Didn't pass

I didn't pass the exam for the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 6 Platform SE6. The training class taught me a lot and gave me the motivation to continue my studies.. There's another class that I can take in September at no cost. I've already signed up for that class and will continue my studies.

It would be nice to have a job where the basics of Java programming would be put to use and that would help fill in the missing pieces in my knowledge of the basics. Instead, I get to go back to seeing what kind of GIS portlets I can dream up.

I was successful this week in getting the portlet to work that makes a WFS call for World Port Index data that's loaded on one of our team's virtual servers. The feature data is displayed on an Open Layers map. I resurrected another portlet that queried a local instance of a Geonames.org lookup service compiled from code written by a developer on the team. That query returns KML data and displays it on an OpenLayers map.

The KML portlet could only work on my local machine because the service was running locally. I thought I would make an attempt to get the same service running on the virtual server. Not a trivial task, given the lapse in time from when I had been working on this before. I needed some way to get the WAR file to the remote server. At first I thought I could just use the GlassFish admin console through a browser and upload the file. But then I realized the virtual server was not letting that port be accessed remotely. I recalled that when this issue came up months ago the process was to use VNC to get to the server, bring up a browser locally on the server and get to the Admin console from there.

When I tried VNC it wouldn't let me in. I figured out that since this office had recently changed their network setup it was likely that I was now getting out of here with a different IP address. Sure enough, that was the case. It took several email exchanges with the admin person on the other end but we finally managed to get VNC working again from here to there.

Next problem--When you upload a WAR file from the GlassFish Admin console the browse option only lets you look for something on the local machine. Now I was back to square one. How to get the WAR file from here to the remote server? The solution that I finally came up with was to use GEOINT Online. Who would ever have imagined that the GEOINT Online SharePoint site would be useful for anything technical? Turns out the Document Sharing feature in one of my communities allows me to upload a file. So I upload the file from here to the community, go to the browser on the remote server, log in to GEOINT Online, find the Shared Document on my community and download it. Pretty cool.

After all of that, the GeonamesDotOrgLookupService actually does work on the virtual server. Now I can retrieve the KML file across the network and not just from my local machine. Next step is to think about what wonderful things that will allow me to demonstrate in my GIS portlets.