Notebook

User specific locale in Mifos

2011-10-27T20:14:00.003+05:30

We have been able to get the user specific locale work in Mifos which is scheduled to be released next (probably 2.3.x something).

i.e. at head office a manager could use mifos in english while a loan officer on their own machine could let's say use a French.

You can play with the feature on http://ci.mifos.org:8085/mifos/

The login page is localized based on system (server) locale settings in applicationConfiguration.custom.properties, after login the user locale are used for display.

You can go to the "Your Settings" and change locale for the user, also notice a new link "Change Language" at home page. We have added a dialog popup for dynamic locale change which make it easier to see what is the current locale of the user and change it on the fly.

Change Language Dialog box. (auto refresh)

After (selected Tegulu)

If you have suggestions/improvements/bugs, report all those on http://mifosforge.jira.com

Changing language in Mifos without restart (lab feature)

2011-10-11T12:32:00.000+05:30

Mifos uses a system wide locale setting and to change locale one have to change the configuration and restart Mifos server, I have always wanted for Mifos to have the ability to dynamically change the locale at runtime but never got the time to do so.

I just finished doing so, check http://ci.mifos.org:8085/mifos

click on change language, you will get a list of languages.

and click change

Now, this is not intended for production use, it is a system wide setting and change by one user is reflected to other users as Mifos still doesn't support user/session based locale settings.

It is a lab feature and we hope that we can get user specific locale working soon and then same can be used in production also.

This gives us benefit for testing and reduces our locale specific deployment server, and hopefully if the number of users who play with localization simultaneously increases on our deployment/test servers we will be done with user specific locale.

There is a new setting in applicationConfiguration.custom.properties
Localization.Lab.Level=1
which enables this feature, but in applicationConfiguration.default.properties this setting is 0 which makes it disabled.

You can help if you are interested in Mifos I18n/L10n project.
http://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/projects/Simplify+Locale+Configuration
http://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/projects/Mifos+Localization

Adaptation of new technologies : XP and Agile

2011-05-08T09:00:00.000+05:30

I have met experienced people not buying that idea that
- JPA 2 is good specification.
- No body needs XML configurations (spring)
- RAD platform (rails, roo, grails, django) are better for enterprise development than old way Java or Php frameworks.
- We don't need DTOs (data transfer objects)

Java developer : Python can be slow at times

2011-04-23T13:44:00.000+05:30

Python is a powerful and more expressive language than Java. But, when I see open source code of some well known projects using Python (I am not going to name them) they seem terribly inexpressive at places. There are well known projects where code is so obscure that it's even hard to make sense out of them.

But, the question is how Python is slow?

I read this on Google's Code Jam FAQ for 2011

What programming languages would you recommend?

"Many of our contestants use C++, Java and Python, though occasionally Python's slowness at dealing with large sets of numbers can pose a problem. Our contestants have used a wide variety of languages to compete in Code Jam, though we aren't certain that we'd recommend LOLCODE and Piet. See a site set up by one of our contestants, at http://go-hero.net/jam, for a look at what languages people used in previous Code Jams, and how that distribution changed in later rounds."

See the link in this quote for Language comparison.

I wanted to see it myself.

I created same program to compute prime numbers in Java and Python the difference in computation time was in the order of 100, Python program was 100 times slower than Java.

Java - http://pastebin.com/PvXJNM9T
Python - http://pastebin.com/t5eEE9sq

May be there are optimization that can be done at lower level for python code, but the out of the box truth is that "Python can be slow in dealing with large numbers"

I love Python and it's a great language. Write code for humans not machines.

Python WebDriver backed Selenium RC 2.0 beta4

2011-04-23T00:49:00.000+05:30

install python selenium rc driver 2.0b4 using "easy_install selenium"

testing the WebDriver backed selenium rc 2.0 with python script

from selenium.webdriver.firefox.webdriver import WebDriver
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

browser = WebDriver() # Get local session of firefox
browser.get("http://google.com") # Load page
elem = browser.find_element_by_name("q") # Find the query box
elem.send_keys("Udai Gupta" + Keys.RETURN)
try:
    browser.find_elements_by_link_text("Udai Gupta")
except NoSuchElementException:
    assert 0, "can't find Udai Gupta"
browser.close()

The documentation was outdated related python selenium 2.0 rc api and lots of changes are happening. Probably best thing would be to have Selenium IDE plugin to generate python scripts for RC 2.0 (for Java the plugin is available).

MySQL profileSQL with Mifos

2010-11-11T19:39:00.000+05:30

local.properties (of Mifos)
main.database.params=useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8

add &profileSQL=true

This will print the queries as System.out

To enable Log4J with this
add &logger=Log4JLogger

loggerconfiguration.xml(or log4j.xml)

log4j.properties
log4j.category.MySQL=INFO, STDOUT

Load CSV file in MySQL

2010-10-12T13:09:00.000+05:30

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE 'C:\\datafile.csv' INTO TABLE interest
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
enclosed by '"' -- OPTIONAL
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
(columnX, columnY, columnZ) -- OPTIONAL

Reuse by Inheritance Or Composition

2010-09-30T14:03:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I was doing pairing (programming) with Keith Woodlock for implementing savings interest calculation in Mifos for Release E. I was using Inheritance for different types (Average Balance, Minimum Balance) of interest calculation. After doing some TDD together we reached with some implementation and then Keith re-factored the implementation using inheritance to a design pattern call "Reuse by Composition". I have to admit that Keith's code was far much better than what I was doing using Inheritance and more easy to create tests. Composition reuse seems to me a very clean design principal, specially where you want to separate out the logic/policies, for example, Principal(Balance) calculation and Interest calculation in case our case.

There is good article written on this in 1998

Now, I am thinking of using Spring DI with that code.

Annotation versus XML, where to use, which is better

2010-04-11T19:02:00.001+05:30

I came across many discussions, blogs about this topic, This is what I concluded.

Annotations are best option for mapping (Hibernate, JPA, Spring etc). Mapping is something you won't change very often. It's better to go through the build lifecycle when mapping is changes to see effect on other modules.
Benefits of Annotation
- Type safety
- Better IDE support, reducing the chances of bugs as IDE easily reflects them as error.
- Better readability and location of mapping (in the same class context).
- Less chances of users messing up with the mappings causing unknown bug.

XML are useful when you want to tune the configuration without recompiling the whole code.
Example
- port
- no of connections
- Things which are variables and can have a range of tune up values.

Having freedom of tuning helps in performance fixing of application (even at the user end) without doing a whole build.

Intalling Xtrabackup 1.0 on Ubuntu 9.10

2010-01-31T00:57:00.003+05:30

Using this package http://www.percona.com/mysql/xtrabackup/1.0/deb/xtrabackup_1.0.tar.gz

Got error while building

error: cannot run /bin/sh config/config.sub

checking for termcap functions library... configure: error: No curses/termcap library found

follow these steps

sudo apt-get install libtool
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install ncurses-dev

cd xtrabackup-1.0 (already extracted)

cp -f /usr/share/misc/config.guess config.guess
cp -f /usr/share/misc/config.sub config.sub

sudo ./configure
sudo make

cd innobase

sudo ./configure
sudo make

cd xtrabackup
sudo make

./xtrabackup (this will show the options)

NOTE:

- There are more options for building , my intent of this post it to help with the dependencies only.
- Read xtrabackup-1.0/innobase/xtrabackup/Build.txt also

Using Hibernate Reverse Engineering Tool

2010-01-17T20:02:00.002+05:30

Hibernate Tools eclipse plugin is a quite convenient way to do some reverse engineering stuff on a project.

Update site(used in eclipse): http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable
Ref Guide (really cool): http://docs.jboss.org/tools/3.0.1.GA/en/hibernatetools/html_single/index.html

First I am going to set Hibernate Tool for Mifos.

then I am just going to generate schema dump for from hbm.xml files of Mifos (http://mifos.org) project.

The purpose of this exercise is to find out what is the difference in schema definition of Mifos and its hibernate maps.

Add the hibernate.properties file in root of mifos-gazelle project

hibernate.connection.driver_class=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
hibernate.connection.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mifos_gazelle
hibernate.connection.username=root
hibernate.connection.password=somepassword
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect

Add new "Hibernate Console Configuration" from "Run Configurations"

and Apply the configuration and then close it(not run it).

Open Hibernate Perspective.

Select Code Generation Configuration

Add the project root as output directory "/mifos-gazelle" and then select the ddl option

Make sure your hibernate.properties file has right parameter so that ddl can perform schema creation using hbm.xml from the project.

I took the mysql dump for schema structure so that I can analyze where the mapping is lacking in with latest_schema.sql of mifos.

Best Compression utility for mysql dumps on linux - rzip, bzip2, gzip

2009-12-07T22:56:00.000+05:30

I found that rzip is the best utility for compression of large mysql dumps.

http://rzip.samba.org

also a extension of rzip called lrzip is more enhanced.

I have tested upto 50GB of mysql dump using this utility and the result was amazing.

http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/lrzip

2009-11-15T04:53:00.002+05:30

MIFOS Development Kick start Guide (Ubuntu 9.10)

Moved to
http://uguptahome.appspot.com/mifos/MifosDeveloperKickStartGuide.html

Mifos videos

2009-09-12T21:31:00.000+05:30

Mifos - Micro Finance Open Source

This video describes a bit about the Grameen Foundation and their efforts to create an Open Source Software solution to facilitate the use of microfinance to alleviate worlds poverty.

George Conard - Mifos: Open Source Software for Microfinance - Ignite Seattle 2007-8-8

I am fortunate that I am going to work with Mifos Core team for at least next 12 months (and hopefully after that too).

Mifos and Me, Google Summer of Code 2009

2009-09-11T21:47:00.001+05:30

My name is Udai Gupta and I’m a Software Engineer from Bangalore, India. I believe that innovative solutions can make the world a better place. There are hands that want to help the underprivileged but communities lags behind to reach all of them and technology is the key.

I came across the Mifos Open Source Community while looking for projects under “Google Summer of Code 2009”. I realized the potential of Mifos, which helps the people (Micro Finance Institutions) serving the unprivileged.

My work for Mifos under GSOC 2009 includes

* Standardizing the naming conventions for all unit and integration tests
* Improving the performance of the integration tests by optimizing the SQL used to initialize the database
* Making each test class run independently of one another (a long standing problem with the tests)
* Eliminating the need for rigid JUnit test suites classes
* Converting database dependent integration tests to in-memory unit tests either directly or by using mocks.

This has prepared Mifos for the upcoming project of splitting Mifos into modules. There are still many things one can improve or create for Mifos.

Mifos developer team is very helpful to its new members, everyone on the list is very active. My communication wasn’t just limited to my mentor (Adam Monsen), I was able to reach to everyone which I liked the most about Mifos community.

Mifos is a great community with a greater social cause.

To contribute to other volunteer projects at Mifos - you can go here to see what is available -
http://www.mifos.org/developers/wiki/MifosVolunteerProjects

There is Blog entry on my work during GSOC 2009 for Mifos

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/09/endless-summer-of-code-google-style.html

Reliance Netconnect works with Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux/GNU), Kernel 2.6.28-11

2009-06-02T22:49:00.000+05:30

At last I got my mobile modem ( Hauwai EC 121 ) working. I was facing problem as Ubuntu 8.10 or less wasn't able to detect mobile modem because it contains a installer (storage), so the kernel get confused and consider modem as a storage device. This is a problem with all the GNU/LINUX Kernel less than or equal to 2.6.27.

I tried many things like usb_modswitch utility but it seems it doesn't work for my model

for Ubuntu 9.0.4, I downloaded wvdial (its dependencies) and gnome-ppp package from windows and then installed manually. Now you just need to confgure gnome-ppp to make it work.

Make sure that other network devices (eth0) are down (ifdown eth0).

After connecting check by nslookup yahoo.com. If it works then everything is fine.

I got stuck when my firefox appeared to be offline even when I was connected.

The problem will go away you just need to update using package manager(it was working even if firefox was showing offline status) and restart.

Cheers....Enjoy internet on Ubuntu...

Developers point of view: Windows to Ubuntu and Mifos

2009-04-18T01:11:00.000+05:30

I have been using windows and Now I migrated to Ubuntu(8.04).
For development I realized that Windows is much slower that Ubuntu.

MySQL(default) is 4 times faster than MySQL on Windows (Vista or XP). MySQL on GNU/Linux (including Ubuntu) uses a UNIX socket, and on Windows an AF_INET socket, packets via the former have much less overhead

You get rid of an anti virus which keeps on scanning every file, imagine thousands of files of a software that you are developing have to go through it (which is a waste)

NOTE:-
- MYSQL on Linux/GNU(Ubuntu) is case sensitive.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/identifier-case-sensitivity.html
Solution
http://enricogi.blogspot.com/2008/05/mysql-case-sensitive-in-linux.html

If you want to stick with Windows you may use this article
http://www.waltercedric.com/component/content/article/348-mysql/1217-optimizing-mysql-jdbc-under-windows-using-named-pipe.html