Simple Testing

A while ago I've upgraded my whole development AS infrastructure to 10.1.2.3, after the upgrade SSO stopped working. Since SSO (at least mine) tends to be a bit fragile, I sighed with a familiar feeling that this is going to take some time and started browsing through the logs. Once again Oracle proved that their logs suck and tend to display the same error message for totally different errors. So the logs showed an error that usually accompanies a bad keytab file, since I had some similar issues lately I've decided to re-create the keytab file, but it didn't really help. Apparently, all I had to do is to search the Metalink. 

The real issue is that the jdk version this version(actually not only this one, if I'm not mistaken IDM 10.1.4.0.1 is as well) is shipped with (1.4.2_14) has some error that prevents SSO from working, the solution is a simple one - install a higher version (say 1.4.2_19).

Now, these things get me really frustrated. OK, I get it, your error handling is not the thing you take pride in (sure hope not), but it's not the first time (more examples to come in following posts or you can read this post again [last example]) it seems nobody have really tested the final product. Had somebody taken the final product (with jdk 1.4.2_14) about to be published for everyone to download, installed it and tested it for the very basic functionality this error would've been discovered (and hopefully the product wouldn't be published).

That's the part when I start to imagine the following conversation (a special bonus for whoever discovers the meaning behind the aliases):

M: "Hey, there's a new jdk out! We should ship 10.1.2.3 with it because it's the newest" (and new is good, right?)

S: "But we tested it with 1.4.2_x<14!"

M: "Yeah man, but we didn't really touch something that heavily depends on jdk specifics, it's a minor version anyway."

S: "You know what, you're totally right, let's do it! It's not like we've ever shipped any totally-unworking piece of code before."

Really, with the simple applications we have in my company we try to test them thoroughly and even though not always successful try to enforce different rules before deploying, things like a certain period of time in which the application has to work on a test environment without code modifications before moving to production, a clean testing environment for relatively big installations, etc.. 

So how come Oracle manages to ship a totally not working version of a product?

Noise

Well, I haven't blogged for a while, you can probably blame halo 3 for that as well as some other XBOX games. Anyway this post is not going to be too professional as I just want to raise an issue that deeply bothers me.

Lately I have been to several meetings in different companies, at most times I haven't been too satisfied with the hosting. How come? 

Well, there's this issue with cookies and other snacks placed on the table, they tend to be noisy - I mean every bite you take makes a sound so loud it reminds me of the reasons I haven't blogged for a while, if you know what I mean. And so instead of enjoying a snack I end up trying to silence the breaking sounds - can't people provide snacks that behave?

In one company they gave me a drink in a glass bottle, the problem is that the table in the conference room was made of glass as well, so putting the bottle back on the table after drinking without generating a loud response required great skill - I kinda started imagining me as a Terminator measuring the distance to the table and the amount of force needed to put the bottle back silently.

Please people, think of me next time...