Codeasaurus Rex

June 28, 2008

The Birth of a Notion

Filed under: Mainframer makeovers, SAP — Codeasaurus Rex @ 6:18 pm

I’ve been thinking about getting into SAP for the last few years and often talked to my fellow guild members and brokers about it (I’m a contract programmer and brokers get me most of my jobs). The usual suggestion was to take a year off and spend a pile of money getting schooled, so I let things slide…

The light finally came on this afternoon and one google later, I found the SAP Developer Network website. Poking around, I found that free registration was required to access the training goodies, forums etc.

One registration and email confirmation later and I’m a brand-new SDN member. My first job is to learn the ABAP language used to program SAP, but I pick up programming languages like dogs pick up fleas; after all, what are command shells, awk, grep, sed and SQL but programming languages, in addition to the usual suspects like FORTRAN, COBOL, C, Python etc.?

There appears to be a download for Windows XP that will let me play around with ABAP, in which case I won’t need to get a SAP job first (which would probably be impossible). There also seems to be an opportunity to download some kind of SAP application to learn on, but it has SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell as a prerequisite. (Dang! Just when I was getting excited about the BSDs…)

Note: ABAP is pronounced Ah-Bop by the cognoscenti because SAP comes from Germany. (If you really want to lay it on, say “zahp” instead of “sap”.) I did two years of German during one of my numerous forays into higher education and look forward to reading the SAP scriptures in the original language.

Anyway, what better for this mainframer than to get retreaded with SAP? I know it’s a big system to get your arms around, but I’ve been doing legacy maintenance on and off for twenty years so big systems don’t hold any particular terror for me.

As Fred Astaire sang in Top Hat:

I’m stepping out, my dear,
to breathe an atmosphere
that simply reeks with class,
and I hope that you
won’t mind my dust
when I step on the gas…

Honeypots

Filed under: IT Backgrounders, Security — Codeasaurus Rex @ 8:29 am

A honeypot is a destination on your private network that you don’t use for normal purposes. Any attempt to access it is by definition anomalous and therefore an indication that a security breach of some kind is in progress. This simple idea is what makes a honeypot a valuable network security alarm.

A honeynet is a collection of honeypots, though a single machine and network interface card is sufficient to simulate a honeynet.

SANS provides an informative overview of honeypot/honeynet technology that is interesting whether or not you are personally responsible for network security. It is listed as the December 1, 2005 Wednesday Webcast entitled “Honeypots” on the SANS webcast archive page at

https://www.sans.org/webcasts/archive.php

See the Howto for information on how to access a SANS webcast.

Spam vs. Antispam: A History of the Arms Race

Filed under: IT Backgrounders — Codeasaurus Rex @ 8:23 am

A very listenable and informative overview of the Spam Wars from 1998 to 2005. Now that major ISPs have decent filtering in place, spam isn’t as much of an end-user problem as it used to be (unless of course your email address has been blacklisted as a spam source).

The presentation is listed as the February 2, 2005 Wednesday Webcast entitled “Spam Prevention: Past, Present and Future” on the SANS webcast archive page at

https://www.sans.org/webcasts/archive.php

See the Howto for information on how to access a SANS webcast.

Howto: Access the SANS Webcast Archive

Filed under: Howto — Codeasaurus Rex @ 8:13 am

I fortunately stumbled upon the SANS Webcast Archive and have been making my way through the streaming media presentations as I prepare for a security certification exam. Some are outstanding (even if a few years old), and I’ll be posting about them here: they usually provide interesting explanations of important topics accessible to an IT generalist.

To access the Webcast Archive as well as the current webcasts, you must register for free with the SANS Institute at http://sans.org using the

 portal > create account

menu entry.

Once you are registered, login via the http://sans.org

portal > login

menu entry and then select the

resources > webcasts

menu entry. Then click on the Webcast Archive link and click on whatever presentation you’re interested in. You will be taken to yet another page where you’ll need to click on the “click here to proceed” button, but I usually uncheck the “share my info with sponsor” checkbox before doing so.

The presentations are usually sponsored, so the sponsor gets first crack at you. The quality of the advertising presentation is variable, but if I recommend a webcast it’s worth getting through so you can enjoy the main presentation that follows. There is usually a question-and-answer period after the presentation in which emailed questions are entertained, and the presenter’s answers to the questions often supplement the main presentation in useful ways.

The presentations can be accessed as audio with synchronized slides, though this of course ties you down in front of your computer. I just listen to the audio over a wireless headphone connection and go about my business at home while taking in the audio, and have never tried to view the slide part of a presentation. This way, I gain valuable IT background without having to dedicate time to it exclusively.

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