For some time in the office we've been unable to use Mylyn with Jira due to the fact that we have to have SiteMinder SSO challenge in front of it. The Jira Connector by default doesn't like this and so fails. I've had to do a few things with the Jira installation we have so that we can have a Dashboard showing the team's logged time and the status of our CI.
So this got me to thinking there must be a way I can get this to work with my trusted friend Charles Web Proxy Debugger. So that I could ensure that the dashboard worked against our production setup I had to do two things – 1) Get my internal Jira Password set (Using Siteminder meant that passwords where externally managed) 2) Get a SiteMinder Cookie which was authenticated.
I already had a rule in Charles to show me just the call to the Jira dashboard so that I could grab the authentication Cookie and the place it in my web app on my local machine and make a call to the production Jira install to pull back all the data I wanted.
With Charles running I tried to create a connection to the internal Jira install but I kept getting the SSO login, I then placed request break point (This means Charles stops the request, and allows you to modify it before it goes back to the server) I added the SMSESSION cookie to the request and I was moving forward but again was stopped again, I added the SMSESSION and moved forward. I was able to make a full Mylyn Jira Connector connection, but I had to keep adding this SMSESSION cookie which took an age.
I thought there must be a way I can add it every request and blow me Charles had this in the rewrite section, in here I could say for this URL / Parameter modify the Header and then use regex to modify any requests to the Jira web services by adding the SMSESSION cookie.
Once I had done this I'm able to use Mylyn + Jira as normal as long as the session cookie is still active. When it's not I'm able to go to the dashboard grab the new authentication cookie and update the rewrite rule. Now I know this sounds a lot to go through, but if I turn Auto Sync off this now gives me the ability to use contexts again against the Jira issues I have assigned.
For me the biggest benefit is being able to use contexts, and now if I need to do I can do the manual sync and then add the context to the Jira if needed so that another member of the team can pick it up and move forward with it.
To this end, yet again Charles Web Proxy Debugger is such a great utility tool.
2011 is now behind us, and for me it was a very up and down year to say the least.
The first half of the year started off on a major up, I was offered a full time role at General Electric as Technical Lead for the Global VAT GST Systems team. I was already working in a similar role for the previous 9 months as a contractor, in Leeds commuting from London every week. Taking the position meant I had to move to Leeds and I did this within in three months of starting. So come the end of January 2012 will be 1 year in my full time role, and I've loved and still love every minute of it. I've learnt a lot and have a lot more to learn and that is certainly what I'll be doing in 2012. When I started in the team in May 2010 there were only 4 of us in the team this month we'll hit over 25 team members which has been great and this year we have plans already to grow more.
So on to the second part of the year and why I've been so quite on my blog, after a week's holiday in Spain for some summer sun my girlfriend and I got back home on the Saturday and on the Monday live changed very quickly. She awoke with a blurry eye, and was very worried about it and so went to the opticians, and was quickly referred to the Eye clinic at St. James Hospital in Leeds who then referred her for an MRI scan the following day and this when we found out the issue. A tumour was found at the front of her skull. That night we travelled back to London as it made sense she was near family and friends, we spent the whole morning waiting to see the consultant and to my surprise I had been under the same consultant's knife 10 years earlier for a trapped nerve in my arm. So I knew he was good already, and they admitted her and were ready to operate the following Tuesday and so within 3 days our whole world was turned upside down. Due to additional checks she wasn't operated on until another week later so within 2 weeks of the symptoms starting she was operated on and the tumour removed. Test showed it wasn't cancerous, which was as great relive for us all. She's been through so much in her life between 20 month and 4 years she had leukaemia and other complications and they reckon that the tumour was caused by the radiation that cured her leukaemia. As a child she had another rare condition and an article in the medical journal was written on her. The brain tumour was also a rare one, and they are going to write another article on her, a very unique and strong lady.
So now on to 2012, this year will hopefully be a full 12 months of goodness, and I've already planned a lot for myself I'm going to make a big effort on self-development and I've already booked myself on some courses and have others planned:
- Open University course - English for Academic studies (I don't have a degree and wanted to see if I could do one with the OU - Starts Feb 2012
- User Stories for Agile Requirements - Mike Cohn - In London Feb 2012
- Certified ScrumMaster - Mike Cohn - In London Feb /Mar 2012
- Agile Estimating and Planning - Mike Cohn in London Mar 2012
- Anger Management - To be booked
I'm also hoping to be making it out to Adobe Max again in LA, as I've always found it an awarding trip and I'll also be attending a few other conferences as they come up.
I'm going to be making a bigger then ever effort to keep my blog updated and detail all the things I learn though out the year.
At the start of September I saw a tweet from Simon Bailey mentioning a really cool service called If This Then That.
Basically it’a a massive mashup of a load of Web API’s, that you can setup between the web services that you use across the net and let them interact with them. You create a “recipe” and share it with others.
The Adobe ColdFusion team have released: ColdFusion 9.0.1 : Cumulative Hot fix 2
Quite a few fixes in there, take a look at the details here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/918/cpsid_91836.html
Cumulative hotfix consists of all the previous security releases for 9.0.1 along with the cumulative hotfix 1.
They have also have added an additional fix to the security hot fix APSB11-14/APSB11-15 as they found an issue. http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/907/cpsid_90784.html
Another interesting fix included is: “Bug 83514 Session is Invalid” issue more info is here: http://blogs.adobe.com/coldfusion/2011/09/16/updated-bug-83514-session-is-invalid-issue/
