Flutterby™! : Oh Java my Java 2006-03-22 01:09:37.593712+00

Oh Java my Java

2006-03-22 01:09:37.593712+00 by meuon 3 comments

OK, So I'm no expert, but I earned my keep today playing with Java Servers. Not by being a java code dude, and doing what they were doing, but by hooking up a sniffer and actually capturing the communications between two servers, (one ours, one 'theirs') and finding that we were sending the wrong data, that I fixed it (in .java/.class files) and that after fixing it, verifying that it was right, that 'their' systems were STILL borken. It was all worth it when I sent the other guys both sides of the interserver communications (and related management) in an e-mail (they are .net guys) and got a single 1 line e-mail back: "How the F!!! did you get that?" and it reminded me why I enjoy working with people of various disciplines and backgrounds. They live/work in a monoculture, and 'sniffing' is a "hacker" thing, maybe a network weenie thing, and not a tool in a programmers arsenal for troubleshooting.

I've used sniffers for troubleshooting on occasion, but I have to be careful at my current gig because the server guys have been known to come down hard on anybody "caught" running a sniffer of any kind.

Grins. Yep, had an office-mate who believed that you could write notYET

code without a network sniffer, 'til he got stumped on a really nasty one. Network sniffers are total necessities for web services code, especially on systems which try to hide as much from you as .NET does.

Heh. I've been doing sysad work for a long time, developing needed tools along the way. I've always had the attitude that anything I can compile and have permissions to run is a tool in my arsenal. I do get permission before running a) network scanners (nmap et al) and b) password decrypts. As I told a DBA who, when consulted about a query/report said "That's data *analyst* work", I'm a problem-solver. I debug everything.