Ken Fogel

With the installation complete it was time to test the critical software I use daily. The first was Microsoft Outlook and as I expected it worked perfectly. So did the rest of the Office suite. Next on my list were the Java environments that I use, Eclipse and NetBeans. First I checked at java.sun.com for newer versions of Java and found a new release 1.6 r15. I downloaded both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I uninstalled the version I currently had, 1.6 r13, and then installed the new versions. I installed the 32 bit version first followed by the 64 bit version. Going to a command window I executed “java –version” and got back: Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Users\neon>java -version java version "1.6.0_15" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_15-b03) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM... (more)

Files & Directories Disappear in Eclipse’s Project Explorer

Since the release of Eclipse 3.3 and continuing thru to the new Fall release I have observed an annoying problem when running Eclipse in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Without any discernable reason or time frame, the Project Explorer window loses files and directories. They are not physically lost. The first time it happened I panicked but a check of the directory on disk revealed that all the files were there. My first course of action was to restart Eclipse. This solved the problem and Project Explorer displayed all the files and directories. However this is a time consum... (more)

Null Pointer Error in XSLT Transformation

In a recent lab session with my students one of them presented me with what I thought would be a simple problem to resolve. Their code was transforming a DOM into an XML document using the XSLT engine in Java 1.6. The source of the data was an ArrayList of JavaBeans created from a JDBC RecordSet. Creating the DOM went smoothly but when the transformation was called on a null pointer exception occurred. The stack trace pointed to a line of code that read: transformer.transform(xmlSource, result); So as I usually do I had the student add some System.out.println statements to dete... (more)

Configuring the PHP Version of Eclipse 3.5 RC4

Step 1: Download and install WampServer Download the latest version of WAMP from here. As of this writing the current version is 2.0h dated 04/16/09 and file you will download is called WampServer2.0h.exe Run the file WampServer2.0h.exe You will be asked to agree to the software license, approve the choice of directory, select the default browser, and decide if you want a desktop and/or quick launch icon. For the directory the default is c:\wamp but you may change to whatever you like. In later steps in this document it will be assumed you selected c:\wamp so change this to your ... (more)

Upgrading to Windows 7 – Part One

It is now one week since I upgraded my primary desktop system to Windows 7. I had been an early adopter of Vista and had a number of problems, even an occasional BSOD in the early days. I delayed putting Vista on my school computer because it did not support Novell which is used at Dawson College where I teach. Today I upgraded my school computer and I am fully integrated into the Novell structure. Here is the what and why of what I did, part one. My department at Dawson College subscribes to a program at Microsoft called the MSDNAA that is a subset of the MSDN subscription progra... (more)