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Monday, July 17, 2006

Search Engine Optimization Tools

As a search engine optimiser (SEO) you definitely require a set of tools that display your ranking in various search engines, generate keyword, analyse backlinks, etc. Listed below are the various free tools that are available on the net for SEO.

Ranking in various search engines:

http://www.googlerankings.com/

In order to use this tool you need to register with Google and get an API key. This tool enables users to check the rank of your web site for a certain key word with Google, Yahoo and Msn.

I was able to get a high ranking of 16 for my site for the key words “software complexity”.
Keyword Suggestions/Density Checker:
Though most search engines do not consider the keywords anymore for better ranking, its better to have appropriate keywords in your sites. These tools can help you in deciding keywords.

http://googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Though these tool are good it would have been better if it could narrow down the keywords rather that giving a big list for us to choose from.
Other tools:
These are other third party tools that are available for free on these sites
http://www.webconfs.com/
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/
http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html

Though these sites provide free tools using Google’s API, I consider most of the functionality provided by these tools to be redundant.
Google’s Alert:

One other good tool that might help webmaster to get more backlinks to their sites is to register with Google alert. With this alerting facility you can easily build more backlinks. Click here to register http://www.google.com/alerts

Monday, July 03, 2006

Passing parameters to XSL from Java

Generating a HTML from XML can be done using the javax.xml.transform class in the Java’s API. The transformation can be done using the code below;

TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer
(new javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource(xslFileName));
transformer.transform(new javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource
(xmlFileName),new javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult
( new FileOutputStream(htmlFileName)));

Note: Remember to provide the correct XSL, XML and HTML file names and the XSL and the XML file should be valid (i.e. all tags should be closed properly)

Now, suppose you want to customise the HTML output depending on certain criteria in your program, how do you do that? This can be done by sending information to the XSL file as parameters. So, the next big question, how can parameters be passed into the XSL file from a java programme?
The javax.xml.transform class provides you with a method called setParameter(String name, Object value). An example of this is given below;

Timestamp ts = new Timestamp(System.currentTimeMillis());
transformer.setParameter("timestamp", ts);

Here the timestamp is passed to the XSL filename. The XSL file can get this value by using a global param field as shown below.
<xsl:param name="timestamp"/>

and used like this
<xsl:value-of select="$timestamp"/>

to print the time that is obtained from the java class.

Note: The parameter name in the XSL should match the one in the java class.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

CyVis v0.9.0 Released!

Are you a Java developer? Do you want a tool that visualises the complexity of your software? We have just released the first public version of CyVis.
CyVis is a software metrics collection, analysis and visualisation tool for software built using Java. It enables developers to identify complex part of their software very easily.
CyVis collects data from java class or jar files hence there is no need for the actual source code. Once the metrics are collected, the statistical information is shown in a way that enables you to immediately detect which part of your software is complicated and which is not.
CyVis can either be integrated with your Ant script or used in command interface to generate reports. It also has a GUI Interface which we consider to be of great help to its users.
Try this cute little tool once and you will love it. Visit http://cyvis.sourceforge.net for more information.