• Usual back ups at site
• Production server still was not working when I got in.  Sent out and email checking on the status.  Right before I left I checked the site again and it worked!  No word from anyone but I sent an email out thanking everyone who I contacted and letting them know it was now working.
• Now that the production server is up and running I’m working on new index and information pages for the visibility suite.  One page will have a banner declaring it the test site and urging people to the production site.

4.25

• Usual backups in the morning
• I came in to find my help ticket for getting connectivity to our production server closed as ‘resolved.’  The server was still unreachable.  Luckily a very nice lady from the customer advocate office asked to confirm the the issue was in fact resolved.  She helped me get the ticket reopened.
• A guy who saw the email chain from earlier this week and last is trying to help me diagnose the firewall issue.  He asked me to run a continuous ping to the production server so I wrote a batch file that pings and queries port 443 on the production server ever 5 seconds until stopped.  Unfortunately he’s not responding today.
• While waiting I decided to verify that the CASPORT servlet filter I wrote will work on the production server.  I was mostly worried that connectivity to CASPORT would be a problem.  The library and  test servlet deployed without a problem.  This is probably the most valuable library I’ve ever written: “CASPORT enable your webapp in 5 minutes.”
• Continuing the spring-security tutorials

4.26

• Backups
• The firewall guy is back and responding to my emails.  Started the ping for him and he said he would investigate.  No word back after several hours of waiting and email stating I was about to stop the ping.
• Back at the mill learning about spring-security.

• Usual backups at site
• My proxy issue ticket is bouncing around from team to team, hopefully someone who knows what is going wrong eventually reads it
• Back at the mill looking in to the Spring Security frames, lots of tutorials
• http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2010/12/securing-gwt-apps-with-spring-security.html
• http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/start-here.html

• Backups at site
• Finished acquiring and building the new PKI Certificate for the production server.  I tested that it works by using it to connect to the authentication server and retrieve some user credentials.  I deployed it to the production web server but it did not fix the connectivity problem.
• Phil gave me his port checker program and I tested connectivity with the production server.  As expected the server responds as listening on port 443 whether or not the webserver is up.  This pretty much confirms there is a proxy issue.
• Back at the mill reading about GWT security and user authentication.  Here are some useful articles:
• Security for GWT Applications
• GWT Login Security FAQ
• Basics of GWT Authentication
• Authentication using servlet filters (general method I used for flex auto-login)
• GWT and Spring Security

• Usual backups at site
• The PKI site was back up so I was able to access the signed cert.  Couldn’t figure out how to construct the .jks file from it, Phil said he would show me on Monday.
• No word from the firewall people.
• Back at the mill reading about Maven best practices and general java naming conventions

• Usual backups at site
• No word on my help ticket regarding the production server connectivity
• Since the production server IP address changed I decided to get it a new PKI Cert in hopes that might resolve the issue.  I applied for it yesterday, it was approved, and today the download site is unreachable.
• Back at the mill looking at GWT Calendar widgets from various libraries

• Usual backups at site
• The firewall team replied to my help desk request saying the firewall is open just fine because their firefox responds with a generic SSL error when trying to connect to our production server.  I recreated their results both with our webserver on and off and asked how it could be an SSL issue if the server is not even on and firefox reports the same error.  Waiting for a reply…
• Back at the mill, tried checking in my log changes to svn and it wouldn’t go.  So I deleted my sandbox project, redownloaded the latest checked in version, and redid all my changes: checks in fine now.
• Added a cursor example page to my sandox, clicking buttons changes the cursor to various options: default, wait, help, hand, etc.

• Usual backups this morning
• Someone got back to me about my help ticket concerning connectivity to our production machine.  They believe the firewall change request was not correctly filled so they are checking with the firewall team and will get back to me
• Back at the mill incorporating Dong’s gwtLogger in to my sandbox to try it out, local log works well so far
• Helped Dong build my sandbox so he can check out my hibernate usage

• Usual backups at site
• No word back from the firewall person, submitted a new ticket assuming the firewall port is open but something else is wrong
• Contacted by Jessica R. with a COGNOS data dictionary (approx. 3,500 rows) briefly describing every field available in the COGNOS database.  She suggested I go through and and try to match up their tables / columns with ours.  I looked at it briefly and then requested access to the actual data to make it less of a guessing game.
• Back at the mill looking at AspectJ examples
• Also reviewing the additions made to GWT in Action

• Server backups this morning
• Heard back about my firewall change request,  apparently it has been implemented but I was still unable to connect to the server.  I asked where else the connection may be getting blocked and he said he would get back to me.
• At the mill learning about AspectJ, an AOP extension for Java, as I have run in to it in a number of examples.  It looks pretty neat so far.

• Usual server backups
• My firewall change request was approved but not implemented yet
• Still working on connection Hibernate and MySQL through a RequestFactory, lots of dependency issues.  A few notes:
• As of GWT 2.4, in order to use RequestFactories a 3rd part validator must be run as part of the build process: link
• There’s a class loader issue with Hibernate 4.0+ and the GWT jetty dev server.  There are a few workarounds:
• Revert to Hibernate 3.6
• Don’t use the dev server and simply deploy to something like tomcat or jboss
• It works, doesn’t use best practices, but it works.

• Usual backups at site this morning
• Fixed an issue with Tomcat on the production server, it seemed to be stopping whenever I logged off.  Not that i can tell since the port is closed but it was not running when I would log off / back on.  Now it does.
• The DNS issue has been resolved, my firewall change request is still pending
• Denise P. emailed me asking for documentation on “installing casport and pki enabling” a server.  I responded with links to each groups list of instructions and she seemed happy with that.
• Back at the mill working on linking up my gwt widget to my hibernate managed database using a GWT RequestFactory service layer, so far it compiles but that’s about it

• Usual back ups this morning
• Our SSP got a 1-month extension so it did not expire today.  As far as I know I have completed everything I’m responsible for.  There was a flurry of emails going around about tasks for other people.
• Finally heard back from the help center about our production server.  I can’t connect to it via HTTPS for several reasons…
• The DNS is pointing to the wrong IP address and the tech doesn’t know how to fix that but is sure someone else does
• I need to submit a ticket to the production firewall team and have a exception put in.  The firewall team is a completely separate group than the person who is answering my ticket
• So I submitted a firewall exception request
• I contacted Allen N., the guy who set up our VMs originally last May, and asked him about the DNS problems.  He helped me submit several more tickets to get that resolved.
• Back at the Mill I was able to create, save, and reload some hibernate java objects
• Looked back at some old Dynamic Hibernate stuff for Phil: closet full of wheels

• Usual backups this morning
• Contacted the help center at site to check on the status of my ticket requesting the production server to be opened up…. they will be back to me (I believe the person I spoke to submitted a ticket to check on the status of my ticket)
• Back at the mill working on a fully wired SuggestionBox (user types in a text input, as the user types the incomplete entry is sent to the server and queries the database for possible results, then the matches are displayed below the text input on the client).
• I started with a very basic implementation that generated suggestions on the client
• Now I’m going to try starting at a hibernate managed database table and work my way to the client

• Usual backups this morning
• Figured out how to upload my server vulnerability scan to the SSP documents and immediately received questions from people asking “how did you do that?”
• Back at the mill working on GWT things: Finished my sandbox framework, simply a framework site for displaying and testing simple components
• Added a built in gwt SuggestBox to my sandbox just to make sure it works
• Played around with an autocomplete demo found here and implemented it in my sandbox