Within this post we will have a deeper look into the new Date/Time API we get with Java 8 (JSR 310). Please note that this post is mainly driven by code examples that show the new API functionality. I think the examples are self-explanatory so I did not spent much time writing text around them :-) Let's get started! Working with Date and Time Objects All classes of the Java 8 Date/Time API are located within the java.time package. The first class we want to look at is java.time.LocalDate. A LocalDate represents a year-month-day date without time. We start with creating new LocalDate instances: // the current date LocalDate currentDate = LocalDate.now(); // 2014-02-10 LocalDate tenthFeb2014 = LocalDate.of(2014, Month.FEBRUARY, 10); // months values start at 1 (2014-08-01) LocalDate firstAug2014 = LocalDate.of(2014, 8, 1); // the 65th day of 2010 (2010-03-06) LocalDate sixtyFifthDayOf2010 = LocalDate.ofYearDay(2010, 65); LocalTime and LocalDateTime are the next classes we look at. Both work similar to LocalDate. ALocalTime works with time (without dates) while LocalDateTime combines date and time in one class: LocalTime currentTime = LocalTime.now(); // current time LocalTime midday = LocalTime.of(12, 0); // 12:00 LocalTime afterMidday = LocalTime.of(13, 30, 15); // 13:30:15 // 12345th second of day (03:25:45) LocalTime fromSecondsOfDay = LocalTime.ofSecondOfDay(12345); // dates with times, e.g. 2014-02-18 19:08:37.950 LocalDateTime currentDateTime = LocalDateTime.now(); // 2014-10-02 12:30 LocalDateTime secondAug2014 = LocalDateTime.of(2014, 10, 2, 12, 30); // 2014-12-24 12:00 LocalDateTime christmas2014 = LocalDateTime.of(2014, Month.DECEMBER, 24, 12, 0); By default LocalDate/Time classes will use the system clock in the default time zone. We can change this by providing a time zone or an alternative Clock implementation: // current (local) time in Los Angeles LocalTime currentTimeInLosAngeles = LocalTime.now(ZoneId.of("America/Los_Angeles")); // current time in UTC time zone LocalTime nowInUtc = LocalTime.now(Clock.systemUTC()); From LocalDate/Time objects we can get all sorts of useful information we might need. Some examples: LocalDate date = LocalDate.of(2014, 2, 15); // 2014-06-15 boolean isBefore = LocalDate.now().isBefore(date); // false // information about the month Month february = date.getMonth(); // FEBRUARY int februaryIntValue = february.getValue(); // 2 int minLength = february.minLength(); // 28 int maxLength = february.maxLength(); // 29 Month firstMonthOfQuarter = february.firstMonthOfQuarter(); // JANUARY // information about the year int year = date.getYear(); // 2014 int dayOfYear = date.getDayOfYear(); // 46 int lengthOfYear = date.lengthOfYear(); // 365 boolean isLeapYear = date.isLeapYear(); // false DayOfWeek dayOfWeek = date.getDayOfWeek(); int dayOfWeekIntValue = dayOfWeek.getValue(); // 6 String dayOfWeekName = dayOfWeek.name(); // SATURDAY int dayOfMonth = date.getDayOfMonth(); // 15 LocalDateTime startOfDay = date.atStartOfDay(); // 2014-02-15 00:00 // time information LocalTime time = LocalTime.of(15, 30); // 15:30:00 int hour = time.getHour(); // 15 int second = time.getSecond(); // 0 int minute = time.getMinute(); // 30 int secondOfDay = time.toSecondOfDay(); // 55800 Some information can be obtained without providing a specific date. For example, we can use the Year class if we need information about a specific year: Year currentYear = Year.now(); Year twoThousand = Year.of(2000); boolean isLeap = currentYear.isLeap(); // false int length = currentYear.length(); // 365 // sixtyFourth day of 2014 (2014-03-05) LocalDate date = Year.of(2014).atDay(64); We can use the plus and minus methods to add or subtract specific amounts of time. Note that these methods always return a new instance (Java 8 date/time classes are immutable). LocalDate tomorrow = LocalDate.now().plusDays(1); // before 5 houres and 30 minutes LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDateTime.now().minusHours(5).minusMinutes(30); TemporalAdjusters are another nice way for date manipulation. TemporalAdjuster is a single method interface that is used to separate the process of adjustment from actual date/time objects. A set of common TemporalAdjusters can be accessed using static methods of the TemporalAdjusters class. LocalDate date = LocalDate.of(2014, Month.FEBRUARY, 25); // 2014-02-25 // first day of february 2014 (2014-02-01) LocalDate firstDayOfMonth = date.with(TemporalAdjusters.firstDayOfMonth()); // last day of february 2014 (2014-02-28) LocalDate lastDayOfMonth = date.with(TemporalAdjusters.lastDayOfMonth()); Static imports make this more fluent to read: import static java.time.temporal.TemporalAdjusters.*; ... // last day of 2014 (2014-12-31) LocalDate lastDayOfYear = date.with(lastDayOfYear()); // first day of next month (2014-03-01) LocalDate firstDayOfNextMonth = date.with(firstDayOfNextMonth()); // next sunday (2014-03-02) LocalDate nextSunday = date.with(next(DayOfWeek.SUNDAY)); Time Zones Working with time zones is another big topic that is simplified by the new API. The LocalDate/Time classes we have seen so far do not contain information about a time zone. If we want to work with a date/time in a certain time zone we can use ZonedDateTime or OffsetDateTime: ZoneId losAngeles = ZoneId.of("America/Los_Angeles"); ZoneId berlin = ZoneId.of("Europe/Berlin"); // 2014-02-20 12:00 LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDateTime.of(2014, 02, 20, 12, 0); // 2014-02-20 12:00, Europe/Berlin (+01:00) ZonedDateTime berlinDateTime = ZonedDateTime.of(dateTime, berlin); // 2014-02-20 03:00, America/Los_Angeles (-08:00) ZonedDateTime losAngelesDateTime = berlinDateTime.withZoneSameInstant(losAngeles); int offsetInSeconds = losAngelesDateTime.getOffset().getTotalSeconds(); // -28800 // a collection of all available zones Set allZoneIds = ZoneId.getAvailableZoneIds(); // using offsets LocalDateTime date = LocalDateTime.of(2013, Month.JULY, 20, 3, 30); ZoneOffset offset = ZoneOffset.of("+05:00"); // 2013-07-20 03:30 +05:00 OffsetDateTime plusFive = OffsetDateTime.of(date, offset); // 2013-07-19 20:30 -02:00 OffsetDateTime minusTwo = plusFive.withOffsetSameInstant(ZoneOffset.ofHours(-2)); Timestamps Classes like LocalDate and ZonedDateTime provide a human view on time. However, often we need to work with time viewed from a machine perspective. For this we can use the Instant class which represents timestamps. An Instant counts the time beginning from the first second of January 1, 1970 (1970-01-01 00:00:00) also called the EPOCH. Instant values can be negative if they occured before the epoch. They followISO 8601 the standard for representing date and time. // current time Instant now = Instant.now(); // from unix timestamp, 2010-01-01 12:00:00 Instant fromUnixTimestamp = Instant.ofEpochSecond(1262347200); // same time in millis Instant fromEpochMilli = Instant.ofEpochMilli(1262347200000l); // parsing from ISO 8601 Instant fromIso8601 = Instant.parse("2010-01-01T12:00:00Z"); // toString() returns ISO 8601 format, e.g. 2014-02-15T01:02:03Z String toIso8601 = now.toString(); // as unix timestamp long toUnixTimestamp = now.getEpochSecond(); // in millis long toEpochMillis = now.toEpochMilli(); // plus/minus methods are available too Instant nowPlusTenSeconds = now.plusSeconds(10); Periods and Durations Period and Duration are two other important classes. Like the names suggest they represent a quantity or amount of time. A Period uses date based values (years, months, days) while a Duration uses seconds or nanoseconds to define an amount of time. Duration is most suitable when working with Instants and machine time. Periods and Durations can contain negative values if the end point occurs before the starting point. // periods LocalDate firstDate = LocalDate.of(2010, 5, 17); // 2010-05-17 LocalDate secondDate = LocalDate.of(2015, 3, 7); // 2015-03-07 Period period = Period.between(firstDate, secondDate); int days = period.getDays(); // 18 int months = period.getMonths(); // 9 int years = period.getYears(); // 4 boolean isNegative = period.isNegative(); // false Period twoMonthsAndFiveDays = Period.ofMonths(2).plusDays(5); LocalDate sixthOfJanuary = LocalDate.of(2014, 1, 6); // add two months and five days to 2014-01-06, result is 2014-03-11 LocalDate eleventhOfMarch = sixthOfJanuary.plus(twoMonthsAndFiveDays); // durations Instant firstInstant= Instant.ofEpochSecond( 1294881180 ); // 2011-01-13 01:13 Instant secondInstant = Instant.ofEpochSecond(1294708260); // 2011-01-11 01:11 Duration between = Duration.between(firstInstant, secondInstant); // negative because firstInstant is after secondInstant (-172920) long seconds = between.getSeconds(); // get absolute result in minutes (2882) long absoluteResult = between.abs().toMinutes(); // two hours in seconds (7200) long twoHoursInSeconds = Duration.ofHours(2).getSeconds(); Formatting and Parsing Formatting and parsing is another big topic when working with dates and times. In Java 8 this can be accomplished by using the format() and parse() methods: // 2014-04-01 10:45 LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDateTime.of(2014, Month.APRIL, 1, 10, 45); // format as basic ISO date format (20140220) String asBasicIsoDate = dateTime.format(DateTimeFormatter.BASIC_ISO_DATE); // format as ISO week date (2014-W08-4) String asIsoWeekDate = dateTime.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_WEEK_DATE); // format ISO date time (2014-02-20T20:04:05.867) String asIsoDateTime = dateTime.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME); // using a custom pattern (01/04/2014) String asCustomPattern = dateTime.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd/MM/yyyy")); // french date formatting (1. avril 2014) String frenchDate = dateTime.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("d. MMMM yyyy", new Locale("fr"))); // using short german date/time formatting (01.04.14 10:45) DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDateTime(FormatStyle.SHORT) .withLocale(new Locale("de")); String germanDateTime = dateTime.format(formatter); // parsing date strings LocalDate fromIsoDate = LocalDate.parse("2014-01-20"); LocalDate fromIsoWeekDate = LocalDate.parse("2014-W14-2", DateTimeFormatter.ISO_WEEK_DATE); LocalDate fromCustomPattern = LocalDate.parse("20.01.2014", DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd.MM.yyyy")); Conversion Of course we do not always have objects of the type we need. Therefore, we need an option to convert different date/time related objects between each other. The following examples show some of the possible conversion options: // LocalDate/LocalTime <-> LocalDateTime LocalDate date = LocalDate.now(); LocalTime time = LocalTime.now(); LocalDateTime dateTimeFromDateAndTime = LocalDateTime.of(date, time); LocalDate dateFromDateTime = LocalDateTime.now().toLocalDate(); LocalTime timeFromDateTime = LocalDateTime.now().toLocalTime(); // Instant <-> LocalDateTime Instant instant = Instant.now(); LocalDateTime dateTimeFromInstant = LocalDateTime.ofInstant(instant, ZoneId.of("America/Los_Angeles")); Instant instantFromDateTime = LocalDateTime.now().toInstant(ZoneOffset.ofHours(-2)); // convert old date/calendar/timezone classes Instant instantFromDate = new Date().toInstant(); Instant instantFromCalendar = Calendar.getInstance().toInstant(); ZoneId zoneId = TimeZone.getDefault().toZoneId(); ZonedDateTime zonedDateTimeFromGregorianCalendar = new GregorianCalendar().toZonedDateTime(); // convert to old classes Date dateFromInstant = Date.from(Instant.now()); TimeZone timeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone(ZoneId.of("America/Los_Angeles")); GregorianCalendar gregorianCalendar = GregorianCalendar.from(ZonedDateTime.now()); Conclusion With Java 8 we get a very rich API for working with date and time located in the java.time package. The API can completely replace old classes like java.util.Date or java.util.Calendar with newer, more flexible classes. Due to mostly immutable classes the new API helps in building thread safe systems. The source of the examples can be found on GitHub.

So far, we have just put the data in and out. And we have had a pretty good track record doing so. However, what do we do with the data now that we have it? As you can expect, we need to read it out. Usually by specific date ranges. The interesting thing is that we usually are not interested in just a single channel, we care about multiple channels. And for fun, those channel might be synchronized or not. An example of the first might be the current speed and the current engine temperature in a car. They are generally share the exact same timestamps. An example of out of sync is when you have a sensor on a rooftop measuring rainfall, and another sensor in the sewer measuring water flow rates. (Again, thanks to Dan for helping me with the domain). This is interesting, because it present quite a few interesting problems: We need to merge different streams into a unified view. We need to handle both matching and non matching sequences. We need to handle erroneous data, what happens when we have two reading for the same time for the same sensor? Yes, that shouldn’t happen, but it does. I solved this with the following API: public class RangeEntry { public DateTime Timestamp; public double?[] Values; } IEnumerable results = dts.ScanRanges(DateTime.MinValue, DateTime.MaxValue, new[] { "6febe146-e893-4f64-89f8-527f2dbaae9b", "707dcb42-c551-4f1a-9203-e4b0852516cf", "74d5bee8-9a7b-4d4e-bd85-5f92dfc22edb", "7ae29feb-6178-4930-bc38-a90adf99cfd3", }); This API gives me the results in the time order, with the same positions as the ids requested for the values. With nulls if there isn’t a value matching the value from that time in that particular sensor channel. The actual implementation relies on this method: IEnumerable ScanRange(DateTime start, DateTime end, string id) All this does it provide the entries all the entries in a particular date range, for a particular channel. Let us see how we implement multi channel scanning on top of this: private class PendingEnumerator { public IEnumerator Enumerator; public int Index; } private class PendingEnumerators { private readonly SortedDictionary> _values = new SortedDictionary>(); public void Enqueue(PendingEnumerator entry) { List list; var dateTime = entry.Enumerator.Current.Timestamp; if (_values.TryGetValue(dateTime, out list) == false) { _values.Add(dateTime, list = new List()); } list.Add(entry); } public bool IsEmpty { get { return _values.Count == 0; } } public List Dequeue() { if (_values.Count == 0) return new List(); var kvp = _values.First(); _values.Remove(kvp.Key); return kvp.Value; } } public IEnumerable ScanRanges(DateTime start, DateTime end, string[] ids) { if (ids == null || ids.Length == 0) yield break; var pending = new PendingEnumerators(); for (int i = 0; i < ids.Length; i++) { var enumerator = ScanRange(start, end, ids[i]).GetEnumerator(); if(enumerator.MoveNext() == false) continue; pending.Enqueue(new PendingEnumerator { Enumerator = enumerator, Index = i }); } var result = new RangeEntry { Values = new double?[ids.Length] }; while (pending.IsEmpty == false) { Array.Clear(result.Values,0,result.Values.Length); var entries = pending.Dequeue(); if (entries.Count == 0) break; foreach (var entry in entries) { var current = entry.Enumerator.Current; result.Timestamp = current.Timestamp; result.Values[entry.Index] = current.Value; if(entry.Enumerator.MoveNext()) pending.Enqueue(entry); } yield return result; } } We are getting a single entry from each channel into the pending enumerators. Then, we collate all the entries that share the same time into a single entry. We use the Index property to track the actual expected index of the entry in the output. And we handle duplicate times in the same channel by outputting multiple entries. Testing this on my 1.1 million records data set, we can get 185 thousands records back in 0.15 seconds.

JDave, Concordion, Easyb, JBehave, Cucumber are all compared here briefly for your convenience.

it's very important to learn hadoop by practice. one of the learning curves is how to write the first map reduce app and debug in favorite ide, eclipse. do we need any eclipse plugins? no, we do not. we can do hadoop development without map reduce plugins this tutorial will show you how to set up eclipse and run your map reduce project and mapreduce job right from your ide. before you read further, you should have setup hadoop single node cluster and your machine. you can download the eclipse project from github . use case: we will explore the weather data to find maximum temperature from tom white’s book hadoop: definitive guide (3rd edition) chapter 2 and run it using toolrunner i am using linux mint 15 on virtualbox vm instance. in addition, you should have hadoop (mrv1 am using 1.2.1) single node cluster installed and running, if you have not done so, would strongly recommend you do it from here download eclipse ide, as of writing this, latest version of eclipse is kepler 1. create new java project 2. add dependencies jars right click on project properties and select java build path add all jars from $hadoop_home/lib and $hadoop_home (where hadoop core and tools jar lives) 3. create mapper package com.letsdobigdata; import java.io.ioexception; import org.apache.hadoop.io.intwritable; import org.apache.hadoop.io.longwritable; import org.apache.hadoop.io.text; import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.mapper; public class maxtemperaturemapper extends mapper { private static final int missing = 9999; @override public void map(longwritable key, text value, context context) throws ioexception, interruptedexception { string line = value.tostring(); string year = line.substring(15, 19); int airtemperature; if (line.charat(87) == '+') { // parseint doesn't like leading plus // signs airtemperature = integer.parseint(line.substring(88, 92)); } else { airtemperature = integer.parseint(line.substring(87, 92)); } string quality = line.substring(92, 93); if (airtemperature != missing && quality.matches("[01459]")) { context.write(new text(year), new intwritable(airtemperature)); } } } 4. create reducer package com.letsdobigdata; import java.io.ioexception; import org.apache.hadoop.io.intwritable; import org.apache.hadoop.io.text; import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.reducer; public class maxtemperaturereducer extends reducer { @override public void reduce(text key, iterable values, context context) throws ioexception, interruptedexception { int maxvalue = integer.min_value; for (intwritable value : values) { maxvalue = math.max(maxvalue, value.get()); } context.write(key, new intwritable(maxvalue)); } } 5. create driver for mapreduce job map reduce job is executed by useful hadoop utility class toolrunner package com.letsdobigdata; import org.apache.hadoop.conf.configured; import org.apache.hadoop.fs.path; import org.apache.hadoop.io.intwritable; import org.apache.hadoop.io.text; import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.job; import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.fileinputformat; import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.output.fileoutputformat; import org.apache.hadoop.util.tool; import org.apache.hadoop.util.toolrunner; /*this class is responsible for running map reduce job*/ public class maxtemperaturedriver extends configured implements tool{ public int run(string[] args) throws exception { if(args.length !=2) { system.err.println("usage: maxtemperaturedriver "); system.exit(-1); } job job = new job(); job.setjarbyclass(maxtemperaturedriver.class); job.setjobname("max temperature"); fileinputformat.addinputpath(job, new path(args[0])); fileoutputformat.setoutputpath(job,new path(args[1])); job.setmapperclass(maxtemperaturemapper.class); job.setreducerclass(maxtemperaturereducer.class); job.setoutputkeyclass(text.class); job.setoutputvalueclass(intwritable.class); system.exit(job.waitforcompletion(true) ? 0:1); boolean success = job.waitforcompletion(true); return success ? 0 : 1; } public static void main(string[] args) throws exception { maxtemperaturedriver driver = new maxtemperaturedriver(); int exitcode = toolrunner.run(driver, args); system.exit(exitcode); } } 6. supply input and output we need to supply input file that will be used during map phase and the final output will be generated in output directory by reduct task. edit run configuration and supply command line arguments. sample.txt reside in the project root. your project explorer should contain following ] 7. map reduce job execution 8. final output if you managed to come this far, once the job is complete, it will create output directory with _success and part_nnnnn , double click to view it in eclipse editor and you will see we have supplied 5 rows of weather data (downloaded from ncdc weather) and we wanted to find out the maximum temperature in a given year from input file and the output will contain 2 rows with max temperature in (centigrade) for each supplied year 1949 111 (11.1 c) 1950 22 (2.2 c) make sure you delete the output directory next time running your application else you will get an error from hadoop saying directory already exists. happy hadooping!

If you ever need to persuade management why it might be better to deploy a larger change in multiple stages and push it to customers gradually, read on. A deployment of many changes is risky. We want therefore to deploy them in a way which minimizes the risk of harm to our customers and our companies. The deployment can be done either in an all-at-once (also known as big-bang) way or a gradual way. We will argue here for the more gradual (“stepwise”) approach. Big-bang or stepwise deployment? A big-bang deployment seems to be the natural thing to do: the full solution is developed and tested and then replaces the current system at once. However, it has two crucial flaws. First, it assumes that most defects can be discovered by testing. However, due to differences in test/prod environments, unknown dependencies, and the sheer scale of a typical larger system there always will be problems that are not discovered until production deployment or even until the application runs for a while in production (whichapplies even to airplanes). The more parts have been changed, the more of these production defects will happen at the same time. A gradual deployment makes it possible to discover and handle them one by one. Second, the more complex the deployment, the higher chance of human error(s), i.e. the deployment itself is a likely source of serious defects. Some of the drawbacks of a big-bang deployment in more detail: Complexity: A big-bang deployment requires coordination of many people and “moving parts” that depend on each other, providing a huge opportunity for human mistake (i.e. there will be mistakes). Lot of time: Such a deployment requires lot of time (typically also more than planed/expected) and thus lot of downtime when users cannot use the system. Hard troubleshooting: With a network of inter-dependent parts that changed all at the same time, while perhaps also changing the infrastructure (i.e. connections between them), it is extremely hard to pinpoint the source of defects, thus considerably increasing the time to detect and correct defects while also increasing the risk of people stepping on the toes of each other and “panic fixes” that either cause more problems than they remove or are not good enough (as the rollback that sped upKnight’s downfall). Rollback is likely either impossible or equally time-consuming and risky as the deployment itself, thus increasing the impact of defects and inviting even more human errors. Impact: Deploying everything to all users at the same time means that everybody will be impacted by a potential defect/error/mistake. Long freeze: All needs to be tested together after all development is finished, which requires a lot of time while the code is frozen and no more fixes and changes can get into production for weeks. Risk mitigation The goal of a good deployment plan is to mitigate the risk of the deployment and get it to an acceptable level. There are two aspects to risk: the probability of a defect and the impact of the defect. The following table shows how the possible measures affect them: Defect probability reduction Defect impact reduction testing stepwise deployment gradual migration of users to the new version (f.ex. 1 in 1000 or particular subsets) rollback mechanism => these also lead to much lower time to detect and fix defects Practices for stepwise deployment Enable stepwise deployment: Use parallel change and other Continuous Delivery techniques to make it possible to deploy updated components independently from each other and to switch on/off new features and to switch what versions of the components they depend on are currently used. (Parallel change – keeping the old and new code and being able to use one or the other – is crucial here. Also notice that parallel change applies also to data – you will need to evolve your data schema gradually and keep both old and new one at the same time in a period of time.) Enable rollback. The previous measure – stepwise deployment – makes it also easy(ier) to roll-back the changes by switching to a previous version of a dependency or by switching back to the old code. Migrate users gradually to the new version, i.e. expose the new version only to a small subset of the users initially and increase that subset until everybody uses it. This can be done f.ex. by deploying to only a subset of servers and sending a random/particular subset of users to the new servers but there are also ways if you have only a single machine. (See f.ex. my post Webapp Blue-Green Deployment Without Breaking Sessions/With Fallback With HAProxy.) Monitoring – make sure you are able to monitor flow of users through the system and detect any anomalies and errors early, long before angry calls from the business. Tools such as Logstash, Google Analytics (with custom events from JavaScript), client-side error logging via one of existing services or a custom solution are invaluable. About these ads

Earlier this month, I was delivering a proof of concept around Mule that required the use of the schema validation filter. The use case was pretty simple. XML messages comes in through a SOAP request, and some fields in the incoming message had to be validated against a bunch of XML schemas. Well this is the perfect use case scenario for the Schema Validator that is provided out of the box with Mule. Its an element you can drop from Mule Studio palette straight into your flow. schema-validator Configuration of this element is a bit tricky. This accepts a comma separated list of schemas to validate the payload against. Fair enough, but you immediately face the first problem. How to come up with a URL that works both in Mule Studio and in Mule standalone if your schemas are part of the classpath? Usually in Spring, you do this by pre-pending your URL with “classpath:”. Unfortunately this does not work with this filter. We solved the issue by placing the schemas under the src/main/resources folder in Mule Studio. From the schema validation filter, we referred to them using the ${app.home} variable: The second issue that immediately comes up is that any xs:imports or xs:includes in your schemas are happily ignored by the schema validator. The schema validator will fail on startup with an exception that looks similar to the following (exception detail removed for simplicity). Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'schemaValidator': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.mule.api.lifecycle.InitialisationException: src-resolve: Cannot resolve the name 'xxxyyy' to a(n) 'type definition' component. ... Caused by: org.mule.api.lifecycle.InitialisationException: src-resolve: Cannot resolve the name 'xxxyyy' to a(n) 'type definition' component. ... Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: src-resolve: Cannot resolve the name 'xxxyyy' to a(n) 'type definition' component. ... This is due to the class; javax.xml.validation.SchemaFactory. Mule’s schema validation filter uses this class to build the schemas to be able to validate against. This factory class ignores any XSD ‘includes’ and ‘imports’. (See here for more information.) Luckily there is a solution. Mule’s schema validation filter allows you to configure a custom resource resolver. This is the class that is used to load external resources, like XSD ‘includes’ and ‘imports’. We have written a very simple resource resolver that loads the external resources from the classpath: package com.ricston.xml; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import org.apache.xerces.dom.DOMInputImpl; import org.mule.util.IOUtils; import org.w3c.dom.ls.LSInput; import org.w3c.dom.ls.LSResourceResolver; public class ClasspathResourceResolver implements LSResourceResolver { @Override public LSInput resolveResource(String type, String namespaceURI, String publicId, String systemId, String baseURI) { try { InputStream resource = IOUtils.getResourceAsStream(systemId, getClass()); return new DOMInputImpl(publicId, systemId, baseURI, resource, null); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); return null; } } } As you can see, it is extremely simple. Just 2 lines of Java code. The idea here is that we are loading the external resource passed in by the SchemaFactory by using the Mule IOUtils library. Once loaded, we have to pass back an instance of org.w3c.dom.ls.LSInput. We used org.apache.xerces.dom.DOMInputImpl to help us with that. The last step is now to configure the schema validation filter to use our custom resource resolver: Of course you can code your custom resource loader to load resources from absolute paths, relative paths, or any other method that you would like to implement. It’s simple enough to take our ClasspathResourceResolver and convert it to meet your needs. Another issue that I found with this filter is the way it handles the errors. If you supply it with an XML that does not match any schema, it silently blocks your message. There won’t be anything displayed in the logs by default. To see the errors, you need to configure the SchemaValidationFilter class to log to debug level through log4j: log4j.logger.org.mule.module.xml.filters.SchemaValidationFilter=DEBUG We are going to conclude this blog post by saying that the out of the box schema validation filter of Mule is quite useful for obvious reasons, but to exploit its full potential does require a bit of configuration work.

This article presents the usage of sripted data set in the eclipse's BIRT.

Using Apache Commons Configuration to configure long-running applications.

The best code coverage metric for Scala is statement coverage. Simple as that. It suits the typical programming style in Scala best. Scala is a chameleon and it can look like anything you wish, but very often more statements are written on a single line and conditional “if” statements are used rarely. In other words, line coverage and branch coverage metrics are not helpful. Java tools Scala runs on JVM and therefore many existing tools for Java can be used for Scala as well. But for code coverage it’s a mistake to do so. One wrong option is to use tools that measure coverage looking at bytecode like JaCoCo. Even though it gives you a coverage rate number, JaCoCo knows nothing about Scala and therefore it doesn’t tell you which piece of code you forgot to cover. Another misfortune are tools that natively support line and branch coverage metrics only. Cobertura is a standard in Java world and XML coverage report that it generates is supported by many tools. Some Scala code coverage tools decided to use Cobertura XML report format because of its popularity. Sadly, it doesn’t support statement coverage. Statement coverage Why? Because a typical Scala statement looks like this (a single line of code): def f(l: List[Int]) = l.filter(_ > 0).filter(_ < 42).takeWhile(_ != 3).foreach(println(_)) Neither line nor branch coverage works here. When would you consider this single line as being covered by a test? If at least one statement of that line has been called? Maybe. Or all of them? Also maybe. Where is a branch? Yes, there are statements that are executed conditionally, but the decision logic is hidden in internal implementation of List. Branch coverage tools are helpless, because they don't see this kind of conditional execution. What we need to know instead is whether individual statements like _ > 0, _ < 42 or println(_) have beed executed by an automated test. This is the statement coverage. Scoverage to the rescue! Luckily there is a tool named Scoverage. It is a plugin for Scala compiler. There is also a plugin for SBT. It does exactly what we need. It generates HTML report and also own XML report containing detailed information about covered statements. Scoverage plugin for SonarQube Recently I have implemented a plugin for Sonar 4 so that statement coverage measurement can become an integral part of your team's continuous integration process and a required quality standard. It allows you to review overall project statement coverage as well as dig deeper into sub-modules, directories and source code files to see uncovered statements. Project dashboard with Scoverage plugin: Multi-module project overview: Columns with statement coverage, total number of statements and number of covered statements: Source code markup with covered and uncovered lines:

This morning an interesting topic was posted to the Apache ServiceMix user forum, asking the question: To ServiceMix or not ServiceMix. In my mind the short answer is: NO Guillaume Nodet one of the key architects and long time committer on Apache ServiceMix already had his mind set 3 years ago when he wrong this blog post - Thoughts about ServiceMix. What has happened on the ServiceMix project was that the ServiceMix kernel was pulled out of ServiceMix into its own project - Apache Karaf. That happened in spring 2009, which Guillaume also blogged about. So is all that bad? No its IMHO all great. In fact having the kernel as a separate project, and Camel and CXF as the integration and WS/RS frameworks, would allow the ServiceMix team to focus on building the ESB that truly had value-add. But that did not happen. ServiceMix did not create a cross product security model, web console, audit and trace tooling, clustering, governance, service registry, and much more that people were looking for in an ESB (or related to a SOA suite). There were only small pieces of it, but never really baked well into the project. That said its not too late. I think the ServiceMix project is dying, but if a lot of people in the community step up, and contribute and work on these things, then it can bring value to some users. But I seriously doubt this will happen. PS: 6 years ago I was working as a consultant and looked at the next integration platform for a major Danish organization, and we looked at ServiceMix back then and dismissed it due its JBI nature, and the new OSGi based architecture was only just started. And frankly it has taken a long long time to mature Apache Karaf / Felix / Aries and the other pieces in OSGi to what they are today to offer a stable and sound platform for users to build their integration applications. That was not the case 4-6 years ago. Okay No to ServiceMix - what are my options then? So what should use you instead of ServiceMix? Well in my mind you have at least these two options. 1) Use Apache Karaf and add the pieces you need, such as Camel, CXF, ActiveMQ and build your own ESB. These individual projects have regular releases, and you can upgrade as you need. The ServiceMix project only has the JBI components in additional, that you should NOT use. Only legacy users that got on the old ServiceMix 3.x wagon may need to use this in a graceful upgrade from JBI to Karaf based containers. 2) Take a look at fabric8. IMHO fabric8 is all that value-add the ServiceMix project did not create, and a lot more. James Strachan, just blogged today about some of his thoughts on fabric8, JBoss Fuse, and Karaf. I encourage you to take a read. For example he talks about how fabric becomes poly container, so you have a much wider choice of which containers/JVM to run your integration applications. OSGi is no longer a requirement. (IMHO that is very very existing and potentially a changer). I encourage you to check out fabric8 web-site, and also read the overview and motivation sections of the documentation. And then check out some of the videos. After the upcoming JBoss Fuse 6.1 release, the Fuse team at Red Hat will have more time and focus to bring the documentation at fabric8 up to date covering all the functionality we have (there is a lot more), and as well bring out a 1.0 community released using pure community releases. This gives end users a 100% free to use out of the box release. And users looking for a commercial release can then use JBoss Fuse. Best of both worlds. Summary Okay back to the question - to ServiceMix or not. Then NO. Innovation happens outside ServiceMix, and also more and more outside Apache. If you have thoughts then you can share those in comments to this blog, or better yet, get involved in the discussion forum at the ServiceMix user forum. PPS: The thoughts on this blog is mine alone, and are not any official words from my employer.

Background SPNego is RFC 4178 used for negotiation either NTLM or Kerberos based SSO. A typical use case is for web applications to reuse the authentication used by Desktops such as Windows or Linux. In this article, we will explore approaches for SPNego authentication with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. JBoss Negotiation is the library that provides the SPNego authentication support in JBoss. This library has been integrated in JBoss EAP and WildFly Application Server. Checklist Obtain JBoss EAP from jboss.org. Enable your JavaEE Web Application for SPNego Authentication. Configure JBoss EAP for SPNego. Configure your Browsers for SPNego. Start JBoss EAP. Test your web application. Obtain JBoss EAP from jboss.org Download JBoss EAP 6.2 or newer from http://www.jboss.org/products/eap You can also use WildFly Application Server from http://www.wildfly.org. Your configuration may vary slightly. Enable your JavaEE Web Application for SPNego Authentication It is easier to use a demo web application as a starting point. You can then modify your web application for SPNego authentication. The demo web application we use for this article is called spnego-demo, by my colleague, Josef Cazek. The demo web application is available at https://github.com/kwart/spnego-demo . You can also download the spnego-demo.war from here . Fully configured web application spnego-demo.war can be obtained from this location . Copy the spnego-demo.war in your jboss-eap-6.2/standalone/deployments directory. Configure JBoss EAP for SPNego Authentication You will need to configure a couple of security domains and system properties in JBoss EAP6. There are two ways by which you can configure: either manual editing or using CLI tool. Manual Editing of configuration file standalone.xml in jboss-eap-6.2/standalone/configuration Add system properties to this file. Remember to put this block right after the extensions block (around line 25 of the configuration file). Add security domains to this file. Remember to put these blocks in the block. Using Command Line Interface to update JBoss EAP Go to the bin directory of JBoss EAP 6.2 and run the following. $ cat << EOT > $SPNEGO_TEST_DIR/cli-commands.txt /subsystem=security/security-domain=host:add(cache-type=default) /subsystem=security/security-domain=host/authentication=classic:add(login-modules=[{"code"=>"Kerberos", "flag"=>"required", "module-options"=>[ ("debug"=>"true"),("storeKey"=>"true"),("refreshKrb5Config"=>"true"),("useKeyTab"=>"true"),("doNotPrompt"=>"true"),("keyTab"=>"$SPNEGO_TEST_DIR/http.keytab"),("principal"=>"HTTP/[email protected]")]}]) {allow-resource-service-restart=true} /subsystem=security/security-domain=SPNEGO:add(cache-type=default) /subsystem=security/security-domain=SPNEGO/authentication=classic:add(login-modules=[{"code"=>"SPNEGO", "flag"=>"required", "module-options"=>[("serverSecurityDomain"=>"host")]}]) {allow-resource-service-restart=true} /subsystem=security/security-domain=SPNEGO/mapping=classic:add(mapping-modules=[{"code"=>"SimpleRoles", "type"=>"role", "module-options"=>[("[email protected]"=>"Admin"),("[email protected]"=>"User")]}]) {allow-resource-service-restart=true} /system-property=java.security.krb5.conf:add(value="$SPNEGO_TEST_DIR/krb5.conf") /system-property=java.security.krb5.debug:add(value=true) /system-property=jboss.security.disable.secdomain.option:add(value=true) :reload() EOT $ ./jboss-cli.sh -c --file=$SPNEGO_TEST_DIR/cli-commands.txt This is explained in https://github.com/kwart/spnego-demo/blob/master/README.md We will need a keytab file. In this example, we will use the Kerberos Server using ApacheDS (as explained in Appendix A). $ java -classpath kerberos-using-apacheds.jar org.jboss.test.kerberos.CreateKeytab HTTP/[email protected] httppwd http.keytab Note that the http.keytab has been configured in the security domain called "host" in standalone.conf. So place the keytab file appropriately while correcting the path defined in security domain. More information is available at https://github.com/kwart/kerberos-using-apacheds/blob/master/README.md JBoss EAP will need a keytab file. In this example we use a keytab called as http.keytab Different tools such as ktutil exist to create keytab files. Keytab files contain Kerberos Principals and encrypted keys. It is important to safeguard keytab files. It is very important that JBoss EAP configuration for keytab in the security domain "host" refers to the actual path of the keytab file. Configure your Browsers for SPNego The browsers such as Microsoft IE, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari have different settings for enabling SPNego or Integrated Authentication. Start JBoss EAP Go to the bin directory of JBoss EAP 6.2 and either use standalone.sh (Unix/Linux) or standalone.bat to start your instance. Test your Web Application Assuming you have followed Appendix A steps to start the kerberos server and done kinit, you are ready to test the web application. In this article we have used spnego-demo, we can test that by going to http://localhost:8080/spnego-demo/ You can click on the "User Page" link and you should be able to see the principal name as "[email protected]" Appendix A Local Kerberos Server Download the zip file https://github.com/kwart/kerberos-using-apacheds/archive/master.zip Unzip the zip file into a directory. Build the package using maven. $ mvn clean package Start the Kerberos Server as $ java -jar target/kerberos-using-apacheds.jar test.ldif A krb5.conf file has been created. Login now using [email protected] $ kinit [email protected] Password for [email protected]: secret Launch Firefox via command line from where the kinit was run On MacOSX $open -a firefox http://localhost:8080/spnego-demo/ Appendix B Kerberos Command Line Utilities klist can be used to see the current kerberos tickets. $ klist Credentials cache: API:501:10 Principal: [email protected] Issued Expires Principal Feb 9 21:19:30 2014 Feb 10 07:19:27 2014 krbtgt/[email protected] kdestroy can be used to clear the current kerberos tickets. References SPNego Demo Web Application: https://github.com/kwart/spnego-demo Kerberos Server using ApacheDS: https://github.com/kwart/kerberos-using-apacheds JBoss EAP 6 http://www.jboss.org/products/eap PicketLink Open Source Project: http://www.picketlink.org Troubleshooting https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/PLINK/SPNego+Support+Questions Remember krb5.conf is important for client side kerberos interactions. You can use a environment variable on Unix/Linux/Mac systems called KRB5_CONFIG to point to your krb5.conf Acknowledgement Darran Lofthouse for the wonderful JBoss Negotiation Project and Josef Czacek for the SPNego-demo and Kerberos_using_Apache DS projects.

Renaming domain names is not supported by Glassfish application server. There is no toolkit or any command available by Glassfish to perform domain name rename. You can choose your desired domain name when you install glassfish 3.x, but Glassfish 4 doesn’t let you choose your desired domain name (auto selecting domain1 for domain name). Without diving into domain configuration files or messing with domain XML files, the rename operation can be done quickly and cleanly. In case another name is required for currently operating Glassfish domain, follow these simple steps: Steps are so easy and simple: 1. Execute asadmin utility of your Glassfish distribution. 2. Stop your domain if it’s running by issuing stop-domain command. 3. Run backup-domain . 4. After executing the backup domain command, your backed up domain is located under glassfish_ home/domains//backups directory a .zip file. 5. Copy the generated .zip backup file to other location. 6. Now delete your existing domain by issuing delete-domain command. Don’t worry you have already backed up your domain settings, remember? 7. Open your backup file, normally packaged as a zip file. Open the backup.properties file and change the domain.name property to your desired name. 8. Save the file and make sure that the modification is applied to your zip file too. 9. Bring up asadmin utility up and issue the following command restore-domain domain1 --filename --force 10. Execute list-domains command to see your domain with its new name. That's it. Your domain name is changed and your settings are restored as well.

I needed to diff some OPML files today and came across this project. Even through it's 10 years old, it still mostly worked and the best part is it's a source distrib... :) The XML Diff and Patch GUI Tool Amol Kher Microsoft Corporation July 2004 Applies to: the XML Diff and Patch GUI tool Summary: This article shows how to use the XmlDiff class to compare two XML files and show these differences as an HTML document in a .NET Framework 1.1 application. The article also shows how to build a WinForms application for comparing XML files. Contents Introduction An Overview of the XML Diff and Patch API XML Diff and Patch Meets Winforms Working with XML DiffGrams Other Features of the XML Diff and Patch Tool Introduction There is no good command line tool that can be used to compare two XML files and view the differences. There is an online tool called XML Diff and Patch that's available on the GotDotNet website under the XML Tools section. For those who have not, you can find it at Microsoft XML Diff and Patch 1.0 [GD: yes, this link is busted... you can download it below]. It is a very convenient tool for those who want to compare the difference between two XML files. Comparing XML files is different from comparing regular text files because one wants to compare logical differences in the XML nodes not just differences in text. For example one may want to compare XML documents and ignore white space between elements, comments or processing instructions. The XML Diff and Patch tool allows one to perform such comparisons but it is primarily available as an online web application. We cannot take this tool and use it from command line. This article focuses on developing a command-line tool by reusing code from the XML Diff and Patch installation and samples. The tool works very similar to the WinDiff utility; it presents the differences in a separate window and highlights them. The XML Diff and Patch tool contains a library that contains an XmlDiff class, which can be used to compare two XML documents. The Compare method on this class takes two files and either returns true, if the files are equal, or generates an output file called an XML diffgram containing a list of differences between the files. The XmlDiff class can be supplied an options class XmlDiffOptions that can be used to set the various options for comparing files. ... Microsoft Downloads - XML Diff & Patch GUI Tool Winforms application that can be used to compare 2 XML files. Version: 1.0 Date Published: 7/14/2004 xmldiffgui.msi, 278 KB This code sample shows how to build a Windows forms application that utilizes the XML Diff & Patch library to show the difference between 2 XML files. There's a bug somewhere in it in that it was giving me an error when trying to load the HTML into an IE window, but that's likely a path thing. In the end, it executed and diff'd the two XML files. And since we do have the source... :) Another blast from the past is that this was available on the old GotDotNet site. I miss that site... :(

dan liebster has been kind enough to send me a real world time series database. the data has been sanitized to remove identifying issues, but this is actually real world data, so we can learn a lot more about this. this is what this looks like: the first thing that i did was take the code in this post , and try it out for size. i wrote the following: int i = 0; using (var parser = new textfieldparser(@"c:\users\ayende\downloads\timeseries.csv")) { parser.hasfieldsenclosedinquotes = true; parser.delimiters = new[] {","}; parser.readline();//ignore headers var startnew = stopwatch.startnew(); while (parser.endofdata == false) { var fields = parser.readfields(); debug.assert(fields != null); dts.add(fields[1], datetime.parseexact(fields[2], "o", cultureinfo.invariantculture), double.parse(fields[3])); i++; if (i == 25*1000) { break; } if (i%1000 == 0) console.write("\r{0,15:#,#} ", i); } console.writeline(); console.writeline(startnew.elapsed); } note that we are using a separate transaction per line , which means that we are really doing a lot of extra work. but this simulate very well incoming events coming one at a time. we were able to process 25,000 events in 8.3 seconds. at a rate of just over 3 events per millisecond . now, note that we have in here the notion of “channels”. from my investigation, it seems clear that some form of separation is actually very common in time series data. we are usually talking about sensors or some such, and we want to track data across different sensors over time. and there is little if any call for working over multiple sensors / channels at the same time. because of that, i made a relatively minor change in voron, that allows it to have an infinite number of separate trees. that means that i can use as many trees as you want, and we can model a channel as a tree in voron. i also changed things so we instead of doing a single transaction per line, we will do a transaction per 1000 lines. that dropped the time to insert 25,000 lines to 0.8 seconds. or a full order of magnitude faster. that done, i inserted the full data set, which is just over 1,096,384 records. that took 36 seconds. in the data set i have, there are 35 channels. i just tried, and reading all the entries in a channel with 35,411 events takes 0.01 seconds. that allows doing things like doing averages over time, comparing data, etc. you can see the code implementing this in the following link .

Since JBoss EAP 6.1 / AS 7.2.0 is modular and you can exclude what modules are visible to your webapp, you would expect it to be easy to ignore the built-in implementation of JAX-RS (Rest Easy 2.3.6) and use a custom one (3.0.6). However, sadly, this is not the case. You are stuck with what the official guide suggests, i.e.upgrading Rest Easy globally – provided that no other webapp running on the server becomes broken by the upgrade. This should be enough to exclude the built-in Rest Easy and be able to use a version included in the webapp: However it is far from working. This nearly does the job (though few of the exclusions might be unnecessary): However, only nearly. The problem is that the exclusion of javax.ws.rs.api has no effect. It seems as the core Java EE APIs cannot be excluded. Dead end. BTW, this are my final jax-rs related dependencies: // resteasyVersion = '3.0.6.Final' compile group: 'org.jboss.resteasy', name: 'jaxrs-api', version: resteasyVersion compile group: 'org.jboss.resteasy', name: 'resteasy-jaxrs', version: resteasyVersion compile group: 'org.jboss.resteasy', name: 'resteasy-jackson2-provider', version: resteasyVersion // JSONP compile group: 'org.jboss.resteasy', name: 'async-http-servlet-3.0', version: resteasyVersion // Required at runtime compile group: 'org.jboss.resteasy', name: 'resteasy-servlet-initializer', version: resteasyVersion // Required at runtime An approximate history of failed attempts I do not remember anymore exactly all the dead ends I went through but here is an approximate overview of the exceptions I got at deployment or runtime. java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServlet30Dispatcher - fixed likely by adding org.jboss.resteasy:async-http-servlet-3.0:3.0.6.Final to the dependencies java.lang.ClassCastException: myapp.rs.RestApplication cannot be cast to javax.servlet.Servlet - fixed likely by adding org.jboss.resteasy:resteasy-servlet-initializer:3.0.6.Final to the dependencies java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ResteasyProviderFactory.(Lorg/jboss/resteasy/spi/ResteasyProviderFactory;)V - fixed likely by adding more of the RestEasy/Jackson modules to the exclusion list java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.jboss.resteasy.specimpl.BuiltResponse.getHeaders()Ljavax/ws/rs/core/MultivaluedMap; - this is the ultimate one that cannot be fixed; the problem is that BuiltResponse from resteasy-jaxrs inherits from javax.ws.rs.core.Response however the version of this class from jaxrs-api-3.0.6.Final.jar is ignored in favour of Response from JAX-RS 1.1 from the javax.ws.rs.api module (/jboss-eap-6.1.0/modules/system/layers/base/javax/ws/rs/api/main/jboss-jaxrs-api_1.1_spec-1.0.1.Final-redhat-2.jar), which lacks the getHeaders method and, as mentioned, cannot be excluded. (Thanks to allprog for hinting at this confilct!) Conclusion The only way to use a newer JAX-RS is to upgrade the JBoss modules. If that would break some other webapps, you are stuck. Lessons learned: Application servers with the plenty of out-of-the-box, well-integrated (?) functionality seem attractive but when you run into conflicting libraries and classloading issues, their value diminishes rapidly. Starting with something simple that you control fully, such as Jettty, is perhaps in the long run a better solution. Also, running multiple webapps on the same server was perhaps smart in 2000 but is not worth the pain nowadays. We have plenty of disk space and memory so reuse of libraries is unimportant and the ability to manage global settings for all apps at one place has certainly better alternatives. Microservices FTW! Update: As Yannick has pointed out , the conclusion seems too general and unjustified. That is because I have arrived to it already before and this problem with JBoss serves only as another confirmation. Solution? Bill Burke has proposed a solution : I’ve lived through your pain and here’s a solution that works on AS7.1.1, EAP6.x, and Wildfly: https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/blob/master/server/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jboss-deployment-structure.xml JBoss Modules don’t suck. The implicit dependencies do. The culprit is the “javaee.api” module which you have missing from your exclude. This module includes every single Java EE API. I haven’t tried, but I think if you reduce your excludes to just that module and the “resteasy” subsystem, it will work. ... FYI, I believe the “javaee.api” module problem is fixed in Wildfly so you won’t have to do the extra exclude.

This article was originally written by Jeff Morris In the introduction to this series, I discussed some of the motivation for rewriting .NET SDK, the goals, objectives and the major features of the upcoming 2.0 release, and we examined the high-level architecture (10,000 feet view) of a Couchbase Server Client SDK. In this post we will go over the design and development of one of the core configuration components of a Couchbase SDK: Server Configuration. Introduction A Couchbase SDK client requires configuration from two sources: the Client Configuration, which defines the IP of the cluster to connect to, number of connections to use and other important information regarding how the client will interact with the cluster, and the Server Configuration, which defines the current state of the cluster (e.g. number of nodes, buckets that are available, etc.), thus driving the internal state of a client (Cluster Map) This post will only discuss the Server Configuration aspects and will largely revolve around implementing several well-defined interfaces or contracts. HTTP Streaming Configuration Currently, most clients use a “bootstrapping” technique via client configuration and a “Streaming Configuration” exposed by the Couchbase REST API. This is supported by versions of Couchbase from 2.2 and back. The usual approach is as follows: Within the “uris” element of a Client Configuration (semantics very per client), a URL is defined for which to start the bootstrapping process: http://[SERVER]:8091/pools The response is then parsed and the a request is made to get the buckets configuration: http://[SERVER]:8091/pools/default?uuid=[UUID] This response is parsed and another request is made to get streaming URL from: http://[SERVER]:8091/pools/default/buckets?v=[VERSION]&uuid=[UUID] Finally, the streaming URL connection is made which is long-lived and raises events in the client with respect to changes in the cluster: http://[SERVER]:8091/pools/default/bucketsStreaming/default?bucket_uuid=[UUID] The client will then change its internal state to match that of the current server configuration. There are some problems with this approach, among others: The “streaming URL” is resource intensive to create and maintain (mainly memory) on the server-side During a rebalance or failover situation, the cluster configuration may change many, many times. Each time this happens the client must tear down all of its resources (socket connections, VBucket mappings) and build its state up again and again, which can leads to reduced throughput, latency, higher than expected memory and CPU usage, and so on and so forth… Operations that are in-flight may be terminated and then re-tried on a new config state – it’s as if the “carpet has been pulled out from underneath them”. Responding to NOT_MY_VBUCKET responses are handled in-efficiently by simple trying the next node in the list – there is no information to help the client in which node to re-direct the operation to. A New Model for Configuration Management: CCCP While the streaming HTTP “bootstrapping” approach has worked reasonably well for most clients, the downsides have begun to outweigh the plusses, thus a new model for updating client configuration has been defined is available starting with the 2.5 version of the Couchbase Server: Client Cluster Configuration Publication or “CCCP”. CCCP introduces a new operation to be used before or after authentication to request configuration as well as a mechanism for returning configuration information when a NOT_MY_VBUCKET response is returned for a failed operation. In this case CCCP supporting SDK, the client will react by using the configuration to update itself before resending the operation. Note that a NOT_MY_VBUCKET is the standard response that is returned by the cluster when the cluster itself has changed (during a rebalance or failover scenario for example) and the client has not yet “synched” up and is using a stale configuration, resulting in an invalid key mapping. Whereas the “bootstrapping” approach is somewhat of a “pull” type operation, CCCP is either “push” or “pull” depending upon whether the request was initiated by the client (via an explicit CMD_GET_CLUSTER_CONFIG operation) or by the server itself (via a NOT_MY_VBUCKET response to an operation). We will go over CCCP in more detail in a later post. File Based Configuration One other semi-supported configuration option exists: file based configuration. File based configuration is primarily useful for testing and development and we will provide an implementation in the test projects to remove some of the dependencies that are difficult to replicate and or cause false positives when running the test suite. Structural Architecture View Internally the Server Configuration component of the client is a provider based model, in which multiple implementations of a configuration provider can be configured in the client and then a strategy can be chosen to determine which provider should be used. The default is a simple linear, fallback approach where the first configured provider is used and then if it fails the next provider in sequence will take its place. Here is a diagram showing the main actor objects and the relationships with some of other key objects within the client which will be discussed in subsequent posts: A description of each follows: ConfigurationProvider: a source which shall yield a new ConfigInfo. It’s the responsibility of the provider to provide the mechanism for fetching the configuration from its source. ConfigurationInformation: the configuration info contains a list of possible nodes and the VBucket map informing clients about which servers within said nodes a given key should be forwarded to. ConfigurationManager: bridge between the client and the providers and the strategy taken to determine which provider to use and what retry logic to apply. A more detailed document of this architecture can be found here. Please note that this, like all development, is an evolutionary process, so expect some changes and revisions over time. Conclusion and Next Steps This post discussed the history (HTTP Streaming) and the future (CCCP) of Couchbase SDK Server Configuration Management. In the next post we will go into detail the implementation of the HTTP Streaming configuration provider which is required for clients targeting pre-2.5 versions of the Couchbase Server.

In this post we will see how to setup a load balanced JBoss or Tomcat environment with the fail-over capability. This post assumes that both Jboss/Tomcat and Apache httpd are setup and running properly. Configure Apache Httpd Step 1: Configure apache’s workers.properties Go to /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra and open workers.properties and configure the properties indicated in bold. # for mapping requests # The configuration directives are valid # for the mod_jk version 1.2.18 and later # worker.list=loadbalancer,status # Define node # modify the host as your host IP or DNS name. worker.node.port=8009 worker.node.host=192.168.0.3 #(IP or DNS name of the server on which Jboss is running) worker.node.type=ajp13 worker.node.lbfactor=1 worker.node2.port=8009 worker.node2.host=192.168.0.4 #(IP or DNS name of the server on which Jboss is running) worker.node2.type=ajp13 worker.node2.lbfactor=1 # Load-balancing behaviour worker.loadbalancer.type=lb worker.loadbalancer.balance_workers=node,node2 worker.loadbalancer.sticky_session=1 worker.status.type=status The property balance_workers is used to specify the nodes to load balance. For example, if we specify only ‘node’, all requests will be routed to the server named ‘node’. Modify this to test that requests are going to both servers. Step 2: Configure mod-jk.conf Go to /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra and open mod-jk.conf and configure the bold properties according to your requirements. #Load mod_jk module # Specify the filename of the mod_jk lib LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.so # Where to find workers.properties JkWorkersFile conf/extra/workers.properties # Where to put jk logs JkLogFile /var/apache/logs/mod_jk.log # Set the jk log level [debug/error/info] JkLogLevel debug # Select the log format JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y]" # JkOptions indicates to send SSK KEY SIZE # Note: Changed from +ForwardURICompat. # See http://tomcat.apache.org/security-jk.html JkOptions +ForwardKeySize +ForwardURICompatUnparsed -ForwardDirectories JkOptions +FlushPackets # JkRequestLogFormat JkRequestLogFormat "%w %V %T" # Mount your applications JkMount /* loadbalancer # You can use external file for mount points. # It will be checked for updates each 60 seconds. # The format of the file is: /url=worker # /examples/*=loadbalancer JkMountFile conf/extra/uriworkermap.properties # Add shared memory. # This directive is present with 1.2.10 and # later versions of mod_jk, and is needed for # for load balancing to work properly # Note: Replaced JkShmFile logs/jk.shm due to SELinux issues. Refer to # https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=225452 JkShmFile /var/run/jk.shm # Add jkstatus for managing runtime data JkMount status Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 The JkMount /* loadbalancer indicates that all requests are to be routed through the load balancer. Step 3: Go to /usr/local/apache2/conf and edit httpd.conf Add Include conf/extra/mod-jk.conf to the end of the file. Configure Tomcat/JBoss These settings need to be made for each of the nodes we intend on placing behind the load balancer. We need to modify the server.xml file which is located at For Tomcat ../apache-tomcat/conf/ For JBoss ../jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/deploy/jbossweb.sar Edit the following tag: where the jvmRoute attribute is configured to ‘node’ (which is the name we gave the first worker while configuring workers.properties.) Next, locate the following tag and edit the port to be the same as while configuring the workers.properties. Configure the other node(s) accordingly. Next, Start Apache httpd and the Jboss/tomcat node(s) that you have configured.

At the end of last year I was playing around with running scheduled tasks to monitor a Neo4j cluster and one of the problems I ran into was that the monitoring would sometimes exit. I eventually realised that this was because a RuntimeException was being thrown inside the Runnable method and I wasn’t handling it. The following code demonstrates the problem: import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import java.util.concurrent.*; public class RunnableBlog { public static void main(String[] args) throws ExecutionException, InterruptedException { ScheduledExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor(); executor.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable() { @Override public void run() { System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " -> " + System.currentTimeMillis()); throw new RuntimeException("game over"); } }, 0, 1000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS).get(); System.out.println("exit"); executor.shutdown(); } } If we run that code we’ll see the RuntimeException but the executor won’t exit because the thread died without informing it: Exception in thread "main" pool-1-thread-1 -> 1391212558074 java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.lang.RuntimeException: game over at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:252) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:111) at RunnableBlog.main(RunnableBlog.java:11) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:601) at com.intellij.rt.execution.application.AppMain.main(AppMain.java:120) Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: game over at RunnableBlog$1.run(RunnableBlog.java:16) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRunAndReset(FutureTask.java:351) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:293) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) At the time I ended up adding a try catch block and printing the exception like so: public class RunnableBlog { public static void main(String[] args) throws ExecutionException, InterruptedException { ScheduledExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor(); executor.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable() { @Override public void run() { try { System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " -> " + System.currentTimeMillis()); throw new RuntimeException("game over"); } catch (RuntimeException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }, 0, 1000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS).get(); System.out.println("exit"); executor.shutdown(); } } This allows the exception to be recognised and as far as I can tell means that the thread executing the Runnable doesn’t die. java.lang.RuntimeException: game over pool-1-thread-1 -> 1391212651955 at RunnableBlog$1.run(RunnableBlog.java:16) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRunAndReset(FutureTask.java:351) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:293) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) pool-1-thread-1 -> 1391212652956 java.lang.RuntimeException: game over at RunnableBlog$1.run(RunnableBlog.java:16) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRunAndReset(FutureTask.java:351) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:293) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) pool-1-thread-1 -> 1391212653955 java.lang.RuntimeException: game over at RunnableBlog$1.run(RunnableBlog.java:16) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRunAndReset(FutureTask.java:351) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:178) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:293) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) This worked well and allowed me to keep monitoring the cluster. However, I recently started reading ‘Java Concurrency in Practice‘ (only 6 years after I bought it!) and realised that this might not be the proper way of handling the RuntimeException. public class RunnableBlog { public static void main(String[] args) throws ExecutionException, InterruptedException { ScheduledExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor(); executor.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable() { @Override public void run() { try { System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " -> " + System.currentTimeMillis()); throw new RuntimeException("game over"); } catch (RuntimeException e) { Thread t = Thread.currentThread(); t.getUncaughtExceptionHandler().uncaughtException(t, e); } } }, 0, 1000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS).get(); System.out.println("exit"); executor.shutdown(); } } I don’t see much difference between the two approaches so it’d be great if someone could explain to me why this approach is better than my previous one of catching the exception and printing the stack trace.

Security has become a great topic of discussion in the last few years due to the recent releasing of documents from Edward Snowden and the explosion of hacking against online commerce stores like JC Penny, Sony andTarget. While this post will not give you all of the tools to help prevent the use of illegally sourced data, this post will provide a starting point for building a set of tools and tactics that will help prevent the use of data by other parties. This post will show how to adopt AES encryption for strings in a Java environment. It will talk about creating AES keys and storing AES keys in a JCEKS keystore format. A working example of the code in this blog is located athttps://github.com/mike-ensor/aes-256-encryption-utility It is recommended to read each section in order because each section builds off of the previous section, however, this you might want to just jump quickly jump to a particular section. Setup - Setup and create keys with keytool Encrypt - Encrypt messages using byte[] keys Decrypt - Decrypt messages using same IV and key from encryption Obtain Keys from Keystore - Obtain keys from keystore via an alias What is JCEKS? JCEKS stands for Java Cryptography Extension KeyStore and it is an alternative keystore format for the Java platform. Storing keys in a KeyStore can be a measure to prevent your encryption keys from being exposed. Java KeyStores securely contain individual certificates and keys that can be referenced by an alias for use in a Java program. Java KeyStores are often created using the "keytool" provided with the Java JDK. NOTE: It is strongly recommended to create a complex passcode for KeyStores to keep the contents secure. The KeyStore is a file that is considered to be public, but it is advisable to not give easy access to the file. Setup All encryption is governed by laws of each country and often have restrictions on the strength of the encryption. One example is that in the United States, all encryption over 128-bit is restricted if the data is traveling outside of the boarder. By default, the Java JCE implements a strength policy to comply with these rules. If a stronger encryption is preferred, and adheres to the laws of the country, then the JCE needs to have access to the stronger encryption policy. Very plainly put, if you are planning on using AES 256-bit encryption, you must install theUnlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files. Without the policies in place, 256-bit encryption is not possible. Installation of JCE Unlimited Strength Policy This post is focusing on the keys rather than the installation and setup of the JCE. The installation is rather simple with explicit instructions found here (NOTE: this is for JDK7, if using a different JDK, search for the appropriate JCE policy files). Keystore Setup When using the KeyTool manipulating a keystore is simple. Keystores must be created with a link to a new key or during an import of an existing keystore. In order to create a new key and keystore simply type: keytool -genseckey -keystore aes-keystore.jck -storetype jceks -storepass mystorepass -keyalg AES -keysize 256 -alias jceksaes -keypass mykeypass Important Flags In the example above here are the explanations for the keytool's parameters: Keystore Parameters genseckey Generate SecretKey. This is the flag indicating the creation of a synchronous key which will become our AES key keystore Location of the keystore. If the keystore does not exist, the tool will create a new store. Paths can be relative or absolute but must be local storetype this is the type of store (JCE, PK12, JCEKS, etc). JCEKS is used to store symmetric keys (AES) not contained within a certificate. storepass password related to the keystore. Highly recommended to create a strong passphrase for the keystore Key Parameters keyalg algorithm used to create the key (AES/DES/etc) keysize size of the key (128, 192, 256, etc) alias alias given to the newly created key in which to reference when using the key keypass password protecting the use of the key Encrypt As it pertains to data in Java and at the most basic level, encryption is an algorithmic process used to programmatically obfuscate data through a reversible process where both parties have information pertaining to the data and how the algorithm is used. In Java encryption, this involves the use of a Cipher. A Cipher object in the JCE is a generic entry point into the encryption provider typically selected by the algorithm. This example uses the default Java provider but would also work with Bouncy Castle. Generating a Cipher object Obtaining an instance of Cipher is rather easy and the same process is required for both encryption and decryption. (NOTE: Encryption and Decryption require the same algorithm but do not require the same object instance) Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding"); Once we have an instance of the Cipher, we can encrypt and decrypt data according to the algorithm. Often the algorithm will require additional pieces of information in order to encrypt/decrypt data. In this example, we will need to pass the algorithm the bytes containing the key and an initial vector (explained below). Initialization In order to use the Cipher, we must first initialize the cipher. This step is necessary so we can provide additional information to the algorithm like the AES key and the Initial Vector (aka IV). cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secretKeySpecification, initialVector); Parameters The SecretKeySpecification is an object containing a reference to the bytes forming the AES key. The AES key is nothing more than a specific sized byte array (256-bit for AES 256 or 32 bytes) that is generated by the keytool(see above). Alternative Parameteters There are multiple methods to create keys such as a hash including a salt, username and password (or similar). This method would utilize a SHA1 hash of the concatenated strings, convert to bytes and then truncate result to the desired size. This post will not show the generation of a key using this method or the use of a PBE key method using a password and salt. The password and/or salt usage for the keys is handled by the keytool using the inputs during the creation of new keys. Initialization Vector The AES algorithm also requires a second parameter called the Initialiation Vector. The IV is used in the process to randomize the encrypted message and prevent the key from easy guessing. The IV is considered a publicly shared piece of information, but again, it is not recommended to openly share the information (for example, it wouldn't be wise to post it on your company's website). When encrypting a message, it is not uncommon to prepend the message with the IV since the IV will be a set/known size based on the algorithm. NOTE: the AES algorithm will output the same result if using the same IV, key and message. It is recommended that the IV be randomly created each time an encryption takes place. With the newly initialized Cipher, encrypting a message is simple. Simply call: byte[] encryptedMessageInBytes = Cipher.doFinal((message.getBytes("UTF-8")); String base64EncodedEncryptedMsg = BaseEncoding.base64().encode(encryptedMessageInBytes); String base32EncodedEncryptedMsg = BaseEncoding.base32().encode(encryptedMessageInBytes); Encoding Results Byte arrays are difficult to visualize since they often do not form characters in any charset. The best recommendation to solve this is to represent the bytes in HEX (base-16), Double HEX (base-32) or Base64 format. If the message will be passed via a URL or POST parameter, be sure to use a web-safe Base64 encoding. Google Guava library provides a excellent BaseEncoding utility. NOTE: Remember to decode the encoded message before decrypting. Decrypt Decrypting a message is almost a reverse of the encryption process with a few exceptions. Decryption requires a known initialization vector as a parameter unlike the encryption process generating a random IV. Decryption When decrypting, obtain a cipher object with the same process as the encryption method. The Cipher object will need to utilize the exact same algorithm including the method and padding selections. Once the code has obtained a reference to a Cipher object, the next step is to initialize the cipher for decryption and pass in a reference to a key and the initialization vector. // key is the same byte[] key used in encryption SecretKeySpec secretKeySpecification = new SecretKeySpec(key, "AES"); cipher.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, secretKeySpecification, initialVector); NOTE: The key is stored in the keystore and obtained by the use of an alias. See below for details on obtaining keys from a keystore Once the cipher has been provided the key, IV and initialized for decryption, the cipher is ready to perform the decryption. byte[] encryptedTextBytes = BaseEncoding.base64().decode(message); byte[] decryptedTextBytes = cipher.doFinal(encryptedTextBytes); String origMessage = new String(decryptedTextBytes); Strategies to keep IV The IV used to encrypt the message is important to decrypting the message therefore the question is raised, how do they stay together. One solution is to Base Encode (see above) the IV and prepend it to the encrypted and encoded message: Base64UrlSafe(myIv) + delimiter + Base64UrlSafe(encryptedMessage). Other possible solutions might be contextual such as including an attribute in an XML file with the IV and one for the alias to the key used. Obtain Key from Keystore The beginning of this post has shown how easy it is to create new AES-256 keys that reference an alias inside of a keystore database. The post then continues on how to encrypt and decrypt a message given a key, but has yet shown how to obtain a reference to the key in a keystore. Solution // for clarity, ignoring exceptions and failures InputStream keystoreStream = new FileInputStream(keystoreLocation); KeyStore keystore = KeyStore.getInstance("JCEKS"); keystore.load(keystoreStream, keystorePass.toCharArray()); if (!keystore.containsAlias(alias)) { thrownew RuntimeException("Alias for key not found"); } Key key = keystore.getKey(alias, keyPass.toCharArray()); Parameters keystoreLocation String - Location to local keystore file location keypass String - Password used when creating or modifying the keystore file with keytool (see above) alias String - Alias used when creating new key with keytool (see above) Conclusion This post has shown how to encrypt and decrypt string based messages using the AES-256 encryption algorithm. The keys to encrypt and decrypt these messages are held inside of a JCEKS formatted KeyStore database created using the JDK provided "keytool" utility. The examples in this post should be considered a solid start to encrypting/decrypting symmetric keys such as AES. This should not be considered the only line of defense when encrypting messages, for example key rotation. Key rotation is a method to mitigate risks in the event of a data breach. If an intruder obtains data and manages to hack a single key, the data contained in multiple files should have used several keys to encrypt the data thus bringing down risk of a total exposure loss. All of the examples in this blog post have been condensed into a simple tool allowing for the viewing of keys inside of a keystore, an operation that is not supported out of the box by the JDK keytool. Each aspect of the steps and topics outlined in this post are available at: https://github.com/mike-ensor/aes-256-encryption-utility. NOTE: The examples, sample code and any reference is to be used at the sole implementers risk and there is no implied warranty or liability, you assume all risks.

In this post I would like to describe how to build a fat JAR using NetBeans IDE.