SSO with Brightcove Gallery

If you haven't heard about Brightcove Gallery, in a few words is just platform that allows you to stream video efficiently and with great quality.

One of the challenges we faced was to integrate this platform with ours. Despite the fact that they have decent documentation, as usual, the fine details are not present. If it was that easy anyone would do it :)

In order to keep things simple we just have to pay attention to these details:

• After you have created your SSO configuration on Access Control and on your SSO server you have setup your IdP.

• Go to your site settings in your project/experience and link your site to your newly created Access Control

According to the documentation this should be all (yay!) 

However when testing you will get a 404 from Gallery (o_O) 

Why me???? :O

This is the trick:

Double check your SSO settings on your IdP settings

Our endpoint matches what Gallery has in ACS URL Override. But we have a site which has its own URL

Bingo! Let's use that URL in our Assertion Consumer Service URL, keep the /login/callback

And success!!!

Can your CTO still code?

Chief technology officers need to keep their sleeves rolled up and maintain their coding skills to better challenge their teams of developers.

Many chief technology officers study technology, consider different architectures and challenge their team to deliver products and services. The problem with this approach is that many CTOs today no longer maintain application development proficiencies.

The CTO is often at the mercy of many differing opinions within their organization without the important understanding, in some level of depth, the challenges, capabilities or even limitations that certain platforms present.

Worse yet, when a CTO completely relies on the advice of his or her engineers, that advice may simply be based on the preexisting comfort levels of the designers, programmers and architects.

When you’re consistently taking the word of others and haven’t maintained enough skill to perform basic discovery for yourself, you, as a CTO, are significantly diluting the power you have in driving true digital transformation for your company.

Continue reading

Partnering with Amazon

Amazon.com
Sounds impressive, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, integrating with them it could be a challenge, I guess the bigger a company becomes the more bureaucratic and slow becomes.

My experience dealing with them it's been less than pleasant and I can't complain about personalities but more about constant rotation of personnel on their side, slowness (every little thing with them takes 2 weeks that become 4 and sometimes 6) and lack of clear communication, you can't even talk to an actual Engineer.

I guess it's the price you have to pay when doing business with them.

Yeah, I know, this entry is more a way to blow some steam rather than providing useful insights.

My only advice I can give about Amazon.com is be patient and keep your business involved so you don't get dinged.

JS Frameworks with Salesforce

As I mentioned on previous entries, Salesforce has its good and bad things, but coming from a Java School, I still firmly believe that is not very Developer Friendly.

One of the things I wanted to try was to implement a Rich UI using JavaScript frameworks and either simple backend or APIs. However, Salesforce makes it kind of complicated.

The main challenge is around managing static resources, since all your code will be mostly in a bunch of JS files which have to be packaged and deployed in a Zip file as static resource.
But if you are patient enough you could implement something cool with a Visualforce page that might look like this:

On this particular approach we mixed Apex Remote Objects (Remote Object Model) with React. But that doesn't mean that you can't be creative and go for something more complex like using @RemoteAction in your controller methods.

Yeah, we could have tried something more Salesforcy like Lightning, but that's not what the cool kids use nowadays :D

Geo location fields throwing "No such column 'XXX__c' on entity 'XXXX__c' during deployment.

While performing a routine deployment to Salesforce we encountered a really weird issue:

kap_aoc_dao_Product: line 245, column 48: No such column 'location__c' on entity 'Facility__c'. If you are attempting to use a custom field, be sure to append the '__c' after the custom field name. Please reference your WSDL or the describe call for the appropriate names.

We double checked if we have missed any permissions or something else but no, everything was ok.

In order to keep this story short, we found our smoking gun:

List<facility__c> facilities = [Select id__c, Location__c From Facility__c WHERE DISTANCE(Location__c, GEOLOCATION(:latitude, :longitude), 'mi') < :distanceValue];

If we comment that line, at least the SOQL, the issue automagically gets fixed. What???

After more research and dozens of interactions with Salesforce support we found that this is a known issue with the plattform:

https://success.salesforce.com/issues_view?id=a1p30000000SpfnAAC

Salesforce has a workaround for this, but it will require to have Salesforce helping us to deploy this line after a regular release every time.

In other words:

1. We deploy all our changes
2. Ask Salesforce to deploy that code

Then in a subsequent release:

1. We comment that line and deploy (reference to geolocation is gone)
2. Deploy any additional code - BAU
3. Uncomment line on lower environment
4. Ask Salesforce to deploy that code referencing geolocation
5. And repeat this forever until Salesforce fixes that issue

OR

Convert that query into a String:

String facilitiyquery = 'Select id__c, Location__c From Facility__c WHERE DISTANCE(Location__c, GEOLOCATION(' + latitude + ',' + longitude + '), \'mi\') < ' + distanceValue; List<Facility__c> facilities = database.query(facilitiyquery);

By doing this we tricked the Compiler, so the validation that breaks the whole deployment never is executed, therefore our code is just executed/compiled during runtime.

Voila!!!

Salesforce page keeps loading forever

If you are poking around Salesforce, you might be one facing a lot of challenges and at the same time hitting your head against the wall multiple times.

Have you heard that Log levels have a big influence on your whole Org performance?
There is a way which might help to you to add a little boost to your apps developed on this not very friendly developer platform:
Change Log Levels using your Developer console.

But what happens when your developer console is so slow which doesn't allow you to change anything :(

There is a solution for that:

Launch the developer console and under "Query Editor" type the following query

select Id from TraceFlag

Then check the "Use Tooling API" checkbox and click "Execute."

After that select all the resultant rows and click "Delete Row."

Now you should be able to change the log levels.  You may have to refresh the developer console page and good as new.

Switch from PC to Mac

I found this great article about someone like me who just switched from PC (Windows) to Mac, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did

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The Story

Have you ever tried to resist brainwashing?

Before I get into why I switched, there’s some background you need to know. A year or three ago, you’d be hard pressed to find a more dedicated self-ordained Windows evangelist. I even wrote a lengthly piece about Mac vs. Windows and how I thought Windows had a stronger position (thankfully, that was only published on Google Docs, so no one can ever find it, as it was obviously biased). Over time, a few things happened. First, a couple of my cousins—shoutout to Britt and Matt—came in possession of a couple of MacBooks. Since I see them rather regularly, there was no shortage of opportunities for them to tout their new tools.

Have you ever tried to resist brainwashing?

The next big shift was dabbling in several dynamic programming languages, like Python and Ruby. It seems that it’s always easier to start up with these languages if you’re using a Unix-based OS. While it’s definitely not impossible on Windows, they don’t seem to integrate with the OS in the same way they do with Unix flavours.

Of course, there were better reasons than peer pressure (more on that in a minute). However, when my Windows 7 Release Candidate ran out, I gave myself an ultimatum: either buy Window 7 and secondary monitor, or get a used Mac. After a week or so of deliberation, I found myself in a miniature Starbucks in downtown Toronto, buying a 20-inch iMac off a third-year psychology student.

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The Reasons Why I Switched

So what came out of those few weeks of deliberation? Here’s why I switched:

1 Unix

Probably the biggest motivation to switch was the fact that Mac OS X is built on Unix. Being a real geek, I’m reasonably comfortable with the terminal; if you’re the same, you probably know that a Unix shell offers a lot more power than the Windows command line. Yes, I’ve tried Cygwin, but it’s not quite the same (and I never actually got it to work on Window 7 RC). Then there are Ruby and Python, so much more at home on Unix. And of course, there are so many other low-level benefits to running Unix.

So why didn’t I just switch to Ubuntu? Well, Ubuntu is really nice, especially the latest release, but it really just didn’t work for me, not for a full time gig.

2 Hardware

This one’s a no-brainer: Apple just makes their hardware better than most of the competition. I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that all that’s beautiful is not aluminium. However, I like Apple’s minimalistic stance. And of course, it’s what insides that matters most, and Apple does an excellent job there, too. There’s a catch to Apple hardware, though, and we’ll talk about that later.

3 Software

The final reason was simply this: there’s a lot of great software for Macs that doesn’t have a good Windows counterpart. There are two cases I ran into. First, there’s nothing on Windows that does as well, or at all, what I’ve found in a Mac app. Example: I use Simplenote a lot on my iPod Touch; there are four or five Mac apps that sync with Simplenote; before I switched, I had to use a perl script to do this on Windows. (Now,Uri Fridman has made Notes, which is based on Notational Velocity, and will soon support Simplenote sycing! Check out his site for other great nuggets; Codex is another of my favourites). Then, there are programs that do the right things, but aren’t as aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly as the Mac apps. For example, I use Evernote a lot; their Windows client does as much (and a bit more, I think) as their Mac client, but it’s just not as pretty.

However, there’s a catch on the software, too.

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The Good What I’m Liking

So now that I’ve switched, here are my favourite things about the Mac; some may seem rather insignificant, but when your working full-speed and don’t want to break that flow, little things matter a lot.

1 The Terminal

I’ve already pointed out that the Terminal was part of my first reason for switching; it’s every bit as glorious as I expected it to be, and has motivated me to use it more that I have on Windows. Anyone who has used the Command Line on Windows and Terminal on Mac will know exactly how much better a Unix shell is.

2 Languages Preinstalled

I was surprised and delighted to find that my Mac came with Ruby, Python, Perl, and even Java (which I need for university) already installed.

3 Mounted Drives on the Desktop

This is a feature of Unix that I’ve always loved and could never find a way to duplicate on Windows. Not huge, I know; but, huge.

4 Quicklook

Another tiny feature that saves me a second-and-a-half, dozens and dozens of times a day. I’m working mainly with text files, but for everything from code to Word docs, I’m just a tap on the spacebar away from inspecting the contents of that file. Only gripe: I can’t copy from the quicklook panel.

5 Time Machine

It’s kind of a hassle to do backup and restore on Windows. With Time Machine, it’s easy and fun. I do wish I had a bit more control over what it backs up and how often (without the numerous hacks), but for daily backup and revisions, it works flawlessly and easily.

6 Installing Apps

Installing apps on Mac is much different from installing them on Windows. They both use extremely different methods; and overall, I think the Mac does it much more smoothly.

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The Bad What I’m not Liking

But all’s not perfect in any OS; here’s what’s bothering me about the Mac:

1 The Trash

I really don’t get the philosophy of the trash on the Mac; I know you’re not supposed to use the Trash as a holding place for the files you’re not sure about, but why can’t I delete individual files? Why? Here’s a scenario I’ve had: I wanted to get rid of several gigabytes of files, in multiple folders that I’d just zipped into an archive; so, I moved them all to the trash, and then opened the trash to get rid of them permanently. First, I wanted to sort the files by the date/time they were moved to the trash, but that’s not a feature Jobs would ever need, and so I can’t do it. That’s when I found I couldn’t delete individual items; just all or nothing. Mighty inconvenient, if you ask me. I should have used the Terminal to terminate them.

2 Too Few USB ports

My 20-inch iMac has fewer USB ports than my Dell Laptop did; it only has 3; my Inspiron 1520 had 4; how do you explain that? Then, the old USB extender I was using on Windows doesn’t appear to work on the Mac; not Mac’s fault necessarily, but certainly less than ideal.

3 “Enter” doesn’t open the file/folder

This one is just a matter of muscle memory, but it’s rather annoying. On Windows, hitting enter opens a file or folder; on Mac, the enter key renames the item in question. To open it, I’ve got to use two keys: cmd + o. On the same note, it now takes two keystokes to send files to that crooked Trash: cmd + delete instead of just delete.

4 Home and End Keys

This has to be the most frustrating part about the Mac. On Windows, the home key places your cursor at the front of the current line; the end key places it at the end. However, on a Mac the respective commands are cmd + left-arrow and cmd + right-arrow. This has been pretty hard to get used to; and, since I’m in text editors a lot of the time, hitting home and end (which, by the way, bring you to the top or bottom of the linebut does not move your cursor) has been a dizzying experience.

5 Keyboard shortcuts

I know I’ve already talked about two specific keyboard shortcuts that bother me, but keyboard shortcuts in general have been hard. It’s mainly because the cmd key takes the place of the ctrl key in the shortcuts, but it takes the place of the alt key on the keyboard. So if you’ve used Windows for a long time, caveat emptor.

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The Other What I’d also like to mention

I’ve shown you what’s good and what’s bad, but there are a few things I have to mention that don’t really fit into either of those categories. Welcome to miscellaneous.

1 Closing Windows / Programs

One of the biggest differences between Windows is Mac what happens when you close a window; on Windows (and with a name like that, they should know how to deal with it) the program closes; on Mac, the window closes but the program continues to run. I think the idea here is that it will be quicker to open just a window instead of the whole app next time you need to open it. This is nice for the most part, but I think some apps of a certain nature should really and truly exit when you close their windows. And some do, like System Preferences. I really wish Preview did this. This is one of those fundamental feature of Mac OS X that really takes a paradigm shift to properly grok.

2 Knowing what’s going on

I’m familiar with Windows, to say the least. I had my A+ certification, which deals mainly with Windows, so I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on under the covers when working on Windows PC. I really miss this intimate knowledge of the system when working with a Mac. I know it’s not an unsolvable problem, but it’s been pretty different to not have that background knowledge. For example, I was recently surprised to find that Time Machine has maxed out my external hard drive; it turned out that iTunes copies all the imported media into the iTunes folder, so I had a two copies of the entire library being backed up. Like Sir Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge [about how the system works] is power.”

3 The software catch

There’s a ton of great software for Mac; however, it seems that the moving from Windows to Mac also requires a move from free software to quality software. Now, I know there’s quality, paid-for software for Windows, and free software for Macs. However, for every quality, paid-for app on Windows, there are five or six free ones that will do the same job decently. On Mac, the same isn’t quite so true. It seems that Mac developers just put a lot of thought and sweat into their products.

4 The hardware catch

Like I’ve said, Apple makes great hardware. However, one thing I know I’m going to miss is the ability to upgrade it. Apple does make it easy enough to add RAM. But when I’m ready to upgrade my hard drive, well, it will be scary at best. But I’d gladly sacrifice the single-piece back-side of my iMac for an easy-to-access hard drive slot.

5 Switching?

Throughout this article, I’ve talked about switching to a Mac. And yes, I’ve switched to a Mac as my main workhorse. But my trusty old Dell hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still in good use, and syncing services likeEvenote and Dropbox (referral link) more than ever.

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The Resources What I’ve found Helpful

Switching operating systems is a pretty big change; here are the resources that have been the biggest help to me while doing so; don’t forget to let me know about other great sources in the comments!

• Mac.AppStorm
• Mac Power Users Podcast
• Minimal Mac

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A Very Important Conclusion

Switching to Mac has in no way made me an Apple fanboy or a Microsoft hater. I couldn’t say it better than this:

“Mac vs PC debates make me want to throw up. Does your OS of choice work for you? Great, problem solved!”
- Drew Douglass

Source: http://net.tutsplus.com/