (the standard set of software installed on machines), and why should there be? Sure it means a lot more work for the people in the Desktop team, moving from managing the computers of 5000 people to 30000 people, but there is an economy of scale. One or two people are assigned to create the image (or fix the image), and the people from other regions that were duplicating this effort can do other things, which does not mean redundancy. There is always too much work and too few people.

Technology has long passed the point where it is possible to work effectively across countries. My own responsibility, the Document Management System, is a part of this. Tools that allow you to collaborate effectively on the creation of documents, and create workflow processes that allow the steps taken when dealing with content, to be distilled.

The global economic crisis has changed a lot of things. Budgets that were a foregone conclusion have been reevaluated. This isn’t a bad thing, good economic times breed weakness. Rather than being smart about things, taking the easy way out because if you throw enough money at the problem will eventually go away.

I say bring on the chance to be leaner. The chance to prune to weak.

It’s been almost a month since my last post, disgraceful. While I have the will to maintain a blog, I certainly don’t have the time. We’re currently in the thick of a large Documentum deployment, which means that there are bucket loads of new users that each have their own issues with the system.

I have learned SO much over the last few months, hopefully I’ll have a chance to sit down over the next week or so and distill some of that wisdom. Until then, keep safe.

Over the weekend I went to melbourne for a couple of christmas parties, the work one and the extended family one. I’m into my last week at work before the chrismas break and I must say that I am dying to put up my feet and enjoy the a nice sunny and warm christmas. I know there are people that think christmas should be all white and cold, more power to them, but I’m not one of those people. I like the fact that we can have our social occasions outside at the beach or in the sun.

One of the things that has to happen this week is for me to make sure that the system is in the best possible condition. Create documentation about how to keep the system running for the on call person that will be responsible for dealing with any issues that arise and provide as much knowledge based material as possible. Not to much mind since I don’t want my job to disappear over the christmas break, but enough that when I come back on the 5th of january I don’t walk into a disaster zone.

I’m secretly working on a tool that can be used to monitor each of the Documentum components and send me information when one or more of them breaks. It won’t be mature by christmas but it’ll be good if it notifies me of any irritating problems. I also need to finish up as many of the outstanding tasks as possible. All this should make for a hectic week.

I’m thrilled to announce I am no longer a prisoner of an oppressive firewall. I’m currently working at a clients site for the next *year* give or take, which has been great, but one of the things that has really irked is the fact that their firewall is downright oppressive. Corporate policies prevent anything other than 80/443 out onto the net and stop webmail from working (to protect from viruses). This is a problem for me because I keep 2-3 dedictated linux servers for various reasons, obviously I can get to the hosted webapps just fine, but sshing in the change something on them is not possible due to the above mentioned firewall.

Thats where corkscrew comes in. its a tool that allows you to change the clientside settings for OpenSSH to tunnel over the HTTP Proxy. Of course you still have to make sure that the SSH server is listening on either 80 or 443, however this is easy to accomplish if either one or both of those ports are spare or alternately you can assign and extra ip address and avoid apache/etc listening on */0.0.0.0

I’ll leave it to the other corkscrew guides as to the particular setup. And yes its probably possible for them to block this, which is why I won’t scream to loudly. Just remember if you’re one of those people trying to prevent people from using this that I’m not trying to do anything nefarious, i’m simply a geek who needs/loves port 22.