Is Microsoft really Evil?

No I don’t hate Microsoft, in fact in areas where they have good competition I love their products. I own a X-Box 360 and purposefully decided on one over the PS3. After buying a new Logitech mouse I went back to my comfortable Microsoft one within a week.

But yes, I will admit in areas where Microsoft has a monopoly, I have always had a huge grudge against them and thought they were evil. Yes you guessed it I don’t like Windows. In fact I’m not alone, many other people all around the world will constantly complain about the dominant operating system but yet somehow Microsoft managed to keep Windows as the only real choice for most people. Or did they? Many people might believe Windows's monopoly is due to Microsoft’s good marketing or maybe their strategy to lock you into their products, and I have no doubt that they try to get people in every way possible to use their products, but lately I don’t think that Windows has monopoly because of Microsofts own cunning plans, no I rather think its because of other companies and developers who is in no way affiliated with Microsoft. Read further to hear my story and I’ll explain why..

I am an Oracle developer, and about 10 months ago I took the big step and bought a Macbook Pro. The experience so far has been awesome, the hardware is stunning, and all the software by Apple, or software made for the Mac are all incredible. The problem I have is with multi platform software, or the lack of certain software.

One of the biggest reasons that made it possible for me to move away from Windows was the fact that Oracle Jdeveloper and Oracle SQL developer (the 2 major applications I use for work) both have a Mac version. After already buying my new notebook I realized that the Mac version of Jdeveloper has a major known bug in the BPEL module (which I use a lot) which forces me to either use the Windows version in a virtual machine, or have to use many workarounds to get by. (See http://marinussnyman.blogspot.com/2009/03/usingoraclebpelonmacosxleopard.html) On Oracle’s support site under this bug logged the response from the developer is something like “can’t look at problem since he has no Mac hardware to reproduce the error on”). The bug has been there for more than 2 years. Oracle SQL developer is much better, but even so when my network connection drops, the application just hangs, something that never happens on the Windows version.

Ok, so that’s Oracle, but that’s just one company, but there are many more examples. Lets look at a few. Skype is a great example, their latest official release for the Mac is 2.7 (Windows is 4.0) and even though it has all the major features, its still way behind the Windows version on things like games, screen sharing and more. This is quite strange to me since all Mac’s come with a build in webcam I would think it’s quite a big audience for them? Another application that’s missing from the Mac is from the big Microsoft hater, Google. Yes even though you can use Google Talk through iChat or Adium, if you want to transfer files with your Windows buddies on you have to look elsewhere. In fact, I turned to Messenger for Mac to send files to a lot of friends since even Microsoft’s IM worked better on the Mac than Google’s!

Now, lets look at the open source world. Big Microsoft hater’s right? Well, I have a problem with a bug in Firefox where the Home / End key’s don’t work in certain sites (including Gmail) and it’s a known bug on the Firefox site since 2006! (I have to use a external tool to fix it) I’m sure if there was a bug like this in the Windows version, it would have been a mayor priority to get it fixed right away!

Now, I’m in no way saying I will go back to Windows, and I still love Mac OS X. But for most people its just pain easier to stick to Windows, and know their software will work, and when a bug arrives in the Windows version it will get priority over other OS version’s. Sad, but true.. :-( What do you think?

SQL*Plus command history on Mac OS X

Anyone who has tried and use SQL*Plus on Unix would have seen that its quite frustrating since it does not have a command history function under Linux and Unix. When you try to use the ‘up’ key, you get something like this:
However there is a utility called rlwrap that can help us fix this problem. rlwrap is a readline wrapper for shell commands which uses input from the controlling terminal. It adds a persistent input history for each command and supports user-defined completion.

Here are the steps to install rlwrap on Mac OS X:

1. Download Macports from http://darwinports.com/ (If you don't have it already)
2. Install macports.
3. Update macports. Go to /opt/local/bin and type the following:

sudo ./port -d selfupdate

4. Install rlwrap with the following command (You will see it will install some dependencies too):

sudo ./port install rlwrap

5. Add the following line to your .bash_profile:

alias sqlplus='/opt/local/bin/rlwrap sqlplus'

6. Launch SQL*plus as usual and use rlwrap to access your sql history!

Using Oracle BPEL on Mac OS X ­ Leopard

There is some irritating bugs in Jdeveloper 10134 and the use of BPEL on Mac OS X - Leopard. Here is what they are, and how I fixed / or got workarounds for them:

The first and biggest problem is not being able to drag a Service from the Component Palette into the BPEL Process diagram. You also can't drag in functions in your transformations. This is quite frustrating since it is a known bug on metalink, but not yet fixed. (Bug Number 6924432) Well there is a easy workaround for the BPEL process diagram. You can right­click on any of the Process Activities and go to Insert After ­> Activities ­> Activity.

But what if you created a Empty BPEL process? Whell then you'll have to go to the source and add a empty node (<empty/>) to get you started.

Its just as easy to add a Partnerlink. Right­-click in the Services area of the screen, and select Create new Partnerlink.

On the transformation side of things it's not quite that easy to work around. The best solution I could come up with is to add the functions directly to the source code in the source tab.

You can then switch back to the Design view and see your code.

This might not be the best solution, but will centainly work and enable you to create BPEL processes without VMware or Parallels. And will definitely improve your xsl knowledge.. ;­-) You can also right­click­ ->Help on a function to get information on how to use it.
The second problem I experienced was that my jdeveloper kept crashing when I wanted to edit a partnerlink. I tried changing the JDK versions it used with no luck. What I found was, as soon as I open jdeveloper I "create a partnerlink" but click cancel right afterwards. Why this worked for me, I don't know, but it certainly solved my problem.
The third and last issue I had was that when launching jdeveloper it doesn't close the terminal

window. What I did to fix that was to add the JDeveloper directory to my PATH environment variable and then launch jdeveloper with the following command:

jdev &exit

This will exit the terminal window after opening JDeveloper. To add the JDeveloper ditectory to your path open your .bash_profile file and add the following line:

export PATH=$PATH:"/Applications/jdevstudio10134/jdev/bin"

Hope this post will help you use BPEL on Mac OS X Leopard!