Wedding Invitation

My First FIR with Delhi Police

I have learned to lodge my FIR in my life. It was during the recent official trip to Delhi for PNB implementation support (I will post this seperately). It was Sunday morning (25/1/2009), I was woken by a SMS from some of my friends that some of terrorists were shot dead by UP police at Noida while trying to enter Delhi city. I switched on the TV in the hotel room and started watching all News channel. The Noida encounter was the hot news.

The next day is Jan 26 2009, the Republic Day. Celebrations were going on for it. Since, it was Sunday and moreover the next day was RDay, PNB Office at Patel Chowk was closed. So, I have no other go but to waste the whole day in the hotel room. My parents told me not to go out anywhere expect to one of our relative house in RK Puram.

After some time later I switched to other channels and was watching about the hot review on the movie "The Slumdog Millionaire". Later I switched to watch Star Movies.

It was around 1:00PM and it was time to go for my lunch.I was staying at Hotel Ramanujam,Karol Bagh. Usually, I don't take lunch in the same hotel. Usually, I have my food at Hotel Southern, Karol Bagh.

Hotel Southern is just 1/2 KM from where I am staying. I reached there and had my lunch. It is to be noted that I have never seen Gaffer Marker so deserted in my life. I finished my lunch in Hotel Southern around 1:45PM and at the hotel corridor I decided to call my relative at RK Puram to inform him that I will come there around 4:00PM after having a small nap.

After calling him, I decided to return to Hotel Ramanujam to have a small nap and then to leave for my relative's house at RA Puram. It was around 2:00PM outside the street a few meters away from Hotel Southern a few people were standing (I never noticed that they were watching me talking on my SE W810i cell phone). I started walking towards Gaffer Market on the way to my lodging room.

It was at this moment, one of the stranger watching me put his leg while I was walking (I thought he kept it unknowingly). Because of this I was about to fall, but some how I managed to balance and came to a stand still. The stranger watching this came to tell sorry for his act, by catching my leg (It was as if he fell on my legs and asking sorry by catching my legs). I just wanted to move away and said OK and after 3 steps of walking I kept my hands on pockets astonishing to see that the stranger has tricked me and snatched away my mobile SE W810i (It was about Rs.13k, when I bought it).

Immediately I turned away to see that he has escaped. I was helpless and had no energy to even shout. I came near the spot and there were 2 rickshaw wallas standing with their rickshaw. I initially thought it was those gang and asked them the where about of them. I also said, can I check your pockets for my mobile. He said, if it is not there I need to pay him Rs.50/- I said leave it and started to walk towards the Police booth in Gaffer Market. The guards and commondos stationed for RDay security guided me towards the Karol Bagh PS, which is parallel to Ajmal Khan Road.

I am new to Delhi city and in 2 days I will be back to Chennai. Before this the worst has happened. I was very much afraid of the misuse of my mobile (the next day is RDay and the area where it happened was near the shops of Number plate dealers). I rang and informed my parents in Chennai and told my dad to block my mobile no.

I started to go towards the Karol Bagh PS. I simply went and asked them to file a complaint that my mobile was stolen. He said give me. I told him I have no pen or paper and the HC (Head Constable) was very helpful by providing all the required stationary. I started to write my first FIR in my life (with the national capital police). I even don't have a reference of my mobile phone IMEI. So, I simply left it blank.

Some police people said that they don't need IMEI. I don't understand how is it possible to track my mobile without the IMEI. The HC reacted quickly and said, we will not enter this complaint into the computer system unless you provide all detail and your are always welcome to come and provide the complete details. I thanked him and said I am not from this city but on a official trip.

I decided to finish this there it self. I went to a local STD booth and called my parents to get the mobile's IMEI (Luckily I am having the mobile phones cartoon and package with the bill, I told my parents the location of the package and read the IMEI). Meanwhile my relatives in Delhi, whom I was supposed to meet at 4:00PM was also informed.

Along with the IMEI and the mobile Sl. No. I went to the Karol Bagh PS. The HC took me inside from the reception and introduced me to an Officer. The Officer took the complaint and asked me are you an engineer. I said yes and on an official trip.

The Officer told me to wait and with in 5 mins a HC came with a computerized FIR. He told me to sign a copy and gave the other to me. The Officer also noted down the complaint on his personal diary and said he will start tracking it from 27/1/2009. Since, they were busy with RDay. He gave me water and told me to relax. He also inquired abt. the stranger and how he was (face, complexion etc.). The Officer also told that if it is taken as Stolen, you may need to run between Court and PS and instead said he will take it as lost. I don't know what to say and thanked and walked away. As he said, I don't think it would be possible to go to Court while on an official trip.

I took an auto and reached RK Puram to meet my relative to know that the stranger has attended one of the call made by them and said he got the phone on the streets and he was laughing when he was talking.

I returned to chennai on 28/1/2009 and was very upset about the trip. After 1 week later I called the Karol Bagh PS and inquired about the FIR status and reply was "Parashan mat karo" meaning "Don't worry".

I left and started to carry on with my daily activities. On 7/2/2009 I went to the Chrompet BSNL Customer centre to get a duplicate SIM with my same mobile no.


Though I got the mobile no. I lost my favorite costly mobile and several of my contacts, photos and data. It was a total lost. It was at this time I decided to not go for hifi and burn the pockets.

I started using the new SIM with my dad's old Nokia 3315 mobile. Even, this is a good mobile with which I can communicate and inform about my existence.

I also researched and found that there is no proper coordination between the Law enforcement agencies and the Mobile operators. There is a new law to come into existance (already postponed several times) from TRAI(Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) by March 31st 2009 that all Mobile operators need to install an EIR (Equipment Identity Register) instrument. This register helps in categorizing white list, black list of IMEI nos. and helps in tracking the mobile. It is to be noted that there are lot of China mobiles in India without IMEI, how can this law be enacted then?

A mobile operator is in no hurry to install a EIR and is least bothered whether a terrorist uses his infrastructure. He needs business from his customer and not to check the validity of the mobile used by their customers.

The mobile operators are much interested about caller tunes and other entertainment stuffs but not ready to install a secure system.

The Govt. is not ready to pass a essential law since the Mobile operator don't want it. The Finance dept. of the Govt. is ready to sell cheap mobiles without valid IMEIs.

I hope the dust will settle soon and will hope all to come to a good end.

Automatic Session Timeout

Recently I was given an assignment to provide a solution to the automatic session timeout. The requirement was that the end user needs to be alerted of the session timeout and inform him to recreate his session to proceed with the application.

I know that all J2EE application servers provides a session timeout value, but the timeout on the server side will not be informed back to the end user. So, I thought of creating a Poll action which receives an ajax request from the browser. The session timeout is got from the database and when the server's last access time reaches more than the seesion time the Poll action explicitly invalidates the session.

Clustering on Oracle 10G AS

Recently I got an opportunity to test and evaluate Oracle 10G AS (10.1.3). I initially deployed Profunds CMS application on it and was trying to set up a cluster.

I installed the 10G AS on 2 nodes and used Multi casting for node discovery. OPMN (Oracle Process Management and Notification Server) was a piece of cake and was immediately able to discover each other.

Within hours Profunds CMS application started running on the cluster. I initially tried the fail over by shutting down one of the OC4J instance and viola I was transparently served from the other node.

But, though the fail over was transparent I lost my session during the process. I was wondering what could have been the reason. I enabled application level clustering using Peer, Multi casting and Persistence. But, none of them helped me. I was keeping on loosing the session though the fail over was happening. At last I founded that I left the tag in my web.xml and that made the trick. Profunds CMS was running clearly on the test cluster. My sessions started replicating without any problems.

My first experience on 10G AS was a great success.

I am now left with setting up a RAC Database and test out the FCF (Fast Connection Fail over). Once I do it I will post that experience.

Profunds CMS gets more orders

Profunds CMS, a Cash Management System of Laser Soft Infosystems, Chennai gets more orders from Indian Public and Private Banks.

The order list includes 7 banks

1) Bank of India - Gone to Production
2) Punjab National Bank - Partially on Production
3) DCB (Development Credit Bank) - on UAT
4) CUB (City Union Bank) - on UAT
5) Axis Bank - Currently using an old version,expected to migrate to the latest version
6) ICICI Bank - Currently using an old version,talks are on to migrate to the latest version.
7) Union Bank of India

Profunds CMS Benchmarking @ IBM Labs, Bangalore

I along with few of my Colleagues were sent to benchmark Profunds CMS (Cash Management System), [a prestigious product of Laser Soft Infosystems Limited, Chennai] at IBM Labs (IBM SSC), Bangalore.

The benchmark was conducted on 2 System p series server both running AIX 5. One server was used for Application Server (IBM Websphere 6.1 Network Deployment) and other was used for Oracle 10G Database server.

Apache JMeter was used to generate load and record the server throughput and response time. Our test case was to login into the Profunds application and put an entry (Entry of Local Clearing Cheques) (approx 30 fields).

Initially we started with 100 concurrent users and slowly we went upto 750 concurrent users. We are overall satisfied with the servers response and throughput. A little percent of error was found when deploying the application on the Cluster setup.

The benchmark started on June 9 2008 (the day I reached Bangalore from Chennai on Shadabathi) and completed on June 13 2008 ( < a week).

I returned back to Chennai on June 14 2008.

The staff at IBM SSC were very cooperative.

I gained good experience with this benchmarking.

FossConf 08

It is really a nice conference to spend the weekend. It was really a free informative conference. I have attended some talks on Emacs, KDE & System calls. I hope to attend more such conferences in the future.

My Days at AIG Systems & Solutions

I was deputed to AIG Systems & Solutions,OTP, Chennai on Feb 07 2007 from Laser Soft. I was put up onto a project called AIGD (AIG Direct)-DRC (Decision Research Corporation). It is a product developed for Auto Insurance catering to North America. It was a system running on HP-UX and backed by Oracle. It took a week before system and access were provided to me.

My first work over there was to solve a heat (a live production issue). I was able to solve it with my skills in SQL and from that day onwards I grew with confidence and started to handle complex issues. By, solving I came to learn a lot about the DRC system. Though, it was a small system it had interfaces with many big systems such as ChoicePoint, TransUnion, POLK and like

ChoicePoint - Credit Score Verification
TransUnion - MVR (Motor Vehicle Report) & CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange)
POLK - Vehicle Information System

MVR are reports about the insurer accident history
CLUE are reports about his past claims with his previous insurance companies.

I learned partially of these third party systems. All my colleagues at AIGSS were very supportive and helped me a lot. It was really a great experience at AIGSS. They even offered me a permanent position over there, but i declined because I was offered a new J2EE project back in Laser Soft. All together it was a great experience. My last day work at AIGSS was on 31 OCt 2007.

Software Economy

E-Governance projects can really be a boon to the open source developers. Not only the open way of making the software prevent the governments to get locked to a particular vendor. It will also improve the contribution to the open source development. If a Government tries to open source its software need, it will really help in the development of the economy. It would be nice if the governments have open source repositories similar to the one like SF or berlios. As far as Indian Govt. is considered a lot more has to be done in serving its citizens using IT. I think a single vendor can not serve the purpose. It requires the contributions from the open source community to help in achieving its goal. In India there are more than 25 State Govts. and each Govts. activities are similar to one another. We find House tax, water tax etc. in all the states. But, what each state requires is a small customization and not a complete product from a new vendor. In this way the Govts. can save a lot of money in the software. Thus a Central repository can be maintained at the Central level to which all the Open Source developers contribute. The contributed code will be subjected to auditing by the Govt. authorities before releasing across each states.

The advantage in this kind of approach is that
1) All indian open source developers will contribute to the maximum effort. They can really show their patriotism over here. It helps them to serve their people.
2) Turnkey and Huge projects can be delivered within the time to serve their citizens.
3) Standardized system can be put in place.
4) Support to these systems can easily be found.
5) Help to boost the economy.

This approach does have a lot of disadvantages too
1) Key and Sensitive requirements cannot be handled.
2) Not everything can be customized.

My Long Term Dream

I would like to work in a Company for around 5-6 years till the age of
30, before starting up my own startup in the name of "Fourvees".
Within this 5-6 years I need to gain maximum experience from the
industry, which I would like to utilize for my startup. My startup
would be something dealing with OSS (Open Source Software) consulting.

The support for application oriented OSS is very less rather than
system oriented OSS. There are very few application oriented OSS
giving better support. Existing OSS does not concentrate much on
domain. My startup would go in this direction providing Open Source
consultation for Retail, Banking, SMEs etc...

I would like to retire from my startup "Fourvees" at the age of 60
after a long 30 years in the company before joining a R&D lab (Can
also be a part of Fourvees). I would like to work in the R&D lab till
the end of my life providing better solutions.