Rebirth of T-rex

The following is quoted from Michael Volker.
"The thrill of transforming a new idea into a successful commercial venture is hard to match. We love to talk about the success stories – those that make heroes of their founders and millionaires of their backers.
We don't like to talk about our failures. Yet, we can learn a great deal from these euphemistically called learning experiences. Why do some companies fail when others succeed in the same environment?
Venture capitalists on the speaking circuit love to explain that there are three essential criteria for success: management, management and management. But when we do hear about a company that didn’t make it, the reasons given by management are usually along the lines of inadequate funding, market conditions, competition, or some governmental woe.
My business is starting-up businesses. As such, I see a great number of failures – companies that just couldn’t cut it. However, there are many more which don’t exactly fail, but aren’t smashing successes, either. These are the ones that the VC’s refer to as their living dead. I think of them as patients in a coma. They’re still alive, but they’re not performing.
I was recently speaking to a class of university engineering students on how to measure corporate performance using the P&L, i.e. Profit and Loss, statement. Indeed, it is the job of management to produce P&L results. For startups though, a P&L is merely a projection of what might happen.
In these cases, it isn’t this P&L at all that’s really important. It’s one that’s a lot more difficult to measure, although not at all difficult – yet frequently overlooked – to observe. And that is true P&L – Passion and Leadership.
One overwhelming conclusion which I’ve come to is that it isn’t just management that will make a business hum. What do we really mean when we talk about management? Is it the MBA school skills or business experience that will make a difference? While these are necessary, what are the essential success factors?
An entrepreneur who is passionate about her business and who can lead a management team, i.e. the operators who can execute a business plan, is the one who is going to hit a home run.
When looking at the usual P&L numbers, the exhaustive spreadsheets and backup material projecting future revenues and profits, it may be easy to conclude that a good management team is in place – but without passion and leadership it’s pretty useless. I’ve seen countless detailed plans and projections which are impressive to say the least – worthy of high grades and accolades – but which have not taken off.
VCs and other investors need the business plan in the course of doing their due diligence to provide the justification for risking other peoples’ money. They are obligated to look at, and validate, the P&L numbers. Angel investors who, by definition, invest their own capital don’t need these numbers. They look at the other P&L paradigm. Maybe that’s why VCs like to back angel deals – both types of P&L may be present.
Monday morning quarterbacking will inevitably point to the lack of passion and leadership. We know that because all other obstacles can be overcome if these attributes are present.
Budding entrepreneurs or those wishing to back them, must understand this. A critical self-assessment will keep the entrepreneur from deluding himself. Anyone who tends to blame others or circumstances or has trouble trusting others to carry out tasks will have difficulty.
I like what Michael Gerber, small business consultant, refers to as the E-Myth which simply states that many people who think they are entrepreneurs are merely technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. His thesis is that just because someone is good at performing a technical skill (engineering, programming, or design) doesn’t mean that they will be good at building a business that does those things. But simply hiring people with the requisite management talent isn’t enough.
The way I see it, management may well be the most important factor in building a successful company, but it’s passion and leadership that differentiates the winners."

I came across this in one of the Business Opportunity Symposium, which says that Success will brings you a lot of Dollar and Cents (C in the title should be sign of Cents, but since I can't represent it, I have to use back C).

However, referring back to the previous posting, this could also means that in order to succeed, you need to invest quite a large number of Dollar and Cents.

What do you think?

I came across this statement in newspaper, quoted from Sauber, which make me ponder whether there is anything that doesn't require money to make it success.

I have a 'step sister' who don't see $$$$$ as everything and willing to sacrifice herself to achieve what she always wanted to do- charity! I am really impressed with her philosophy. Keep it up! I will fully support you.

I started the week by continuing my assignment given by my trainer, which is to prepare a search screen which allow user to enter search criteria and shows the result in a tabular format. Besides, the result should support pagination, in which the challenge is user will be brought to the next page automatically when he/she scrolls to the last record of the page. I managed to complete the task with some clue and guidance from my trainer. Besides, I tried to improve the design by generating a new utility class that is targeted to be generic enough to support future usage.

Then, things move faster when I was called in for a briefing to start working on a POC, which stands for Proof-Of-Concept, similar to a working prototype that is to be delivered on next Thursday. I was excited as this is only my third week with the company and I am already given a chance to get involved in 'real work'. My spirit is high!

Besides, I have been spending quite some time to help up at home to ease my parents' and siblings burden. I carry the practice promoted in my company, which is 'discipline flexibility' and I know my responsibility well and I get them fulfilled.

I also started to discuss meet up friends whom I haven't been meeting for quite a while, discussing about their current situation and future plans, trying to provide some opinions or point of views... I can see the difference.

Most importantly, I started to miss my girl friend, who is in China for family trip. She will be coming back tomorrow but I can only meet her on the coming weekend. Hope she is enjoying her trip there in China.

I am growing, even more this time. Just like a rocket propelling to the space!

I came across the following Programming Precepts when I was tidying up cupboard. Quoted the following to be shared:

1. Keep your algorithm as simple as you can.When in doubt, choose the simple way.
2. Consider time and space trade-offs in deciding on your algorithm.
3. Never afraid to start over. Next time it may be shorter and easier.
4. Be sure you understand your problem completely. If you must change its terms, explain exactly what you have done.
5. Act in haste and repent at leisure. Program in hast and debug forever.
6. Start afresh is usually easier than patching an old program.
7. Always plan to build a prototype and throw it away. You'll do so whether you plan to or not.
8. When the user of global a prototype and side effects is unavoidable, be sure of the subprogram.
9. Keep your documentation concise but descriptive.
10. The reading time for programs is much more than the writing time. Make reading easy to do.
11. Don't lose sight of the forest for its trees.
12. Each subprogram should do only one task. But, do it well.
13. Keep your connections simple. Avoid global variables whenever possible.
14. Never cause side effects if you can avoid it. If you must use global variables as input, document them thoroughly.
15. Keep your input and output as seperate procedures, so they can be changed easily and can be custom-tailored to your computing system.
16. The quality of test data is more important than its quantity.
17. Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never their absence.
18. Most programs spend 90% of their time doing 10% of their instructions. Find this 10%, and concentrate our efforts for efficiency there.
19. Practice information hiding. Seperate the application of data structures from their implementation.

It has been quite a while that things have not been changing or things are changing, more of rotating around the same axis. However, I have taken a paradigm shift to enter a new environment, new challenges, which enable me to handle several concerns together while fulfilling my responsibilities to meet different parties' expectations.

I love the new environment a lot. People around are very nice and pleasant. I undergo a new environment on how a normal working life is. There are many plans after work which I can never have a chance to carry out last time. It's just seems that everyone is welcoming me back, especially my family and friends.

I was asked to give guideline and opinion on how to study IT.

Firstly, I would like to make myself clear that I am not an expert, just an amateur who are learning, just like you. :) I wouldn't say giving you guideline or advise, but sharing some of my experiences.

I found that the main thing is you have to be clear of why you are in this field and what do you want to achieve at the end of the journey. I have many juniors who get into IT because IT is cool; IT is so popular; their parents want them to take IT... etc. At the end of their day, they join sales and marketing field. So, what's your goal?

In IT world, you have to get yourself as exposed as possible, in terms of knowing what's happening around. You need to be resourceful in terms of when you need information, where will you head for the reference, eg. Internet, eBooks... etc.

Master the concepts. In programming, there are many basic concepts which we learn in college or university level. We tend to ignore it after the exam. Many of these are very important and useful concepts that you need them when you apply it in your job. If you have better grasp of these concepts, it helps you a lot in designing and writting better system. I experienced this when I was preparing for my Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam.

Get your hands dirty by practically apply things that you learn. There are many tutorials or articles that explain certain technology, many of these provide sample code, which you can try them out to understand it more.

Just my two cents.

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Chai! How's your CNY? Received a lot of Ang Pao?

As for me, it's a very different Chinese New Year- one that is full of feeling! My family and me celebrate it in Penang (both my parents's hometown) this time. We departed on Tuesday morning, around 4am, drove two cars up the highway. As I always sleep during a journey, so I started driving while my younger sister take her nap; in the other hand, my elder sister drive another car while my younger brother slept first. The journey was smooth and we reached Penang Island around 10am as we rested a while at Sungai Perak R&R.

We went straight to 1st aunt's house, then we went for breakfast with grandma, auntie and cousins. The subsequent days continued with food as grandma and aunties prepared a lot of great food for each meal. I became 'Satay Man' for one of the dinner. :) I met up all my relatives, whom I have not been meeting them for quite some time. Having great chat and sharing with them. Full of cherish!

Hope that you also having great times like me for your CNY.

I just sat for Sun Certified Java Programmer exam yesterday and it was an interesting experience. Yeah! I passed! It was not only the exam session that I sat for, but also the whole preparation process that gave me a new insights. Thus, I would like share some of them with you here.

Firstly, I would encourage any Java programmer/developer who hasn't sit for this exam to start looking into it and register for it. It's not the cert (the paper you get upon passing the exam) that gives you the most value, but the knowledge that you acquired when preparing for the exam that bring you to another level. I have always asking myself how I can write a robust code- I can say that this certification is the first step.

The following are some of the references that I would like to share for you to understand what SCJP is, how to kick-start your preparation for the exam and how to enhance and testify your knowledge with the mock exams. Please take note that the following are some of my recommendations (just my 2 cents) and it does not guarantee as the best.

General:
http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/index.html
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-scjp/

Book:
Exam Cram 2- Java 2 Programmer by Bill Brogden and Marcus Green

Mock Exams/ Tests (Please ignore questions on AWT and IO since it's not covered in SCJP 1.4):
JWhiz1.4
PrepLogic Preview Edition for Exam 310-035 (in the CD of the Exam Cram 2- Java 2 Programmer book)
http://www.javaprepare.com/quests/test.html
http://www.javaprepare.com/quests/test2.html
http://www.javaprepare.com/quests/question.html
http://www.jchq.net/mockexams/exam2.htm
http://www.jchq.net/phezam/login.php

Notes/Tutorials:
www.whizlabs.com/tutorial/scjp/j-scjp-a4.pdf
http://www.jchq.net/certkey/index.htm
http://www.javaprepare.com/notes/intro.html

All the best!

Happy New Year to everyone! New resolutions for a new year. As I was still pin down by sickness, coughing seriously, no special celebration was undergone for this new year. I felt pretty sorry for not able to join my sister and friends back in PJ on the new year eve.

Anyway, I ended the day with a simple Java program, in fact, the first Java program with the new features introduced in J2SE5.0 (Tiger), in particularly enhanced for loop.

I wrote the program using JCreator, a light weight Java IDE. You can obtain a free JCreator LE (Build 3.50.009) at http://www.jcreator.com/download.htm.

Besides, you must have JDK 5.0 in place; I would recommend you download and install JDK 5.0 Update 1 (from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp) as that's the latest release. Ensure the JAVA_HOME is added in the environment variable, please refer to my previous posting- Hypersonic SQL (http://trexlim.blogspot.com/2004/12/hypersonic-sql.html) for reference.

You are required to set the compiler to the used in JCreator. Launch JCreator and select Configure > Options from the menu. Click on JDK Profiles and click on New button, then browse to JAVA_HOME. Click OK button and then Apply button.

The following is the source code I have written:
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class Test {
   public static void main(String[] args) {

      // Create a new list and add some strings to it
      ArrayList mylist = new ArrayList();
      mylist.add("a");
      mylist.add("b");
      mylist.add("c");

      // Use enhanced for loop to show the element added into the list
      for(String str : mylist) {
         System.out.println(str);
      }
   }
}

After you compile (using menu Build > Compile in JCreator) the above (provided no compilation error) and run the program (via menu Build > Execute File in JCreator), the following should be the expected output printed on the console:
a
b
c

I was working on a project last week in which the application was initially deployed in Tomcat 5.0.28 in my local PC. As I would like to evaluate how JDK 5.0 perform in my local PC, I tried my luck in migrating the application to Tomcat 5.5.4, which is intended for supporting JDK 5.0.

The migration was quite a straight forward process as I just need to change the path for JAVA_HOME (pointing to where JDK 5.0 is installed, eg. c:\j2sdk1.5.0_01) and CATALINA_HOME (where the Tomcat 5.5.4 is installed, eg. c:\jakarta-tomcat-5.5.4) in my system's environment variables; then add the context configuration file in CATALINA_HOME\conf\Catalina\localhost folder, in particularly myapp.xml.

The issue that I faced when the migration was performed was on the content of myapp.xml. I had the following the old myapp.xml:

<Context privileged="true" debug="0" path="/myapp" docBase="c:\software\IDE\eclipse-3.0.1\workspace\myapp">

<Resource name="jdbc/myappdb" type="javax.sql.DataSource" auth="Container">
<ResourceParams name="jdbc/myappdb">
<parameter>
<name>factory</name>
<value>org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>driverClassName</name>
<value>oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>url</name>
<value>jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:dev</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>username</name>
<value>myappusrid</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>password</name>
<value>myapppwd</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>maxActive</name>
<value>20</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>maxIdle</name>
<value>10</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<name>maxWait</name>
<value>-1</value>
</parameter>
</ResourceParams>
</Context>

However, after simplifying the above to the following, it was running well!
<Context privileged="true" debug="0" path="/myapp" docBase="c:\software\IDE\eclipse-3.0.1\workspace\myapp">

<Resource name="jdbc/myappdb" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:dev" username="myappusrid" password="myapppwd" type="javax.sql.DataSource" auth="Container" driverclassname="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver" maxactive="20" maxidle="10" maxwait="-1">
</Context>

Enjoy and good luck!

These few days were terrible as I 'lose the war'- a sudden attack of throat infection. I was alright till Saturday afternoon, my eyes started to feel uneasy and tiredness crept in. Initially I thought it was just exhaustion from my long working hour for the week. However, things don't seem right when I started to get soar throat and having some symptom of fever in the late night- 'under heavy fire'.

The next day I was brought down and I surrendered. I started to take some panadol, hope that I could recover soon as I need to travel down to Segamat, Johor to stay over night at his place before we depart to our work place in Kulai, Johor on Monday morning. Attack become more aggressive and I was in high fever, in which surprisingly I don't feel it myself but by my girl friend.

At last, I retreat as I have been feeling headache and dizzy and have been sleeping the whole day. I went to consult doctor, thus cancel my trip down to Segamat and claim for MC on Monday. I was pretty shock when doctor told me that my body temperature was 39 degree Celcius. When my girl friend told the doctor that my body temperature was higher earlier on, doctor answered with a smile, telling us that it could have went up to 40 degree Celcius.

After taking the medication, fever ceased, however, throat irritation still persist. I took a good rest on early half of Monday and went down to Kulai in the evening. I continued working on Tuesday, however, was attacked by insomnia for two consecutive nights although exhaustion from sickness crept in very early of the night. One of the reason could have due to the nose block and throat irritation as I can hardly breathe and swallow. Pretty suffering.

Just pray hard that I will recover soon.

I managed to have a tea break session with my company's Sales and Marketing Director-Mr. Siao. He was telling me about the new project the company is pursuing and the solution they came up with is pretty impressive and convincing. I managed to realize some good points from the conversation, in which I summarized in the following:

He highlighted that when we are selling solution, "We are selling idea and solution, however, it must be beneficial to the general public so that they feel that it's a need but not only what they want'... besides it should be something that change, help and improve the society.

He also mentioned that 'Always put yourself on the shoe of a customer/user when generating the idea or solution because the goal is to make their life simpler but not miserable'.

'If you would like to do something, do it really good and make it the best but not partially, otherwise as well not to do it at all. Generate a complete solution, not only abstract/high level; come up with product that covers the business logic and entire flow... because we are not selling insurance policy.'

When I suggested to him that it may be a good solution to take part in Asia Pacific IT Award, he told me that 'it's not the monetary/award, but acknowledgement/gratitute from love ones that gives him the most satisfaction for the achievement/accomplishment'

'Life may be changed entirely by a single opportunity'

Yesterday was an interesting day as I had a chance to meet with a CEO of a growing company. It was an hour of discussion and I have learnt a lot from him. Salute to the CEO- Mr Kor.

There are a few points that he mentioned to me leaves a big impact in my mind and I will never forget it. He created a definition of R.E.A.L. Success, in which R.E.A.L. Success is formed from the following elements:

R: Relationships
E: Equipting
A: Attitude
L: Leadership

I heard from his associates that the CEO emphasis a lot on relationships among the members of the company. The CEO also highlighted to me that when we are saying 'we want to climb up the corporate ladder', it means how well you manage your relationship with other members of the company to support, assist and bring you up the ladder but not 'climbing up' by killing other people.

Besides, I also discussed with him about the working culture for the company, in which the dress code, working hours, Internet facilities and usage policy. The first thing he told me is 'Just look at how I am dress up?' (He was wearing in a smart casual manner). He told me that he practices 'Discipline Flexibility', which I am very impressed with. He elaborated that 'You are adult, although you may be just a fresh graduate, but you know deep in your heart that you have and able to be responsible on your tasks and works. If you are allowed to surf the Internet, using Yahoo Messenger, please don't use it to surf the porn sites.' He added 'Some come in at 9am, some at 9:15am, as long as you get your job completed (really completed) by due date, I am ok with that.'

From the way he said, 'I provide rooms for my associates to do things using their own way because they are smart people and have their own way of thinking, creative way of doing their work; if one day they feel that they are more capable if sitting on my position, go ahead!' I can see that he is a very understandable person, a real leader.

It was a great experience! Really appreciated! Thanks Mr Kor.

I woke up early in the morning and suddenly wanted to write my first C# Hello World program after Sunday's conversation with my best friend- Boo. He told me that I can just write a simple C# program then compile and run without MS. Visual Studio .Net, but as long as I have the .Net Framework 1.1 installed.Thus, I started to study some sample Hello World over the Internet and so eager to get it run. Opps I got stuck because I don't know how to call the C# compiler. Luckily I met my MMU junior (Teck Kong) who is .Net expert. So, I summarized the basic steps in the following for others to refer.

First need to install the .Net Framework 1.1, in which you can get from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&displaylang=en.

Assume the installation for .Net Framework is successful, then you need to add the path into the environment variable 'PATH'.
If you are using Windows XP, you can easily do this by right click on My Computer icon and select Properties from the pop-up menu, then select Advance tab and click Environment Variables button. Locate the variable 'PATH' (by left click on the entry) from the System Variables list and click Edit button.Input ';C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322' (the semicolon is used as delimiter to seperate different values) at the end of content of Variable Value.Then apply the changes.

You can start writing the first code by typing the following in a notepad or any other text editor then save as HelloWorld.cs.

using System;
public class HelloWorld {
public static void Main() {
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
}

Once completed, start a command prompt and navigate to where the C# code is, eg. C:\CSharpTutorial, and type csc HelloWorld.cs to compile it. You will see the following as the output, assuming there is no compilation error:

Microsoft (R) Visual C# .NET Compiler version 7.10.3052.4
for Microsoft (R) .NET Framework version 1.1.4322
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2001-2002. All rights reserved.

If you observe the folder, there will be a new file created with the name HelloWorld.exe. So we can just execute the file like normal Windows EXE. Just type the following in the command prompt:

HelloWorld

and you should get the following as the output.

Hello World!

Enjoy!

As one of my plan for my leave this time, I attended the Java Technology Forum organized by Sun Microsystem at Hotel Nikko, Kuala Lumpur. Although it was a short afternoon session from 1.40pm till 5.40pm, it was a beneficial session, I have no regret in attending it.

It was not a session that I grab some new technical knowledge, but I also managed to meet up many people, including my ex-juniors from MMU (Alex, Ee Boon, Alvin Goh, Billy Yeo), my ex-course mates from MMU (Bobo, Khai Wei), ex-senior from MMU (Tuan), ex-colleague from industrial training company (Chee Woei). Besides, I managed to have a short chat the Chief Operation Officer of a rapidly growing company (in which not convinient for me to expose its name). In fact the company is in the process of recruiting since they just got grant from MDC. If anyone interested, I am willing to pass you the contact of the person in charge.

Anyway, the real gain was on the technical input from the forum. The focus of the forum was on J2SE 5 (code name Tiger), which is the newly released J2SE; the Web Service and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA); and the Mobile Technology. In conclusion I found that the session on Tiger and Mobile Technology were very attractive and interesting. As for the second session on Web Service and SOA, I was a bit disappointed as I was expecting the speaker to speak more about the SOA but the topic was only briefly introduced.

I was a bit regret and felt sorry for my step sister (Shuen Hui) when I found that J2ME MIDP 2.0 supports SMS transaction via Wireless Messaging API (javax.wireless.messaging). I should have recommended J2ME MIDP 2.0 to her during her Final Year Project proposal, instead I made a bad judgement for telling her that SMS transaction is not supported by J2ME yet, which was a really wrong judgement. J2ME Wireless Toolkit 2.2 has already came with a tool to enable developer to send SMS to the emulator and vice versa, in which she would have used it for her project for at least a proof and concept. Sorry Shuen Hui :(.

Lastly, I found that the new features introduced into Tiger were very powerful and useful, such as autoboxing and unboxing of primitive type, enhanced for loop, static imports, typesafe enumeration, variable argument list, generics and annotation. Besides, also the inclusion of JMX and new platform libraries into Tiger and enhanced JVM implementation strengthen its power.

Java Power!

It has been quite a while I didn't go to Mid Valley, however the trip to Mid Valley yesterday gave an insight that impressed me and put me in doubt on what makes them different.
My girl friend and I were having dinner at one of the restaurant that sell Hong Kong delicacies (I guess it's not convinient to expose the name of the parties involved), I realised that the waiter and waitresses were really 'fit', in terms of how well the service they provide!

Firstly, I found that the waiter and waitresses are very energetic. Secondly, they react efficiently and pollitely to customers' orders and requests with full willingness. All these lead me to ponder why they are able to provide such satisfying service. Is it because mostly are youngster who are very energetic and lead by experienced seniors? Or is it due to satisfying reward programme that the company offer? Or is it due to the excellent recruitment/selection process to hire right attitude employee?

Reflecting back to the environment in my company, I keep question myself why such situation doesn't exist in my company. As a team leader, I hope that I will be able to find out the 'key' to achieve what I saw in that restaurant, and practice it in my team.

While I was researching on Object Relational (O/R) Mapping using Hibernate (an open source tool that provide OR persistence and query service), I managed to come across and used Hypersonic SQL (aka HSQL database engine, also an open source product). I found that it's a really useful, lightweight database suitable for small scale application/system. Thus, I would like to share with you all over here.

You can download it via http://hsqldb.sourceforge.net. If you are going to obtain the latest stable version (1.7.3), as what I am using, it's about 2.70MB in size. Once download process is completed, you can start using it by extracting the zip file with WinZip or Windows XP built in archive extractor. Let's assume it's extracted to drive C:\ and thus we refer C:\hsqldb as HSQL_HOME.

You would have to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4.2 in order to proceed in using HSQL. I would recommend you download Java Development Kit (JDK, aka J2SE SDK) 1.4.2 as you may use it for Java file compilation later. Select Download J2SE SDK link from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html page. Install the JDK, let's assume it's installed at C:\j2sdk1.4.2, again herewith, we refer to this folder as JAVA_HOME.

It is recommended that you add JAVA_HOME/bin into the environment variable 'PATH'. If you are using Windows XP, you can easily do this by right click on My Computer icon and select Properties from the pop-up menu, then select Advance tab and click Environment Variables button. Locate the variable 'PATH' (by left click on the entry) from the System Variables list and click Edit button.Input ';C:\j2sdk1.4.2\bin' (the semicolon is used as delimiter to seperate different values) at the end of content of Variable Value.Then apply the changes.

Once the basic setup is ready, you can start the database server by using the following statement in your command prompt.

java -cp hsqldb.jar org.hsqldb.Server

You can then use the Database Manager (a GUI tool) to manipulate the database, by using the following statement in the command prompt.

java -cp hsqldb.jar org.hsqldb.util.DatabaseManager

When the Database Manager is launched, you can click Ok button on the Connect window, using the default preset values to start playing around with the database.

If you would like to find out more, you can refer to some guide in HSQL_HOME\doc\guide folder.

Hope you enjoy trying it. Probably we can try out other open source databases such as Cloudscape, MySQL, even OneDollarDB (yes, there is such database; I was quite surprise to come across this name :)) besides the more powerful ones, eg Oracle, Sql Server and DB2.

Yes! My first blog is created! Hope that I can expand and maintain relationship through this blog. I also plan to discuss some technical issues via this blog to share some of my experience in Java Web Based Application. :)