AncaA's tech journal

Creating a job using the Design module. Here you have to define the source and the target of the job. This can be either a text file or an Oracle table. After choosing the source and the target, the job must be implemented and the unit tests executed.
Creating the job control. The job that has just been created should be integrated into a set of job and the moment of launchment should be established(after what job it starts). The job will be executed and the logs viewed with the help of the DataStage Director.

1. Job Design

In order to design a job there are a few steps to follow:

• Define the entering parameters
• Use stages like: databases, ODBC, sequential files, hashed files, folders, containers, transformer, aggregator, pivot, sort, link partitioner, link collector.
• Define the derivations(transforming functions)
• Execute the unit tests. In order to execute the unit tests, the definition of parameters is required, real time view of the number of lines treated as well as the end of the job(Error or Succes). This can be done using the Director module.The logs are not visible in the designer.

Frequent tasks when creating a job:

• Adding a Transformer item that can be based either on a formula, a filter or some variables.
• Adding a hashed file for creating and alimenting a table.
• Adding a lookup(database of hashed file ).
• Adding a OCI Oracle (query type/ sql overload)

Frequent transformations in a job:

• Alimenting a table using insert else update
• Aggregation
• Sort
• Removing duplicates
• Manage the rejects: generating one ore more rejects starting from a single line .
• Lookup for a big database table.

2. Job Control

The steps in executing a job are the following:

• define the entry parameters
• use the stages: Job Activity, Execute Command, Wait for file activity, Routine Activity, Sequencer, Terminator Activity, Exception Handler, StartLoop activity, EndLoop Activity.
• execute the unit test

DataStage is an ETL(Extract, Transfer, Load) tool.
Like all the ETL tools it satisfies the following needs:

• extract data from the datawarehouse or from files that arrive from different other applications
• transform and modify the data and after
• insert or load data into the datawarehouse.

DataStage is composed of more modules that will allow you to implement these three main functionalities:

The client module:

• Designer – creates the jobs
• Director – launches and stops the jobs, enables you to consult the logs of the jobs
• Administrator – manages the projects , the users and the security
• Manager – manages the objects of a project: Import – Export

The server module:

• The DataStage Server – can be installed on Windows/Unix/Linux
• The Repository – stores all the Datastage objects as well as the logs

Different other products:

• Datastage Server
• Datastage Parallel Extender
• Datastage MVS

What it does :
Enables the creation, management and delivery of both traditional, paper-oriented reports and the interactive Webbased reports(integrated part of the Microsoft Business Intelligence framework).

Architecture

Tools used :

• Reporting Services Configuration
• Report Manager
• Report Builder
• Report Designer
• Model Designer

Adding reports directly to the server:

• Using Report Designer from Visual Studio Business Intelligence
• Using the programatic interfaces availbale

Management of reports :

• using Report Manager from Visual Studio Business Intelligence
• using the programatic interfaces availbale

How to access the SRSS programaticly :

• URL Access
• Webservice
• Windows Management Instrumentation

Webservices exposed :

• ReportExecution2005 – programmatically process and render reports from a Report Server
• ReportService2005 – allows the programmers to programmatically manage objects from Report Server

Note : The webservices can be used only in applications that use the .Net framework

Another free tool I found that might be useful when doing performance testing for a website is WebLoad .

As a beginner in this area, I thought the first things to do is to get a little familiarized with the main concepts it involves. So, some of the keywords to start with are :

Bussines Intelligence, Data warehouse, Data mart, Key performance indicators, Extract Transfer Load (ETL), Data mining, OLAP Modelling, Multidimensional analysis, Type of models, Cube model.

My Cognos training was composed of the following :

Impromptu Series 7 Administration.

The course contained :

• Administrator Role
• Planning Process
• The Project lifecycle in 14 steps
• How to use the catalog’s data
• Joints
• Folders
• How to create user profiles
• How to optimize the performance
• User defined functions
• System deployment and mentenance

Power Play Series 7 Version 3 – OLAP Modelling using Transformer

The modules studied were :

• Plannfication, creation and use of a model plan
• Organizing multiple data sources
• How to use the measurements and the data dimensions
• Customizing the model in order to satisfy specific business needs
• Cubes customization and optimization
• Customizing the dimensions
• Security application

The Technical Interview might be a little scary if you are a beginner and you are trying to get your first job as a developer.
You can wonder yourself how much in detail they will get, how technical the questions will be, if they will try to stress you or, on the contrary, they will try to create an relaxed athmosphere.
This is why I will try to describe a little my experiences with the technical interviews.
As far as I have seen, sometimes the technical interviews can be not at all technical or they can get really, really technical.

This depends mainly of the company’s policy and the type of person they are looking for. Also sometimes the technical interview comes befor the Human Resources.

In most of the cases at each of these interviews there are around two persons present : the project manager or the manager of the company and a more technical person that is interested in testing your technical skills.

It usually starts in the same way, by asking you to present yourself. The approach this time should be more focused on the technical details and mention the proffesional experiences by emphasising the aspects that you know the company is interested in. For example if they are looking for a .Net developer, it would be a good idea to focus on getting into details about your .Net knowledge and projects, but mention and just overview you experiences with the Java technology.

While you describe the projects you worked in, some of the questions may be how long the project lasted, how many people were involved, who the client was, what was your role in the project, why was a certain technology used and not another.
Sometimes these are all the questions you might get at the technical interview.

Other times things get a little into more details.For example, after you finish presenting yourself usually the technical guy will look over each of your projects and start asking you from general question related to each of them to more detailed ones.In one of my interviews for which I was applying for a job as a .Net developer the questions were like this :

• What is Agile Programming?
• What are the project management models that you know ?Ex : v-model, waterfall model
• What do you know about Corba ?
• If you have used UML, what is the version of UML you used ?
• Describe the Model View Control architectural pattern.
• What is CRUD and what is it used for? (create, read, update and delete)
• Have you worked with .Net Nuke and if yes can you tell what it is ?
• Which are the features of an NTier application ?
• What are the web parts in .Net?
• What are master pages ?
• What are the Design Patterns ?
• What is the difference between a Data Grid and a Grid View ?
• What are the Generics in C # ?
• What are the sealed classes ?
• What is a string builder ?
• What is the size of the string variables ?
• What is an web service ?
• What is the difference between the C++ API and a web service ?
• Regarding SVN, what the chain of changes were.

After some technical questions like this, usually the company and the company’s projects are presented and also the role they might have in mind for you. And the salary question comes up again as well as the availability to start, the mobility you have for going to work to a client’s place.

Today I wanted to test a little how the hardware acceleration is working in rendering 3D OpenGl ES applications on the Nokia N95.
In order to do this I downloaded a sample 3D engine from the Nokia website.
In order to run it on the emulator, I used Carbide VS 2005. The steps I followed were:

1. Click File ->Import Symbian Project.

2. In the dialog box that appears, as project file, specify the path to the bld.inf file of your project and select the project type from the drop down list below(in my case is Symbian 9) and click Next

3. In the Solution Settings dialog box select the SDK you want to use for your application(in my case S60 3.0 FP2). Here you can choose if you want your solution to be executed on the emulator(check the WINSCV checkbox) and on the phone(check the GCCE checkbox)

4. Click Finish.

Now you can see all your project files included in a Visual Studio solution. In order to launch the application on the emulator just choose WINSCV configuration, like in the image below and run your application.

One problem I encountered, I don’t know if is normal or not, is the fact that the application is installed when you run the project from Visual Studio. The emulator is launched, but for a few seconds a white screen is displayed and after the main starting screen shows up. In order to launch the program I opened the Menu folder -> Instalations and I launched my application from there.

For running it on the phone, the GCCE configuration must be chosen and the solution launched. In order to communicate by USB cable with the phone, you will need to download the PC Suite from Nokia.The application will be installed on the phone but you will have to go as well in the Installed folder to launch it.

As seen until now after finished with the basics of building a 3D application on the Windows Mobile platform, I started to notice the advantages and disadvantages on using OpenGL Es on Windows Mobile. The available free implementations of OpenGL ES that I could find for Windows Mobile were only SW implementations and made no usage of the hardware acceleration of the graphic card. Doing some research I’ve found out that Nvidia might provides some implementations of OpenGL ES but this is only for their clients.
So, in order to start studying the posibility of using the 3D HW acceleration, I started looking deeper into what Nokia phone and especially the Nokia N95 smartphone offers.
As it uses Symbian OS, I decided to have a look on how to start programming on Symbian using OpenGL ES. After a small research I saw that using OpenGL Es on Symbian was extremly well documented and explained. Here is an overview of Nokia and OpenGL ES.

So, some few more start-up hints:

1. Some general things about Symbian.

2. Some tools and SDKs for Symbian can be found on the Symbian Developer Network site. As far as I have seen the SDKs are free but you have to register in order to use them.
For my Nokia N95 application I downloaded the S60 3rd Edition SDK. As IDE you can choose between:
– Carbide C++ : based on the Eclipse platform. Comes in three “flavors”: Express, Developer and Proffesional. Only the Express version is free.
– Carbide VS, this is a plug-in for Visual Studio that allows you to develop C++ Symbian projects in Visual Studio 2005 and 2003. The plugin is free to download and use.
– CodeWarrior IDE that i think also needs a paied licence.
For Carbide and Carbide VS you have the emulator included.

3. Information about 3D applications in Symbian devices.

4. An implementation of OpenGL ES on Symbian for the desired platform. You can download it from here. And here you can see a list of questions that might help you a little more. After installing the SDK, you will notice it has included very good documentation, training courses and demos on how to start implementing OpenGL ES applications.

The N95, Nokia’s Smartphone, includes a built-in accelerometer. This was originally only used for video stabilization and photo orientation (to keep landscape or portrait shots oriented as taken).

Nokia Research Center has recently allowed an application interface directly to the accelerometer, allowing software to use the data from it. Nokia has released an application to demonstrate this.
Third-party programs have already begun to appear, including RotateMe, which will automatically change the screen orientation when the phone is tilted and Lightsaber, which causes the phone to make the sounds of the Star Wars Lightsaber when waved through the air.Another third-party program which has also used the built-in accelerometer is Glogger VS2 , a camera application which can automatically detect camera shake and reduce the possibility of taking a blurry image.

For more on this click here

For the PDF version click here.
Soon I will add also the source code for the application I developed and give some hints about usefull tutorials!