First post of 20!!

A comeback after a long time..

There are definitely some good things to cheer about this time. After a 10 month long internship in Oracle Applications, I am converted as FT Employee in UDA Data Mart Team in Yahoo!, Bangalore.
A shift to a better living place is yet another sign of more positive things to happen.
Probably the birth stars are beginning to fall in favourable positions.

Regarding work, Oracle will now become my specialization Technology.. There are lot of exciting stuffs out their about Oracle. Taking it one by one would be the best way to master something.

Life is now very much conducive for doing some bit of crazy stuffs which I cherish.. Looking for the right moment to kick off...

Thankyou God!

"Be patient, positive and believe in your skills!! Everything happens for a reason at the right time" ~ My Experience.

Intern @ Yahoo!, Bangalore

My 6 months internship at Yahoo!, one of my dream companies, started on May 24th.
Since my BTech course is complete, I decided to take up the Internship going behind the Yahoo! brandname.


My team's domain is Oracle Financial Applications which is 70% business (finance) + 30% DBMS (SQL, PL/SQL). It is rather a big field and would require some good amount of effort to understand the working of ERP and finance concepts. But it is interesting too.. :)

3 months have gone past very quickly. I have been given small part in some good projects..
Life at Yahoo! is incredible...It is a fun filled environment where games and recreation goes along with work..Infact, not many companies give such freedom and resources/benefits to its employees..


We celebrated Onam at Y! on 18th August. It was marked by Pookalam, Vadam vali, Maveli giving rounds and Onasadhya.The very fact that a Kerala festival like Onam was celebrated with such vigor in Y! displays how much the company cares for its employees interests...
It was a memorable day where mallus at Y! in ethnic wear joined together for a common cause.

In a few months, hoping to get converted to FT and wishing to remain as part of Yahoo! for a very long time.

GSOC-2010 Completed Successfully !

By god's grace, I have completed perhaps my first and last GSOC successfully.
The project was : Testsuites for OAR Batch Scheduler

Thanks to my OAR mentor, Mr. Joseph Emeras and Google for giving me such a memorable experience in life.
I am also happy that I could create a good rapport (or indeed a good friendship) with the other OAR GSoc students especially Thiago Presa and Jean Poutcheu.
We helped each other in some critical moments during the course of the programme.

It was a great learning experience during the last 3 months.
The event started with the Community Bonding Period wherein I was asked to play around with the OAR Batch scheduler that managed the Grid5000 (G5K).


I was given an account in the G5K and finally I ended up creating a funtool with a menu interface that provided most of the available usecases of the batch scheduler using the OAR REST APIs.

After some research on Ruby testing frameworks for REST APIs, I finalized on RSpec. RSpec is based on Behaviour Driven Development. Know more about RSPec
There were some changes in ideas and plans after the start of the coding phase.
Finally when the testsuite requirements were clear and feasibility discussed, it didnt take much time for coding.

Lesson to be learnt : Always discuss the feasibility and understand the requirements for any project before you start coding.

Though Kameleon Tool (developed by OAR GSoc-09 student) initially gave me some hiccups during the generation of Debian appliances with OAR Server/Client,
later on it became an integral part of my project. Kameleon is a multipurpose versatile tool that can be used not only for creating VM Images, but also as a parser tool for different purposes. Take a look at Kameleon Wiki

Though Mid Term evaluations went pretty smooth, my teststuites had some incompatibility issues when new version of OAR APIs were rolled out towards the end of the programme.
But all ended well and issues were solved before the final evaluations.
All Details of OAR Testsuites can be seen in my OAR Testsuites Wiki Page.


It was a great summer and I would probably miss all the fun I had in the last few months.
But above and all, I am happy that I am an Open Source Developer for Inriaforge and I would continue giving any contributions the OAR team requires from me.

My advise to all upcoming Gsoc aspirers : Dont wait for the programme to start to get in touch with mentors. Collect and read documentations well before to get a good idea on the project you wish to work on (you may even get additional ideas which is a bonus while making up the proposal) ; give good wholehearted effort in preparing the project proposal because according to me the most challenging aspect of GSoc is to convince the organization and Google that you are indeed a suitable person for the project in hand.

For now, I am waiting for my Google T-Shirt and certificate :) :)
Thanks Google for the big stipend...and all your efforts to promote Open Source...

GSOC 2010 : OAR Testsuites

Hi,

This is definitely a good news.. I have been selected by Google to be part of their Summer Open Source Development Programme.
I will be working for the OAR organization, with my mentor Mr. Joseph Emeras, to make a Testsuite Framework and several Testcases for their OAR Cluster Management Tool or Resource Manager or Batch Scheduler.

More info regarding OAR can be found at : http://oar.imag.fr/
My Project would be :
http://wiki-oar.imag.fr/index.php/Test_Suite_Proposal

More updates will posted soon..


Bye,
Narayanan K

CGI Placement Interviews at Bangalore

I've bin offered job from CGI, Bangalore, as Associate Software Engineer.

I was shortlisted for their interviews at Bangalore after writing a common PEP Exam(Preparatory Examination for Placements) through Career Net.
On 28th March, at CGI, Bangalore ,there were 2 Technical and 1 HR interviews (In fact, I felt all 3 were HR itself). It was a great experience.

Now that I have Infosys as well as CGI in hand, I am a bit confused. Both are offering almost the same salary package. Infi is not giving any hikes as was heard in the news..(atleast their offer letter doesnt mention about any hikes).
If somebody has points to distinguish CGI vs Infosys for a fresher..please share it here..TIA.

In the meantime, I am thinking of looking for opportunities better than these in my areas of interest. Hope something comes by my way...

Bye
Narayanan

Main Project : WhiZearch

My Academic Main Project : WhiZearch.

Duration : 4 months
Highlighting Technologies used :
1. Cluster management Technology - Apache Hadoop 0.20.1
2. Map-Reduce Parallel Programming Framework.
3. Semantic Web Technologies like RDF, SPARQL etc..

Abstract: WhiZearch is a web-based Search Engine meant for the Research Community as well as students who wish to find details regarding the various publications and journals scattered in an unstructured manner in the web. It also helps the end-user to find all information regarding a specific author/researcher, be it the author’s works or his/her personal info such as Mail ID, Phone No., Address, Interests, Educational profile etc..
A Login Module with Search History feature is also included.

While WhiZearch uses the advantages provided by the Semantic Web Technologies like RDF and SPARQL for data storage, processing and retrieval, it also uses the power of the Map-Reduce Programming Framework on a Hadoop Distributed Platform in the back-end. These features definitely demarcates itself from the other available web services providing similar functionalities to the end-user.

DBLP Online data, Bibliography details in Bibtex file formats are used to create RDF models of publication and Author details. All RDF Entries matching the user query are mapped and in the reduce function, RDF Querying is done for all entries with common key.

Other Technologies Used : Eclipse EE IDE for normal Java/J2EE, Jena APIs for Semantic Web Implementations, Servlet, JSP, Tomcat Server, etc..

My main project has been a good platform to learn about the latest cluster management technology, Hadoop (We tested our webservice with a Hadoop Cluster having a namenode and 5 Blade Servers added as Datanodes) as well as the state-of-the-art Semantic Web Technologies like RDF, SPARQL etc..
We used Prezi Tool for Final Project Presentation. It went really gr8.. :-)

Bye,
Narayanan

Infosys, Cordys at MEC

My Eighth Semester at MEC has begun and my first happy news is that I am placed in Infosys!!
The Infosys Recruitment Drive was on 17th December,2009. Out of the 180 students who had taken the written test, 48 of us cleared and 46 finally made into the company.

The written test consisted of 2 papers:
1. Logical and Analytical Reasoning
2. Verbal Ability
There was individual cut offs for each section.
HR Interview followed and I was fortunate to get a very experienced, energetic and jovial person from Infosys to interview me. He made me feel quite comfortable during the interview.

Yesterday i.e 18th December, "Cordys" came for recruitment in MEC. I was again one among the 17 lucky people who cleared their written test which consisted of Aptitude and Technical Sections..
First Tech Interview went really cool! I had almost confidently answered all questions...but was rejected! Maybe it was because I said yes, when asked if I was placed in Infy. :-P

I am just wondering if I have to go for higher studies or industry straight away!!! I would be very happy if I get some experienced advice regarding the pros and cons of my above concern.

Couple of companies had come in the seventh semester for campus recruitment in Model Engineering College. Capital IQ, Subex, Smartcrowds were among those, but they just took a handful of our students.

Many more companies are yet to visit MEC in the months to come especially after the 6 month freeze in recruitments to IT industry.

Now Hope to improve my skills in various departments with a free mind!!!

Bye!