Remembering the old Sunny Days

Although my tenure with Sun Microsystems (now Oracle Corp), working as a Sun Campus Ambassador was numbered (just 6 months), but I consider that to be an important phase in my life, a beginning of a new journey, something that motivated me to work on open-source technology and learn new and exciting stuff.

The bad, rather the ugly part is that I cannot access my Sun Blog anymore !! Yes, I have written to Oracle about it, but nothing has happened so far. Still the sole purpose of writing that post was to re-live moments of the past and  thanks to Arun Gupta, I’m re-posting one of my favourite entries again: A poem for me from one of my favourite professor: Dr. P.K. Hazra.

Under the SUN-MICROSYS SunRay
Has bloomed a Lovely Rose,
Over Joyful in Java & Solaris
He is SUN CAMPUS AMBASSADOR Agraj.
Only one request I want to make
to the SUN's shining flower,
To remain in serene silence
During my lecture hour
                Quoted by Dr. P.K Hazra

and As they say,  “I’m really gonna miss this place, I’m gonna my college days…”

Tech Talks @ DU

There's a lot happening at Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, when you talk about interesting tech-seminars taking place.
Recently, we had a talk on "Open Source : How we already use it" by Aadhar Mittal, our new Sun Campus Ambassador. It was an introduction to Open Source, much needed for the new batch. He started by giving some insights on Open Source and gave examples from daily life that how we already make use of so much Open Source Software(OSS) without knowing about it. He talked about advantages of OSS and told how big companies like Sun mint money from their OSS. It was an eye opener for the first years since it was their first talk. I'm sure he's going to blog about it pretty soon and put up some nice pics....:-)

Now, the big one. Today, we also had a great lecture by Prof. Christelle Schraff, Pace University, New York on "Towards 'More' Correct Software". She talked about various phases of SDLC giving emphasis on testing. She also gave a short demo on JUnit (she used it in Eclipse) but the same can be done with NetBeans too. She also talked about Java Assertions and showed us the Rational Functional Testing Tool but it was too slow on her machine. She talked in brief about formal methods like theorem proving and about some of her open source projects. It was definitely an interesting seminar with the students getting lucky enough to get a chance to meet and interact with professors of her status.

My Blog Wins Award

My Blog Entry JavaMail for Starters !! is one of those few, which have won themselves quite a fortune in Sun's Student Review Contest on NetBeans and OpenSolaris. You can see the complete result here.

The blog entry was about how to send Email from a Java Application, making use of JavaMail API. The blog was written for the target audience, primarily unfamiliar with such API's and using them with NB.

New Sun Campus Ambassador for Delhi University

I'm feeling extremely happy to announce Aadhar Mittal as the New Sun Campus Ambassador for Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi.
Aadhar Mittal is pursuing Masters of Computer Applications (MCA) from University of Delhi and is immensely talented and hardworking student.
Hope that he carry forward the legacy and do wonders. Wishing him all the best for all his future endeavours.

Also, if you haven't tried Mozilla's FireFox RC 3 till now, go download it here and see why people (read smart, intelligent and trendy people) do not use IE anymore. :-)
I just love the way its Smart Location Bar works. It also helps me manage my bookmarks easily.

SUN shines @ Sankalan 2008

Now thats a biggie for me :-)

Well. the good news is that Ms. Anuradha Sen (my coordinator from SUN) along with Mr. Ajay Ahuja (Learning Services, SUN Microsystems) would be coming to deliver a talk on "Sun Microsystems: Choice, Innovation & Value". This will introduce the participants to Sun Technologies and offerings in terms of products and trainings.
Its great to have their presence with us.
I, as the campus ambassador for Delhi University, would be responsible for managing everything related to it. And am i not happy? (to say the least, i'm excited, anxious, curious, confused, thrilled)...i hope you can see the mixed feelings. :-)
It would be a pleasure to meet such learned ppl and learn from their experience & knowledge. Really waiting for the big day.

Do not miss this opportunity to meet some learned people from the industry and win lots of prizes/certificates/trophies by winning competitions.

For further details on Sankalan 2008, please visit
http://cs.du.ac.in/sankalan

First Visit to Sun's Office, New Delhi

The day before, my mail read "Lets meet tomm at 10 at office" :-) and i was amazed to see 'no' address mentioned. I quickly called up my coordinator and asked her about the plan. And the destination was Munirka.
Now, for those people who do not already know, traveling in Delhi is not an easy job and that too, when you are unaware of the destination :)

So reaching office at 10 was not going to be easy. And i did not wanted to be late in the very first meeting. Always believed in "First impression is the last impression" stuff :p

So i left home at 8.15 and fighting the chilly winter, managed to reach there by 9.20, thanks to my bro (he gave me lift till Moti Bagh)
Well going to Munirka from there, was no big deal and i was getting nervous with each advancing step.

Then followd some pretty good moments of my life. I saw the Sun Microsystems Logo and the board welcoming me at the 5th floor.
Well i reached a lot early before time and my coordinator was not present there (obviously she has more important work to do and is not as free as i m) :-)

But getting a feel of that office was like once-in-a-lifetime experience. Though i sat at reception for a few minutes, my eyes were glued to the interiors(read infrastructure + facilities) of the office and it was really overwhelming to see a cool laptop and an Apple Machine on almost each desk !! Dont know why someone would want to play with two powerful machines at a time.
(even more amazed to know that this is not a development office) Still they need all that stuff...!!
But the staff over there was very friendly. They offered tea/coffee/water 3 or more times to me. and i was beginning to feel happy :-)

Meeting Anuradha Madam (my coordinator) for the first time was a pleasure. She came with another CA (Anwesha) and we had a small meeting, where we discussed about how can we create more awareness in Delhi and about communicating with other CA's.

All in all, it was something i think i will never forget. Its not like that i have not been to other companies before, but none was like this. :)

I hope they will have more meetings in future and i guess i got to meet more people working over there....

Excerpts from my presentation : A first at DU !

So, finally I presented my first technical demo at the campus (Delhi University) today. And yeah, it was fun.
Since, it was the my first tech session, so i started off by talking about Sun Microsystems and the role they are playing in Open Source Arena.
Then i talked about the Campus Ambassador Program (although many already knew about it). Also i talked about various benefits of a product/technology being open source.

The talk was attended by around 100 students from my department and 2 faculty members. Also Mrs. Anuradha Sen took out some time from her hectic schedule and made it a point to attend the talk. Would really like to thank everyone to make it a success.















Vidya Madam presenting bouquet to Anuradha Madam
(Reader @ Department) (My coordinator from SUN)

The topic of the talk was "Web Services with Netbeans 6.0". The talk included a detailed description of some cool features of Netbeans 6.0 and its comparative study with IBM's Eclipse.
The particular points i stressed on were:
> What is Netbeans 6.0 ?
> Why Netbeans ?
> Whats New in Netbeans 6.0 ?
> Why Netbeans rocks over Eclipse (spent 2 slides and 10 minutes) :-)

It also talked about the out-of-box support that the IDE provides, especially for Java EE 5.
Then i introduced them to the world of Java EE 5(something completely new to them) by introducing to them, the basics of Web Services.
It includes points like:
> What are Web Services ?
> Why Web Services are required ?
> History of Web Services (talked a bit about the technologies before the advent of WS)
> What earlier distributed systems (DCOM, CORBA, RPC) lacked :
--> Interoperatability
--> Firewall traversal
> Simple Web Service Architecture
> About w3c standards for Web Services
> Advantages :
--> Interoperable
--> Accessible
--> Economical
--> Automatic
--> Available
--> Scalable



It followed with a demo showing them how easy it is to create, deploy and invoke a web service by using (Drag & Drop) in Netbeans.
Also stated the process going behind the scenes and the role Glassfish plays in it.

Glassfish is an open-source implementation of Sun's Application Server. And i also talked about how Tomcat differs from Glassfish.














I showed them the messages that Netbeans & Glassfish displays when we run the project and while deploying and invoking the web service.
What i could not show, was how to decipher those messages as it would have been really advanced for an introductory session.

I also talked about the ease with which you can use almost any application server with Netbeans and why you will never need any other Application Server as long as you have Glassfish.

I did not failed to mentioned that Glassfish is already shipped with the latest version of Netbeans and how it is fully compliant with Java EE 5.

At the end, i gave them the URLs of the various resources that they can lay their hands onto.
Also Anuradha Madam talked a bit about SAI(Sun Academic Initiative) and cleared a few doubts.

I also distributed some freebies (caps and pens) to the students in the question-answer session. And some refreshments were also given to the students after the talk.

Some points to improve upon:
I overshooted the time : took almost 2 hours ;)
I have a tendency to divert from the topic and i did it some times during the presentation.
And if you would like to add on to it, i would really like to hear. :-)

All in all, it was an interactive session with the students, an amazing experience and something that i will always remember, in spite of how many more demos/presentations i give.

My First Tech Demo

So folks, finally its happening !!

On 14th January 2008, Monday at 3 P.M. in the premises of Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, I will be giving my first technical demo on "Web Services with Netbeans 6.0".
It will introduce the IDE and will also cover the basics of web services.
There are no prerequisites for attending this session.
All the students are encouraged to participate and learn something new and useful.

There are prizes to be won and refreshments will be given to the participants.

For any queries, please drop me a mail on agraj.mng@gmail.com

Developer Tools : Making Life Simpler !!

Today i'm gonna talk about some really cool tools (tech toys) that software developers use to develop high-end software products.
Let me start with a full-fledged Java IDE, Netbeans 6.0
You might already have heard of it. Simply, because its everywhere. Simply because if you are a Java programmer and you want to make any Java Application, Netbeans 6.0 is for you.


For those who do not know, Netbeans 6.0 comes with out-of-box support for Java SE, Java EE
and Java ME. It comes preconfigured with Sun Application Server Glassfish v2, thus allowing
the developer to develop Web Applications with ease and without downloading any plugins
for supporting Java EE.
Also Glassfish makes life easy as it apps running on it conforms to Java EE 5 standard and you can get an early look on Java EE 5 technologies like

• Java Persistence API
• JAX-WS 2.0 (Java API for Web Services)
  
• JAXB 2..0 (Java API for XML Binding)
• EJB 3.0 (Enterprise Java Beans)
  

Dont worry if that sounds alien to you, i just wanted to highlight the advantages of a free, open-source application server, yeah i mean Glassfish. :-)

On this note, i would like to add that Delhi University Computer Science Department Students use Netbeans/Glassfish in their projects. And yes, we are enjoying it.

Also, i would like to mention that we were introduced to this amazing world of technology (Glassfish+Netbeans) by Mr. Arun Gupta, an alumnus of our department and now working with Sun Microsystems, USA.

To start with Glassfish/Netbeans, i would suggest you to download the Netbeans IDE here and see for yourself, how easy life can be.

To start with Glassfish, read
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/glassfish/GFBasics.html

I would like to take a hands-on session on
"Introduction to Netbeans 6.0" pretty soon.
Will keep you informed. :-)

Ciao

My "Sun"ny days

Well i have been recently selected as a Campus Ambassador for Delhi University by Sun Microsystems. :-)
Its basically an internship program but more than that, its about being a technology evangelist. It simply means Talking, and that is something i love. Yeah, i love talking about stuff i know (that includes technology talks as well as gossiping)
Sun Microsystems, as you might know, is a leader in the spectrum of Open Source, with most of its products and technologies being open source. They were the first one to quickly perceive the pervasiveness of open source technology in the software life-cycle. More than that, it allows technologies to grow at a never-ending rate with the help of online communities and discussion forums. Kudos to Sun Microsystems for that.
And for those who do not know, Open Source is not limited to software. Yeah, Sun engineers have also open-sourced their chip design. :-)

So, all students from Delhi University, feel free to contact me on agraj.mng@gmail.com and i will try my best to answer your queries asap.
For those who are interested, can join these groups:
Java User Group of Delhi University : http://groups.google.com/group/jug-du
OpenSolaris User Group of Delhi University : http://groups.google.com/group/osug-du
Don't forget to introduce yourself and tell why you want to join the group.

I think thats enough for today.
After all, its just the starting of my "Sun"ny days. Hope the fun continues with this quest of learning and sharing knowledge.