Unlocking an uncontested market space for the Telcos

Today throughout the globe Telcos are locked in a fierce battle in a “Red Ocean”. Typical as in any “Red Ocean” they face a great challenge in ensuring a profitable growth. Fighting a price war by differentiation and somehow retaining existing customers had become the mantra of the decision makers. At the same time Telcos are faced with a huge challenge of keeping up with cutting edge technological innovations while keeping the capital and operational expenditures under control. Adding to the Telco’s woos is the complexity in differentiating white elephant technological innovations from the ones which the market is ready to buy.

It might look as if I had made it to sound scary but when you listen to the Telco decision makers when they are in total pouring the heart out mode, you get to know that they all face a similar dilemma.

hSenid being a vendor for Telco grade service delivery platforms wanted to break out of the Red Ocean and unlock an uncontested market space for the Telcos. Hours and hours of brain storming by the hSenid team have yielded Soltura, which is a bundled solution encompassing both technological and business process innovation.

Inspired by the work of W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, hSenid team crafted the product strategy for formulation and execution of Soltura using some of the tools and techniques prescribed in their book Blue Ocean Strategy.

Soltura’s New Value Curve

Using the four actions framework hSenid decided to focus on creating a new value curve and set the priorities clear for the product.

As shown in the four actions framework above, Soltura creates a new value curve for the Telco by providing the following features.

a. Cost Perspective

· Irrespective of the sophistication of the Service Delivery Platform the incremental cost occurred for each new application in the form of both development cost and the operational cost from the Telco side in the form of NCS configurations, testing and management has traditionally been taken as an inevitable cost. Soltura differs from this currently accepted wisdom.

· By making each architectural decision in a cost conscious manner hSenid has managed to come up with a Service Delivery Platform which can be deployed at a Telco without any initially outflow of capital expenditure. One of the important features that are presented by Soltura is the raise of a new industry standard of providing SDP as a hosted solution on the cloud and thereby greatly reducing the Total Cost of Ownership of the platform.

b. New Market Segment and thought leadership Perspective

· By eliminating the incremental cost per application, Soltura creates an opportunity to house thousands of applications and discover a totally new market segment which was not reachable with the existing set of tools and platforms.

· The concept of giving an opportunity of allowing everyone to become a content provider and giving a paradise of choice to the subscribers gives rise to a totally new way of looking at Telco applications – this is what we call as “Socializing the Mobile Network.”

Stay around to see the strategy canvas of Soltura!!!!

Looking away but why?

A picture from my amma's garden

For some strange reason I like this picture! I am just trying to find the reason...

is it because it opted to look away?

or

is it because I am impressed about reverse perspectives?

or

is it because its seriously a nice picture? ;)

எனக்கு பிடித்த ஏழு பாடல்கள்

தமிழில் பதிவு எழுத வேண்டும் என்று அடியெனுக்கு நீண்ட நாள் ஆசை. எனுக்கு மிகவும் பிடித்த ஏழு பாடல்களை வருசை படுத்தும் ஒரு முயற்சி இது. உண்மையில் இவற்றை பிடித்த பாடல் என்று சொல்வதிலும் பார்க்க என்னை பாதித்த பாடல்கள் என்று சொல்வது பொருந்தும்.

1. பெம்மானே - ஆயிரத்தில் ஒருவன் பட பாடல்.
எலும்பு உருகி எம் மக்கள் விழிந்து கொண்டு இருக்கும் பொழுது வெளியானது. நூறு முறையாவது என் மனதுக்குள் கண்ணீர் விட வைத்த பாடல்.

2. கண்ணே கலை மானே - மூன்றாம் பிறை பட பாடல்.
ஒரு நாலு அல்லது ஐந்து வயது இருக்கும் போது மாமாவின் நெஞ்சில் தலையை புதைத்த எனக்கு, நடை பெற்ற தனிப்பட்ட கச்சேரியில் பல முறை "once more " கேட்ட பாடல் இது. அருமயான குரலில் அவர் பாட அவரது இதய துடிப்பு பக்கவாத்தியம் வாசிக்க நிலா முற்றத்தில் முழுமயாக ரசித்த பாடல்.

3. நினைத்து நினைத்து - 7g rainbow colony
இந்த பாடலில் எதோ ஒரு மயக்கம் சரியான காரணம் சத்தியமாய் தெரியாது, அனால் ஒரு காலத்தில் தினமும் winamp இல முதலாவதாக இந்த பட பாடல்களை தெரிவு செய்து கேட்டது உண்டு.

4. நறுமுகயே நறுமுகயே - இருவர்
தொடக்கத்தில் வரும் மிருதங்க ஒலியும் தொடந்து வரும் சலங்கை ஒலியும் ரகுமானின் கைவண்ணம். எனினும் இந்த பாடலின் நாயகன் கவிபேரரசு தான். சங்க தமிழில் ஒரு பாடல், காலம் கடந்து என்னை அழைத்து செல்வது போன்று ஒரு வியப்பு இந்த பாடல் கேட்கும் ஒவ்வொரு முறையும் வரும்.

5. என்னவளே
உன்னி கிருஷ்ணன் குரலும் AR ரஹ்மான் இசையும் என்னை கட்டி போட்ட ஒரு பாடல்.

6. நிலா காய்கிறது - இந்திரா பட பாடல்
ஹரிணி இன் பிஞ்சு குரலில் கேட்ட்கும் போது பாடசாலை காலத்தில் காமிலோ மற்றும் ஜெகவந்தன் கலை விழாவில் பாடியது ஞாபகாம் வருவது உண்டு.

7. ஆராரிரோ நான் இங்கே பாட - ராம் பட பாடல்
தாய் பற்றி வந்த பாடல்களில், இந்த பாடலும் தீயில் விழுந்த தேனா (வரலாறு பட) பாடலும் வித்தியாசமான பாடல்கள்.

Why do I write here?

During the past few weeks it has been totally uncharacteristic of me to keep away from all sorts of writing which includes blogs, diary….. I was trying to analyze my self to find out the reasons for this. Some probable excuses which came to my mind included,

Tied to work? Still caught in the obsession that I have with the new camera? Postponing the day to writings, so that I write something “monumental” than the usual grumbling like this post? Desperately wanted to write my first Tamil blog entry?

Whatever the excuses I tried to find deep inside I knew one thing for sure – something was wrong somewhere. Usually when I skip writing my diary note for too long I know that “sayanthan is out of his mind” (some may say that usually that’s the case always).

Being an introvert, I had always looked for energy in doing my scribbling. It’s not actually written for any audience. It’s more a way of pouring off some thing in the mind. It lets me think in a more systematic way and gives me some good time to question my own self, often the writing produce is controversial hence the majority of them end up in the dustbin/recycle bin after I had read it for a few times, only a few which doesn’t make little or no controversy end up here.

In any case if you have read this blog you would have realized that it’s a sense less post without anything interesting, that is because my posts are not written for an audience other than myself. ;)

Discrimination of women – Who’s responsible?

Whether we like it or not discrimination of women still exits wildly. It ranges from occasional banter at the work place to the more criminal offenses involving the ultimate crimes. I honestly think and believe that women should not to be discriminated on any grounds. Woman like man should be given the opportunity and freedom as they wish to have.

Usually, any discussion about the reasoning for the oppression or discrimination of women with a girl or woman would almost turn out to be animated or emotional. At the very start itself all the blame would be placed fair and square on the men as a whole. But then with second thoughts they would dilute the argument to say that not all man are bad, but still at large they would conclude that men are the very reason for all this discrimination. Its funny at times the striking similarity they have when it comes to the style of arguments to vilify men. My latest discussion was with a fanatic feminist novelholic ( new term patented by yours truly ;)), she for one has been reading too many novels based on the Arab world and quotes all her arguments based on those books, which are all supposed to be real life stories. Unfortunately she always misses the point that some of this involves a certain element of dramatization, when it comes out as fiction. All though I do not deny completely the fact that woman are treated in notoriously bad ways in some of these countries.

Then of course I have had the “privilege” of having the greatest feminist very close to me from the time of my birth itself. She is a vocal critic and an expert exponent when it comes to handling the cause of discrimination to her advantage, all though in recent times, I see a more subdued approach from her especially after managing to prove her wrong at least a few times.

There are always a few points that I try to tell these ladies and usually they are in no mood to listen to this part of the story since they are with a preconceived idea that all men are chauvinist pigs. So I thought of putting it down on this blog and let them read probably they might start to see from the reverse angle too.

The first thing is that actually women are the enemies of women. Whether we like it or not women are at the root of discrimination of woman, in a very high number of cases. For example look at the cases of dowry, women who they themselves who would have suffered because of the problem of dowry when they were young haunt their daughter-in-law with the demand for dowry. Of course there is no denying that the man who is asking for the dowry is mostly acting to be a slave and clearly portraits his own weakness of being a vegetable without any self confidence of leading his life on his own. The main point missed by women in this cases is that discrimination is caused by a fellow woman.

Secondly, if you look at the cause for having so many men with superiority complexes, I would say that at home and at schools women are taught and shown to be inferior by women teachers and mothers. So these girls grow up with the inherent mind set of being inferior and then on the other hand the boys are bought up with the superiority complex. Its simple, "As you sow so shall you reap".

So atleast when you say women are discriminated please do not place all the blame just only on men, remember that women too aid and abet this crime and a larger proportion of the real power of eliminating the discrimination from the society lies in the hands of women.

Most importantly I hope and pray these feminist will not grow older to become the people who would sow the seeds of discrimination or use the word of discrimination to black mail the innocent men who get caught in there hands. Lol

The wake up call

I was just reading the book called as “The Monk who sold the Ferrari”, I was left captivated by the beauty of the flow of it and the easiness with each the author relates the pieces of wisdom.

It starts of with a character portrayal of a litigator, but I am pretty sure some of the IT people like me would see a striking resemblance to our own lives too, although we might have not reached such pinnacles or fame as of that character, we might have already hit the negatives. The book was successful in pulling some of the most sensitive codes in my system. I felt like it was timely reading when I was in a deep personal slumber and complacency!

The good thing about the author Robin Sharma was that he didn’t leave me with questions instead had left me with a lot of instructions and answers. I see it as a much diluted version of the Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda; I see this as a better reading for a layman like me to start with. He had made sure that the text is positioned in such way, where the noble pieces of wisdom from the mystic land of east is swallow-able even for a westerner. I loved some of the concepts he talks about starting from Loving ones self, Goal setting, Opposition thinking, enjoying the beauty of small thinking and of course training the mind.

I had read about design patterns – I mean the software ones, but reading this I felt as if the author was talking about the design pattern for once own life. Then again when he was talking about self – governance I felt as he was talking of managing once own life as a project. The good thing is that I didn’t get to read many things I didn’t know about but I was happy to get a swallow able dose of it at a single place. That is what I would suggest as the greatest strength of this book.

For anyone who wishes to read this, I would suggest to find quiet nice place where you will be alone. Ideally find a natural surrounding where your mind will be relaxed and open for exploration and then settle into a nice cozy place and start reading out the book loud. I am pretty sure that you will get caught in the charm of the sages of sivana and would end up reading the book from cover to cover and walk away with a refreshed and focused mind.

Good Luck!

Some of you all might be aware, that Vani is said to be leaving hSenid to find greener pastures elsewhere. Anyhow we are hearing conflicting reports on where she is will be leaving to.

Some say that she will be leaving to "GREEN WITCH"!!!!, I too believe that, since its more suitable name.

Anyhow while at KL our investigator managed to track down a new business venture started by her.

Where ever she is leaving to "I wish her GOOD LUCK!"



PS: To the people there "GOD BLESS" (ROFL), specially to the customers to these places!

TIPS for Vegetarian Travelers to Philippines

Philippines is a place with nice polite people, anyhow its one of the hardest places for a vegetarian traveler. I had a nightmare trying to find veg food. After some patient menu reading I found a few dishes that I can survive with. Most of the restaurants serve plain rice with Japanese Tofu. I survived eating Tofu for 8 days in Philippines! I later found out another option for vegetarians, is to have some vegetables and mushrooms soaked in garlic syrup which is also served with plain rice. Then of course, if you need the odd things to crunch, you do not have to worry as at every corner you will usually find a seven eleven store.

If you want to find out whether if there are vegetarian dishes don’t hesitate to ask them, usually most of them speak English, atleast in Makati, and are really helpful. Anyhow watch out and read the menu item since at times they innocently assume that oyster syrup is vegetarian.

TIPS for Vegetarian Travelers to Sri Lanka

Usually it’s very easy to find pure vegetarian (Eggs not considered as vegetarian but Milk considered as Vegetarian) food in Colombo. Areas like Bambalapitiya and Wellawatta have a vegetarian restaurant eating place every 100 meters. Usually the places are pretty clean, anyhow people who expect 100% hygene its better you choose the more expensive veg restaurants instead of the usual way side shops. For people who can afford little more and want a bit of more luxury can consider Shanthi vihar at Thunmulla junction, Food Waves at Hyde Park corner, Food waves at Nugegoda, Shanmugas outlet at the Crescat shopping Mall.

Any how my personal preferences are A1 Restaurant in Colombo 2, where it’s affordable for regular eating place and Food Waves at Nugegoda.

Watch Out For

Usually in Sri Lanka being vegetarian is a subjective thing and a lot of non-vegetarians claim to be one. So if you are trying to pick and choose vegetarian dishes at a non-veg place make sure you clearly verify if the dishes have maldive fish or not, in Sinhala maldive fish is referred to as “umbalakada”, any how be careful in pronouncing this word as if not pronounced correctly can sound awkward.In Tamil its called "masi".

If you are a vegan you might have to be extra careful to avoid the Milk related products at the vegetarian restaurants as its a common ingredient at Veg eating places.

If you are traveling out of Colombo then you would have limited options, unless you stay at a hotel which has veg dishes. Its better you communicate this before hand to the place where you are going to stay and according to your definition what you consider as Veg.

evolution of an "interview"

Few weeks back I managed to get something good written about me and get it published... the best thing is that I got it published on paper on the b'day....This is the accusation from my "dear" sister..lol

The funniest thing that happened was that I was told it might appear just on paper and I was thinking it will not reach too many people. When I gave the answers to the questions provided by email I was not at all worried. But on a Friday night quiet uncharacteristic of me to be working, but on that day i was at my office desk, when Gura sent me a link without even a "hi". I clicked on it to find the "interview" appearing on the link. Goodness gracious me, it has reached the "feared" guy ;) living in the land of rising sun even before I knew about it. I had a fair amount of answering to my friends and a hell of a lot of feedback ranging from a few good ones to a lot of funny ones. To most I promised that I will put up my exact answers here for them to read after the interst in this joke dies off. So as promised my answers appears here,

1. Tell me about your background?
(Where you are from, family background) I was born in Jaffna and brought up in the beautiful city of Kandy and currently working in Colombo. My father is a retired teacher and my mother is the “home maker”. I was born as the last in the family with three siblings. People at home are my greatest sources of energy. I had a blessed childhood with the care and security of my parents and a life within the Trinity College school compound itself, since we lived in the quarters. I had always been lucky to have parents, brother, sister, teachers, neighbors, friends and now at hSenid my colleagues, who believe in my ability, at times even more than the self belief I have about me.

2. What was your child hood dream?
(Describe about your ambition as a child)
As a child my dreams and ambitions were circumspect, but limited to the stereotypical careers like engineer, doctor and lawyer. But funnily as a child I never saw myself doing anything with computers, probably because I didn’t know what are the things that can be achieved in this domain and secondly thought that others around me were much better than me, when it comes to handling machines.

While being a child I wished I traveled the world like Ian Wright, the host of the discovery channel program known as lonely planet! Watching this program and fantasying about traveling like him was a routine activity of me and my sister.

3. Why did you choose Information Technology as your future?
(Describe the reasons behind selecting IT as a career path)
Soon after I completed my advanced level exams I started to experiment with web development and got captivated by the joy of seeing at work the pieces of code that I wrote, this excitement was the single biggest influencing factor in taking IT as my career path. The other thing that influenced me to take to IT, was the fact that I was fascinated by reading about the humble beginnings that the big players like yahoo and google has had and I was convinced that this is a field that we do not have to be dependant on having any ancestral inheritance and its more of a level playing field even with the developed world. Our success will mostly depend on what we do in present and not much on what others had done on the past.

Another reason might have been that I knew for fact that in this field you can be mostly dressed in casual clothing and would have the least amount of formalities. (Just kidding)

4. What is the impact IT has made on you?
(Note the changes, a brief comparison of your past and present)
Straight out of university I joined hSenid Mobile Solutions as an Associate Software Engineer. On paper I had a degree specializing in Computer Science from the Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya and was a CIMA passed finalist. I was eager to apply the things that I had learnt from both Computer Science and Management and see them at use.

hSenid provided me with a good ground for me to put the things that I learnt to practice. I was pushed out of my comfort zone and was given challenges on a continuing basis. Currently I lead the Business Solutions Division. As a team we are primarily responsible for understanding the business requirements of our customers and proposing technical solutions. The usual tasks shall be like requirement gathering, feasibility studies, scoping, presentations, technical clarifications, demonstrations and of course a lot of traveling.

At the same time I was made into a MySQL expert at hSenid and currently a certified MySQL Cluster DBA and an authorized MySQL instructor. This gave me an interesting opportunity to conduct trainings on MySQL on a regular basis. This provided me with an opportunity to train students from more than 10 countries and at most times the students were older than myself and even had a few people with industry experience as much as my age to join my trainings. I was humbled by the attitude shown by them and made me realize that how much knowledge is valued and respected. Further at hSenid Mobile working on open source technologies gives me a sense of eternal satisfaction.

As part of my job I had got an opportunity to realize a childhood dream of mine, which is to travel the world. Looking into my passport the other day I realized I had traveled out of the country 15 times during the last 18 months and been to 5 different countries already and have scheduled business engagements in two more countries during the next month.

In short the experience at hSenid Mobile Solutions, which is a truly Sri Lankan multi national company had been exciting and it has given me a wider audience to perform in front of. I am very much thankful for the support and guidance I get from Dinesh(CEO), Harsha(CTO), Jerome(Senior Manager – Product development) and Ruchith (CTO, hSenid Malaysia) with respect to my career.

5. Why should I select Information Technology as my future?
(Describe why you think it is best for me to study, learn IT and work in IT)
If you are irresistibly attracted by the things that can be done by computers, has a thirst to learn and ready to take on challenges then this is the industry for you. IT is an industry with a global potential which is large enough to take in people with varied skills to play different roles and also has enough opportunities for individuals to carve out a niche for themselves. As our CTO Harsha said at a recent presentation for a group of university students “you do not have to be already the ‘Best’ in the batch, class or group, all you need to be is good enough and be committed to learn and practice it for a considerable amount of time to become the best ultimately!”.


The writer did a great job by putting it all together and making it read like a real interview. As it appears here,
http://prwire.blog.com/5189113/

having html tables in blogspot

If you want to have an HTML table included into the blog as I had done in my previous post. Make sure that you remove all the spaces in the HTML code.

If you write code like.

<table>
<tr><td>hii</td></tr>
<tr><td>hii</td></tr>
</table>


Then the table will have a lot of spaces from the top. So to avoid getting the spaces, have the code like

<table><tr><td>hii</td></tr><tr><td>hii</td></tr></table>

Forget about readiablity and coding standards. :)

This is written solely to get some traffic to the blog...lol

Seven Lessons Learnt in Dark

Life is not a bed of roses is a statement that you might very often hear, but I wish I could make an addition to this statement by saying that,

Life is not a bed of roses and if it seems like a bed of roses then you are not living ;)

I know I sound a bit pessimistic by that statement, but I feel that dark periods in life can be a great learning curve and could be used in a positive way.

I had a period in life which I would undoubtedly call as the "darkest period" in my life up to now. The span of this period was not a day or two it was for nearly 3 to 4 years when I was personally feeling doomed and as a family shattered. A failure or two made me come to the conclusion that I was a loser. It was a period of life in denial and fear. Made me spend a lot of sleepless nights just rolling in the bed and then when the eyes closed due to tiredness one thought would come and shake me out of the sleep. Last thing I wanted to do was to meet people, due to the fear that I will be just asked about one bad thing or the other and might make fun out of it. Bitter experiences with a few people suggested that my side of the explanation will never be listened to as people were already with pre-conceived ideas. These were days where I wanted to be at a place all by myself to cry out loud. For brief period found refuge in visiting the temples, but then again after some time stopped it when I found that even the temple had too many people and my own room was a better refuge.


My Intention here is not to talk about the circumstances of that bad period, but instead discuss some good lessons I learnt during this time. My intended audience of this piece is for anyone who is going such a period in life (If ever this would be read by anyone). They might be able to take some points from here to help them come out of it. But believe me life cannot be applied in templates, my way of things might not be the solution to your problem and what I say might be totally incorrect when applied to you.


1. Make decision after minimizing the sentimental factors
When ever we become emotionally attached to things the decision we make too becomes subjective and biased. At times when bad things happen considering them to be “blessing in disguise” could help in keeping the morale up.

2. One of the easiest ways to solve problem is by thinking from the other person’s shoes
A thing we Sri Lankan’s seldom or never do. It can be at the level of family, friends or even between communities learning to think from the other person’s shoes at times gives the chance to realize the harsh realities around problems.

3. Stop perverting data in the way we like to see
Another thing at which we Sri Lankans are excellent at! But unfortunately by doing this we are lying to us and being hesitant to face reality, it can make the situation bad to worse and at times we might be sleeping in the grave that has been dug for us and still be twisting the story.

4. Time is a good healer
I learnt that for non – physical illnesses time was a good healer. Especially when good people have misunderstood me or my ways. At that point arguing or even standing on ones own head might not convince them, but with time as we live our life with a genuine intent they would realize the ultimate truth. So to make this happen, give enough time to heal the wounds in heart.

5. Mind is the greatest Asset invest in it
Training the mind and learning to keep it coherent can be one of the real factors influencing a complete turn around. Though I am no expert in this was at times impressed by the content written by Swami Vivekanada in this regard.

6. Learn to position things.
Positioning is an art. I try to analyze people and think how they are positioning stuff. I first learnt positioning stuff with my amma, after I went out shopping for her, usually I forget that I need to get the goodies back home and get occupied either watching people play or get myself involved in it. So usually I will get home about 2 to 3 hours late and now to ‘ice’ amma I need to position the reason. This was the first place I learnt to position stuff and I think knowing to position well can be a big blessing to solve problems. But the fine line between lying and positioning should not be misunderstood.

7. If you had hit the rock bottom - remember it can be converted in to an opportunity

When at the rock bottom it gives two choices, either live in denial for ever and accept suffering as a way of life, or consider it to be an opportunity. Since we will neither be in the spotlight and scrutiny of the society nor required to live any longer in the fear of failure. Seriously it was hard to think about alternatives and options at this sort of time but after sometime I felt much relieved to rebuild the life at a slow pace doing what I wish to do, instead of doing what the society wants.

Believing that the odds would change will keep us motivated to fight another day. It’s easily said here but going through and living it that way is a huge challenge, but having that thought that there would definitely be light at the end of the tunnel is very important.

TIPS for facing the CMMI Interview

The thought of CMMI interviews and audits are surely making some butterflies fly in some of our stomachs these days. I list down a few tips here which might
be helpful in preparing and facing the interview in a better way.

********************* Before the interview **************************

1. Check Artifacts
Before the interview go through the checklist and see if your project or process has all the relevant artifacts and check if they are at the mentioned common location.

2. Read the process documents.
Go to the Process Asset Library [PAL] and read the process document/s which is/are relevant to your role in the project.
If a Developer - Read the Software Engineering lifecycle document, Configuration Management, Decision analysis and resolution
BA - Requirement Management Process and Configuration Management
QA - Delivery Assurance and Configuration Management
But better if you can check all the process area docs.

3. Find the PIID document and check the questions and the artifacts listed under them.
Here you will come across the CMMI terminology and will get to know what is the artifact that you need to mention about when asked a specific question. If you are desperately out of time consider even memorizing the questions and the artifact in the PIID file, but better if you can understand it.


4. Have a story to tell
As the project team sit down and plan out a consistent story to tell. For example if the BA says he prepared the Requirement traceability then the others need to follow it up by mentioning about it when they answer questions. So plan and have a coherent thinking process to explain the flow of the project.


5. Make sure you know the following terms in CMMI context before you go to the audit,
Baseline, Commitment, PMP, PAL, Integration Testing, Check list, DAR, Configuration Management, Artifact, Work products, Process Documents, Process Templates

********************* At the interview *****************************

5. Remember that the auditor is an outsider.
Do not assume that he will be aware of all the things. Explain to him every artifact as if you would explain to a small kid. For example, Just because you know and use SVN everyday doesn’t mean he will know what it is, so tell him about it and explain how you base line code and how the integrity of the baseline code is maintained.


6. Make use of the first question.
Just like in one day cricket the first few over will be with fielding restrictions, rather to be more specific the auditor will usually throw a very simple question first up. Make use of it; elaborate a lot on the project flow using this question. If you mention most of the things he is looking for in this question, you will get lesser number of questions thereafter. But incase if you miss this opportunity you will end up getting a lot of questions which are really hard to understand with some strange terminology.


7. Ask if not clear
If you do not understand the question politely ask him to repeat it for you. It’s perfectly alright to do so.


8. Make sure you refer all the artifacts while answering the questions.
It’s an unpardonable sin if you miss out on mentioning all the artifacts in you process, so mention all the things, even small things like, xplanner, svn, checklists, review documents, bugzilla, project plan, dash board and so forth.


9. Do not try to innovate.
Remember that the auditor is not your customer and don’t try to impress him by trying to make up a story that you never practice at the organization. This can back fire a lot. Secondly do not try to show off what you had read in the process documents too much unless it has been made use of in the project.

Seven Questions I Hate to Answer

1. What are you doing now?
A very ordinary question but while at the University I used to hate answering it, since my usual answer will be "I am at the university", which would 90% of the time lead to a question "Engineering?" and then when I answer "No Science" the look on the face of the questioner would turn sacastic and lead to a general discussion on the future of doing a Science degree. Later on I found a better answer to the first question itself, "I am doing a Science degree, since I was not good enough to get into Engineering" (full stop)


2. Your ID says that you were born in Jaffna, has a Kandy address and now you are in Colombo, Explain?
I need to write an autobiography and give it to them if I am to answer this question...lol

3. Where are you?
A question asked with genuine concern , but when woken up from the deep slumber in the bus can be quiet annoying when you know that even if I look out of the window I will not be able to identify where the bus is currently traveling through.


4. Are you busy?
For god sake do not ask me this question, I feel embarrassed since usually I am jobless..lol


5. How was the paper?
When ever I finish an exam and come out I want to forget about it and get on with something else which is more fun and positive. This question reminds me of all the horrors. So my usual answer will be either "Printed on quality paper" or "Done, do we have anything else which is interesting"


6. Why are you coming here?
Outright a very rude question , I need to have been trespassing to deserve this question. If I had been bugging some one, then of course I deserve it. But funnily I had been asked this question a few times at the airport. Specially when this question is asked from me when I get down from a midnight flight I always think that I should give an answer like "you dumb idiot, check my passport, I am coming back to my own country after a very short stay overseas and I don't need answer this question like a foreigner"..... attitude attitude attitude of some of our government officials cannot even be changed in their tombs.


7. What is your confidence level?
Started to hear this question more recently. When asked I have a big problem in giving a value, since at most times I cannot find any rationale to answer this question. Personally when asked in isolation as part of making a decision I used to think that it was a very dumb question. At least if this is asked along with an opportuity for the reasoning of the confidence level I feel a bit better in answering.

Look who is talking about responsibility

While traveling around each day I bounce in to different people. Today while taking the taxi to the Changi I met up with an interesting taxi driver. He was a tall, Chinese, middle aged man. As soon as I got into the Taxi I said "I want to go to Changi" and then he asked "what was the terminal?" I replied, “I think Terminal 1...but let me check the ticket and confirm", so while I was digging my bag to get the ticket out. He told me “Tell me the air line la, I might be able to tell the terminal", as soon I had found the ticket and told him, “its Emirates Airlines and Terminal 1”. Then this guy started to explain to me about the airlines and the terminal relationships. I never new anything like that, although I had been to Changi a few times.

Then he explained to me why he asked for the airline, I was utterly surprised by this explanation. He told me even if the passenger has mistakenly told him a wrong Terminal number; it was the RESPONSIBILITY as the taxi driver to use his knowledge in the best possible way to help the passenger to get to the right terminal. Now I thought for a moment and was thinking was it “an extended self imposed responsibility” that this guy was talking about. Then I was trying to map to my job. If customer gives me a wrong requirement which will be a hindrance to him and he cannot foresee, isn’t it my professional responsibility to go that extra mile to make the relevant suggestion with the best of my knowledge?, so for my profession I thought the answer was an yes, This led me to analyze my own thinking process. I was thinking at least for a few minutes why did consider this was unnecessary RESPONSIBILITY of a taxi driver. Then I realized that the mistake that I made was that I did not consider that the taxi driving was a professional occupation, within myself I felt ashamed, after seeing the infamous three wheel drivers around this place , I had grown up never thinking that this was a profession which has a set of ethics and RESPONSIBILITIES.

This was the point at which I realized why the Singapore Taxi drivers stood out. A level of service I had never found in any of the other countries I had been to, it’s not about luxury but a service known for its highest level of trust and discipline.

Then he inquired from me whether if I was reading the paper while I was here. I said I didn’t get to read any local Singapore news papers and was only checking the international news websites last few days. He then related to me the story of a taxi driver who “threw” out two ladies from the taxi in the middle of the night in a jungle. This sounded weird, in Singapore standards by a jungle; I think he might probably be refereeing to a patch of road with trees on both sides of it. Still he was really angry with his fellow taxi driver to have done this and bought discredit to his profession. He explained to me that the taxi driver, when in a position where he is unable to find the place to drop the passenger, he should have called a friend to get the location information or at least should have dropped the two ladies at a safer location at a highway or a mall.

He was so proud of his company, when he said the taxi company sacked the driver and his license was removed. He then told me if this was not done people will start to assume “he can do, I can do, and we can do” and it will spread like a virus and become an accepted practice”!!! Then he hit the nail on the head when he told a Chinese proverb and translated it to English which was something similar to “Kill one to stop hundred”. I usually hate to hear proverbs talking about killing but in this context I should confess that I liked it.

MySQL Development Best Practices

I strongly believe that MySQL programming best practices need to be known and followed by each developer, since practicing query optimization from day one make everyone's life much more easier. So I present here a very simple MySQL Development check list.


Check List for General Best Practices

1. Checking for indexing

1.1 All columns in the 'WHERE' clauses indexed?

• [Eg. select * from student where StudentId = '7986'; then column StudentId need to be indexed]
  

1.2 All columns in the 'ORDER BY' indexed?

• [Eg. select * from student ORDER BY dob; then column dob need to be indexed]

1.3 All columns in the 'GROUP BY' indexed?

• [Eg. select * from student GROUP BY Class; then column Class need to be indexed]
  

1.4 All columns used for joins indexed?

• [Eg. select country.Name, city.Name where country.Id = city.CountryId; both country.Id and City.CountryId are better to be indexed]
  

2. Checking for over indexing

2.1 No redundant indexes?

• when having composite indexes remember that the left most indexes can serve as indexing and does not require separate indexes.

• [Eg. select * from student where house = 'YELLOWS' and class = '3E';

• if student table has the following indexes a. index(house,class) b. index(house)The index(house) is a redundant index hence not required and better be removed.
  

2.2 No indexes that has been created and never used within the 'WHERE'or ORDER BY or GROUP BY or for joins?

2.3 No simple indexes created on column which does not have unique values?

• [Eg. A simple index on a 'sex' column with a data set with a distribution of 45% Males and 55% Females will not be usually used for result pruning]

3. Check for data types

3.1 Has the appropriate shortest data type been chosen for each column?

• [Eg. If a column can be defined as TINYINT do not have it as BIGINT]
• [Eg. If a column can be defined as varchar(10) do not define it as varchar(255)]
• [Eg. If a column can be defined as enum do not define it either as varchar, char or int]

3.2 Has the integer columns not taking minus values defined as 'unsigned'?

3.3 Has the columns which could never have NULL values explicitly defined as NOT NULL?

4. INNODB Specific Checks

4.1 No char columns in INNODB tables?

• [ Do not use char columns in INNODB always have VARCHAR]

4.2 Does All the INNODB tables have primary key?

4.3 Are the columns in the Primary key of the minimal possible length?

4.4 Has all the statements like, select count(*) from innodbTable; statements eliminated?

• [Specially do not use on critical tables with a huge dataset. As an alternative to the select count(*) use summary tables]
  

* NOTE: I had avoided complicated practices and included only the most simple practices.

panorama pics

I had become sort of addicted to taking panorama pics while I travel around. If I am to confess the reason why I bought this camera [Kodak M853] its actually because of three things(mainly),
1. Suits my limited budget
2. Has capability for night photography and shake free.
3. The talent of the sales person by showing me the panorama mode.

Now I feel that I had slowly staring to master it and here are some panorama pics taken in Singapore.

Jealousy - Staring at Aish

It has been long time since I wrote any blogs. But today I was tempted to write about jealousy. A topic that could generate a lot of controversy. So instead of doing any writing I thought that I would let this picture do the talking.

Who said a picture is worth a thousand words? Its absolutely lot more than that...lol

*** Pic with make up

Using Perl Script for memory calculation of NDB Cluster in Fedora 9

Step 1: Check that you have perl

get the perl DBI module installed by using,

yum install perl-DBD-MySQL

step 2: cd into $MYSQL_HOME(or mysql base directory usually /usr/local/mysql and try

./bin/ndb_size.pl --database=myDb --user=myUser --socket=/tmp/mysql.sock --password=password

If this fails with the error like Can't use string ("9/16") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" ..... then you need to get fix the bug by replacing the following peice of code,

current code, in release ..it starts from line number 920


foreach my $i(@show_indexes)
{
$indexes{${%$i}{Key_name}}= {
type=>${%$i}{Index_type},
unique=>!${%$i}{Non_unique},
comment=>${%$i}{Comment},
} if !defined($indexes{${%$i}{Key_name}});
$indexes{${%$i}{Key_name}}{columns}[${%$i}{Seq_in_index}-1]=
${%$i}{Column_name};
}


need to be replaced as follows,

foreach my $i(@show_indexes)
{
$indexes{$i->{Key_name}}= {
type=>$i->{Index_type},
unique=>$i->{Non_unique},
comment=>$i->{Comment},
} if !defined($indexes{$i->{Key_name}});

$indexes{$i->{Key_name}}{columns}[$i->{Seq_in_index}-1]=
$i->{Column_name};
}


then executing,

./bin/ndb_size.pl --database=myDb --user=myUser --socket=/tmp/mysql.sock --password=password

should get the output for you.