My Latest Ride - Mercedes 230E

After my father's passing last December, my family and I were left with a bunch of belongings of my late father. Apart from still trying to cope with our lost, we are still in the process to finish off a number of items related to my late father. This include 2 cars my father left, one is a 2004 Mitsubishi Storm L200 and the other is a 1990 Mercedes 230E (W124). I've been using the Mitsubishi Storm for a couple of months since the car almost got abandoned because it was a challenge for my late father having to maintain 2 cars at the same time.

My trustworthy red Proton Iswara Aeroback 1.3 is currently being used by my wife. I never drove the Mercedes when my father was around. Being the eldest son and the named driver based on the insurance policy of the Mercedes 230E, I was the most eligible person to take care of the car after my father's passing. The car cannot be sold yet because it needs a trust handler's authority to issue an authorization letter before changing changing ownership and being sold off. Because of that, I'll be driving around with the car until all of the other stuff relating to my father's death has been cleared.


Front view of the Mercedes 230E


Rear view of the Mercedes 230E

Some good review about this Mercedes Benz 230E, apart from being huge, it's much more comfortable from the cars I've ever own. Since the car's front hood is so long, I am guessing the Mercedes logo in front of the car is a good indicator about the length of the car's front end, if not you'll be kissing the bumper the car in front of you. The interior is roomy however, I seem to have trouble with the air conditioning being too cold. This car is has automatic transmission so driving short or long distance is a breeze to drive. Other than that, the raw engine power and the driving experience better than the Proton I've been so used to.


Interior view of the Mercedes 230E

The downside of having such a big car is the always, the fuel consumption and more money for both parts and car services. My Proton Iswara only consume around 15 - 17 cent a kilometer of fuel while the Mercedes would be using 20 - 24 cent a kilometer of fuel. That would translate to an extra RM15 - RM25 of fuel in a week since I drive to work almost 500km per week. If fuel consumption is not a problem, I would definitely keep this car for it continental driving experience. It reminded me of the old Volvo 240GL my father handed over to me when I was studying my Diploma in Mechanical (Automotive) Engineering.

I'm not a big fan of old cars anymore, therefore I would settle for a new car once I've finished off my car loan 2 more years to come.

A Tribute to My Late Father

On the 9th December 2009, something really sad happened which affected the lives of all who are in my family. My beloved father passed away after a really sudden heart attack. It all happened so fast, only my mother had the chance being with him during the final moment. I was fast asleep in my bed upstairs at 3.30am in the early morning only being awakened by my youngest brother who woke me up that time. I didn't had a chance to meet him after getting back late from work the night before. He was already fast asleep.

Anyway, no one knows when or where your final moment would be so it might be best to accept fate that god had written.

Al-Fatihah to Syed Azizan Syed Hashim Al-Idrus..

Potential Jobs After Oracle SOA Training

There is a career fair happening at PWTC KL at the time I'm writing this blog post. It reminds me when I was still unemployed, really missed those good old days while doing job hunting. Anyway, my job hunting experience is rather different than any one else. I never attended any proper interview, one day I set an appointment to meet this person in charge of the company, the next thing I knew, I was offered the job. So far, I never rejected any job offering and I'm not looking for a new one at the moment.

After a week of learning all there is from the SOA/ADF Oracle training, I found this job advertised by a big multi-national company that matches what I have learned so far. Before I write about it more, I wanted to share with you some screenshots of what I've learned from the Oracle training I attended, here you go:

 

What you see above is a screenshot of Oracle Jdeveloper tool in designing a work flow of a credit card process. At first, following the step by step instruction in the tutorial was easy. Not until the end part when you have to test to see if the work flow application you've just created could run or not. It was sort of a relief when it run successfully. But when you see an error message appears, there is where you start to scratch your head opening up every little components which you've thought was so simple and realized it has become so complex. It's like doing math problems during school but with some visuals added to it. For those people who loves the challenge, this is an ideal job for you. I can't really say it is for me although I do like it once in a while.

 

This is a view of Oracle Enterprise Manager. It's a heavyweight application which I believe involves BEA Weblogic application server. My laptop couldn't take that application therefore I had to connect to the instructor's laptop to view. If you are familiar with online dashboard, PHPmyadmin or others, you'll get the hang of it. All of these activities I've shown to you requires a lot of 'experiencing'. It's not something you could just read and digest. So if you are lazy 'doing' but love to just 'read', this is not something for you. I love experimenting (up to a level where I don't see too much disappointing error messages) so this might be a suitable task for me.

Alright, enough about my ranting, here is the job description of a Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants:

Job Description

Systems Integration Consulting professionals are responsible for delivering large-scale, complex programs that marry processes with technology to help our clients achieve high performance.

Oracle Weblogic professionals design, implement and deploy Oracle Weblogic Portal and Oracle Weblogic Integration solutions to achieve defined business goals. They maintain skills in Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI solution architecture, design, configuration, development, integration, testing and deployment; and Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI technical architecture.

Key responsibilities may include:

• Supervising functional and technical design activities


• Creating functional requirements as an input to application design


• Developing and testing detailed functional designs for business solution components and prototypes


• Supervising application build, test, and deploy activities


• Planning and executing data conversion activities (e.g., test data)


• Driving test planning and execution

Qualifications

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Portal skills.

1. Portlets, Page Flow, Web Flows


2. Weblogic Portal Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning


3. Weblogic Portal Clustering Design and Implementation


4. Web Services Integration


5. Portal Content repositories


6. Content integration and management


7. Access Management Integration or Single Sign-On


8. Rules-based personalization


9. RIA technologies such as AJAX / Adobe Flex

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Integration skills.

1. WLI Clustering Design and Implementation


2. WLI Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning


3. Human Workflow Design and Implementation


4. Process Integration Design and Implementation


5. Synchronous (e.g. SOAP, Web Services, EJB, RMI, CORBA) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation


6. Asynchronous (e.g. JMS, MQ) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation


7. Batch Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation


8. Canonical Data Model and Data Transformation including XML, XSD, XPath and XQuery


9. Service Orientated Architecture


10. Oracle Database Integration (JDBC, SQL)

Other Related Skill Requirements

• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Oracle WebLogic Server based solution


• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Java Open Source Framework (e.g. Spring)


• Knowledge and experience in full application development and implementation lifecycle


• Recognized Degree from good universities

Experience Preferred

1. Manager: 8 years and above of relevant experience including Project Management and Solution Architect roles


2. Consultant: 4 years and above of relevant experience including Team Management and Web Architect roles

Professional Skill Requirements

• Proven success in contributing to a team-oriented environment


• Proven ability to work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment


• Desire to work in an information systems environment


• Excellent leadership, communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills

Phew!! That's just too much to handle for me. I can't imagine myself learning all those skills just to become an Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants. I know that this job can offer triple or more the salary I'm earning right now. However, I am missing a lot of requirement in becoming one for instance, a degree. So I guess my only option at the moment is to work closely with my company to maybe provide services for this role. Although my boss would not probably give me triple salary earning, at least I can still make use of what I have learned so far.

By the way, the product line my company is selling can be used with BEA Weblogic server. I think I'll try and find some time to fiddle around with that one first. Hope you get an insight of what my job is at the moment.

Have a nice day everyone.

Attending Oracle SOA Training

What a great way to start the month of November with a fresh week of training. I can't really remember when was the last time I went for a week long training. The closest I went to was attending the Oracle Demand Generation Training at Sunway Hotel last September. As you've guessed it, lately I've been exposing myself a lot to Oracle. The way I see Oracle is that if MySQL open source database is a normal compact car where everybody can buy, Oracle database is a luxury car where only people with a lot of resources can afford to buy. The function is generally the same, it gets you to point A to point B but the features, performance and the experience are entirely different.

It doesn't really matter which product is the best or not, it is a matter of preferences. If I can afford to buy a BMW, I would definitely owned one. Unfortunately, I can only afford a basic car at the moment but I can still dream of a BMW nevertheless. Back to my Oracle training of course. The training was held at Oracle's HQ up in Level 38, Menara Citibank Kuala Lumpur. Check out their front desk:

 

I can only wish I am working with a huge corporation such as Oracle. It must be really tough trying to score a job there, don't you think?

Anyway, my trainer is a guy name Sachin, I am guessing he's from India from his thick Indian accent. Prior to this training, I have no idea what SOA or the longer version Service Oriented Architecture means. Even after reading Wikipedia, I still couldn't picture what SOA is all about. My trainer tried to give some clue on what SOA is all about but all I see is a bunch application pool represented by jargon linking with each other. I must give credit to Sachin although his presentation was a bit bored, he's quite a tech nerd when it comes to hands-on training which came in late in the afternoon since the Oracle JDeveloper installation file was almost 1GB and had to be copied manually from person to person. The requirement was 3GB of RAM for the training laptop just for the VMWare containing the SOA suite to run while I only have 1GB of RAM. Lucky there was an alternative.

 

The training class became more livelier when the hands-on approach began. With Nescafe coffee served, it was very enjoyable to crunch the tutorials given. Right up until my developed SOA scripts got corrupted and could not be deployed apart from the wireless networking changed setting. The journey continues tomorrow morning.

Systems Analyst Job Role

Since doing sales job is not one of my strongholds, I've always been interested to become a systems analyst. It may sound geeky but it is something that I like to look upon. Nevertheless, since I don't have a diploma or degree in IT or Computer Science, I'd better stick with becoming at least an engineer role such as a web engineer role.

I just wanted to share with you some notes that I've gathered on what a job of a systems analysts is all about:

What are the responsibilities of the systems analysts?

Here are some of the responsibilities that System Analysts are expected to deliver:

• Provide creative source of ideas, solution to address problems to the existing implementations.


• Perform internal testing and debugging.


• Produce project progress reports, including project details, schedule, milestones and resource allocation.


• Ensure projects are implemented and completed successfully within schedule.


• Conduct technical feasibility studies, evaluate user requirements and recommends solutions and resolve issues.


• Prepare functional and technical specification and provide production support.


• Design, analyse and code programs for system development according to user specifications.


• Support user testing and be responsive to user queries, request for assistance.


• Participate in the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) including requirements study, analysis, design, coding, testing, documentation, implementation and user training.

What are the types of knowledge and skills possess by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skill needed to be possessed:

• Up-to-date with the latest IT in specific areas of their scope


• A keen determination in problem solving


• Excellent communication skills with various level of management level

How are these knowledge and skills acquired by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skills is normally acquired:

• During on-going job, tasks and projects


• Daily routine of work and communication internally and externally


• Internal training by senior personnel and top management


• Own effort of obtaining the latest information

Are the knowledge and skills possessed by the systems analyst adequate for him to perform his responsibility effectively?

Knowledge and skills are hard to be determined whether it is adequate or not. It is all depend on the individual performing their responsibility and the motivation and drive that they have.

If you are a job seeker, hope this information would be a good guide for you.