Experience vs. Certification

This perticular question have been discussed so many times everywhere . so i just thought of putting my own views on it. Some give weightage to certification(SCJP, MCSE..) and some give weightage to experience. What i think is that certification is not as much important as real time experience. The only advantage having certifications is that the hiring managers will pick those resumes more than the resume of a non-certifieds. But again this advantage is limited to the freshers. It does not apply to experienced professionals.
If a person is having real time experience , It's much much better than a perosn having only certification, Because at the end work is more important than just knowledge. What i would prefer is to go for some real experience and after some time along with your work, you can go for certifications.

Watir- An automated test tool

"Watir" stands for Web Application Testing in Ruby. Watir is a free open source functional testing tool for automated browser based testing of web applications. It does everything from clicking a link to filling a form.
Watir uses Ruby to work with internet explorer in windows. Watir does not work with Active X plugin components, Java applets, macromedia flash. To start with Watir, All you need is the knowledge of HTML, little programming exposure and basic concepts of Ruby. Watir is very powerful and very easy to use.

A sample test file which i made for checking mails from rediff website.

#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
Simple Rediffmail test written by Sunil Gupta 7/20/06
# 1) log on to mail account
# 2) check new mails
# 3) Click on a mail link
# 4) forward this mail
# 5) Logout from mail
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------#

require 'watir' # the watir controller
# set a variable
test_site = 'http://www.rediffmail.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi'
# open the IE browser
ie = Watir::IE.new
# print some comments
puts "## Beginning of test: Rediffmail"
ie.goto(test_site)
puts " Action: entered " + test_site + " in the address bar."

puts "Step 2: Logon:" ie.text_field(:name, "login").set("admin")
ie.text_field(:name, "passwd").set("password")
ie.button(:name, "proceed").click

puts "Logged on as admin"

puts "Step 3: Check new mails" ie.link(:text, "new mails").click
sleep 6.0

puts "Step 4: Open a mail"
ie.link(:text, "NIIT").click
sleep 3.0

puts "Step 5: Forward this mail"
ie.button(:value, "Forward").click
sleep 2.0

puts "Step 6: Enter email address"
ie.text_field(:name, "To").set("admin@yahoo.com")
ie.button(:value, "Send").click

puts "Step 7: Logout"
ie.link(:text, "Logout").click

puts "Expected Result: "
if ie.contains_text("admin")
puts "Test Passed. Found the test string: 'admin'. Actual results match expected result"
else
puts "Test Failed! Could not find: 'admin'"
end

puts " "
puts "## End of test: Rediffmail"

# -end of simple Rediffmail test

To know more about Watir, You can check their home page. Watir- An automated test tool.

Rich Internet Applications ( RIA)

Rich Internet Applications ( RIA) are those web applications that have the features and functionality of desktop applications. Rich internet applications are similer to normal web applications in the sense that

1. Rich internet application run in a web browser. It does not require the software installation.
2. Rich internet application run in sandbox

There are some organizations which are promoting the term RIA , One of them is Macromedia( formally Adobe ), Macromedia is the orgaization who introduced the term RIA.

Compared to normal web applications having client-server architecture, Rich internet applications have benifit over those. In the normal web application , All the processing take place on the server side and client is only used to display static text. For every task, data need to be send to server, server should process it and send back the result to the client lead to page reloading. Rich internet applications uses client side technology for executing instructions locally on client side and hence improve the performence.

What makes it Rich internet applications is to have rich features like drag & drop , slider to change data and more. There are some terms which are used under the rich internet applications. These are Flash, AJAX, CSS, ActiveX controls, Java Applets, Java applications using java webstart, XHTML.

The only problem with rich internet applications is that they run on the sandox, so limited system resources can be accessed. Since Java script is some time required, if java script is disabled, then it may be problem running rich internet application.

The use of rich internet applications is increasing becuase it gives a feel of desktop applications in to a web application.