python manage.py syncdb 

I got this exception

 .......

backend = load_backend(db['ENGINE'])
  File "c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\db\utils.py", line 33, in load_backend
    return import_module('.base', backend_name)
  File "c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\utils\importlib.py", line 35, in import_module
    __import__(name)
  File "c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\db\backends\mysql\base.py", line 14, in
    raise ImproperlyConfigured("Error loading MySQLdb module: %s" % e)
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Error loading MySQLdb module: No module named MySQLdb 

I was using Python 2.7 , so the solution was to use the MySQL Python connector. I downloaded it from here

After , I Installed the MySQL Python Connector, I created the MySQL database,(make sure you commit it) This seemed to work fine.

 $ python manage.py syncdb
Creating tables ...
Creating table auth_permission
Creating table auth_group_permissions
Creating table auth_group
Creating table auth_user_user_permissions
Creating table auth_user_groups
Creating table auth_user
Creating table auth_message
Creating table django_content_type
Creating table django_session
Creating table django_site

You just installed Django's auth system, which means you don't have any superusers defined.
Would you like to create one now? (yes/no): yes
Username (Leave blank to use 'test'):
E-mail address: test@gmail.com
Password:
Password (again):
Superuser created successfully.
Installing custom SQL ...
Installing indexes ...
No fixtures found. 

Hopefully this helps.

mysqld –install followed by mysqld –start

After executing the above commands, I had issues while trying to connect to mysql prompt.

ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘localhost’ (10061)

I went to services UI and started the MySQL Service. Then i was able to get into MySQL Prompt

This error happens If you are working on a 64 bit operating system and pointing to a 32 bit library.

So this is how your environment variables should look like.

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
ORACLE_HOME=/x/home/oracle/product/11.2.0.1
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib64:$PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib64
export ORACLE_HOME
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export PATH 

This will fix the issue.

vi /etc/oratab 

You can find the installation directory of the oracle instance here.

It gives me a perspective on what people are searching for. I typed in “Ayodhya Verdict” and this is what I got.This is pretty similar to trending topics on twitter. I wonder how useful will this be the end user. I want relevant results, I’m least bothered about how normal I’m.  Let’s see where google goes from here. They seem a little clueless.

I was really amazed how people can inspire methodologies from real world activities. I remember playing Mikado ( we used to call it something else, I can’t remember) during my school days. Then, it was just a game, now it makes a world of sense in the software world.

I have come across many people, who even after years of experience in the industry, they are scared to do some re-factoring. There are always two reasons to it,

• The code is so messed up, they don’t want to go through the pain of re-factoring it.
• There was not enough tests, that becomes the safety-net when someone is trying to re-factor. (No one wants to be in the bad books of their bosses by breaking the Build )

For the people who fall into the former category, Re-factoring approaches will help them feel more comfortable . Few of the re-factoring approaches are listed here. I always use divide and conquer approach for most of the scenarios that I face on the work.

One such approach is Mikado. Where you define your re-factoring goal using a graph and find the dependencies, till you reach the leaf node. Once you reach the leaf node, You can start re-factoring from the leaves, till you reach the goal. It makes a lot of sense to me. Here is how Mikado works,

The double lined node is the re-factoring goal. To read more on the mikado approach read up on prag-prog (Awesome resource).

Like Mikado? Read more by downloading this book

I have been working on functional test automation for the API’s at work. We are using SoapUI for the automation of the functional tests. We wanted to invoke the test suite from the Junit test. When  I was trying to call the test case from JUnit. Strangely, I found that the test cases with JDBC steps failed.

Reason for failure :

NoClassDefFoundError: java/sql/SqlFeatureNotSupportedException

After some research online, this is what I found out.

I was using Jdbc drivers for Java 6 and I was compiling my code with Java 5. So changing my project settings to use Java 6 libraries and making the Java compiler as Java 1.6 Compiler did the trick.

I hope this helps someone out there. Let me know, If I made your day.

I was working on doing some Proof of concept for Functional Testing using SOAP UI Pro. I have got the Proof of Concept ready, But I was not leaning towards another long meeting, where people get tired of listening. So I got an idea of creating some screencasts of what I did. So that it will help our QA guys get started soon. And, Also this was the first time, I was trying to do some screen cast, So I’m excited.

• Jing (Free Version – 5 Minutes videos only allowed -Allows you to create only SWF file (sigh) )
• Copernius (No Audio)
• ScreenCast-O-Matic (Yet to Try)

Since I use Mac OSX, the screen cast softwares that was available to me was  Jing and Copernicus.

I started using Jing and later realized, it allows me to create only 5 minutes videos in the free version of the software. I was not happy, But, I created small parts of the video, which might help viewers who have short attention spans. . And  also it allows me to create only swf videos (Sigh).

Copernicus was also something that I considered using, But, to my surprise it did not support Audio recordings. I was like, What the hell.

Anyways, For a first time novice, Jing solved me the problem of creating screen casts on Mac OSX. There was also another Software, that I did not have to time to check out. It was ScreenCast-O-Matic , its a Java based tool. I should try it, when I have time. May be then I can create some lengthy videos.

When I started searching. This link gave me the heads up on what I can look for .

Try Ruby. Takes you from a novice to not a novice level

My problems aside… Let’s get to the point.

I wanted to learn ruby on rails. oof.. the moment I said this. There were people saying.. oh another Web framework. But, I have done my research and I’m gonna learn Ruby on Rails.
So let’s start.
Where to start?
Installation of Ruby on Mac OS X 10.5 :

You can install Ruby on Rails on Mac OS X using GEM . What is GEM?

Gem is a package manager for Ruby on Rails. In Short its like a exe or dmg for Ruby programming language. All the libraries and sources are installed properly by gem.

Mac comes with Gem installed ( Which I was unaware of, after some reading, I found that out). But, I faced a problem while trying to install ruby with gems.

I issued the following command to install rails.

gem install rails

I got an error stating,

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteSourceException)
    HTTP Response 301 fetching http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml

After doing some research online, I found that, may be my gems installation was out of date. So I decided to install gem.
I downloaded RubyGems1.3.7

1) Unzip the tar.

2) cd path/to/rubygems1.3.7

3) sudo ruby setup.rb

After installing the fresh copy of Ruby gems, I was able to install rails by issuing

sudo gem install rails

Rails ready to go.