This will be considered a classic. It is relevant at least every three years… (Click the post title to see properly until I get around to customizing this blog more)
© Scott S. Nelson
My Session Has Fallen and I Can’t Get Out
Ran across on question on LinkedIn today and thought the answer belonged here as well…
Q: (paraphrased for grammar) How to automatically redirect to the login page after a session time out?
A: Assuming that there is a security session that is separate from your server session, you can add a hidden AJAX component that checks every n seconds and redirects when the session is closed. When you do this, you need to include in your keep alive call an appended parameter that is incremented or changed randomly each time or else you may get a cached response from the browser and miss that magic time out moment.
If you need to know if the session of the same application on the same server has timed out, there is a chicken and egg paradox as any call to the server to check if the session is still alive will keep the session alive, so it will never time out. I’ve heard of applications that have worked around this, but have not had to research it out as the requirement always resolved to a security session timing out that lived on another server (as described in the first paragraph) or the that simply have the page go to the login page on the next click after the timeout was acceptable.
To go to the login page after the next click in a timed out session, simply fill in the security node of your web.xml completely and the web server will do the rest.
© Scott S. Nelson
Work is the Curse of the Web Technologist
While it is very good to be busy in economic times such as these, it becomes easy to fall behind when keeping ahead. One obvious example is the fall off of my postings on this blog. The other is when a new spec right at the heart of my day-to-day livlihood is under construction for four months before it pops up on my radar.
In this case, I’m talking about HTML 5.
OTOH, web specifications seem to be totally outside of the whole “Internet speed” thing, because I’m still waiting for there to be more HTML 4 compliant pages on the web 🙂
© Scott S. Nelson
Some Comments on Offshore and Outsourcing.
This question came up on Linked In today, and I thought I would post my response to it here for those that don’t belong (and if you don’t and you are reading this blog, you probably should):
I read the question as one about outsourcing, and I see many responses about off-shoring. I’ll give my 2 cents on both, and you can owe me a nickle including tip.
Outsourcing is a way to mitigate risk for mission critical goals. The mitigation is in two forms. The first is, outsourcing to experts provides the perceived safety that the job will get done correctly. The perception is right about half the time (in my experience).
The other form of risk mitigation is the ability to place the blame for any failure on the vendor. As a vendor, I know that the likelihood of this being the reason for outsourcing increases with the number of people involved in the decision.
Off-shoring is a mixed bag. There are some companies that are really good, and some that are not. There are individuals within companies that are really good, and many that are not. In other words, on one level there is no difference between offshore and outsourcing.
On another level, there is the communication gap that is unavoidable due to both cultural and temporal differences. There are some companies that try to offset the temporal differences by having teams that work hours that coincide with US business hours. Anyone who has ever used 24 hour services knows that the best and brightest rarely work in the wee hours, and those that do are still not at the top of their game.
Off shoring works great for both parties far more often if the requirements are crystal clear and fairly static. Otherwise, your mileage will vary. Since the successes are a huge boost to ROI, they are well publicized and very motivating. The much more frequent failures are kept low key to protect careers.
And, as Dennis Miller often said: “But that’s just my opinion…I could be wrong”
© Scott S. Nelson
Just Like the Good Ole Days
Back when 14.4k baud modems were fast, mice were beige, IBM made PCs, and new software versions were relased annually instead of weekly, software came with useful, intiutive manuals that included tutorials for everything you needed to get up and working.
Other than the ability to take the manual in its binder to the couch to flip through, dog ear and highlight, I was happy to discover a full set of training buried in the doc folder of the Oracle Database install (and many other of their applications, though location may vary).
Even if you don’t have the full install, the 2 Day DBA and other really useful documents can be found online, too. The 10.2 version is located here: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/portal.all_books.
© Scott S. Nelson