Wednesday, October 22, 2008

MySQL Database and GlassFish Application Server Student Contest

January 16th, the day when MySQL combined with SUN Microsystems and gave cheers to the whole student as well as development community giving high end opportunities for people to work and explore more. Indeed, I am a core MySQL user from past 3 years i.e from day 1 of my 'programming' life. So, I thought of creating an application using the 'MySQL' and Glassfish server ( which I started learning recently ) to celebrate this "EVE" of MySQL joining SUN.. [:P][:P]

Well, the competition details came and my mind started pondering over which idea to be implemented. Well, I am an ardent user of all social networking sites like Orkut, faceBook which does not allow resource sharing. Then, I thought of making a cool application using JSP, Glassfish and MYSQL and thus is the birth "Project Roshni", which enables users to inetract socially and share needful information with their peers.The users can share documents/text/links and each user can have a share size of 30MB which would benefit other users who are searching for same or related information. This web portal enables " Social networking + Resource sharing " and also supports semantic search !!


I used MySQL 5.1 community edition for the first time but the installation procedure was as simple as previous editions and I installed 'mysql-gui-tools 5.0' for GUI enabled interaction with MySQL server. This would reduce your work a lot when you are populating your tables and want to do manual entries in testing phase. Connection making to SQL Database is very simple and straight forward and as it is highly stable, I never encountered any kind of problems. So, I can say its simply superb !!


A note to all the readers : "If you're looking for an easy way to add database capabilities to your company's Web site or your own personal piece of the Web, MySQL is the best choice"


I am basically very new to 'Glassfish'. I used to feel that Project Glassfish was more cumbersome and once I went through online tutorials, I felt it not so tough as I expected. Indeed, it took me 8 hours to deploy a simple sample application in Glassfish on my Windows desktop as I got lots and lots of errors but once I get started, it became very simple to handle and interesting too. Indeed, it was a new and novel experience for me working in Glassfish and the navigation way was also very smooth. I just loved this Glassfish.

A simple walk through the installation of Glassfish V2 UR2 installation on your Windows Desktop:

1. Download the entire setup.

2. Open the windows prompt and run the following command by changing into respective directory where the glassfish setup is there

java -Xmx256m -jar glassfish-installer-v2ur2-b04-windows

3. After the successful installation, the installer creates a directory called glassfish at the location where we ran the command from.

4. Inside the glassfish directory, there is an ANT build script that must be executed to complete the installation. The file name for this build script is setup.xml This script can be executed from the command line by changing to the Glassfish installation directory and typing the follwoing command :

ant -f setup.xml

Installation is completed !!


Well, I would like to share my first simple error which I got during the installation phase of Glassfish :


I was getting error when the folder name in which I was having my glassfish setup has a 'space' in it and when I was using the command "java -Xmx256m -jar glassfish-installer-v2ur2-b04-windows" after coming to this folder, it was giving some error .. Then, I relaized and made sure that I dont have any 'space's in folder names which I have to navigate to go to my directory where I had my setup.


Well, I went through many such small/medium/large size problems ( [:P] ) but finally, I was very happy using Glassfish. I added it into my favorites now. Still, I think I need to explore more and more features to effectively use it. One thing is sure that it fascinated me a lot and given a push for me to explore the technology more !


Indeed, this competition gave me nice opportunity to work in these two cool technologies and provided me an insight !

A note to all the readers : "If you are inquisitive and want to have hands experiencing on a '
'new' technology or software, leave alone Web-server, then GLASSFISH would be an ideal one and you would love working on it
"


I suppose this review is sufficient enough to explain how thrilling my experience was and how it may thrill you !

and last but not the least : Open Source ROCKZZZ !!