Investing in UK – best way to do that.

I am going to blog about my experience of investing in UK capital market in next few posts. It will mainly cover major indexes, major shares and cheap share brokers.

After that, I also want to cover some of the unique features of execution only discount brokers. You can always go to site called moneysavingexpert.com and find out what is cheaper or best way to do that. I will narrate my experience though.
Will also add more on cost of service and how competitors can think of reducing cost or including more number of citizens in stock market investment.

My immediate impression about Google Chrome OS

Somehow when I visited Balaji Temple at Birmingham last week on boxing day, I noticed one hoarding at Dudley Road about Google Chrome and I was surprised to see that. Then I thought, since Google has got a lot of money to spend in UK, they might be spending some on brand building. So I though of doing some online search on this advt campaign. I got a article about this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JyFbF7QFlY which is all about more details on Google chrome os. Some of the questions raised by IT Journalist were not answered properly like privacy of data etc. Sometimes, I feel they are reinventing the wheel (OS in this case) than focussing more on their core strengths like Search or Ad works etc. I spent 80 mins today to see the whole video about this presentation and read 284 comments and then thought of blogging about it.  Here is my take on this OS. Some part of it, I tried to post on Youtube but there is limit for 500 words. Hence this additional post on my blog.

Few things to note- This will be new OS same as current Chrome Browser which will fast. Hence, it will be popular. A bad thing about it is that it assumes net connectivity for its functioning. This is not possible in rest of world except may be US, UK and some of EU nations which got better infrastructure either mobile data or DSDL connections. For rest of the world like India, China and Africa, LA and Australia, they need to think differently. They are trying to launch a product in Nov 2010 which will be compatible to some net books.

More on privacy front.  Do no evil is just a slogan to say and not to act. They will definitely  use this stored information for Ad words and other stuff  like building search algorithm or to market Google products or will sell data to third parties to make money out of it.

I am worried that there will be world with loss of privacy using cloud computing. I am sure, EU Anti trust commission will not pass this as single OS, Single Browser system as they objected to Microsoft in case of IE and Windows.

But next year, I will definitely try to get first copy of netbook and try my hand on this new experiment by Google.

A lot more questions that needs to be answered before that..

Best way to send money to India from UK

There are many young Indians reaching to foreign shores in their early ages due to their IT jobs which demands partial Onsite presence and then they get paid in foreign currencies.  Most of the time, they want to know, how  can I convert this currency into INR or send money to India. Initially they do what their colleagues say but longer they stay, more options they look for better returns on their pounds or dollars or whatever currency.  I would like to share my personal experience about which way is best way to get better exchange rates on your GBP to INR conversions.

There are major 2 players in the market. One is backed by Times Group called REMIT2INDIA which is again backed by Citigroup or CITIBANK and Money2India which is backed by largest private sector bank in India called ICICI Bank.

All of these online money transfer agents or websites claims that they to free transfer and eat or cut at least 1 rs per pounds as a commission and also takes 3-5 working days to complete the transaction.

IMHO, SBI’s GLS UK and US might be the best one in terms of exchange rates. Well, you all might have surprised to know that SBI is also doing all sort of things. More about GLS is here.

Global Link Services (GLS) is an office functioning under the International Banking Group of State Bank of India, Corporate Center located at Mumbai, set up for handling foreign currency collections on behalf of all domestic branches of SBI. It also handles Inward Remittances on electronic Platform from Individuals, Banks and Exchange Companies in U.S.A., Europe, Middle East and other parts of the world.

ICICI Bank and other banks like HDFC Banks has recently came to this money exchange business but SBI is there since long time as they were only bank having branches in US, UK, Gulf and Europe ( apart from BOB and Bank of India). Now they do have online interface which works well in reasonable time frame.  I earlier posted about SBI’s global or UK ambition.  I would like HDFC Bank should also come to US and UK and do the similar business as they are one of the most preferred domestic private bank and now a days favourites of stock market. I know Axis bank is trying reach this market but not seen much of branches yet.

Individual experience matters here but I will go with SBI for better exchange rates and ICICI for fast and reliable service. SBI is there everywhere in India and small towns where ICICI or other private sector banks like HDFC or Axis will take another 5 years to reach. Due to its core banking opertions, its possible to send money to these branches from any other banks using NETFT facility of RBI.

Going for 1z0-042 at last

I am planning for second paper in Oracle DBA 10g Series which is 1z0-043- Oracle DBA II Workshop. I am planning for this exam since I passed first paper on Jan 2009 and thinking of doing some training before going ahead.

Seems little tough as there is more focus on RMAN and other advanced features of Oracle 10g. Let’s see

Follow-up on 17 Sept 2009:

I cancelled the exam and I am still planning to go for DBA Training in India and then appear for exam.

General Error Messages in Validations – New way to do it

I developed a lot of applications in Application Express and I do have some kind of freedom to choose error messages where validations are not defined. To add few types of validations which are defined but not what kind of error message lead me to another problem. Now application is going to UAT and external Testing team is testing these applications raised issue about grammer and consistance syntex of validations.
There are few set of validations which are commonly used in my applications like
Number Specific one

1. Item specified is Is number
2. Format mask fo item is is 99.9 or 9.9 or 99.9 ( like height and weight fields
3. Item range must be between x and y value
4. Item valuse must be greater than zero

Date Specific one

1. Item must be valid date
2. Item must be in format dd/mm/yyyy
3. Item must less than sysdate or some other date

General Items – Characters

1. Value must be specified (Not Null) one

Now, I created some of the validations and later came to know about its inconsistant nature of it.
I can’t visit all the validations, change the error message and test the application as it was time consuming, errore prone, and boring.

So, here is new way. I declared a varibale in defination which will be like

For number
V_NUMBER_ERROR_1 and Items specified must be a number.
V_NUMBER_ERROR_2 and Item specified must be greater than zero.

I declared all the validations error messages in defination. Then exported whole application in .SQL (which is default one for apex). Opened the code in SQL Navigator or SQL Developer (whichever is used in your organisation as PL/SQL IDE will be fine – Most use TOAD). Searched for validation type as ITEM_IS_NUMBER and replaced error message with
&V_NUMBER_ERROR_1. in single quotes.

Done all the changes (Find and intellegent Replace) and imported application with keeping same application id. Done. Now all the validations with similar nature of errors will have same error message.

User or anyone who don’t like error message can change it at central place only once and all the messages will be replaced.

Great feature of apex. It also saves time when I create more validations on other forms as I don’t have to type long error messages and worry about uppercase/ lowercase/ error text and just paste error message variable.

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Prolem in Apex – Not able to limit Text Area

I had created a lot of Text Areas in one my pet application and suddenly realised that I am not able to control lenght of it.. Well, I was first surpirse. Then my reaction was, how come I miss this major bug or known issue.
With quick discussion with collegue, I decided to change then with Text Area with word counter. Now it looks dirty but it does its job. Dirty because, it (text or character counter) appears below text area. Does its job because it counts how many words that you had entered automatically and once you reach limit, it shows text in red ( and counter as well) and trim the rest of the stuff to max limit.

Well done..there are other ways to deal with this error but let’s see if this solution is acceptable or not. Whole change took just 20 min of my time as I exported application, searched for textarea and replaced with textarea_with_char_counter..and imported application..

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All about Forms and coding them in HTML/Web

I recently visited site called snappyfingers.com, a Bangalore based start-up or Web2.0 company which developed this new serach engine which will give results in questions and answers.

In brief, it shows on its home page this info..

Looking for answers should be easy. That’s why we have built the smartest and most comprehensive Question/Answer search engine on the web. We search millions of FAQ’s spread across the web so that you don’t have to. Use our search to find answers or to discover more. 

Whether you are doing research or home work, or you just have a plain old question, SnappyFingers has the answer.

Anyway, I tried first Oracle Application Express and it gave me just 4 answers, most of them from OTN site. For Oracle, it gave me a lot of results, hence it might be working for popular questions or words for which are indexed by search engines. 

Point is not that. When I went to complete feedback, I came to know site called wufoo.com and it says on its FAQ as follow

Wufoo is an Internet application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. Because we host everything, all you need is a browser, an Internet connection and a few minutes to build a form and start using it right away.

In short, this site gives users or develoeprs to design or use HTML based feedback forms with out writing single line of code. Very helful, especially you don’t have to spend much time in developement and learning new things like AJAX, Javascript etc.

Thinking of using it for my blog to collect feedback for this blog. More on what to use to develop more Forms or covert exsiting one. RIA — Rich Internet Applications etc..

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For latest happenings on technology

Visit http://milindjadhav.wordpress.com/

This blog will be my all purpose blog which will cover more of Investments, Indian Markets, Portfolio Analysis, Mistakes in past and some things like technology and Certifications Progress and future plans. 

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Its almost a year since last post

I am busy in my job as APEX Developer and implementing Oracle Application Express to develop RAD Applications in Health PSU in SW England. 

I don’t write much now a days on this blog but promise to write more in future.

For latest post on my life and other things..visit http://milindjadhav.wordpress.com/

Benefits of Oracle Certifications

Recently I cam across one article on Oracle Certification Blog which states major three benefits of being certified or time to take certification in this uncertain times ( Read recession, chances of getting canned, pink slips and job loss)

1. Veteran in Oracle : If you are in Oracle Technologies since so many years, and not certified yet, get one. Well, logic seems fine but most of the people in Oracle Development area moves up in hiearchy and they no more develop programs. Not sure that will benefit senior people in development or administration like DBA who are more of a strategy decider or architect
2. New to Oracle: If you are not in Oracle technology and want to know more about it and gain additional qualification that your own core domain or technical skills, you can go for Oracle Certification and Oracle corp has made more easy now with just pass one exam and you will get some kind of certification like expert or OCA etc.. may be in downturn, or depression this kind of additional knowledge will help. ( This point is not mentioned in the certification blog but I am adding it based on my personal experience)
3. Already OCP/OCM: Third and last one is new add ons like expert track. God knows when new things come and go and become stale by the time you it. So, expert tracks are like refresher course which will give you idea about what’s new and can this be used anywhere I am currently working..

I found that advice useful but if things are uncertain, why new aspirants will spend time (more important) and money (less important in US/UK but important in countries like India,China thanks to current exchange rate).

Second things regarding madatory trainings for DBA tracks and some other tracks which I am not aware of. These trainings are so expensive and for 5 days of classes, it almost cost around 2200 GBP and loss of income or leaves for that five days. This is hugh on expenses side. So if your company is not sponsering your training cost, its big hole on your personal balance sheet or budget.

Hope Oracle certification team come up with more innovative and cost effective way to tackle credit crunch.