Notiz-Blog

Kundenwunsch ist nicht gleich Kundenanforderung

2011-11-19T22:20:00.001+01:00

"Der Kunde ist König". Ein sehr wichtiger Spruch im Dienstleistungsgewerbe. Aber gerade im IT-Gewerbe auch ein Spruch der sehr schnell missverstanden werden kann. Oft erlebe ich, dass mit der falschem Herangehensweise und dem einfach eins zu eins umsetzen des Kundenwunsch am Schluss mitnichten ein zufriedener Kunde herauskommt. Damit kann sich dann bei der eigenen Arbeit, die mann nach besten Gewissen und mit besten Absichten durchgeführt hat, natürlich auch keine Befriedigung einstellen. Aber wieso ist das so? Wieso kommt selbst bei engagierten Mitarbeitern und einer guten Kundenorientierung nicht wie selbstverständlich ein gutes Ergebnis für alle Seiten heraus?

Ich will hier mal versuchen mit einem kleinen Gedankenspiel dieses Dilemma anschaulich zu machen.

Gehen wir davon aus, dass wir immer beim selben Bäcker immer die selben hellen, weichen Brötchen kaufen und mit diesen auch sehr zufrieden sind. Bei einem Urlaub gab es auf einmal dunkle knusprige Brötchen die sehr lecker waren und die ich jetzt unbedingt auch von meinem Hausbäcker haben möchte.
Beim nächsten Besuch beim Bäcker nach dem Urlaub, wünsche ich mir einfach von meinem Bäcker dunkler Brötchen. Ich will mein Gefühl vom Urlaub wiederhaben und frage einfach nach Brötchen, die mit etwas dunkler Lebensmittelfarbe überzogen sind. Die dunkle Kruste war das offensichtlichste an was ich ich noch erinnern konnte und da ich keine Ahnung vom Backen habe, ist die Lebensmittelfarbe für mich eine plausible Forderung um zu meinem Wunschergebnis zu kommen.
Der Becker könnte nun meinen Wunsch einfach erfüllen. Ich bekomme was ich will, bin im ersten Moment auch mit dem sichtbaren Ergebnis zufrieden. Zuhause beim Verzehr kommt jedoch die Ernüchterung. Die Brötchen sind einfach nicht knusprig und schmecken so gar nicht nach den Brötchen aus dem Urlaub.
Der Becker könnte jedoch auch Fragen wieso ich das will. Nach meiner Geschichte vom Urlaub mit den knusprigen, dunklen Brötchen würde dieser Bäcker mir am nächsten Tag wohl einfach die Brötchen etwas länger backen. Ich bekomme dann sowohl das sichtbare und auch das geschmackliche Ergebnis, wie ich es mir vorgestellt habe. Obwohl oder gerade weil der Bäcker nicht das gemacht hat, was ich mir von ihm gewünscht habe.

Henry Ford hat dies mal schön in folgendem Ausspruch zusammengefasst

Wenn ich die Menschen gefragt hätte, was sie wollen, hätten sie gesagt schnellere Pferde.

Using cntlm in changing environment with automatic switching

2011-10-25T23:18:00.000+02:00

Cntlm is a proxy manly for enterprise environments. Its stores your credentials to authentificat against the intranet proxy and provides your local apps a simple proxy whithout authentification.

With the update to Ubuntu 11.10 I get the new version 0.91-rc6 of cntlm in the repositories. This main new feature for me is the posibility to define NoProxy direct in the /etc/cntlm.conf. This can be used for two things

1.) Add intranet sites to the NoProxy-List, and your requests to intranet-websites that proxied by cntlm get ntlm-authentification for free. So there is no extra login at your intranet site.

2.) When outsite your intranet, you can change the NoProxy to bypass all requests direct without a parent proxy. So you only have to change the the config of cntlm and not the proxy settings of all your apps when leaving the enterprise intranet. To do this automatic I created a little script in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/setNoProxy.sh

#!/bin/sh
case "$2" in
    up|vpn-up)
          IP=`/sbin/ifconfig  | grep 'inet addr:'| grep -v '127.0.0.1' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $1}'`
          case $IP in
             172.*)
                logger "setNoProxy.sh -set NoProxy for enterprise net"
                NoProxy="NoProxy         localhost, 127.0.0.*, 10.*, 192.168.*,enterprise-intranet"
                ;;
               *)
                logger "setNoProxy.sh - set NoProxy for direct net"
                NoProxy="NoProxy *"
                ;;
            esac
         sudo sed "s/^NoProxy.*$/$NoProxy/g" -i /etc/cntlm.conf
         sudo service cntlm restart
         ;;
esac

Grails Testing - Testing gsp templates

2011-01-21T20:31:00.001+01:00

Sometimes you also have a little logic in your views, maybe some optional rendering or some looping rendering. If so, you may have seen the "Grails Runtime Exception" Page with a Error 500 and you want to add some simple testing to proof your gsp-templates renders correct.

One way to do this use some functional testing, but if you want only test that the gsp renders and check some structure you can do this with build in integration tests.

create new integration test

grails create-integration-test gspRender

change the extend in your test class from GrailsUnitTestCase to GroovyPagesTestCase
create your template you want to test, e.g. a file template.gsp with

Hello ${foo.bar}

use the applyTemplate method from GroovyPagesTestCase to check the correct rendering

void testTemplateRenders() {
def file = new File("grails-app/views/template.gsp")
def result = applyTemplate(file.text,[foo:[bar:"Groovy"]])
assertEquals "Hello Groovy", result
}

another example show, how you can break rendering

void testWithWrongModel(){
def file = new File("grails-app/views/template.gsp")
shouldFail {
applyTemplate(file.text,null)
}
}

run the tests with grails build in test-app

I get this from this post by Rich Marr.

Installing Custom-Rom on Samsung Galaxy under Ubuntu

2010-05-16T19:40:00.000+02:00

I am very happy with my Android Phone, the Samsung Galaxy I7500. But the support from samsung is not the best, somehow for people who wants staying on the bleeding edge and use also linux on her desktop. The official release of the firmware of the galaxy in germany is still based on android 1.5 and for updates you have to connect you phone to a windows pc with a very buggy software.

So i decided to update my phone at least to android 1.6 with the costom roms provided by drakaz. I get managed this without the need of a windows pc, so this will be they prefered way to update my phone (fewer need for windows in a virtual box).

So here is my mini-howto:

1.) Install android-sdk-tools and fastboot:

Download and unzip the android-sdk
Download fastboot
to get the device access able from ubuntu add a udev-rule, i created a /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules and put in:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="04e8", MODE="0666"

if still problemes with connecting the mobile download and replace the original adb binary with this one
i could not manage to get fastboot working under normal user, so my workaround was to start it with sudo

2.) Install Recovery

i use Recovery 4.6.3 from drakaz
follow the instructions on the blogpost

Notes from me:

fastboot modus: turn mobile of and then turn it on with accept+reject/on-off button pressed together
I had to use fastboot with sudo like mention above
after finish make first a "Nandroid backup" of your device

3.) Install Galaxo

download Galaxo 1.6.3.1 from drakaz
download the official JC6-PDA Release
follow the instructions on the blogpost

Notes from me:

use the Galaxo_V1.6.3.1.zip as update.zip
use the I7500XEJC6-PDA-CL209906.tar inside the I7500XEJC6-PDA-CL209906.tar.gz as SAMSUNG.tar
recovery-mode: boot your device with volume down+accept+reject/on-off keys pressed

Usefull Links:

Drakaz homepage
Howto root your samsung under ubuntu
Video-Howto to update your samsung to custom roms (windows, german)

Installing buckminster3.5 headless with subversion support

2010-03-11T19:33:00.000+01:00

Buckminster is a tool from eclipse, where you can automate your builds (and much more if you need). To use it for builds in a continious integretion environment, you have to install it headless first.

To get so, first download the director application, unzip it to a local location and go in this directory:

./director -r http://download.eclipse.org/tools/buckminster/headless-3.5/ -d /home/mirweb/tools/buckminster2/ -p Buckminster -i org.eclipse.buckminster.cmdline.product

After this, go to the $buckminster_dir and continue to setup the additional plugins:

./buckminster install http://download.eclipse.org/tools/buckminster/headless-3.5/ org.eclipse.buckminster.core.headless.feature

./buckminster install http://download.eclipse.org/tools/buckminster/headless-3.5/ org.eclipse.buckminster.pde.headless.feature

./buckminster install http://download.eclipse.org/tools/buckminster/headless-3.5/ org.eclipse.buckminster.aggregator.engine.feature

./buckminster install http://download.cloudsmith.com/buckminster/external org.eclipse.buckminster.subversive.headless.feature

Usefull Links:

Using Spring Annotation in POGO inside Grails

2010-01-19T23:46:00.000+01:00

Accessing services from inside grails-components (controller, other services) is very easy. You get it injected by spring for less.

In my usecase I wanted a service-class injected in a POGO that was located under src/groovy. To get this, you have to manage this POGO livecycle also by spring. I get this working in a easy way with annotation. My POGO looks like this

import org.springframework.stereotype.*
import org.springframework.context.annotation.*;
import javax.annotation.*

@Scope("prototype")
@Component("myBean")
class myBean {
@Resource(name="myGrailsService")
def myGrailsService
..
}

To get a instance of my bean I use the following line, for example in the controller:

def myBean = ApplicationHolder.application.mainContext.getBean("myBean
")

So this bean is managed by spring and the Service myGrailsService is injected and can be used in this POGO in the Grails application. In unit tests I can use a simple mock for the service.

In the release notes of grails 1.2 I read about, that scanning of annotation is enabled by default, but this dosen't work for me. To get the scanning working I had changed the resources.groovy:

beans = {
xmlns context:"http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
context.'component-scan'( 'base-package' :"org.myPackage" )
}

Update:

I get the following hint on the grails user-list instead of using resources.groovy you can set:

grails.spring.bean.packages = ['org.myPackage']

This is explained here.

Adding Groovy & Grails support to Eclipse IDE

2010-01-06T18:53:00.000+01:00

For a long time the support of groovy and grails in eclipse lacks, but also thrugh the support by springsource at the moment I consider it as usable. All you need is to install the groovy plugin and then the STS (Springsource Tool Suite). Becouse at the starting I had a little trouble to get it all working I write this post.

Starting with Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers

downloading it from here, I am using Version 3.5.1 / galileo

Installing Groovy Plugin

go to Help -> Install New Software
add http://dist.springsource.org/milestone/GRECLIPSE/e3.5/ to your "Available Software Sites"
Select this site and install "Groovy-Eclipse feature" (at moment of writing I use 2.0.0RC1)

Install STS Springsource Tool Suite

go to Help -> Install New Software
first add http://download.eclipse.org/tools/ajdt/35/dev/update and http://download.eclipse.org/tools/mylyn/update/extras to your "Available Software Sites" (needed to resolve dependencys)
add http://www.springsource.com/update/e3.5 to your "Available Software Sites"
Install from this Site under Core/STS the "Springsource Tool Suite" and from Extensions/STS the "Springsource Tool Suite Grails Support" (at the moment of writing I use version 2.3.0)

Update for Eclipse 3.6

use eclipse helios package for java ee developer
as update sites in update manager use http://dist.springsource.com/milestone/TOOLS/update/e3.6 and http://dist.springsource.com/milestone/TOOLS/composite/e3.6
than install sts and your extensions again

Using Subversion as central repository for a (existing) git repository

2010-01-03T17:59:00.000+01:00

If you have to use a subversion repository (perhaps of your companys policy) this is possible with git-svn command. In this post I discribe how I import an existing git repostitory to an subversion repository.

assume your existing git working directory and your project lives under ~/workspace/project
make a empty directory on the same directory-level and go to this dir

mkdir ~/workspace/project.svn

assume your subversion is empty and lives under svn+ssh://svn-server/var/local/svn/project
initalize an git-svn repository under project.svn

git svn init svn+ssh://svn-server/var/local/svn/project

git svn fetch

loding your existing git repository in this repository

git fetch ../project

git merge FETCH_HEAD

export your git repositroy to subversion

git svn dcommit

now you can checkout,update and commit with git to your subversion-repository

git svn clone svn+ssh://svn-server/var/local/svn/project

git svn rebase

git svn dcommit

Any hints hardly welcome.