Chrome, Firefox 3.5 and IE 8

I am not a web master, not even an ordinary web developer. But as an IT professional I really have deep interest in browser market. As of any writing these lines are not final words but just what I think about these products.
Chrome is relatively new in market as compared to the two others but you can’t ignore it because of one single reason and that is “it is from Google”. My personal experience with it is simply exciting. I am impressed the same way as I was when I first used Gmail. The most amazing thing about it is how light it is in use. Whether it is starting up, closing, tab switching and whatever; it is extremely light in use. I am saying this because I have Firefox on the same hardware as I have this and in certain matters like startup it is much better than Firefox. The interface is really beautiful and easy to use with minimum amount of menus and buttons which give you the maximum area of your screen for the actual website. Even the status bar only appears when it is needed, once the website is completely open it becomes transparent.
Firefox has been my personal choice for the past two years and if I am not wrong it holds the maximum market share as well. The biggest advantage that Firefox had over the others is the large members of Mozilla community backing it up and the biggest add ones collection which can change your browsing experience into much more than just surfing. Experts say that Firefox 3.5 has not come up to the expectations but still I think it has got better than ever. The speed and memory consumption has definitely improved.
When I first started using computer I was really of the point of view that internet means Internet Explorer. To use internet you must have IE. And this continued for a long time until one day I saw Opera. But I think the credit here is not for IE rather it goes to Windows. Windows is leading OS in desktop market and most people use IE just because they are used to it not because of some personal liking or disliking. I never liked IE until its most recent version 8. With light tab switching, In-private browsing, paragraph bookmarks, compatibility view, and being not as heavy as IE 7; IE 8 does carry a lot of weight. It is also the first version of IE that is built according to W3C standards. So a website designed for W3C HTML will run perfectly in IE 8; no separate development required.
So what’s my take? I have profound love for Firefox but ever since I have installed Chrome (a few days back) I have not used Firefox. Have I found a new love when it comes to internet browsing? It’s a question that I can’t answer right now. Only time will tell that whether I am switching to Chrome or staying with Firefox or may be both.

Upgrading APEX 3.1 to 3.2

Oracle has recently released new version of its rapid application development tool better known as Application Express (APEX). Version number is 3.2 and its main features include security enhancements and Oracle Forms Migration. The late mentioned was a great interest for me. I did not have access to the database server on which we have APEX installed but for test purposes I used another server I had with Oracle Database 10g R2 on it. So I installed APEX 3.1 on it and after carefully reading upgrade instructions I started the upgrade. Here are the simple steps.

Backup is always good. So I backed up my current installation. To backup your APEX installation all you need to do is to backup three schemas and images directory located in HTTP Server home. As I used Export Data Pump for backup so I needed to create an Oracle directory.

SQL> create directory backup as ‘e:\oracle\backup’;

SQL> exit;

C :\> expdp backup/***@ORCL directory=backup dumpfile=apex_bkp.dmp schemas=(‘FLOWS_030000’,’FLOWS_FILES’,’APEX_PUBLIC_USER’)

Next I backed up the images directory (Location = $Oracle HTTP SERVER HOME/Apache/Apache/images). Don’t remove it to another place, just rename it to something else than images. Backup is complete.

To upgrade APEX set your current working directory to where you have extracted the APEX 3.2 zip file and start SQL*PLUS. Enter the following command.

SQL> @apexins apex30 apex30 temp /i/ ORCL

This is same as fresh install. Remember in APEX 3.2 you don’t have to specify the admin user password while running the installation script. It will take some time to upgrade and during that all you need to do is to sit back and watch (better start reading something). After it is completed it will create a new user and will update APEX metadata to 3.2. There a will be crystal look in interface of APEX which will distinguish it from previous release. Also if you want to make sure that you have done what you were planning to do then go and create a migration project. If you are given a choice between FORMS and ACCESS then it means you are successful and if there is only ACESS in drop down menu than you have done something wrong.

Remember that your old applications, workspaces and users etc will still remain intact after upgrade.

Being Nice

The subject of the post is a bit misleading. This is not a morality lesson rather yet another technical post. However it is about Linux rather Oracle, so you can say change factor is there.

Process scheduling is among the most important tasks that a kernel must do in order to effectively achieve Multiprogramming. Multiprogramming is a concept that all modern operating systems implement; it allows the user of the system to run several applications at a time. However in reality there can be only one application or process that can use the CPU at any given time. The kernel of the operating system switches the CPU from one process to the other and it does so extremely quickly that the user gets the illusion that multiple processes are using the CPU at a time. The decision that which process to run at what time is very critical and kernel does this by scheduling processes. Different operating systems use different algorithms. One of the things upon which the kernel relies on in making the decision of which process to run at any given time is; Process Priority.

Process priority is a value that is given to each process which determines how much this process is important. Linux handles the process priority by setting a nice value to every process. It's a nice analogy and it means that how much a process is nice to the others. A higher nice value means lower priority (process is nice to the others) and vice versa. The administrator can set the nice value and can also change it at any time. Most Linux distributions include priority classes for more complex process scheduling but they are rarely used instead the Nice value is more common and much reliable.