Heaven and Hell is the Black Sabbath reunited with Dio. It features the original Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, as well as Vinny Appice. Dio is widely believed to be one of the best singers in metal. And this was the line up with which Black Sabbath released the Dio years. More on the two bands later. All in all October is going to be one hell of a month. The countdown begins

http://subclipse.tigris.org/svnant/svn.html

So we need to find the native JNI interfaces. I had no idea which these were and even googling did not help. Until it struck me that the subeclipse must have the JNI interfaces because it was working on my colleagues workstation who did not have subversion installed in his system. A quick search through eclipse plugins and we had what we needed. In the eclipse\plugins\org.tigris.subversion.javahl.win32_1.0.2 directory there are the following eight dll files.

• intl3_svn.dll
• libapr.dll
• libapriconv.dll
• libaprutil.dll
• libdb43.dll
• libeay32.dll
• libsvnjavahl-1.dll
• ssleay32.dll

These have dependencies about which we had no idea. So we copied all of them and placed them in the ant lib directory.

Now we set the javahl=”true” for the ant task and viola it works. Nice no, easy no way, but if you really want to run svn from ant then this is the way to go I guess. How to install subclipse in eclipse to get the dll files?

Installing Subclipse

Link to Javahl – courtesy Thomas

To syntax for this task is:
<input message=”Please enter db-username:” addproperty=”db.user” defaultvalue=”Scott-Tiger”/>

Using this will create a prompt when the script is run. But wait for password you don’t want the password to be seen by others do you? Well Input does not provide for that. You can extend Ant’s input capabilities by writing a subclass of org.apache.tools.ant.input.InputHandler where you replace each character with a * or you can use Jera Ant Tasks. The query Task should fulfill ones needs.

<sql driver=”oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver” url=”url” userid=”username” password=”password” delimiter=”/” delimitertype=”row” keepformat=”yes”>

First it requires the three jars (svnant.jar, svnClientAdapter.jar,svnjavahl.jar) which need to be loaded. For ‘ant’ this can be done in two ways. Either you place all the jars in the ant lib directory. The other method is to load the jars when running ant via the command prompt.

ant -lib /home/svn/java/lib

with this one is setup to use svn with ant. Unfortunately that is not enough.

With the help of the underlying svnClientAdapter, <svn> task uses JavaHL (a native JNI interface to the subversion api) if it can find the corresponding library (e.g. svnjavahl.dll on windows). Otherwise it uses svn command line interface.

http://subclipse.tigris.org/svnant/svn.html

So now you are either have to have the native JNI interface or you have to have subversion installed in the system. I had subversion installed in my system.

So now we can move forward to the ant build file.

<typedef resource=”svntask.properties”/>

This is required as it defines the svn task. the svntask.properties can be found in svnant.jar. This defines the task svn to map to org.tigris.subversion.svnant.SvnTask.

It is equivalent as to writing
<taskdef name=”svn” classname=”org.tigris.subversion.svnant.SvnTask” />

To checkout the xml is

<svn javahl=”false” username=”${svnant.repository.user}” password=”${svnant.repository.passwd}”>
<checkout url=”${svn.url}” destPath=”${svn.workdirectory}” />
</svn>

javahl defaults to true. So unless you have the native JNI interface it is better to install subversion and use javahl=”false”.

The various subversion commands which can be used in ant can be found insubclipse:Svn task

Patient: Er..

Nurse: For Blood letting.

Mine: Its Big but does it shoot?

The equvalent sql task for ant is

<sql driver=”oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver” url=”url” userid=”username” password=”password”>

However when one wants to connect as the sysdba one has to use CONNECT username/password@url as sysdba

Using the sys username and password int the ant task throws theexception.

java.sql.SQLExpection: connection to sys should be as sysdba or sysoper

The ant task can stil be used however. To overcome this you need to use:

<sql driver=”oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver” url=”url” userid=”username as sysdba” password=”password”>

BusinessWorld carried an Interview titled ‘Captain Gopi Defends Himself’ in its September Issue. The site requires registration (cumbersome) to read the articles.
What stood out in the interview was the way the Captain defended himself. Defense is not about giving excuses but that is exactly he does. Shifting the blame to other people whom he has employed directly or indirectly. While the fact that Deccan has improved and he has had to face hardships which can be contributed to politics and bureaucracy cannot be ignored neither can be the way the Captain shifts the blame to others.

If you do outsource your airport work to agents it does not mean that your responsibility ends there. What the agents do is in your name. Saying that they hired substandard staff does not improve your reputation one bit.

Nor does saying that your competition took away your men by paying more salary. In fact quoting the exact amount is sheer lack of PR skills.

His mathematical skills are not to great either by the looks of it. His yardstick of the Deccan’s worth is probably the most flawed thing I ever heard after a friend’s assertion that people in the South worship demons. As per the Captain the net worth of Saharah was around Rs 2,000 crore with a 7 per cent market share and therefore his should be around Rs 10,000 crore since he has 21 per cent of the market. Sounds reasonable right? Until you realize that this is 21 per cent of the people flying in India, not the air fare. The 7 per cent who fly in Saharah definitely pay more than what the average Deccan flier does.

Cost cutting is an effective way to reduce overheads and increase margins. But cost cutting to such an extent that who have people who do not know their business in being plain stupid. The captain compares his airline to our famed Indian Railways. Yes you read it correctly the Railways. Yes the people do not stop the next day’s train from leaving because their earlier train was cancelled, and it has happened to Deccan. Peevish and childish is the only way I can describe this sort of mindset.

The Deccan isn’t making profits and when your salary model depends upon profits and sale of ticket per cent then people are going to leave you and join your rivals who are offering a steady income at least.

The service and flights of the Deccan has improved over the last year or so. I can vouch for that having traveled via Deccan a couple of times. The change in service is noticeable but nothing to bother about as yet. The cancellations is down, the number of flights leaving within the hour has shot up to nearly 98 per cent (I am comparing with the Railways here as well. Ok when the railways were like really bad in the early nineties). The credit for this goes to Warwick Brady without a doubt. It just shows how you do need people with knowledge to run things, and for that you cannot have cost cutting at all levels.

In any industry a brand and it’s perception could be the making or breaking of it. Air Deccan has started badly and stamped its own reputation into the ground. People will not tolerate being told to ‘get out’ instead of ‘get off’ no matter how low you price yourself. Money may drive the Captain’s mind, but self-respect is something even the poorest don’t lack. Why the Deccan did badly can be conjectured long and hard. The lack of management at the top definitely did not help its cause. The interview with the Captain really begs the question what sort of management was there? Tata Motors had Ratan Tata at the helm. A man respected by his peers and public alike. The Captain does not arouse any sort of confidence in me at all. However hard it may be for me to say it – Good management cannot be replaced.

However the fight for the Indian skies has just begun. Pricing themselves to the ground, the Deccan might be able to capture a good percentage of the aviation market however it is those people who will pay the higher fare and still travel in Deccan which will make them profitable.

The Railways can afford to be late and cancel trains. They had a monopoly which is now being threatened by the low cost carriers. A thousand rupees more for a day’s worth of time is small price indeed. However the Railways have dedicated travelers in a way which the aviation industry cannot hope to match. Deccan has competition already. Indigo has started small but its services are excellent. Only thing I can complain about is that food is not sold in the plane. Other than that the felling of sitting in a fresh new aircraft on its first day in service is a great feeling compared to the awful noise created when the Deccan flight raised or lowered its landing gear.

Low prices will keep the airline afloat and flying for now but the question is whether The Deccan will ever soar?