Simply Blogging: 2013

Monday, 9 December 2013

Apple iPad Air Review

Apple is known to cause a stir every time it releases a product in the international market. Although this time it seems that the mobile and tablet market across the globe did not welcome the new apple product: 'Air'. The release of Air was announced in October 2013, the product is now available across world in the Apple stores since 10th November 2013. The average* user rating and experience is 6.2 stars.

A major website** was even reported saying : "Shares of Apple's Asia-based supply chain plunged on Wednesday after the consumer electronics giant's latest product lineup, including its new iPad Air and iPad Mini, failed to wow investors. Taiwan-listed camera lens manufacturer Genius, touch screen manufacturer TPK Holding and casing maker Casetek fell 4 percent, 6 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. While Hong Kong-listed acoustic component maker AAC Technologies declined 1.6 percent.

Shares of Apple, meanwhile, ended down 0.3 percent in the U.S. trading session on Tuesday 22nd October 2013."

The reason why 'Air' didn't make it big are given below:

Keyboard and Navigation lag
Some people have encountered lag when typing on the keyboard, or when navigating around in and out of apps. The pinch to close gesture seems to be produce a noticeable stutter for some. This is probably an issue with iOS 7 rather than the iPad Air, but there are things you can try. Be aware that you might encounter lag when the iPad Air is in the process of restoring as it downloads apps and data.
Safari Browser Crashing
A lot of people are having issues with the Safari browser crashing frequently. This seems to be occurring most often when people try to open additional tabs, or have multiple tabs open in Safari. Pressing the tab button is enough to produce a crash in many cases.
Won’t connect to Wi-Fi, slow, or drops connection

This problem always rears its ugly head in our problem roundups. If you find that your iPad Air won’t connect to your Wi-Fi or it drops the connection frequently without explanation, then you can try a few things.
Battery life

This is another common problem with all modern tablets, but the iPad Air should actually get comparably good battery life. If you find that the battery is draining fast and you’re sure it’s not just because of heavy use then you can try a few different fixes.
Frozen or Unresponsive iPad
Some users have reported saying that the tablet turns off as soon as it is turned on just after seeing the apple logo. Pressing the Home button does not help even Users have even reported that restoring the tablet's original settings did not help either. The only possible solution to this problem now seems the replacement of the tablet itself.
Failed the torture test
Apple's iPad Air was given a torture test made up of four parts. First, dropping it on soft ground then on concrete, followed by dunking it in a container of water and finally hitting it with the Airsoft MP7.
We were surprised to see that the iPad Air, when dropped on soft ground from a height of about one metre, immediately failed the torture test and showed cracks on its screen.When dropped from the same height on concrete, the case suffered dents and more cracks showed on its screen. we then tried to test if the tablet is still running, and could hear the device attempting to run but was not successfully. In the third test, we dropped the iPad Air in a plastic container of water and the device went dead. With a useless device on hand, we did the ultimate and used the iPad Air as target for his Airsoft M7. By the time we finished the last of the torture test, the tablet, if compared to meat, was double dead.
The Screen has dark lines or yellow tint on one sideA few iPad Air owners have been complaining about issues with the screens on their new tablets. Reports have mentioned dark vertical or horizontal bars, mostly on the left edge of the display when held in portrait view. There have also been complaints about a noticeable difference in color between the two halves of the screen, with the left hand side having a yellowish tint. This is easiest to see when the display has a white background, on a web page, for example.This seems to be an issue with production, so your only option is to take it back to Apple Store or your retailer and get a replacement.

* the survey is based on the review of the 257 users who voted iPad Air out of 10 on gsmarena

**the website is cnbc. report dated wednesday 23rd October 2013.

Friday, 6 December 2013

iGate internal restructuring

+iGATE has been seeing a lot of changes (as on 06 December 2013) since the new CEO Ashok Vemuri arrived like the appointments of people at managerial level. One of the most important was the replacement of Sean Narayanan, the CDO of the company by Amit Bhadra. This news was revealed by the CEO himself in a formal mail to iGators late on 5th december 2013. The email reads that the formation of a leadership group is in progress which will help and guide iGate to an even better economic growth. Around a month back the news of Sean and Ashok being involved in a heated exchange of arguments was reported, and internally the news of Sean Narayanan filing for resignation was heard; the email by Ashok finally puts an end to stories and rumours.
The internal restructing is also in progress. RMG (Resource management group) has been completely resolved into different verticals called domains (like marketing, V&V, GE). Earlier the so called 'Domains' used to ask RMG to allot people into the projects whenever there was a need, now every domain will have a RMG and its own bench. As soon as the training of an individual is completed he/she will be put under the RMG of a particular domain. If a opportunity arises in a project in some domain, the project manager will contact the RMG of that domain to onboard people from bench. This internal structuring will be profitable to the organization since the recruitment of manpower in company becomes more precise, but to the new recruits and people tagged under the wrong or uninteresting verticals it will prove bane.
The functioning of iGate RMG was questionable since after we interviewed some of its employees. Lets see if these changes will prove worth or the domain specific RMG continues to work in the same sluggish , lethargic and inept way.

Sunday, 1 December 2013

Apple iPad mini 2 review: Getting better and better

At its October 22 media event, Apple introduced its second-generation iPad mini, bringing a new Retina display as well as upgraded internals including the A7 chip and M7 motion coprocessor introduced in the iPhone 5s.

The improvements to the iPad mini have necessitated a slight increase in thickness and weight for the iPad mini, with the device now measuring at 7.5 mm thick and 0.73 pounds compared to 7.2 millimeters and 0.68 pounds for the original generation.

Even though the original iPad mini was launched next to the iPad 4, it was actually a 'mini-me' of the iPad 2 – a tablet Apple released way back in early 2011. It will continue to be sold next to the new version which comes with the same processor and screen resolution as the iPad 2, albeit in a much lighter, prettier body.

The 7.9 inch IPS display on the original mini is bright and color accuracy is good, but the 1024 x 768 pixel screen with 162ppi just isn’t as sharp as it should be. Text isn’t crisp enough and pixels are clearly visible. That sounds silly in a way, but the fact is things have moved and 'sharpness' is one of the most important factors for any tablet or phone.

Gareth Beavis of TechRadar, says the iPad Mini 2 is "almost flawless". But he's not as giddy about the new device as fellow reviewers, saying that the iPad Mini 2 has one big drawback - it's price. "You can buy a Google Nexus 7 for 25-30% less than the comparable 16GB / 32GB option from Apple – and that increase in price to improve the amount of storage on board has no justification".

Trusted Reviews agree, writing that as both the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDX 7 are £199 cheaper than the iPad Mini 2 it makes no financial sense to buy the tablet if you only intend to use it as an "e-reader, casual web browser and video player".

The iPad mini is everything a tablet should be - and like apple's last other products it changed the tech world forever and undoubtedly for better. And unfortunately, it's just one thing short of what we all thought a compact tablet should be - cheap.

Even though the original iPad mini was launched next to the iPad 4, it was actually a 'mini-me' of the iPad 2 – a tablet Apple released way back in early 2011. It will continue to be sold next to the new version and comes with the same processor and screen resolution as the iPad 2, albeit in a much lighter and prettier body.

The 7.9 inch IPS display on the original mini is bright and colour accuracy is good, but the 1024 x 768 pixel screen with 162ppi just isn’t as sharp as it should be. Text isn’t crisp enough and pixels are clearly visible. That sounds silly in a way, but the fact is things have moved and 'sharpness' is one of the most important factors for any tablet or phone.
Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/ipad-mini-2-retina_Tablet_review#Vz4DsGu6OykMe5yA.99

Friday, 29 November 2013

Apple iPhone 5s vs Google Nexus 5

If you are looking for a unbiased comparison between the Apple iPhone 5s and Google Nexus 5 you have come to just the right place.

Nexus 5	iPhone 5s

Processor
The CPU here is the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 which is a 4 core processor that enables the device to perform at 2.26Ghz. The Snapdragon is among the fastest of its other family members such as the Snapdragon 600 or Snapdragon 400. The Qualcomm family of processors also appears in handsets like the Xperia Z1 from Sony, G2 from LG, HTC One from HTC, Lumia 1020 from Nokia, Galaxy mega from Samsung. The Processor is fast and reliable. For more info on this processor follow this Link. our rating is 4.5 stars	1.3GHz dual-core A7 processor powers the new iPhone 5s. If you assume that iPhone has lost this round, you couldn't be more wrong. Apple has introduced a 64bit processor architecture which is a new concept among other rivals. The mobile processor industry has clearly stepped in the next generation of mobile computing with the arrival of this processor. The arrival of this processor in the market has paved a way for the development of 64bit applications and enabled the mobile devices to operate on as much as 4GB of RAM. Rumors have it that Galaxy S5 will also have a 64bit processor be it from Qualcomm or any other vendor. During several tests that were conducted , iPhone beat the competition like Samsung S4 and LG G2. our rating is 4.8 stars
RAM and Storage
The RAM in this device is 2GB, with which the device handles multiple tasks seamlessly. The Storage in GB comes in 2 different versions: the 16GB and the 32GB. our rating is 5 stars.	The RAM in this device is 1GB, which is clearly less than Nexus 5 but the processor seems to make up for this loss too. The Storage in GB comes in 3 different versions: the 16GB, the 32GB and the 64GB. our rating is 3.5 stars.
Sensors
GPS Gyroscope Accelerometer Compass Proximity/Ambient Light Pressure Hall our rating is 3.5 stars	GPS Three-axis gyro Accelerometer Proximity/Ambient light sensor Fingerprint identity sensor our rating is 4.4 stars
Dimensions, Power and Connectivity
137.84mm Height 69.17mm Weight 8.59mm Depth 130gm Weight 2300 mAh battery with wireless charging. 2G/3G/4G LTE GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz Model LG-D820 (North America) CDMA band class: 0/1/10 WCDMA bands: 1/2/4/5/6/8/19 LTE bands: 1/2/4/5/17/19/25/26/41 Model LG-D821 (Rest of World) WCDMA bands: 1/2/4/5/6/8 LTE bands: 1/3/5/7/8/20 our rating is 4.2 stars	123.8mm Height 58.6mm Width 7.6mm Depth 112gm Weight 1570mAh battery. The networks supported include GSM, CDMA, 3G, EVDO, LTE, HSPA+. our rating is 3.8 stars
Screen
4.95" 1920 x 1080 display (445 ppi) Full HD IPS Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 our rating is 4.2 stars	4" (diagonal) widescreen Multi‑Touch display 1136 x 640 pixel resolution at 326 ppi. our rating is 4.1 stars
Camera
1.3MP front facing 8MP rear facing our rating is 3.5 stars	1.2MP front facing 8MP rear facing our rating is 3.4 stars
Total scores
Total rating is 24.9	Total rating is 24

Thursday, 28 November 2013

Learn Hibernate Quick

Before we proceed with Hibernate it is important to understand 2 basic concepts: ORM and RDBMS.
ORM stands for Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) is a programming technique for converting data between relational databases and object oriented programming languages such as Java, C# etc.
Examples of ORM:

Hibernate
TopLink
Castor

RDBMSs represent data in a tabular format whereas object-oriented languages, such as Java or C# represent it as an interconnected graph of objects.

Hibernate is an ORM created by Gavin King in 2001. Hibernate not only takes care of the mapping from Java classes to database tables (and from Java data types to SQL data types), but also provides data query and retrieval facilities. Hibernate works best with POJO.
Hibernate is a popular framework with many advantages over traditional RDBMSs. Few of the important ones are listed below:
Advantages of Hibernate include:

Fast development of application
Hides details of SQL queries from OO logic
No need to deal with the database implementation.
Takes care of Transaction management.

Hibernate Architecture

JNDI and JTA allow Hibernate to be integrated with J2EE application servers.

Configuration Object
The Configuration object provides two keys components:
Database Connection: This is handled through one or more configuration files supported by Hibernate. These files are hibernate.properties and hibernate.cfg.xml(an example file is given below).

hibernate.cfg.xml example
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<hibernate-configuration>
<session-factory>
<property name="hibernate.dialect">
org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect
</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">
com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
</property>


<property name="hibernate.connection.url">
jdbc:mysql://localhost/test
</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.username">
root
</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.password">
root
</property>


<mapping resource="Employee.hbm.xml"/>
</session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Class Mapping Setup
This component creates the connection between the Java classes and database tables..

SessionFactory Object
Configuration object is used to create a SessionFactory object which inturn configures Hibernate for the application using the supplied configuration file and allows for a Session object to be instantiated.
The SessionFactory is heavyweight object so usually it is created during application start up and kept for later use. One SessionFactory object per database using a separate configuration file is made. So while using multiple databases multiple SessionFactory objects need to be created.

Session Object
A Session is used to get a physical connection with a database. The Session object is lightweight and designed to be instantiated each time an interaction is needed with the database. It must be opened and closed as the requirement, should not be kept open for a long time as it is not thread safe.

Query Object
Query objects use SQL or Hibernate Query Language (HQL) string to retrieve data from the database and create objects. A Query instance is used to bind query parameters, limit the number of results returned by the query, and finally to execute the query.

Hibernate Mapping
This is where the classes are mapped onto tables of databases.
A Hibernate mapping file usually has the name: <name-of-the-class-to-be-mapped>.hbm.xml
The contents of a hibernate mapping file generally look like this:

<hibernate-mapping>
<class name="Employee" table="OFFICEEMPLOYEE">
<meta attribute="class-description">
This class contains the employee detail.
</meta>
<id name="id" type="int" column="id">
<generator class="native"/>
</id>
<property name="firstName" column="first_name" type="string"/>
<property name="lastName" column="last_name" type="string"/>
<property name="salary" column="salary" type="int"/>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>

Here the class being mapped is Employee to a table named OFFICEEMPLOYEE.
We then start mapping class variables to the table columns. The name of this file should be Employee.hbm.xml

Application Class (has main method to use the hibernate setup we just created)
General structure of code in main method of application class
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Session session = factory.openSession();
Transaction tx = null;
try {
tx = session.beginTransaction();
// do some work...
tx.commit();
}
catch (Exception e) {
if (tx!=null) tx.rollback();
e.printStackTrace();
}finally {
session.close();
}
---------------------------------------------For more info. about Session interface refer this Link.----

----Follow the code below to create the factory Object from Configuration object.---------------
try{
factory = new Configuration().configure().buildSessionFactory();
}catch (Throwable ex) {
System.err.println("Failed to create sessionFactory object." + ex);
throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------TO MAKE AN ENTRY FOR A NEW EMPLOYEE---------------------------------------
Session session = factory.openSession();
Transaction tx = null;
Integer employeeID = null;
try{
tx = session.beginTransaction();
Employee employee = new Employee(fname, lname, salary);
employeeID = (Integer) session.save(employee);
tx.commit();
}
catch (HibernateException e) {
if (tx!=null){
tx.rollback();
}
e.printStackTrace();
}finally {
session.close();
}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------TO READ ALL THE EMPLOYEES--------------------------------------------------------------
Session session = factory.openSession();
Transaction tx = null;
try{
tx = session.beginTransaction();
List employees = session.createQuery("FROM Employee").list();
for (Iterator iterator = employees.iterator(); iterator.hasNext();){
Employee employee = (Employee) iterator.next();
System.out.print("First Name: " + employee.getFirstName());
System.out.print(" Last Name: " + employee.getLastName());
System.out.println(" Salary: " + employee.getSalary());
}
tx.commit();
}catch (HibernateException e) {
if (tx!=null) tx.rollback();
e.printStackTrace();
}finally {
session.close();
}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------Using Hibernate 3.0 with Annotations-------------------------------------------------------------
above class name
@Entity
@Table(name="OFFICEEMPLOYEE")

above class variables name
@Column(name="id")
@GeneratedValue
@Id

Only the factory object needs to be altered in case of using annotations, rest all remains the same
factory = new AnnotationConfiguration().configure().
//addPackage("com.xyz") //add package if used.
addAnnotatedClass(Employee.class).
buildSessionFactory();

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HQL (Hibernate Query Language)
lets see some examples to understand hibernate query language.
eg1: String hql = "SELECT E.firstName FROM Employee E";
It should be noted here that Employee.firstName is a property of Employee object rather than a field of the OFFICEEMPLOYEE table.

eg2: String hql = "UPDATE Employee set salary = :salary " + "WHERE id = :employee_id";
Query query = session.createQuery(hql);
query.setParameter("salary", 1000);
query.setParameter("employee_id", 10);
int result = query.executeUpdate();
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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