Dynamic graphing in the web world

Instead of studying for my midterm, I am sitting here wondering if there is a way to create and interact with dynamic graphs in the web-based world. I don't know of too many things that are even out there that behave in the manner I envision, apart from perhaps the charts in google finance.

What I want to accomplish can be done using Swing and Java. I suppose I could create an applet that allows you to interact with the data and do things with it. My main motivation for having the ability to interact with data is the following use-case. 

Where I work, we use an HP tool called LoadRunner. It has a fairly useful (if sometimes annoying) tool called LoadRunner Analysis. This tool allows you to dynamically select regions of the various graphs it displays to the end user and then does stuff (in this case, updates the data you see to align with the regions of the graph you selected). Data it presents includes things like averages of whatever you happen to be looking for on the graph, max, mins, that sort of thing. 

We also have similar data externally. One example is the verbose GC logs of the JVM we use. It would be useful if I could find a way to graph the data in a reasonable manner and then interact with it by highlighting regions of interest and then finding out for example when the last full GC was or what the average time is between two young GCs or how much space on average is gained after a full GC in that selected time-frame. 

I suspect something like the dynamic 2D graphs that google finance uses would be sufficient to do most of this work, but I have never seen it used anywhere else before. So, does anyone know what I am talking about and how to go about implementing it?

Trying to use the Java plugin in Firefox

I've been trying forever to get the Java plugin to work on Firefox on Linux. There is an Ubuntu specific way to do it but I don't want to use apt to install it. My JDK is installed in /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_18.

So how do I do it? Used to be, you could go into the mozilla/plugins folder and you link the libjavaplugin_oji.so from the jre/plugins folder. Except no such file exists on my installation of the JDK. After searching on google and looking at official documentation from Oracle/Sun, I saw others have it... but not me. Turns out that my JDK is 64-bit and the setup is different. From one of the Oracle/Sun forums, I noticed that the name and path to the plugin are now different on the 64-bit version of the 1.6 JDK.

So, in my case, the plugin is located at

/usr/local/jdk1.6.0_18/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

and by creating a symbolic link to it in ~/.mozilla/plugins, I have access to the Java plugin now. I needed that to use webex on my Ubuntu machine.

How do I set JAVA_HOME in Ubuntu so it works

I recently installed Ubuntu 9.04. And then I installed eclipse. I am trying to start it from an icon (yes, its via an icon... don't judge!) and am having an issue with setting the JAVA_HOME and PATH variables correctly.

When I kick off from a bash shell, the PATH is correct. But not from the panel in gnome. Of course, in the bash shell, I have both those variables set in ~/.bashrc. However, when I log in via the gdm, that file does not get read. I am trying to figure out what file gets read when I login so I can set the JAVA_HOME variable. I tried adding it to /etc/environment file, but I am at a loss as to how to add $JAVA_HOME/bin to the $PATH variable. For now, I start eclipse via the icon using

/usr/local/eclipse -vm /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_13/bin/java

and that works just fine for me...

Do I need the Java EE editor to work with Tomcat

I am pretty certain that all I have at work is a regular Java IDE and I am able to muck about with Tomcat... mind you, I don't deploy anything onto Tomcat via a 'Server' option. So, how come I can't do that easily with my regular IDE? I tried to install the Java EE development patches via Eclipse and it threw an error at me. I've seen the same requirement for some glassfish tutorials I was following before.

Is it because of that 'Server' feature that I need the EE version of Eclipse? I don't mind installing it, I was just curious. Anyone know?

Hello World BlackBerry Storm Style

As with any new development project, one starts off with a simple 'Hello World' application. And so it is with the BlackBerry and Java code on it. I had a bunch of trouble getting the BlackBerry Eclipse plugin to work properly with Eclipse, but after installing, un-installing and generally cursing the damn thing a few times, I got it to work. I think the big trick was to understand that there are 2 things one needs to install:

• The BlackBerry JDE plugin for Eclipse and
• The BlackBerry Component pack (4.5.0, though I was able to build for the 4.7 device...)
  

A separate post on getting the JDE plugin to work and some questions related to that shortly. For now, here's how I got Hello World to work... I followed the instructions from the Thinking Blackberry blog. Below are the screenshots on the 5930 device running the 4.7 OS. There is also the helpful video put out by the BlackBerry folks themselves that I used as well.

Mobile Application Development

Anyone ever done application development for the mobile platform? I think I've got something going on for the RIM platform. So far, I've got few details that I am not allowed to share... but I have eclipse setup and started working on getting familiar with the RIM Java development tools. I am excited. I've been down this path before and failed. And it was a rough loss.

We (a few other friends) used to sit and wonder at what all we did wrong. We moved on to do other things. One of us works for a search engine, another does QA for a network device manufacturer, another is a Requirements person (he uses terms like MRD). We've learned a tonne since we tried the last time. I think we've learned a lot about how to make businesses work. I just hope we learn a tonne more soon... and succeed. More details to follow. Wish us luck.

How does one go about documenting complex tools?

I am now writing Java code (hooray for me) and playing around with Ant as part of my work. It isn't entirely tout le monde type stuff but it isn't anything spectacular. Yet. So, to my (much disappointed) audience, I ask, how does one go about learning about any system that is full of things one has little idea of? I learn by trying things and documenting them... but where do I start? From top down? From bottom up? What if I don't know where the bottom is?

Also what are the rules about changing someone else's work? Do you just go ahead and change things willy-nilly? Is there such a thing as respecting someone else's creations and working around them?

Oh, so many questions!