IBM i Performance FAQ updated.

One of the most valuable source for information's about performance on the IBM i  is the "IBM i Performance FAQ" got and update in June. This document contains many hints about performance topics and links to other IBM performance resources like:

• What is Performance?
• How to benchmark performance?
• How to size as system?
• Capacity Planning?
• Proactive Performance Monitoring.
• Performance Data Collectors and Analysis Tools.
• Native I/O
• Compiler Optimization
• Java
• Job and Diskwatcher

So be sure to read this document when you need a deep understanding of performance on the IBM i.

Notes Browser Plugin FAQ

The Notes Browser plugin is a popular way to run classic notes applications in the webbrows. If you are using this technology you might find the FAQ page useful that Kevin Macdonald has posted to the Notes Domino Wiki.

Eclipse.org got a new beautiful design

The Eclipse.org website got a complete overhaul. It has now a responsive design and looks fresh and beautiful compared to the old one. If you have not visited it lately, give it a try.

Holiday Readings or what i pack in my suitcase for this year holidays. (Part I)

The holiday season is coming with big steps and so the every year question is,  which books should i pack in my suitcase (or load on my kindle ;-)) to learn new things and improve my skills in various IT topics.

My first priority this year is to improve my understanding of how Windows internals works and how i can solve typical problems in windows more efficient. The most efficient tool to solve windows problems is the Sysinternals suite. But to get the most out of this tools you need a deep understanding how they work and which tool is used for which use case. Fortunately the creators of the Sysinternals suite have written and published a reference manual. If you use the tools regularly you should really take this one with you on your journey.

Windows Sysinternals Administrator's Reference

If you want to go more in detail how Windows works you can have a look at the Windows Internals  books. This books target the windows system developer, but i think they are also a chest full of treasures for the advanced windows admin. Because many mystery problems in windows will become understandable when you know how windows works under the hood.

 Windows Internals Part 1

Windows Internals Part 2

All books are available as softcover or as Kindle Edition.

How Microsoft gurus remove malware and ransomware from their windows installation

The readers of my blog knows, that i am big fan of Microsoft guru and creator of the sysinternals tools Mark Russinovich. So i was really happy that Mark has posted a detailed description how to remove spyware and ransomware from Windows when i got a computer from a friend full with trojans and spyware. With his hints it was very easy to remove the autostarted malware and make my friend a Happy camper again.

If you have also Windows installations to clean from adware, spyware and ransomware have a look at his blog post and his presentation which makes this task really very easy:

Hunting Down and Killing Ransomware by Mark Russinovich


As a bonus the presentation of Mark gives you a good introduction to the fabulous Sysinternals tools.

Howto use Xulrunner instead of Internet explorer as browser component in a Notes RCP

One of the coolest features in Notes RCP applications is, that you can embed a browser widget in your application. You can use the browser widget as a document viewer, to view an interactive map for example with openlayer, or to visualize your data as a chart with dojo chart running inside the browser widget.

Motorola G, X, E bekommen demnächst Android 4.4.3

Motorola hält auch nach dem sie nicht mehr ein Teil von Google sind sein Versprechen schnelle Updates für seine Smartphones G, X und E zu liefern. Vor allem das Motorola G is meiner Meinung nach noch immer ein tolles Smartphone mit einem sehr guten Preis Leistungsverhältnis. Man kann nur hoffen, dass Motorola auch nach der Integration in Lenovo diesen guten Weg weitergeht und weiter auch ältere Smartphone zügig mit neuen Androidupdates ausrüstet. Weitere Infos welche Smartphone demnächst mit Android 4.4.3 rechnen können entnehmen Sie bitte dem Artikel "Android 4.4.3: Update für Moto X, E und G angelaufen" von Andreas Proschofsky auf derStandard.at.

Access the Serial Com Port from java code

Although serial com ports are a very old legacy technology, they are still used in many applications, for example to control some production machines or to access GSM gateways to send sms. The support of the serial port in java was always very weak. In the JDK 1.1 days we had the Java Communication API, and i have used it in some projects with success. But this API was not updated for newer Java versions and i can not get it to run on a new JDK and Windows 64 bit.

So i have to find a new solution and after some googling i have found the "Java simple serial Connector" project which is an excellent solution to access the serial com port from java. The library consists of one jar (jssc.jar) which contains some java classes and the native libraries for Windows (32bit and 64bit) Mac OS X and Linux. To use the library in your project you have to add the jssc.jar to your class path.

Example how to write to the serial com Port in Java

public class TestComPort {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
  SerialPort serialPort = new SerialPort("COM5");
  try {
   serialPort.openPort();// Open serial port
   serialPort.setParams(SerialPort.BAUDRATE_9600, SerialPort.DATABITS_8, 
     SerialPort.STOPBITS_1, SerialPort.PARITY_NONE);
   serialPort.writeBytes("Hello World".getBytes());
   System.out.println(new String(serialPort.readBytes(10)));
   serialPort.closePort();
  } catch (SerialPortException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
 }
}