Easter Eggs

1) MS word
Open Microsoft Word and type following
=rand (200,99)
and then HIT ENTER

2) Notepad
Load Notepad in Windows (in my case XP Pro)
Type “bush hid the facts” or “this app can break” or “this api can break” or “this cat can split” or “jane can not dance” or “xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx” (all in lowercase, no quotes)
Save this file under a name of your choice
Re-open the file

Create your own Digg-like site with Pligg beta 8!

Pligg, the widely used open source “Digg-like” CMS, released its long anticipated Beta 8 today. Pligg’s dynamic structure allows users to quickly and effortlessly install and customize their sites. Pligg acts as a framework for many successful sites such as VH1’s Best Week Ever and VideoSift. The community currently consists of over 2,151 members.

read more | digg story

Expand and Collapse table rows / tree structures with Javascript

By using DOM and Javascript we can create Expandable / collapsable tree structures or Tables like below .  Example can be seen here http://myjavaserver.com/~lavanya505/htmls/ExpandCollapse.htm
Example 1:
–Tree
—- SubTree1
—- SubTree2
Example 2:

Code for expanding table rows is as follows.

How to make our locally deployed Web applications available to others

People connected to the same network group can use other’s Local WSAD / tomcat / weblogic server deployed web applications.  For that we need to change the firewall settings like this :- start-> control panel -> firewall settings -> exceptions tab -> add port -> 9080 for WSAD

Publish the web application in local server and send out the link like this http://computerName:9080/WebapplicationName/index.jsp

Struts + Tiles + Dispatcher Action

http://klavanya.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/struts_tiles1.doc

JSPs, JSTL and Custom Tags

The falkner book is the best one to follow while learning jsps. Try out some examples with expressions, scriptlets, directives, Declarations. This is the easiest part in J2EE.

Learn Java Servlets

After Tomcat Setup Download falkner bookand Go through . This is the best book for beginners which is free to download from theserverside.com. Or else Head first Servlets and Jsps By Kathy sierra and Bert Bates is also a good book to start.

Tomcat Installation and Configuration

This is the time taking and tough part while learning J2EE.  For me It took 2 days to figure out which version to download and setting environment variables. My installation failed so many times for various reasons like I did not changed the port number to 8888 first time so when i open the tomcat link with 8080 I saw oracle server page and while setting environment variables. Finally I successfully installed and configured it. Below are the steps for tomcat installation.

JDBC Setup and Writing first program

Prerequisites:
SQL
Core Java

Installing and Configuring stuff…
Oracle Database Setup
1) Download and install Oracle . This will take so much time and also hard disk memory.
2) Brushup basic commands like creating,alter,insert,select, etc
3) you can even try downloading Toad(This tool will expire in 30 days) or Aqual Data Studio (this tool will provide free license for personal use) . In real time projects most of the companies use this kind of tools instead of plain old PL/SQL editor.

SCJP

I cleared this SCJP certification on July 21 2005 with 85%.  I had a little prior real time experience in java.

1) I first used the complete reference book and tried some examples in Eclipse IDE . You can Download Eclipse latest version here. Writing code is a good way to learn and remember the ideas that you find confusing… 

2) After completing(partially, as I can’t take it seriously until a exam/interview) I registered SCJP exam after 2 months starting from that day.

3) I studied Head First Java by kathy sierra and Khalid mughal book for SCJP and practiced examples in first 30 days. If you go to javaranch website , most of them will suggest  K & B Book.

4) Then I tried out as many mock tests  available in remaining time. They should give you a very good idea about the type of questions you must expect on the test.

5) I also read the certification message board on javaranch from the beginning.