Microsoft CRM 4. 0 and Java clients ...

Having worked on Java and Microsoft technologies, I always found that programming using Microsoft languages like C# is lot easier than coding in Java. There could be many reasons why I felt so and some of them are that MS offers one standard IDE (VS2008) unlike in Java where you have various editors like Eclipse (with MyEclipse), JBuilder, JDeveloper, etc. I personally feel that MyEclipse and Eclipse is a powerful combo than VS 2008 but still it is easier/faster to develop a windows based client in C# than in Java.

Of late, I have been working with CRM web services, trying to develop a custom web application that can consume web services offered by CRM 4.0. I have developed an ASP.NET website and have accomplished what I intended to.

Now, I wanted to experiment with Java a bit (it's been quite some since I had started MyEclipse on my machine ;-) ). I have generated the Java classes using WSDL2Java from Axis1.x. I followed some examples posted in forums and got a sample working using the CRMDiscoveryService. I followed the same process to consume CRMService but hard luck. All the time I encountered "401 User Unauthorized".

After lot of googling, I came to know that Axis1.x doesn't support NTLM authentication (not sure how it worked for CRMDiscoveryService !!). Some posts suggested that the latest stable release of Axis1.x doesn't support NTLM authentication and that we need to download the latest nightly build and the latest sources from SVN. I did that but no luck yet !!

One of my friends suggested to use Axis2 instead of Axis1.x. I have downloaded the latest binaries and source code of Axis2 but the error remained the same - "401 User Unauthorized".

This is real frustrating, 'coz when you say that webservices are aimed to bring about platform independence, getting a client (from a different platform) to work with MS CRM webservices is not that easy !!

Microsoft is famous for the documentation, samples and look-and-feel and I am hoping that someone from Microsoft or Sun finds this post and comes up with some helpful samples and documentation on how to develop clients in Java to consume MS CRM 4.0 web services :-)

Till then, keeping shouting in forums ;-)

India is "still" a developing country ...

"India is a developing country" - I am sure, this was the sentence our parents studied while in school... I read the same sentence but I wish the next generations to come can say "India is a developed country".

Celebrating 61 years of Independence, I blog to memorize those leaders who fought for independence, who dreamt of a free India hoping that it would make wonders and shine with the glory that it had in the past.I salute to each and every individual who have represented our country and spread the greatness of our country across the globe (eg: Kalpana Chawla, Sunitha Williams, to name a few)

61 years - what does it mean ? Does it mean that India is growing older ? Does it mean that India had strived through the tests of time and stands stubborn after getting independence ?

There are some such ways of interpreting this. Let me tell you my interpretation - India looks older 'coz it is still being ruled by older people !! Even now, we hardly see young blood in current politics.

On every Independence day, I watch TV and hear the politicians giving lectures saying that the future of India is in the hands of youth !! But how many youngsters are there in the cabinet of the government in power ?

Let's move on - we are the top rankers when it comes to population, poverty, corruption and all sorts of things..Look at China, world's no. 1 in population and is now a proud host of Olympics.Let's put a question to ourselves - Can we host Olympics on such a scale ? may be yes and may be no..

We are next to China when it comes to population, but how many medals have we won in the past Olympics and how many are we going to win in the Beijing Olympics ?

What are our hindrances, why are we not the top performers in other positive areas ? People say that the reasons are - illiteracy, corruption, etc..

Well, everyone is aware of the problems, the reason for us being marked as a "developing" country and I think that it's high time that we spend time observing the world around us, get inspired by countries like China and Japan and get things improved at a faster pace and let the world know that a super power is in the making :-)

Wish you all a very happy independence day :-)