setup a trading network

Has been long time for not blogging here as I need to blog a lot on company's wiki. Anyway, Yesterday, I was trying to setup trading network using sql server 2005 express. This is an experience that I want to share here. The first time, I tried to setup this, I always have an error about unable to retrieve data from PartnerUser. While, indeed this table does not exist in the WM database. I was googling and find that I need to setup a table for DB and of course I did that as someone's advise in some forum (definitely, WM forum).

Setting up tables do not work using a tool DB config. I am not really sure why was it happening and of course, the tables needed are not created. After struggling enough using this tool, I initiated myself to create the tables manually using the scripts which are provided with the distribution of this tool. Yeah, I could make. But.... hold on. There were a new error coming up. What the....... The error saying that it could not find an object named component_event.




I was checking on the WM database, and it was there. I was questioning myself "what's wrong with this expensive and enterprise tool? Is this really an enterprise tool?". I almost gave up. I tried to reinstall all of the stuffs in WM and try to recreate DB. All the things were nothing, just the same error. After long time thinking. I suspected collation problem in the DB. Yeah, indeed this was the culprit. I need to create a new database which collation is case insensitive. After doing this changes, creating script using db config was going so smooth like a charm. Trying to login to trading network is working so smooth as well without any error message.

friend's conversation

Yesterday, my friend asked me to attend conversation with customer. This session was meant to improve my skill on providing consulting. There are several things that I caught of being consultant.

1. Understand Customer's problem.
   This is very important and also the thing that most of the people and me, are missed. Understanding what problem they have and based on the well defined problem that they have. Consultant will try to think about what actually the solution is.
   
   Most of the time Customer tries to explain what are their problem, but they usually are not well organized on telling all of your problem. Thus, it is job of consultant to manage them. For example: they tell that they have a problem of documenting certain project, they want to have a tool to document a project is available and published in internet and bla...bla..bla and maybe they want everything in the tool. As a consultant, Consultant needs to drive him to the correct path. What actually their problem is, dont let them navigate you. Filtering the problem and prioritizing their problem based on their business is very important so that we can solve their problem and of course it will make their business successful.
   
   
2. Manage customer to the correct path.
   As I explain, most of the time customer tells you all of the thing they need, all of the problem that they have, but they tells you in unwell organized. This is job for consultant to manage their problem and solve their problem.
   
   
   Navigate them is very important for consultant so that we can limit and focus on their problem which relates to their business. If consultant is driven by customer, the solution of the problem will take a long time to implement and of course the impact is customer's business will slow down as probably their problems are too much to solve. Thus, filtering and managing the problem are very important to do in the world of consultancy.
   


3. Use a communicative way to communicate with customer.
   Yeah, maybe for some people, this is quite difficult to do. You get to communicate what is in your mind to customer, communicate what is the solution to customer. Communication is playing the important role of providing consultancy. The above activities which I have explained, would be useless if the way we communicate to customer is not understandable. Structuring the problem, structuring the solution are also part of well communication. You could use any media to communicate your solution. This is a tentative way to do and seems to depend on the situation. There may be a customer wants to have a slide to elaborate the problem and explain the solution or maybe there is another better media to communicate them.

If there is something that I miss or wrong, It would be great for those who read this blog to give me a feedback, I appreciate it much.

maven

i am back to blog now after resting. This week, i am learning maven. A simply build tool to make easy developing your project. All of the capability that Ant has, is provided by maven with a simply way. In this blog, I will state steps that I have gone through (even not detail :P) to build a project using maven and building maven's plugin.

There are several terms that we need to understand about maven:

• repository, maven installed in your machine has 2 repositories (by default). First is in your local, the second is in remote server (ibiblio). repository is used for storing third party plugins needed by your project.
  
• lifecycle. Lifecycle in maven comprises several phases (by default). Take a look at this url. You can bound one or more task to certain phase as you like. You can also bound plugin task to any phases in maven's life cycle.
  

The first thing that you need to do is creating a maven's project. Execute the following command:

mvn -DgroupId=group -DartifactId= artifact

The above command will execute plugin which belongs to group and in artifact . You will see the plugin in your repository, take a look on your repository. If this is the first time you do a maven, maven should download the necessary file to your local repository.

The other interest thing about maven is the existent of plugin. Using plugin, you can customize maven's behavior. The purpose of having plugin is to have additional goal. The goal will be attached in certain lifecycle that has been defined in maven.

data source class used by IS to connect to database

Today, I am exploring webmethods regarding JDBC adapter. In my local machine, I have only 2 DBMS, which are MySQL and sql server 2005 express edition. Huehuehue.... as you know they are free and I can learn a lot from a free thing :P. Anyway, I had a problem today regarding connection to those DBMS.

This blog tells you about data source class that I use to create connection to MySQL and SQL server 2005 express edition.

However, I was trying to find out what is the class to connect to MySQL and sql server. I found a site talking about it. It says that I need to put datasource class like the following and it works fine:

com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource

However, I still could not find any site saying about SQL server 2005. Then, I look around to jar file and I found the following class:

net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbcx.JtdsDataSource