intltechventures.blogspot.com

2011-12-01 Thursday - Bayeux Protocol

2011-12-01T08:54:00.001-08:00

I'm exploring some potential design ideas leveraging server-side JavaScript, and so have started compiling a list of articles and resources to review::

http://nodejs.org/

Standard ECMA-262ECMAScript Language SpecificationEdition 5.1 (June 2011)
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm

Bayeux Protocol -- Bayeux 1.0.0
http://svn.cometd.org/trunk/bayeux/bayeux.html

Introduction to Bayeux Protocol (HTTP Publish-Subscribe)
http://blogs.oracle.com/slc/entry/introduction_to_bayeux_protoco

Cometd is a scalable HTTP-based event routing bus that uses a push technology pattern known as Comet.

http://cometd.org/
http://cometd.org/documentation

http://code.google.com/p/cometd/
http://code.google.com/p/cometd/wiki/BayeuxCometdDocumentation

CometD.NET is a C# client library for the Bayeux protocol
https://github.com/Oyatel/CometD.NET

http://cometdaily.com/

V8 JavaScript Engine
http://code.google.com/p/v8/

2011-11-11 Friday - Apache Tika MD5 and SHA1 errors

2011-11-11T14:14:00.001-08:00

So I was very interested to see the announcement from the Apache Software Foundation regarding the release of Apache Tika 1.0
https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_apache_software_foundation_announces19

However, when I attempted to verify the MD5 and SHA1 values for the .jar on the download page, the values did not match the published/expected values.

I've created a bug in the project's Jira:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TIKA-783

2011-10-24 Monday - Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview

2011-10-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

MSDN: What's New in VIsual Studio 11 Developer Preview

MSDN: Visual C# Developer Center

MSDN Developer Samples

Most Recent CodePlex Releases

2011-10-10 Monday - Interesting Links

2011-10-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

A few interesting things that I'm come across recently:

Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a15c3ce9-f58f-42b7-8668-53f6cdc2cd83
Web Essentials
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/6ed4c78f-a23e-49ad-b5fd-369af0c2107f
Regex Editor
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/55c24bf1-2636-4f94-831d-28db8505ce00

Google Dart Language specification
http://www.dartlang.org/docs/technical-overview/index.html
http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/dartLangSpec.pdf

Google's email: The Future of Javascript
http://pastebin.com/NUMTTrKj

Craig Dickson's JavaOne 2011 presentation: Dead-Simple Deployment: Headache-Free Java Web Applications in the Cloud
http://craigsdickson.com/post/dead-simple-deployment-headache-free-java-web-applications-in-the-cloud-slideshare/

Apache Commons IO 2.1 released
http://commons.apache.org/io/upgradeto2_1.html

2011-09-27 Wednesday: LACP and PAGP

2011-09-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some research today on a batch performance issue that recently came up for a client engagement.

Initial research seems to indicate it may be something related to a recent network infrastructure change. As part of that discussion, the configuration options for LACP and PAGP were mentioned. Those configuration options were not previously familiar to me - so I spent a quick 15 minutes doing some research and found these resources to be of some interest:

Some background info on LACP and PAGP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherChannel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAgP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Aggregation_Control_Protocol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Aggregation_Protocol

VMware Virtual Networking Concepts

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) (802.3ad) for Gigabit Interfaces

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2sb/feature/guide/gigeth.html

For Catalyst 2950 and Catalyst 2955 Switch

Configuring EtherChannels

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2950/software/release/12.1_22_ea2/configuration/guide/swethchl.html

“Interfaces configured in the on mode do not exchange PAgP or LACP packets.”

Table 30-1 EtherChannel Modes
Mode	Description
active	Places an interface into an active negotiating state, in which the interface starts negotiations with other interfaces by sending LACP packets.
auto	Places an interface into a passive negotiating state, in which the interface responds to PAgP packets it receives but does not start PAgP packet negotiation. This setting minimizes the transmission of PAgP packets.
desirable	Places an interface into an active negotiating state, in which the interface starts negotiations with other interfaces by sending PAgP packets.
on	Forces the interface into an EtherChannel without PAgP or LACP. With the on mode, a usable EtherChannel exists only when an interface group in the on mode is connected to another interface group in the on mode.
passive	Places an interface into a passive negotiating state, in which the interface responds to LACP packets that it receives, but does not start LACP packet negotiation. This setting minimizes the transmission of LACP packets

“Interfaces can form an EtherChannel when they are in different PAgP modes as long as the modes are compatible”

Default EtherChannel Configuration

Table 30-2 shows the default EtherChannel configuration.

Table 30-2 Default EtherChannel Configuration
Feature	Default Setting
Channel groups	None assigned.
PAgP mode	No default.
PAgP learn method	Aggregate-port learning on all interfaces.
PAgP priority	128 on all interfaces. (Changing this value has no effect.)
LACP learn method	Aggregate-port learning on all interfaces.
LACP priority	32768 on all interfaces.
Load balancing	Load distribution on the switch is based on the source-MAC address of the incoming packet.

EtherChannel Configuration Guidelines

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2950/software/release/12.1_22_ea2/configuration/guide/swethchl.html#wp1021856

“Do not configure a GigaStack GBIC port as part of an EtherChannel.”

“Configure all interfaces in an EtherChannel to operate at the same speeds and duplex modes.”

“Do not configure a secure port as part of an EtherChannel.”

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/information-technology/computer-networking/TCH_ITS_CNW/255109-12236013

PAgP is cisco proprietary which has 2 implications:
1-Interoperability with other network gear from different vendors is not guaranteed.
2-More importantly, your vmware servers may not be able to leverage the etherchannel

“Cisco's recommandations for VMWare connection is to use the mode "on", not LACP or PAGP”

“ESX does not support PAgP or LACP, you need to set Etherchannel to NONEGOTIATE”

http://www.networking-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=22447

“I need to get in the habit of using LACP. I've been using "on" exclusively and it's bitten me a couple times.”

“Channeling unconditionally can cause a loop if the other side isn't configured.”

http://www.networks-wetworks.com/2010/06/etherchannel-quick-and-dirty.html

For ports to be members of the same EtherChannel, there are some restrictions. Ports must:

Belong to the same VLAN
Have identical STP settings
Have identical speed/duplex settings
Note: In addition, if the EtherChannel is to be used as a trunking interface, all ports must be in trunking mode, have the same native VLAN, and pass the same set of VLANs.

EtherChannel Negotiation: PAgP vs. LACP

There are two EtherChannel negotiation protocols. Port Aggregation Protocol (PAgP) is a Cisco-proprietary protocol, while Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is standards based.

PAgP dynamically modifies the EtherChannel if one of the ports’ VLAN, speed, etc. is changed so that all of the links in the EtherChannel match. PAgP can be configured in active mode (desirable), which actively attempts negotiation. Passive mode (auto, the default) only negotiates an EtherChannel if the far end initiates it.

LACP assigns roles to end points. The switch with the lowest system priority makes decisions about what ports will participate in the EtherChannel at any given time. If you’re familiar with STP, this is similar to the way the Root Bridge is elected. Ports are selected and become active in the EtherChannel according to their port priority. LACP Active mode (active) – actively negotiates, while passive mode (passive) negotiates only if the far end initiates it.

Etherchannel Performance Issues with….

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2067911

http://pktmaniac.info/2011/06/design-for-failure-it-helps/

“Recently there was a post on Linkedin about port aggregation and the use of negotiation. It’s really disturbing seeing how many people recommend not using LACP or PaGP to configure aggregated ports (port-channels|etherchannels). Seems to be common misconception that if two switches are back-to-back configuring an on mode is acceptable.”

2011-09-08 Thursday - IBM Initiate

2011-09-08T16:27:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some research for a client engagement that is using the IBM Initiate product for Master Data Management

Here are the links to some of their product documentation:

IBM Initiate Master Data Service PDF documentation (v9.7)
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/initiate/v9r7/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.initiatepdfs.doc%2Ftopics%2Fc_initiatepdfs_intro.html

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/initiate/v9r7/index.jsp

SDK Reference for Java andWeb Services
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/initiate/v9r7/topic/com.ibm.initiatepdfs.doc/topics/i46mesdk.pdf

IBM Initiate Master Data Service PDF documentation for legacy releases (7.5 thru 9.2)
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/initiate/legacy/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.ichome.doc%2Fcommon%2Fic_homepage.html

2011-09-02 Friday - Weekend Reading...

2011-09-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

InfoQ: Infinitely Extensible, by Alex Papadimoulis
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Infinitely-Extensible

InfoQ: Design For Hybrid Agile Adoption, by Upadrista Venkatesh
http://www.infoq.com/articles/design-for-hybrid-agile-adoption

Getting Things Done with REST Presented by Ian Robinson
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Getting-Things-Done-with-REST

A Fresh Look at Salesforce.com APIs
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2011/09/01/a-fresh-look-at-salesforce-com-apis

This Week's Book Recommendation:
Intelligence Unleashed: Creating LEGO NXT Robots with Java, by Brian Bagnall

2011-08-25 Thursday - JavaScript Rule Engines?

2011-08-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

I spent a few minutes this afternoon doing some searches for possible Web UI based JavaScript Rule Engines…and came across some of these articles which may be of interest for possible strategies on how to easily package Web User Interface business rules…

Not specifically recommending this for adoption...more of an interesting observation...as I'm currently doing some research for a client engagement...

http://hydrogen.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/wiki/index.php/A_JavaScript-based_rule_engine

http://hydrogen.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/wiki/index.php/A_JSON-based_rule_language

Invoke dynamic languages dynamically, Part 1: Introducing the Java scripting API

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-javascripting1/

Invoke dynamic languages dynamically, Part 2: Find, execute, and change scripts at run time

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-javascripting2/

Creating a simple rules engine using the Java scripting API

http://www.mcqueeney.com/roller/page/tom?entry=creating_a_simple_rules_engine

jsonrules: A Rule Engine in the Web browser (2009 – alpha version was published, not much activity since)
http://code.google.com/p/jsonrules/

Simplify dynamic JavaScript UIs by applying the Model-View-View Model (MVVM) pattern

http://knockoutjs.com/

2011-07-30 Saturday - Mobile Application Development Resources

2011-07-30T18:47:00.000-07:00

http://mobile.tutsplus.com

Mobiletuts+ is all about quality tutorials for mobile developers – all mobile developers. Topics will include native development with the iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry platforms, cross-platform development with tools like Appcelerator and Phone Gap, and techniques for building mobile accessible web sites with HTML 5.

OpenPlug Studio

http://developer.openplug.com
(an Alcatel-Lucent venture?)

OpenPlug Studio is a free tool for mobile and tablet applications development.
From a single code base you can now build for all platforms and get the best of web development plus a native user experience in your apps.

In-App Payments
http://developer.openplug.com/index.php/resources/docs?videoid=44

Android

Hello, World
http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

Managing Virtual Devices
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/devices/index.html

In-App Billing
http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/index.html

http://www.javapassion.com/tmp/android_stepbystep/

2011-07-27 Wednesday - Dean Wampler on Functional Programming

2011-07-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

A friend and former colleague, Dean Wampler, has a new book coming out tomorrow (July 28, 2011): Functional Programming for Java Developers
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/-/9781449312657

He also recently gave a presentation at the 2011 O'Reilly OSCON (Open Source Convention),
Become a Better Developer with Functional Programming
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/19191

His presentation [pdf]
http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/61/Become%20a%20Better%20Developer%20with%20Functional%20Programming%20Presentation.pdf

2011-07-23 Saturday - Ceylon, JVM-based programming language

2011-07-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

While reading some comments about the new Jetbrains Kotlin JVM-based programming language, I happened to come across Gavin King's work on the JBoss Ceylon JVM-based programming language...

http://in.relation.to/Tutorials/IntroductionToCeylon

2011-07-23 Saturday - Kotlin JVM-based programming language

2011-07-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

I came across this June 14, 2011 presentation slide deck by Carson Gross this weekend...

Language Features As A Library Using Gosu’s Open Type System With External DSLs
http://www.wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/images/2/24/2011_Gross.pdf

...while reviewing the agenda and presentations from the 2011 JVM Language Summit
http://www.wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/Main_Page

2011-07-09 Sunday - Eclipse 3.7 Indigo Upgrade

2011-07-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

This weekend I've spent some time upgrading to the Eclipse 3.7 Indigo release.

I'm still evaluating the compatibility of the following plugins...

Subclipse
http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x

Findbugs
http://findbugs.cs.umd.edu/eclipse

PMD
http://pmd.sf.net/eclipse

PyDev
http://pydev.org/updates

CheckStyle
http://eclipse-cs.sf.net/update/

Spring IDE
http://dist.springframework.org/release/IDE

SQL Explorer
http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net/

Scala IDE
http://download.scala-ide.org/releases-29/2.0.0-beta

- It appears that I'm encountering a similar problem as this recently reported Scala IDE defect:
(#1000447 IDE failing)
http://scala-ide-portfolio.assembla.com/spaces/scala-ide/tickets/1000447?comment=19263748

Amazon AWS IDE
http://aws.amazon.com/eclipse/

http://developer.android.com
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
Android IDE
https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

Memory Analyzer
http://download.eclipse.org/mat/1.1/update-site

Java Decompiler
http://java.decompiler.free.fr/jd-eclipse/update

Regex Testing Plugin
http://myregexp.com/eclipsePlugin.html
http://regex-util.sourceforge.net/update/

C++ Development
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/indigo

PHP Development (may only be compatible with Helios/3.6?)
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/2.2/milestones

2011-06-25 Saturday - f(x) totallylazy

2011-06-25T22:08:00.000-07:00

...another functional library for Java

http://code.google.com/p/totallylazy/

A functional library for Java that has the following features
Tries to be as lazy as possible just like Clojure's collection library
Works with Iterable, Iterator, Arrays, Char Sequences, Dates and Numbers (i.e virtually everything)
Follows the ML family of function / method names (Standard ML, oCaml, F#, Scala, Haskell)
Uses and extends Callable interface for maximum interop (i.e Can use with Clojure, Hazelcast)
Optionally supports using Hamcrest matchers as predicates
Supports chaining of all methods (Recommended) or the use of static imports for all methods.
Optionally supports creating Callables via dynamic proxies (requires cglib-2.2 and objenesis-1.2)
NEW Alpha support for SQL, think poor mans LINQ for Java.

2011-06-24 Friday - Google Health to be retired...

2011-06-24T20:28:00.001-07:00

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html

2011-06-16 Thursday - JavaScript Library Resources

2011-06-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

EveryJS
http://sstephenson.github.com/everyjs.com/

microjs
http://microjs.com/

25 useful jQuery plugins for form processing

http://www.lava360.com/code-snipets/compilation-of-25-most-useful-jquery-form-enhancing-plugins/

2011-06-14 Tuesday - International Statistical Classification of Diseases

2011-06-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

ICD-10 transition proving complex, expensive for hospitals
http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/icd-10-transition-proving-complex-expensive-hospitals/2011-06-14

International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems
http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online/

International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd/icd10cm.htm

2011-06-11 Saturday - Friend of Eclipse

2011-06-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

The Indigo release of Eclipse is coming later this month - and in honor of the many years of enjoyable free use that I made of the most excellent Eclipse tools - I decided to become a Friend of EclipseF by making a donation in support of the Eclipse Foundation's efforts:

2010-06-05 Saturday - Weekend Reading

2011-06-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

I'm catching-up on some reading today - here are some of the things I'm reading:

http://www.programmableweb.com/

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2011/06/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-of-rest-apis.html

Glenn Fleishman posted some interesting articles a few months ago on ars technica

The ABCs of virtual private servers, Part 1: Why go virtual?
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/02/virtual-private-servers.ars
The ABCs of virtual private servers, Part 2: Getting started
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/02/the-abcs-virtual-private-servers-part-2-getting-started.ars

I came across Brad Fitzpatrick's blog post about his Android application to open his garage door...
http://brad.livejournal.com/2394707.html

I joined the Go Language Developer's Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/golang-dev

Maker's Manifesto
http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown/

Android Scripting
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-android-scripting.html

Google-Guice
http://code.google.com/p/google-guice/

2011-05-09 Monday - Why You Might Need JSON

2011-05-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

"Even the most humble carpenter has hammers of different sizes"

Hypothetical Problem:
An average payload of 50-100 bytes of data needs to be made available via an online service - but an enterprise canonical XSD structure might flood the network with about 200K of just empty tag elements alone.

Proposed Solution:

For certain types of data servcies, a light-weight RESTful service using JSON (over heavier-weight enterprise-level XSD-based canonical models for SOAP-based SOA services) might be more appropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON

JSON Schema

http://json-schema.org/

RFC 4627 - The application/json Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627

JSON support in JAXB

http://wikis.sun.com/display/Jersey/JSON+support+in+JAXB

http://blogs.oracle.com/arungupta/entry/totd_8_generating_json_using

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Web_Platform/5/html/RESTEasy_Reference_Guide/JAXB_and_JSON_provider.html

XMLSpy supports XML-to-JSON conversion

http://www.altova.com/xmlspy/json-editor.html

2011-04-28 Thursday - AurionProject.org

2011-04-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

I have an interest in monitoring the development of the Nationwide Health Information Network - and happened to see an announcement today regarding the Aurion Project

"The Aurion Project, an evolution of the Federal Health Architecture’s CONNECT open source project focused on achieving health IT interoperability using nationally recognized standards, is off to an ambitious start. Its inaugural Aurion Community Town Hall Meeting was held April 12 to begin its chartering and membership process. Meanwhile, the Aurion 4.0 software is set for release May 3."

Aurion Wiki
http://wiki.aurionproject.org/display/AurionMain/Aurion+WIKI

Aurion Specifications
http://aurionproject.org/products/specs-in-aurion

TeamForge / Project Home / Source Code Repositories
http://development.aurionproject.org/sf/projects/aurion

After doing a bit of reading, I also came across this interesting bit (a friend specializes in all things Semantic - and I thought this was a great example for him to highlight in his client discussions) - related to semantic translation "Terminology Services"

see section 2.2.5.2 on page-34:

http://wiki.aurionproject.org/download/attachments/983312/CONNECT_Release_3_1_Integrated_Interface_Description_Document_091410.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1300208064000

"The semantic meaning of medical data refers to the ability for a system
to understand the meaning of the medical data that is being shared. When
two separate medical computer systems are connected, it can be difficult
for one system to understand and compute on the data from another
system. In order to successfully compute upon the data, the semantic
meaning of the sending system must be understood by the receiving
system. Terminologies are used by medical systems to communicate precise
semantics. Terminologies use codes, text, hierarchical layout, and
relationships to communicate meaning. Often times differing medical
systems will use different terminologies. Terminology services are used
to cross map one terminology to another. They are also used to provide
translation services and code relationship services. As the Nationwide
Health Information Network moves forward, these services will become
more and more critical so that the differing medical systems are able to
semantically understand the data they are receiving."

2011-04-23 Friday - Microsoft HPC Server

2011-04-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

I am very intrigued by the potential future direction of Microsoft's High Performance Computing (HPC) Server Group - and have spent quite a bit of time reading through their material.

A few years ago I spent a fair bit of time studying MPI (see links here, here, and here) for possible use in the design of a client's new Enterprise SOA infrastructure capabilities (for distributed parallel and cluster computing) - and was very pleased to learn that the HPC technologies are based on MPICH2 from Argonne National Laboratory.

http://www.microsoft.com/hpc

http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/technical-resources/

MSDN: Microsoft High Performance Computing for Developers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff976568.aspx

MSDN: Using HPC
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc907080%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

MSDN Virtual Labs: Introducing .NET4 Parallel Extensions
https://cmg.vlabcenter.com/default.aspx?moduleid=cc0bc14f-b222-4c3b-b29b-7f729df2af08

MSDN: Microsoft MPI
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb524831%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

Microsoft TechNet: Windows HPC Server
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc514029.aspx

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Resource Kit
http://resourcekit.windowshpc.net/developer.htm

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Community
http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/community/hpc-forums-blogs.aspx

I also found a comparison between Dryad and Hadoop here:
http://nosql.mypopescu.com/

2011-02-26 Saturday - Software Updates...

2011-02-26T20:53:00.000-08:00

Tonight I updated to the following releases:

Thunderbird 3.1.7
- looks very good :)

OpenOffice 3.3.0

Slik SVN 1.6.15

PERL 5.12.3

2011-02-26 Saturday - Python XSLT solutions?

2011-02-26T20:46:00.001-08:00

wow - a bit disappointed that there isn't better XSLT support via a pure Python library...I'm currently evaluating lxml - http://lxml.de/

2011-02-26 Saturday - Aptana Pydev "no such file to load"

2011-02-26T20:43:00.000-08:00

I've discovered an issue with the latest release of the Aptana Pydev plugin for Eclipse (Aptana Pydev 1.6.5.2011022501).

An internal error occurred during: "Loading bundle: C:\eclipse\configuration\org.eclipse.osgi\bundles\1026\1.cp\bundles\bundle-development.ruble".
(LoadError) no such file to load -- ruble/ui

Also tote: I'm running Eclipse Helios 3.6.2.r362_v201102120-9gF78Gs1FrIGnHDHWkEcopoN8AmxeZflGDGKQi
Build id: M20110210-1200

I posted a message to this thread:
https://aptanastudio.tenderapp.com/discussions/problems/2144-an-internal-error-occured-during-loading-bundle-ruble

and also found a similar sounding previously reported problem here:
https://aptanastudio.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions/779-remove-aptana-studio-3-beta-conflict-with-pydev

2011-02-21 Monday - Python 3.2 Released

2011-02-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

What's New?

http://www.python.org/download/

2011-02-15 Investigating Windows Performance Issues

2011-02-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

There are some very good tools, techniques, and lessons-learned in the following articles:

Why does WMI Provider Host ( WmiPrvSE.exe ) keep spiking my CPU ?
http://superuser.com/questions/240794/why-does-wmi-provider-host-wmiprvse-exe-keep-spiking-my-cpu

Windows Crash Dump Analysis...
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=analyze

API Monitor
http://www.rohitab.com/apimonitor

Is WMIprvse a real villain?
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wmi/archive/2009/05/27/is-wmiprvse-a-real-villain.aspx

As the first article mentions an earlier version of the HP Wireless Assistant as a possible culprit to CPU over-utilization, here's the link to the download for the latest version:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?lc=en&cc=us&destPage=softwareDownloadIndex&softwareitem=ob-87841-1&=

2011-01-31 Monday - Sharepoint titles from Packt Publishing

2011-01-31T16:37:00.000-08:00

A colleague mentioned he was about to embark on a new internal IT project involving Sharepoint - and a quick check on Packt Publishing's web site led me to the following interesting titles...

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Cookbook

https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-sharepoint-2010-administration-cookbook/book

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Business Performance Enhancement

https://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-sharepoint-2010-business-performance-enhancement/book

Integrating Silverlight 4 with SharePoint 2010

http://www.packtpub.com/article/integrating-silverlight-sharepoint2010

SharePoint Designer Tutorial: Working with SharePoint Websites

https://www.packtpub.com/sharepoint-designer-tutorial/book

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration: Farm Governance

http://www.packtpub.com/article/microsoft-sharepoint-2010-administration-farm-governance

2010-12-12 Sunday - Oracle 11gR2 Streams

2010-12-12T14:38:00.000-08:00

Today I'm researching some problems that have cropped up during recent maintenance / testing of an Oracle Streams implementation (running on IBM AIX).

Of course, its always good to start with the offical Oracle documentation:
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/portal.portal_db?selected=14&frame=

The following articles are important to review:

Tasks to Complete Before Configuring Oracle Streams Replication
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10705/prep_rep.htm#CACGBCIB

9 Oracle Streams Conflict Resolution
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10705/conflict.htm#i1006084

12 Managing Oracle Streams Replication
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10705/man_gen_rep.htm#CEGICHAA

I'm also ordering the following two books from Amazon:

Oracle 11g Streams Implementer's Guide (January 2010)

Oracle Streams 11g Data Replication (December 2010)

2010-12-06 Monday - Java Heap Dump Analysis

2010-12-06T17:12:00.000-08:00

Today I'm helping a Performance Testing Team do some research on a possible memory leak in a 3rd party application suite - and wanted to review some of the tools that might be of some assistance in my analysis.

This posting is a placeholder for my notes:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21190476

.PHD = Portable Heap Dump format

(started with Java SDK 1.4.2 SR1)

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/heaproots

A tool for debugging memory leaks in Java applications through analysis of "heap dumps."

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/aw.nsf/FAQs/heaproots

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/diagnosis/60.html

http://download.eclipse.org/mat/1.0/update-site/

http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/MemoryAnalyzer

http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/memoryanalyzer/2008/05/27/automated-heap-dump-analysis-finding-memory-leaks-with-one-click/

http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/memoryanalyzer/2010/01/25/heap-dump-analysis-with-memory-analyzer-part-1-heap-dumps/

http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/memoryanalyzer/2010/02/25/heap-dump-analysis-with-memory-analyzer-part-2-shallow-size/

http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/memoryanalyzer/2008/10/23/troubleshooting-memory-problems-from-ibm-systems-with-memory-analyzer/

JavaOne 2009 - TS-4118 Practical Lessons in Memory Analysis

(site appears to be under maintenance)

http://www28.cplan.com/cc230/session_details.jsp?isid=304118&ilocation_id=230-1&ilanguage=english

"In order to analyze IBM system dumps with Memory Analyzer, one needs to install the DTFJ adapter into the Memory Analyzer. The DTFJ adapter as well as installation instructions are available here."

Using the IBM DTFJ with the Eclipse Memory Analyzer Tool

(not sure if this is still needed - or if Eclipse MAT has already incorporated this dependency)

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/tools/mat.html

"The Eclipse Memory Analyzer Tool (MAT) is an open-source Eclipse project for analyzing heap dumps and identifying memory leaks from Java virtual machines. The basic MAT installation only works with Sun HPROF binary dumps. Using the IBM Diagnostic Tool Framework for Java (DTFJ) enables MAT to work with system dumps and Portable Heap Dump (PHD) files from IBM Virtual Machines for Java version 6, version 5.0 and version 1.4.2."

IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Memory Analyzer Version 0.6 Tech Preview

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/tools/memoryanalyzer/

IBM developer kits

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/tools/index.html

IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Dump Analyzer Version 2.2

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/tools/dumpanalyzer/

Eclipse Memory Analyzer – More Than Just a Heap Walker

http://www.eclipsecon.org/summiteurope2008/sessions?id=135

http://jinwoohwang.sys-con.com/

architect and creator of the following technologies:

- IBM HeapAnalyzer

- IBM Pattern Modeling and Analysis Tool for Java Garbage Collector

- IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer for Java

- IBM Trace and Request Analyzer for WebSphere Application Server

2010-11-05 Friday - Microsoft Open Source F#

2010-11-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

Don Syme's blog announcement:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2010/11/04/announcing-the-f-compiler-library-source-code-drop.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

Don's PDC10 presentation: The Future of F#
http://player.microsoftpdc.com/Session/04092962-4ed1-42c6-be07-203d42115274

Microsoft F# Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/fsharp/

F#, August 2010 Community Technology Preview
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=f8c623ae-aef6-4a06-a185-05f59be47d67&displaylang=en

F# PowerPack, with F# Compiler Source Drops
http://fsharppowerpack.codeplex.com/

2010-10-22 Friday - AppDynamics (Java performance management)

2010-10-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

This week I was stunned by a new product. That doesn't happen that often.

A few words that immediately come to mind when examining this tool: elegance; simplicity, extremely useful; intuitive user-interface.

AppDynamics
http://www.appdynamics.com/

- Winner of Gartner 2010 Cool Vendor
- Socred 8.3 in InfoWorld Free Java Performance Monitors

Discover and map business transactions
Monitor and detect performance policy violations
Troubleshoot via the visual display of business transaction flows
Diagnose and resolve performance problems
Dynamically scale applications in cloud and virtual environments

2010-10-20 Wednesday - VMware and GoogleNews from SpringOne Developer Conference

2010-10-20T16:22:00.001-07:00

VMware and Google Advance Cloud Computing

The two companies announcing general availability of key Java development tools for cloud portability

CHICAGO, Illinois—October 21, 2010 — Today at the SpringOne 2GX developer conference, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, announced with Google the general availability of the first in a series of technology collaborations to make enterprise software developers more efficient at building, deploying and managing applications within any cloud environment on any device. The collaborative projects that will be available in the next two weeks include Spring Roo and Google Web Toolkit, Spring Insight and Google Speed Tracer, SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Plugin for Eclipse.

“Together, Google and VMware enable enterprises to develop and deploy rich Spring Java applications across multiple clouds and devices.” said Rod Johnson, SVP, application platform division at VMware. “Today we have reached an important milestone where these modern applications can run smoothly within the firewalls of a company’s production datacenter or in a trusted provider's cloud environment."

The general availability of these projects represents the first in a series of technology collaborations to enhance cloud portability accross multiple clouds and devices. The next collaboration projects will focus on even broader mobile application support and accessing data in the cloud, as demonstrated today by the ability to deploy a SQL-based Spring application on Google App Engine for Business.

“Developers are looking for faster ways to build and run great web applications, and businesses want platforms that are open and flexible,” said Vic Gundotra, Google vice president of developer platforms. “By making deployments of Spring Java applications on Google App Engine using Google Web Toolkit generally available, developers can deploy Java applications in production environments of their choice while leveraging rich web front-end across multiple devices.”

The following projects will be Generally Available within 2 weeks:

Spring Roo and Google Web Toolkit - Spring Roo, a next generation rapid application development tool, combined with the power of the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) enable developers to build rich browser apps in enterprise production environments. These GWT powered applications leverage modern browser technologies such as AJAX and HTML5 to create the most compelling end user experience on both desktops and mobile browsers.

Spring Insight and Google Speed Tracer - Google’s Speed Tracer with VMware’s Spring Insight performance tracing technology, enable end to end performance visibility into cloud applications. This integration provides a holistic view into the web application performance, improving the end-user experience by optimizing the client side as well as the server side.

SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Plugin for Eclipse - The integration of SpringSource Tool Suite version 2.5 and Google Plugin for Eclipse makes it easy for developers to build and maintain large scale, web-based, enterprise applications, putting tools that were previously only available when building desktop and server solutions in the hands of those building cutting edge web apps.

Additional Resources:

· Projects will be generally available for download at google.com/cloudportability and vmware.com/cloudportability

· Blog post from Google's Brad Abrams, describing the project features features can be found at http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/

· Getting started guide: Getting started with GWT, Spring Roo and SpringSource Tool Suite can be found at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/getting-started-with-roo-sts.html

About VMware
VMware delivers solutions for business infrastructure virtualization that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform – VMware vSphere™ – customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2009 revenues of $2 billion, more than 170,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

Vmware and SpringSource are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

Google, Google App Engine and Google Web Toolkit are trademarks of Google Inc.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected availability of technology collaborations between VMware and Google and their benefits to developers and expectations of future projects between the two companies. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the cloud computing market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (iv) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products and computing strategies such as cloud computing and IT-as-a-service, (v) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vi) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software and platforms for cloud and desktop computing; (vii) changes to product development timelines; (viii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (ix) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (x) the successful integration of acquired companies and assets into VMware. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that we may file from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

2010-10-09 Saturday - Developing Notepad++ Plugins

2010-10-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have an idea for a plugin I would like to contribute to the Notepad++ community...doing a bit of research this morning on how to develop plugins:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-plugins/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-plugins/files/

"Notepad++ plugins is a collection of tools which plays a role of completion for Notepad++. This project contains Explorer, Function List, Hex Editor, Spell Checker and a console program NppExec. Other plugin developers are invited to share their project"

Wiki page for plugin development resources...

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=Plugin_Resources

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=Plugin_Development_Quick_Start_Guide

How to develop a plugin or a lexer
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=Plugin_Development

Understanding the source of an actual plugin
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=Analysing_Plugin_Code

Discussions about plugins & plugin development
http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/forums/forum/482781

2010-10-04 Monday - Martin Fowler's Domain-Specifc Languages Book

2010-10-04T22:50:00.001-07:00

...a work-in-progress version is available online:
http://martinfowler.com/dslwip/

2010-10-09 Update:
oops. it appears Martin has removed the content...

2010-10-04 Monday - Videos from Oracle JavaOne 2010

2010-10-04T16:09:00.001-07:00

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/subCategory/33

2010-10-03 Sunday - Book Review: Java EE 6 with GlassFish 3 Application Server

2010-10-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

Java EE 6 with GlassFish 3 Application Server, by David Heffelfinger
Packt Publishing
"A practical guide to install and configure the GlassFish 3 Application Server and develop Java EE 6 applications to be deployed to this server"

This book strives to cover much - if you are new to Java EE 6 - this may be a useful introductory text that can provide a broad overview of the core technologies - and in particular - a great companion to learning how to use GlassFish 3.

As the following chapter list illustrates, this book attempts to aggressively cover a broad spectrum of Java EE technologies:

Chapter 1: Getting Started with GlassFish

Covers the various processes for deploying Java EE applications, and basic GlassFish administration tasks.

Chapter 2: Servlet Development and Deployment

Covers how to develop, configure, package, and deploy servlets, using servlet context to persist information between requests - also covers the major new features of Servlet 3.0

Chapter 3: JavaServer Pages

Chapter 4: JSP Standard Tag Library

Chapter 5: Database Connectivity

Covers Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), Java Persistence API (JPA), as well as Java Persistence Query Language (JPQL)

Chapter 6: JavaServer Faces

Also covers integrating JSF and the Java Persistence API (JPA)

Chapter 7: Java Messaging Services

Chapter 8: Security

Covers he GlassFish default realms, file realm, and the certificate realm. Creation of additional realms is covered via the realm classes included with GlassFish.

Chapter 9: Enterprise JavaBeans

Chapter 10: Contexts and Dependency Injection

Covers how JSF pages can access CDI named beans (as JSF managed beans)

Chapter 11: Web Services and JAX-WS

Covers sending attachments to a web service, exposing EJB's methods as web services, and how to secure web services from unauthorized clients.

Chapter 12: RESTful Web Services and Jersey and JAX-RS

Covers leveraging Java API for XML Binding (JAXB) to simplify integrating data between Java and XML.

Appendix A: Sending E-mails from Java EE Applications

Appendix B: IDE Integration

At 489 pages, this book is necessarily more of a survey of Java EE 6 development topics - with insight into the corresponding configuration and deployment aspects for the GlassFish 3 Application Server. It is a handy reference for both the beginner and advanced user of GlassFish application server.

The code for the book can be downloaded here:
https://www.packtpub.com/java-ee-6-applications-with-glassfish-3-application-server/book

For a more in-depth treatment of GlassFish Administration, Packt Publishing offers another book (by Xuekun Kou), which I also recommend:

2010-10-02 Sunday - Oracle OpenWorld videos posted to youtube.com

2010-10-03T18:09:00.001-07:00

links can be found here:
http://intltechventures.blogspot.com/2010/09/2010-09-22-wednesday-short-videos-from.html

2010-09-26 Sunday - Packt Publishing's 2010 Open Source Awards

2010-09-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

Voting for #Packt Publishing's 2010 Open Source Awards opens on Monday, September 27th, and closes on Friday, November 5th:
http://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home

The Awards are split up into two main stages. Firstly, nominations will begin on August 9. This is your chance to put forward your favorite Open Source project in each category to go through to the final stage of voting. The top five projects with the most nominations in each category will go through to the final stage of voting. The nominations will end on September 17.

The five finalists in each category will be announced and voting will begin on September 27. Voting will close on November 5, with the winners announced the week commencing November 15.

You will also be pleased to hear that by nominating or voting for your favorite Open Source project, you will have chances to win a fantastic Amazon Kindle! This is an opportunity for you to download all your favorite Packt eBooks and read them from one handy device. During each stage, a randomly chosen nominator or voter will be drawn out of the hat. To ensure you have a chance of winning, nominate from August 9 and vote from September 27.

The following categories make up the 2010 Open Source Awards.

Nominations and Voting:
http://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home/nominations

2010-09-25 Saturday - Java Performance Tuning

2010-09-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some micro-benchmarking this weekend on various tuning techniques for a major distributed Java EE 6 application. This posting is a collection of interesting resources that I've come across:

Troubleshooting...

Chuk-Munn Lee of Sun Microsystems Troubleshoots Java SE 6 Deployment
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javase/troubleshoot/

Performance Tuning and JVM Parameters...

Java SE Performance at a Glance [new portal for Java Performance information]
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/performance-jsp-141338.html

Java Performance Documentation
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/performance-138178.html

A Collection of JVM Options (compiled by Joseph D. Mocker)
http://blogs.sun.com/watt/resource/jvm-options-list.html

Java HotSpot VM Options
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/vmoptions-jsp-140102.html

G1: Java's Garbage First Garbage Collector
http://www.drdobbs.com/java/219401061;jsessionid=JA2FP4T4VEQ23QE1GHPCKHWATMY32JVN

Tooling...

Eclipse Memory Analyzer (MAT)
http://www.eclipse.org/mat/

jps - Java Virtual Machine Process Status Tool
http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/share/jps.html

HAT -- The Java Heap Analysis Tool, Bill Foote
(note: JHAT has replaced HAT)
https://hat.dev.java.net/doc/README.html

Tools: Use HProf For Quick and Dirty Profiling Assistance
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t19612.html

NetBeans > Profiler
(The profiler is included in all Java distributions of the IDE)
http://profiler.netbeans.org/

NetBeans > Profiler > HeapWalker
http://profiler.netbeans.org/docs/help/6.0/heapwalker.html

VisualVM
https://visualvm.dev.java.net/
"VisualVM is a visual tool integrating several commandline JDK tools and lightweight profiling capabilities. Designed for both production and development time use, it further enhances the capability of monitoring and performance analysis for the Java SE platform."

"VisualVM is available in two distributions: VisualVM available at visualvm.dev.java.net and Java VisualVM available as a JDK tool in Oracle/Sun JDK distributions starting from JDK 6 update 7 and Apple's Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4"
https://visualvm.dev.java.net/docindex.html

https://visualvm.dev.java.net/gettingstarted.html

http://www.yourkit.com/docs/

Documentation > Java Profiler 9.0 > Help > Memory profiling > Support of HPROF format snapshots
http://www.yourkit.com/docs/90/help/hprof_snapshots.jsp

http://www.yourkit.com/docs/90/help/

Documentation > Java Profiler 9.0 > Help > Memory profiling > Support of HPROF format snapshots
http://www.yourkit.com/docs/90/help/hprof_snapshots.jsp

Benchmarking...

Caliper is Google's open-source framework for writing, running and viewing the results of JavaMicrobenchmarks.
http://code.google.com/p/caliper/

Project Dalvik
Code and documentation from Android's VM team
Google Android Benchmarks
http://code.google.com/p/dalvik/source/browse/#svn/trunk/benchmarks

Application Design...

Caching...
http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2010/presentations/jbossworld/developer-insights-ii/thurs/sambati-310-caching/HowToStopWorryingAndStartCachingInJava-Final.pdf

The Google Collections Library
http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/3735441/The-Google-Collections-Library.htm

The Final Performance Testing Example, by Bruce Eckel
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=122295

Adroid Developers > Designing for Performance
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/performance.html

Chameleon: Adaptive Selection of Collections
Ohad Shacham, Tel Aviv University
Martin Vechev, IBM Research
Eran Yahav, IBM Research
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/people/e/eyahav/papers/pldi09.pdf

References...

The Java^TM Virtual Machine Specification, Second Edition
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jvms/second_edition/html/VMSpecTOC.doc.html

2010-09-25 Saturday - Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)

2010-09-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.cdaacademy.com

"Clinical Document Architecture, Release One (CDA R1), became an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)–approved HL7 standard in November 2000, representing the first specification derived from the Health Level Seven (HL7) Reference Information Model (RIM). CDA, Release Two (CDA R2), became an ANSI-approved HL7 Standard in May 2005."

"The U.S. Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) bases the following recommended specifications on CDA:
HITSP/C28 Emergency Care Summary
HITSP/C32 - Summary Documents Using HL7 CCD
HITSP/C38 - Patient Level Quality Data Document Using IHE Medical Summary (XDS-MS)
HITSP/C48 Encounter Document constructs
HITSP/C84 Consult and History & Physical Note Document
HITSP/C78 Immunization Document
HITSP/C74 PHRM
HITSP/C62 Scanned document"'

CDA Quick Start Guides
http://www.alschulerassociates.com/cda/?topic=quick-start-guides

2010-09-25 Saturday - Indivo, personally controlled heath record

2010-09-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

Indivo is the original personally controlled health record (PCHR) system. A PCHR enables an individual to own and manage a complete, secure, digital copy of her health and wellness information.
http://indivohealth.org/

version X
http://github.com/chb/

Subversion repository for version 3
http://scm.chip.org/svn/repos/ping/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/indivo/
"Indivo is a distributed, web-based, personally controlled health record system that is accessible to the nomadic user and built to public standards. The Indivo project includes a pluggable web services API, web-based UI, data subscription framework, etc."

2010-09-25 Saturday - SMArt (Subsitutable Medical Apps, reusable technologies)

2010-09-25T12:04:00.001-07:00

SMArt (Subsitutable Medical Apps, reusable technologies)

http://www.smartplatforms.org

"...project funded by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology through the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program. The conceptual framework for SMArt was first articulated by investigators Zak Kohane and Ken Mandl in their 2009 New England Journal of Medicine essay “No Small Change for the Health Information Economy”. The current health IT landscape is characterized by monolithic and slow-to-evolve systems: SMArt has brought together researchers, industry partners, clinicians, and other stakeholders to lay the groundwork necessary to enable a tectonic shift to a flexible health IT environment. The major deliverable of this project will be the SMArt platform architecture, which will achieve two major goals. The first will be a user interface that will allow “iPhone-like” substitutability for medical apps based upon shared basic components. The second will be a set of services that enable efficient data capture, storage, and effective data retrieval and analytics, which will be scalable to the national level but nonetheless respectful of institutional autonomy and patient privacy."

http://wiki.chip.org/smart-project/index.php/Developers_Documentation:_Getting_Started

2010-09-25 Saturday - CONNECTopensource.org

2010-09-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today I've spent some time researching the Nationwide Health Information Network

http://www.connectopensource.org/

CONNECT is an open source software solution that supports health information exchange – both locally and at the national level. CONNECT uses Nationwide Health Information Network standards and governance to make sure that health information exchanges are compatible with other exchanges being set up throughout the country.

This software solution was initially developed by federal agencies to support their health-related missions, but it is now available to all organizations and can be used to help set up health information exchanges and share data using nationally-recognized interoperability standards.

http://www.connectopensource.org/blog

http://www.connectopensource.org/about/code-a-thon

http://developer.connectopensource.org/display/CONNECTWIKI/Resources

The CONNECT source code repository can be accessed here:
https://svn.connectopensource.org:8443/svn/Nhin_Public/Current

2010-09-25 Saturday - Ignite Portland 10 - coming February 10, 2011

2010-09-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

http://igniteportland.com

February 10, 2011
Bagdad Theater
3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214

Doors Open at 5:00 PM
Show Starts at 7:00 PM
General Admission, No Tickets
Admission is always FREE!

2010-09-25 Saturday - Seattle 2.0 Startup Day Live Stream [today]

2010-09-25T11:37:00.001-07:00

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/511828

2010-09-22 Wednesday - Short Videos from Oracle OpenWorld

2010-09-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the exhibition hall vendor booth interviews I captured on Wednesday at Moscone Center on Wednesday morning:

Ken Yagen, VP Engineering, MuleSoft, JavaOne 2010 | Oracle OpenWorld 2010

Arturo Oliver, MicroStrategy Booth at Oracle OpenWorld 2010

Matt Runquel, Unify ciphersoftinc.com, at Oracle OpenWorld 2010

Dan , NAVTEQ, at Oracle OpenWorld 2010

Mike H., Regional Sales Manager, Emulex

Infiniban Booth at Oracle OpenWorld 2010

Jeff Summers, Confio Software, Confio.com

Lattice Technologies, Oracle OpenWorld 2010

3Par Booth Presentation at Oracle OpenWorld 2010

3Par Tesla Give-away

ADP Booth at Oracle OpenWorld 2010

2010-09-22 Wednesday - Oracle OpenWorld 2010 OTN

2010-09-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

Oracle Media Network
http://medianetwork.oracle.com/playlist/86

2010-09-21 Tuesday - Spring at JavaOne 2010

2010-09-21T12:23:00.005-07:00

http://www.springsource.org/node/2851

2010-09-21 Tuesday - JavaOne 2010 - Project Coin presentation

2010-09-21T12:23:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.sun.com/darcy/resource/JavaOne/J1_2010-ProjectCoin.pdf

2010-09-21 Tuesday - JavaOne Duke's Choice Awards

2010-09-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

http://java.com/en/dukeschoice/

Innovative End-to-End Consumer Application
MLB Advanced Media Fantasy baseball draft application and scoreboard built in JavaFX and Java and used by 250,000 managers in the official fantasy league of Major League Baseball » Learn more

Innovative Health Care & Human Services
Pulse Pulse Health Intact System, remote telemedicine server that connects doctors, patients and care facilites. Monitoring devices connected to the patient's mobile phone is uploaded and shared. Uses Java EE 6 (server), Java SE 1.6 Swing clients (desktop) and Java ME CLDC (client) » Learn more

Innovative Government & Public Works
Perrone Robotics Perrone Robotics' Pennsylvania Turnpike Laser system used on PA turnpike to effectively measure trucks while in motion. Eliminates need to pull off the road at a weigh station. » Learn more

Innovative User Experience
Effective UI 2010 Winter Olympics medal geo-view, an innovative data visualization application built using Java FX and Java and deployed live to millions of visitors and fans during the Vancouver Olympics » Learn more

Innovative Technical Data Visualization
Gephi Open, interactive graphics visualization platform entirely based on Java SE 6, capable of visualizing and manipulating very lager network data to find patterns and reveal hidden structure. » Learn more

Innovative Java for Developers
Wabi Sabi Software "Application Sonification", which is listening to an application operate to discern behaviors and patterns. Specific example based on application logging (Log4jFuge) using Java SE 6 and Groovy » Learn more

Innovative Java for Education
Rolling Thunder Education solution providing a multi-document interface through which a wide range of data (maps, images, video, text) can be combined. Built using Java SE 6, Swing, and a variety of data viewers (VLC, Worldwind, Yahoo Search, etc.). » Learn more

Innovative Visualization and Data Intelligence
Visual Mining NetCharts Pro 7.0 lets Java developers create HTML 5 compliant web applications, including support for SVG. » Learn more

Innovative Automotive/Transportation
Case Systems, Inc. Solar powered traffic monitoring system using Java ME » Learn more

Innovative Java Building Block
Cinterion Wireless-enabled silicon modules that implement Java ME and provide easy-to-use building blocks for dedicated microelectronics solutions with onboard wireless/GSM communications capabilities. The example nominated is a mobile healthcare system (diabetes management, sleep therapy). » Learn more

2010-09-20 Monday - JavaOne 2010: Java 7

2010-09-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

10am-11am, Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom

[I'll flesh out more details as I have some time later today to add additional reference links]

Observation:
- Grand Ballroom is huge
- about 99% full, good turn-out for this JavaOne session
- speaker sounds like he ~~took a valium~~ needed to drink a jolt-cola before taking the stage...

Productivity...

Project Lambda
version 0.1
JSR 292

"The goal of this Project is to formulate a proposal to add first-class functions, function types, and lambda expressions (informally, "closures") to Java, and to implement a prototype suitable for inclusion in JDK 7 so as to enable broad experimentation. If all goes well then this will serve as the basis of a language-change JSR which will, in turn, be proposed as a component of the eventual Java SE 7 JSR."

Alex Buckley and Brian Goetz will be giving a talk later today at 4pm...

Universality...

De Vinci Machine Project
"a multi-language renaissance for the Java™ Virtual Machine architecture"

"We are extending the JVM with first-class architectural support for languages other than Java, especially dynamic languages. This project will prototype a number of extensions to the JVM, so that it can run non-Java languages efficiently, with a performance level comparable to that of Java itself. Our emphasis is on completing the existing bytecode and execution architecture with general purpose extensions, as opposed to a new feature for just one language, or adjoining an unrelated new execution model." "We want the new languages to co-exist gracefully with Java in the JVM, and to benefit (like Java) from its powerful and mature technologies." "We are looking to remove “pain points” already observed by implementors of successful or influential languages, as opposed to attempting more speculative work on unproven features or niche languages. Sub-projects with major activity include dynamic invocation, continuations, tail-calls, and interface injection. There is a large number of more speculative, lower-priority sub-projects. These are included in hopes that someone in the community will become excited with us at the prospects of a more dynamic JVM, to the point of sharing in its creation."

Modularity...

Project Jigsaw
"get rid of the classpath....put the information in the code as annotations" (?)

"The goal of this Project is to design and implement a simple, low-level module system focused narrowly upon the goal of modularizing the JDK, and to apply that system to the JDK itself. We expect the resulting module system to be useful to developers for their own code, and it will be fully supported by Sun for that purpose, but it will not be an official part of the Java SE 7 Platform Specification and it might not be supported by other SE 7 implementations."

JPackage

The JPackage Project has two primary goals:
To provide a coherent set of Java software packages for Linux, satisfying all quality requirements of other applications.
To establish an efficient and robust policy for Java software packaging and installation.

JMod (?)
...more compressed than JAR files...
...allow creation of JPMs
...will be allow generation via Maven

JVM
...HotSpot will get an injection of HotRocket code/capabilities...

Java 7 Release...

...original scope would have been delivered in middle of 2012...that's too long...
...... Lambda is not done
.......Jigsaw is not done
.......Coin is almost done (?)

Plan:
...deliver what can be made stable...by middle of 2011...
...deliver Java 8 in 2012
...deliver Java 9...in less than 5 years...
...wants to get back to a more regular release schedule (every 2 years...)

GPL version 2 will continue to be used

Still plan to submit JSRs for Java 7 and future releases

JDK 7 binaries will continue to be released every two weeks for testing...

2010-09-19 Sunday - OracleWorld 2010 Opening Keynote

2010-09-20T10:22:00.001-07:00

photos & write-up coming soon...

...and then came the after-party!...

2010-09-19 Sunday - A Shadow of JavaOnes' Past...

2010-09-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

I arrived in San Francisco yesterday via my flight from Phoenix. On my drive into the city, a cab driver mentioned that he had heard that as many 42,000 people will be arriving for the OracleWorld conference this week. I am primarily interested in the JavaOne sessions - but will also attend some of the Oracle Developer sessions - as well as the OracleWorld key notes.

JavaOne, I feel I hardly know ye - I fear you are but a ghost of your former self...

As I look through the catalog of sessions for JavaOne 2010, I am saddened to see that the Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions are limited to just Tuesday night...

By virtue of having JavaOne sessions scheduled at locations such as the Hilton, Parc55, and Westin - rooms are probably smaller (?) than what would normally have been available at Moscone Center - thus sessions are marked as FULL - that might otherwise have had a bit more room for the random drop-in attendee.

I'll be attending the Oracle Opening Keynote tonight...the after-party will be held here?...

Familiar faces from Sun are missing here this week, Google's absence from the list of sessions is noticeable, and the side-show feeling of JavaOne sessions no longer being held in Moscone Center cast a pall over this year's JavaOne for me...

2010-09-18 Saturday - GlassFish 2010 Community Event and Party

2010-09-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

I'll be attending the GlassFish 2010 Community Event/Party on Sunday.

GlassFish 2010 Community Event/Party, Sun. 9/19

http://wikis.sun.com/display/GlassFish/GlassFish%202010%20Community%20Event%20and%20Party

Community Event

Sunday Sept 19th 2010, 2:30pm-4:30pm
Moscone South, Room 252
Event is S319368 in the J1 online catalog;

Party

Sunday Sept 19th, 2010, 7:30pm-10pm (follows the OWW Sunday keynote)
TheThirstyBear
Free Event

I'm also working on a review for Packt Publishing on David Heffelfinger's latest book:
"Java EE 6 with GlassFish 3 Application Server"

2010-09-17 Friday - PictureOfHealth.com

2010-09-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

As I prepare to fly to San Francisco tomorrow for the start of OracleWorld / JavaOne, I thought it would be interesting to check on what Jonathan Schwartz is up to these days:

Jonathan Schwartz has started a new company in S.F.
http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/

and they are hiring...

http://www.pictureofhealth.com/jobs

2010-09-12 Sunday - Flight & Hotel reservations for OracleWorld & JavaOne

2010-09-12T20:06:00.001-07:00

Arriving Sat. 9/18, staying at the Parc 55 Wyndham

2010-09-11 Saturday - SalesForce.com Winter'11 Release Notes

2010-09-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

I'm doing an evaluation this weekend of OrchestraCMS.com for a client's possible use in their adoption of SalesForce.com

As part of that evaluation, I spent some time reviewing the Winter'11 Release Preview information:

http://developer.force.com/releases/release/Winter11

http://na3.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_winter11_release_notes.pdf

I've extracted a few items from the release notes that caught my attention:

Page-86

With Winter '11, developers and partners can use a new CTI Developer's Toolkit to build CTI adapters for call center users working with the Service Cloud console

Page-91

In Winter '11, the High Volume Customer Portal User license is generally available. After you purchase the license, you can assign it to Customer Portal-enabled contacts so that large numbers of users can log in to a Customer Portal without affecting its performance.

Page-114

Revised Governor Limits
For Winter '11, Salesforce.com is reducing the number of items limited by the Apex governor limits. In addition, many of the remaining items have had their limits increased.

Tests no longer run in a separate context: Prior to Winter '11, governor limits worked with three different contexts, with different amounts of resources allocated for each context. For Winter '11. tests no longer have specific limits. Instead, they've been included with triggers, anonymous blocks, Visualforce controllers, and WSDL methods.

Removed limits:
• Total request time for one callout (HTTP request or Web services call) has been removed.

• Maximum size for a callout (HTTP request or Web services call) has been removed.
Increases to existing limits:

• General heap size has been raised from 2 MB to 3 MB, with no scaling. In addition, batch Apex heap size is 6 MB.

• Apex classes and triggers have been raised from 100,000 characters and 32,000 characters, respectively, and can now be 1 million characters long, not counting comments, test methods, and classes defined with @isTest.

• Maximum amount of Apex code allowed in an organization has been raised from 1 MB to 2 MB.

• Total number of ChildRelationship, RecordTypeInfo and PicklistEntry objects allowed and total number of fields calls allowed has been raised from 10 to 100.

page-117

New AllOrNoneHeader SOAP Header
The AllOrNoneHeader header allows the create(), delete(), undelete(), update(), and upsert() calls to roll back all changes unless all records are processed successfully. The default behavior is to allow partial success of a call:

Force.com Web Services API Enhancements
records without errors are committed, while records with errors are marked as failed in the call results. This new header gives you more transactional control over commitment of changes.

Page-118

Force.com Bulk API Enhancements
The REST-based Bulk API is optimized to process a large number of records asynchronously. It allows you to load large batches of data that are processed in the background. The Bulk API has been improved for API version 20.0:
Support for Binary Attachments

With API version 20.0, you can submit batches containing binary attachments, such as Attachment records or Salesforce CRM Content.

Increased Number of Daily Batches Allowed

The limit of batches allowed per rolling 24–hour period has been increased from 500 to 1000.

Page-120

Salesforce.com uses the SAML 2.0 standard for single sign-on and generates SAML assertions when configured as an identity provider.

Page-124

OAuth Version 2.0 Supported
Starting in Winter '11, Salesforce.com supports version 2.0 of the OAuth protocol for authenticating Web applications that access data in a Salesforce.com instance.

A wealth of documentation is available:

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Wiki

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Documentation#Apex_Code

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Introduction_to_Visualforce

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Introduction_to_Force_Database

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Integrating_with_the_Force.com_Platform

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Overview_of_Force.com_Security

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/

http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Introduction_to_Builder

2010-09-10 Friday - GIMP Tutorial Resources

2010-09-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

http://gimp-tutorials.net/

http://www.gimp-tutorials.com/

http://www.gimptalk.com/

http://www.ghuj.com/

http://www.noupe.com/gimp/30-exceptional-gimp-tutorials-and-resources.html

http://blog.qbrushes.net/best-40-gimp-tutorials/

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/GIMP_Tutorials_Learning_The_GIMP.htm

http://naldzgraphics.net/tutorials/40-excellent-gimp-tutorials-for-designers/

2010-09-04 Saturday - "mspdb100.dll is missing"

2010-09-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

I spent some time this evening upgrading some of my Microsoft Visual Studio tools, and installed the latest

Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4

[The Windows SDK provides tools, compilers, headers, libraries, code samples, and a new help system that developers can use to create applications that run on Microsoft Windows], which you can download here:
Web Install
ISO image

While attempting to test the command line utilities, I encountered the following error message popping up rather unexpectedly:

"mspdb100.dll is missing..."

A quick search found this posting on Microsoft Connect - which indicated that the directory where the IDE is installed simply needed to be added to the PATH.

On a side note, I recently installed PowerISO - and highly recommend it.

2010-08-28 Saturday - Google bails on JavaOne this year

2010-08-28T20:08:00.001-07:00

A sad development for JavaOne this year...
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-javaone.html

2010-08-14 Saturday - Mono using GitHub...

2010-08-14T01:51:00.001-07:00

I want to remember to come back and read this FAQ:

http://mono-project.com/GitFAQ

2010-08-14 Saturday - Postal Address Parsing

2010-08-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting challenge today: How to properly parse an address line in a postal address.

Initially, you might think that to be a relatively simple challenge - but spend a few minutes reading the United States Postal Service Pub 28 (Postal Addressing Standards) - and you'll appreciate some of the nuances of the problem. In particular, see the examples beginning on page-9 to get a quick idea of the variations that would need to be handled. At 208 pages - that's quite a bit of information.

A few quick Google searches turned-up a few interesting links that were relevant to my search for a possible solution:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/html/B10657_01/19dataqu.htm

http://software.ictarena.com/forums/t/123474.aspx

http://www.toadworld.com/Portals/0/stevenf/Dynamic%20SQL.pdf

http://www.address-parser.com/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16413/parse-usable-street-address-city-state-zip-from-a-string

2010-08-14 Saturday - CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java

2010-08-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

I happened to come across this interesting resource tonight:
The CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java

2010-08-08 Sunday - Spring Resources

2010-08-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Framework

A May 2005 article on TheServerSide - by Rod Johnson:
Introduction to the Spring Framework

Spring 3.0.x Documentation:
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/spring-framework-reference/html/overview.html

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/spring-framework-reference/pdf/spring-framework-reference.pdf

Introduction to Spring MVC
http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/quickstart-webapps-spring.html

http://viralpatel.net/blogs/2010/06/tutorial-spring-3-mvc-introduction-spring-mvc-framework.html

2010-07-30 Friday - iText PDF

2010-07-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Spending some time today experimenting with the iText PDF library:

http://www.itextpdf.com/

http://api.itextpdf.com/

Initial impression: very nice, almost intuitive.

2010-07-30 Friday - Maven: The Complete Reference

2010-07-30T14:49:00.001-07:00

Nice PDF that is available: http://www.sonatype.com/books/mvnref-book/reference/public-book.html

2010-07-25 Sunday - Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance, 2nd Ed.

2010-07-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Enjoyed spending some time this afternoon coding #Java implementations of ideas from: Paul Wilmott introduces Quantitative Finance, 2nd Ed. - working on some ideas for an Open Source Quantitative Finance library.

This is by far one of the best introductory books on the market. Easily readable - concise - excellent examples - and good coverage of the material. Buy this book first - then consider Wilmott's 3-volume edition that expands further on the material.

http://quantlib.org/ (C++)

http://www.jquantlib.org (Java)

JQuantLib is a free, open-source and comprehensive framework for quantitative finance, offering several mathematical and statistical tools needed for financial instrument valuation, calculation of VaR, portfolio valuation, etc. JQuantLib is written in Java and is based on QuantLib, which is written in C++. QuantLib is a de-facto reference implementation for C++ world. Following the steps of its predecessor, JQuantLib aims to become a reference implementation for Java world. JQuantLib does its best efforts to mimic as close as possible the API exposed by QuantLib, offering a smooth transition path for developers and organizations aiming to adopt Java for high performance, low latency applications.

Other recent books I've added to my reading stack:

2010-07-25 Sunday - Start-up Equity & Vesting

2010-07-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some research to provide guidance to a friend on structuring his start-up. This blog posting is my catch-all of the links I'm reviewing for interesting ideas.]

(Reminder To Self: I need to come back and trim this a bit - and clean-up the formatting of the posting - and add some additional notes)

Vesting Calculator

http://fastignite.com/startup-tools/vesting-calculator

Equity

http://www.sfu.ca/~mvolker/biz/equity.htm

Putting Share Ownership in a Business Plan
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessplans/businessplancoachtimberry/article171940.html

How should we split ownership of our startup?
http://www.optoiq.com/index/photonics-technologies-applications/lfw-display/lfw-article-display/311598/articles/laser-focus-world/volume-43/issue-11/columns/business-forum/how-should-we-split-ownership-of-our-startup.html

Tips for Startup Companies
http://philip.greenspun.com/business/startup-tips/

Sharing Equity in a Startup or Established Entrepreneurial Venture
http://www.nceo.org/main/article.php/id/50/

Equity math for startups
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/equity-math-for-startups.html

What is the standard ownership percentage for an investor in a startup company?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/startups-small-businesses/starting-up/STR_STP/269866-22385753

How to distribute ownership in startup?
http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/forum/f45-startups/how-to-distribute-ownership-in-startup-57524.html

Pre Money Valuation
http://www.venturechoice.com/articles/premoney-valuation.htm

Equity Distribution in Startups
http://www.angelscorner.com/articles/equity_distribution_in_startups.htm

How Equity Dilution Works
http://www.gaebler.com/How-Equity-Dilution-Works.htm

Calculating Ownership
http://www.sandhill.com/opinion/daily_blog.php?id=63&post=496

Equity for unfunded, pre-launch startup as Business Development lead?
http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/12436/equity-for-unfunded-pre-launch-startup-as-business-development-lead

Idea Entrepreneurs and the Startup Equity Advantage
http://www.techinnoventure.com/?p=357

What percentage of partnership would you recommend for a startup?
http://startups.com/questions/16438/what-percentage-of-partnership-would-you-recommend-for-a-startup

Founder Series Part III: How to Structure and Document Your Founder Agreement
http://www.dryanlaw.com/founder-series-part-iii-how-to-structure-and-document-your-founder-equity-split/

Startup Equity Allocation
http://charliecrystle.com/2010/01/11/startup-equity-allocation/

How much equity percentage of the company should startup owners give to their investors?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/finance-accounting/financing/venture-capital-private-equity/FIN_CFN_VNC/602751-14591205

Sharing the Wealth in a Technology Startup: How Much Stock is Enough?
http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2009/03/02/sharing-the-wealth-in-a-technology-startup-how-much-stock-is-enough/

Startup 125: Term Sheet – Liquidation Preferences
http://www.ansanelli.com/blog/2009/05/27/startup-125-term-sheet-liquidation-preferences/

Startup Stock Options: Vesting Schedules & Acceleration
http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/04/05/startup-stock-options-vesting-schedules-acceleration/

Why Your Startup's Founders Stock Should Vest Over Time
http://startuplawyer.com/incorporation/why-your-startups-founders-stock-should-vest-over-time

Cofounder vesting schedule for young startup
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175688

Carrot and Stick: The Psychology of Options Vesting Schedules
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/0001/sa000120.htm

http://www.rulesofthumbs.com/category/startup/

...more interesting results from this Google search term "guidelines on the distribution of founders' stock in a technology startup"

2010-07-25 Sunday - DevOps resource links to read later

2010-07-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

I'm crunched for time today - but want to remember to come back and read these links:

http://edmund.haselwanter.com/en/blog/2008/08/26/automated-environment-puppet-iclassify-and-capistrano/

http://www.agileweboperations.com/sprinkle-automated-infrastructure-for-the-rest-of-us/

http://subbu.posterous.com/poor-mans-automated-deployment-aka-ugly-capis

http://hivelogic.com/articles/deploying-expressionengine-github-capistrano

http://www.thebitguru.com/articles/9-Setting+up+Capistrano+on+Site5

http://www.slideshare.net/eljefe/automated-deployment-with-phing

http://www.rubyinside.com/capistrano-20-flexible-automated-deployment-system-541.html

http://code.google.com/p/bungeni-dspace/wiki/InstallingDspaceUsingCapistrano

2010-07-26 Sunday - Sequential Rule Engines?

2010-07-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm doing some research this weekend on the open source rule engine (OpenL Tablets) that appears to be used in a commercial product (see screenshots on the OpenL Tablets website).

I've previously spent some time exploring the JBoss Community Drools "Business Logic Integration Platform"- and found this blog posting by Mark Proctor that discusses sequential rule engines.

From the OpenL Tablets website, I found the following links to be interesting:

OpenL Tablets Engine Differentiators

5.7.0 Release Notes

Use Guides

Downloads

OpenL Tablets plans to renew(?) their product

June 4, 2010

OpenL Tablets team is working hard to release a new version of the product. It will be restructured and contain configurable Service Frontend out of the box. The release packaging will also be changed. Several different artifacts will be published at sf.net such as eclipse site, webstudio war, service frontend war and archive with engine jars only. The OpenL Tablets artifacts will be released in public maven repository as well.
The team is going to start moving project documentation to project public wiki. This will take some time and will end up with complete product documentation available at web.
Not all the changes will be done in this new release. The next one will also bring some major changes in rules projects and tools (we’re going to introduce maven based rules projects out of the box, however, do not guarantee to accomplish everything, the release is still being planned).

If you are looking for an open source rule engine, see this link:
http://java-source.net/open-source/rule-engines

These books may also be of some interest:

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=intltechventu-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;p=8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=bpl&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;asins=1847195644&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;fc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;IS2=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt1=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;m=amazon&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=intltechventu-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;p=8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=bpl&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;asins=1847195644&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;fc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;IS2=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt1=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;m=amazon&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p><p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=intltechventu-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;p=8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=bpl&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;asins=1847196063&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;fc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;IS2=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt1=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;m=amazon&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

2010-07-22 Thursday - Oracle OpenWorld / JavaOne 2010 - Registered!

2010-07-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

I received confirmation this morning that I'm registered to attend Oracle OpenWorld / JavaOne 2010 in San Francisco (September 12-23, 2010) - as a Blogger :)

http://www.oracle.com/us/openworld/index.htm

2010-07-17 Saturday - Python resources

2010-07-17T21:13:00.001-07:00

Python 3.1.2 documentation

Python Wiki

Functional Programming HOWTO (with Python)

Bruce Eckel / Python 3 Patterns & Idioms (an open source book)
http://www.mindviewinc.com/Books/Python3Patterns/Index.php
http://bitbucket.org/BruceEckel/python-3-patterns-idioms/overview

Doug Hellmann's Python Module of the Week:
http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/contents.html

http://pydev.blogspot.com/

Example of a Python program running faster than a Java equivalent?

Interesting: Spring Python

Spring Community Downloads
- Grails

2010-07-17 Saturday - Some Tool Upgrades

2010-07-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

I installed a new tool today:

WinMerge

And also upgraded:

Notepad++

2010-07-17 Saturday - Firefox Add-ons

2010-07-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

I upgraded my browser to Firefox 3.6.6 today, and decided to spend some time evaluating a few Firefox add-ons:

Firebug
Greasemonkey
Web Developer
FirePicker
HTML Validator

Power User Pack collection

iMacros

PixelGrabber
Screengrab
Rainbow
Image Zoom
MeasureIt

ShowIP

BetterPrivacy
Adblock Plus

JSONView

Google Translator for Firefox
BabelFish Instant Translation

2010-07-12 Monday - Inc. Business Travel 50

2010-07-12T13:11:00.001-07:00

Inc.Business Travel 50
http://www.inc.com/business-travel-2010/index.html?partner=newsletter_Success

Some of the interesting recommendations:

http://www.inc.com/business-travel-2010/best-portable-projector.html

http://www.inc.com/business-travel-2010/best-portable-scanner.html

http://www.inc.com/business-travel-2010/best-car-speakerphone.html

http://www.3floz.com/

2010-07-11 Sunday - Score: Java -3, Python 1000

2010-07-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

Doing some reading through some chapters this evening in Java Puzzlers...

...I decided to write the code to run the same scenarios under Python-3.1.

Interestingly, for the Java example in Puzzle 3, I obtained a different result than what is mentioned in the book (expected result: 5, actual result: -3) - perhaps due to my recent upgrade to the 64-bit version of Java's 1.6.0-u21 release.

Whereas the Python code returned the correct value...

Curious. One would think that an overflow exception could have been detected and thrown in the Java code by the JVM...

I also noted that the three source code analysis tools I ran against the Java code didn't identify the problem either (PMD, FindBugs, CheckStyle).

While this may seem like a trivial code example, there are real-world disasters that are directly related to this type of subtle bug:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501

"Flight 501, which took place on June 4, 1996, was the first, and unsuccessful, test flight of the European Ariane 5 expendable launch system. Due to an error in the software design (inadequate protection from integer overflow), the rocket veered off its flight path 37 seconds after launch and was destroyed by its automated self-destruct system when high aerodynamic forces caused the core of the vehicle to disintegrate."

Lecture 22: Software Disasters
Kenneth M. Anderson
Software Methods and Tools
CSCI 3308 - Fall Semester, 2004
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~kena/classes/3308/f04/lectures/lecture22.pdf

2010-07-11 Sunday - Eclipse Helios Upgrade Experience

2010-07-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ouch.

I've been a user of Eclipse for many years...and all previous experiences with new releases have been very good.

This most recent release (Eclipse 3.6 - Helios) has included a few bumps along the way - primarily due to the mis-adventures of 32-bit and 64-bit applications on a 64-bit OS (Windows 7).

First - I had to uninstall the 32-bit version of the Oracle/Sun Java SE JDK and install the 64-bit version (for which I chose the latest version: 1.6.0-u21)

Second, I discovered that the CollabNet binaries for Apache Subversion are only available in a 32-bit distribution for Windows.

Arggghhh.

[whispers in my mind begin to ask, "So, should you be thinking about making the leap to Git now?"]

Fortunately(?) - I found that the Slik SVN binaries are available in 64-bit....and installed the command-line tools.

I also installed the Eclipse Subclipse plugin.

Observations:
- I can browse my existing Subversion respository
- I can create a new folder in the Subversion repository
- Trying to do a commit to an existing Subversion folder appears to hang within Eclipse/Subclipse...not sure why just yet...time to dig into the Eclipse logs and see if I can identify the root cause.

Note: I tried running the svnadmin upgrade and recover commands - but still no joy.

I also tried installing Subversive - but it appears to hang on install...

One bloggers's rant against Eclipse...

I'll post more updates as I work through the issues.

12:20pm...

Created a new repository folder to experiment with Subversive...

I imported one of my previous Eclipse projects to do some testing...

Curious...now I'm seeing this error: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space

See: http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=546114&

See: http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_increase_the_permgen_size_available_to_Eclipse%3F

Forcing the vmargs on the command line (as parameters to the Eclipse.exe) seems to have resolved the issue). I'm currently using the following value: -vmargs -XX:MaxPermSize=1024m

Also, it helps to actually read the documentation:
http://help.eclipse.org/helios/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/tasks/running_eclipse.htm

2:15pm...

I've re-installed the Subclipse plugin - and it seems to be working now...

Whew!

2010-07-22 Update:
Apparently there is a known issue:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/07/eclipse-java-6u21;jsessionid=AFD82F08E186AEF90C51470744180292

2010-07-11 Sunday - Oracle database design and programming

2010-07-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

I installed the latest release of Oracle 11gR2 yesterday on my primary development machine - as I am reading three new books I recently ordered from Amazon on Oracle database design, programming, and administration:

2010-07-09 Friday - 2010 Hack in the Box Security Conference (Amsterdam)

2010-07-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

While doing some research on a particular area of security (PCI DSS logging requirements), I happened to come across the presentations that were given during the 2010 Hack in the Box Conference (HITBSecConf2010)

Twitter #HITB2010AMS

If you have similar interests in security topics, you might also be interested in these titles from Amazon:

2010-07-02 Friday - E*TRADE RESTful API

2010-07-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting example of a RESTful based API:

E*TRADE's open XML-based Application Programming Interface

2010-06-27 Sunday - Cloud. Future. Bright. Buy Shades...

2010-06-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

Gartner Says Worldwide Cloud Services Market to Surpass $68 Billion in 2010

2010-06-27 Sunday - SQL Antipatterns - Book Review

2010-06-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

I've ordered the new book, SQL Antipatterns, and it should arrive Wednesday, June 30th.

I look forward to updating this blog posting with my book review within the next week.

SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming, by Bill Karwin

2010-06-27 Sunday - IT Complexity

2010-06-27T16:57:00.001-07:00

I met Tim Bray in San Francisco last year, at JavaOne. I recently came across this thought-provoking blog post he made back in January:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/01/02/Doing-It-Wrong

2010-06-27 Sunday - REST Resource Links

2010-06-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

I've spent some time doing a bit of research this weekend on RESTful architecture patterns, and wanted to share the links that I found interesting...not all of the articles are accurate reflections of valid REST approaches - but I found value in considering their dissenting opinions, and so might you.

If you are looking for a short and succinct article to get clarity on REST - you can do no better than reading Roy Fielding's commentary on the subject here:

http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven

Or, if you have the time and inclination...reading his original PhD disseration...

Roy Fielding's Architectural Styles and,the Design of Network-based Software Architectures
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm

Rohit Khare's dissertation is also worth reading:
Extending the REpresentational State Transfer (REST) Architectural Style for Decentralized Systems
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~rohit/Khare-Thesis-FINAL.pdf

Proceedings of the First,International Workshop on,RESTful Design, WS‐REST 2010
http://ws-rest.org/files/WSREST2010-Preliminary-Proceedings.pdf

JSR 311: JAX-RS: The JavaTM API for RESTful Web Services
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=311

InfoQ: A Brief Introduction to REST
http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-introduction

RESTful Web services: The basics
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-restful/

Should We Compare? SOAP VS REST
http://blogs.globallogic.com/should-we-compare-soap-vs-rest

Why understanding REST is hard and what we should do about it – systematization, models and terminology for REST
http://izuzak.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/why-understanding-rest-is-hard-and-what-we-should-do-about-it-systematization-models-and-terminology-for-rest/

InfoQ: REST and transactions?
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/rest-ts

http://kesun.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/exploring-restful-web-service-part-1-roy-fieldings-rest-archite/

http://blog.whatfettle.com/2008/10/21/what-i-believe-roy-said/

REST for Java developers, Part 1
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2008/jw-10-rest-series-1.html

How [someone] explained REST to a SOAP pro
http://www.infosysblogs.com/microsoft/2009/08/how_i_explained_rest_to_a_soap.html

When to Use RESTful HTTP
http://www.innoq.com/blog/st/2008/01/when_to_use_restful_http.html

Designing SOA in a RESTful way
http://blogs.globallogic.com/designing-soa-in-a-restful-way

"nine-part dialogue with an imaginary eBay Architect,...an accessible discussion of the REST vs. SOA issue"
http://duncan-cragg.org/blog/post/getting-data-rest-dialogues/
http://duncan-cragg.org/blog/post/business-functions-rest-dialogues/

REST Resource Links...
http://gis.net/~amesar/links/rest.html

RETRO: A Consistent and Recoverable RESTful Transaction Model
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F5175785%2F5175786%2F05175822.pdf%3Farnumber%3D5175822&authDecision=-203

Abstract
With REST becoming a popular paradigm for Web services, more and more use cases are applied to it, including some that require transactional guarantees. We propose a RESTful transaction model that satisfies both the constraints of transactions as well as those of the REST architectural style. We provide formal proof of consistency and recoverability in the proposed framework and show the robustness of its properties in the presence of concurrent transactions.

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/jersey-part1/index.html

RESTful Web services with Apache Wink, Part 1: Build an Apache Wink REST service
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-apachewink1/index.html?ca=drs-

RESTful Web services with Apache Wink, Part 2: Advanced topics in Apache Wink REST development
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-apachewink2/index.html?ca=drs-

SOAP and REST: Choosing formal and informal Web services for,CICS integration
http://www.hostbridge.com/images/uploads/WP_HostBridge_SOAP_and_REST_090303.pdf

How to Secure REST and JSON
http://kscottmorrison.com/2010/01/08/how-to-secure-rest-and-json/

http://jcalcote.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/restful-transactions/

Credit Cards, Transactions, and REST
http://bill.burkecentral.com/2009/09/21/credit-cards-transactions-and-rest/

Fomenting unREST : Is RESTfulness a semantics game ? Why does REST require statelessness ?
http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2008/11/rest-fomenting-unrest-is-restfulness-a-semantics-game-why-does-rest-require-statelessness/

REST Design Pattern
http://horicky.blogspot.com/2008/04/rest-design-pattern.html

PROPOSAL: Handling Asynchronous Operation Requests
http://kenai.com/projects/suncloudapis/forums/forum/topics/911-PROPOSAL-Handling-Asynchronous-Operation-Requests?

RESTful Transactions
http://www.jboss.org/reststar
http://www.jboss.org/reststar/specifications/transactions.html
(note: this is something that Fielding strongly disagrees with)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/message/13266

Yahoo Groups > REST Discussion Mailing List
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rest-discuss/messages

ERP/2.50/Developers Guide/Concepts/XML REST Web Services
http://wiki.openbravo.com/wiki/ERP/2.50/Developers_Guide/Concepts/REST_Web_Services

Dan Diephouse (of Mule Source) presentation on REST
http://netzooid.com/presentations/Scalable,%20Reliable,%20and%20Secure%20RESTful%20services.pdf

RESTful Casuistry
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/03/20/Rest-Casuistry

WS-Angst
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/22/WS-Flurry

Don Box (on the pragmatic considerations of REST vs. SOAP
http://www.pluralsight-training.net/community/blogs/dbox/archive/2006/02/17/18869.aspx

InfoQ: xTim Bray on Rails, REST, XML, Java, and More (October 11, 2006)
http://www.infoq.com/interviews/tim_bray_rails_and_more

How do you see REST replacing a lot of the functionality that the WS* specs are providing like security transactions, choreography?

"Well, that's a good question. I think that the vast majority of operations on the web right now are GETs, you know, information fetch and a vanishingly small, but important proportion of updates. And to the extent that you can model your system in what I call a web style, where you have a lot of nouns, a small number of verbs, and you clearly distinguish between idempotent, safe operations and things that change the state, you can really go a long way with that pure web style, REST approach. If you really need deeply reliable complex transactions with multi-phase commit and all that stuff, I'm not sure the Internet is a very good channel for doing that. I think you'd really like to do that kind of thing behind the firewall in an enterprise environment. If you're actually going to operate across a heterogeneous large scale network, it would really be much better if you could possibly do things in the web style, which is: "I'm going to send you a package of information with everything that's needed to accomplish this transaction and you're going to come back to me and say if that worked or didn't, which is reliable." Where things start to get weird is where you have to have intermediaries, multiple machines involved in executing some transaction. The WS* stack does have a bunch of proposed, unstable, in-motion drafts for doing reliable transactions and so on across the network that are very highly unproved in practice. At the moment, if I'm actually writing a high volume of transaction processing system, I would probably prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, by talking to Oracle or you know, however you do it. Let's not kid ourselves that the WS* guys are actually offering real solutions in the space of transaction processing, right now, today, it's all theory."

Apache Wink
http://incubator.apache.org/wink/index.html

Apache Wink is a simple yet solid framework for building RESTful Web services. It is comprised of a Server module and a Client module for developing and consuming RESTful Web services.
The Wink Server module is a complete implementation of the JAX-RS v1.0 specification. On top of this implementation, the Wink Server module provides a set of additional features that were designed to facilitate the development of RESTful Web services.
The Wink Client module is a Java based framework that provides functionality for communicating with RESTful Web services. The framework is built on top of the JDK HttpURLConnection and adds essential features that facilitate the development of such client applications.

Microsoft WCF Interoperability
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/webservicesinterop.aspx

JavaWorld REST articles...
http://www.javaworld.com/search/index.html?cx=014839440456418836424%3Aiiuuq2fuymm&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=REST&x=0&y=0&siteurl=www.javaworld.com%2Fjavaworld%2Fjw-10-2008%2Fjw-10-rest-series-1.html#778

WSTF.org
http://www.wstf.org/

The Web Services Test Forum in an open and free community where developers and customers can perform interoperability testing and discuss issues surrounding the application of Web Service-based technologies. Web Services are machine-to-machine communications using HTTP, REST, SOAP or any other internet focused technology.

2010-06-27 Sunday - HTML 5 Resources

2010-06-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

I did a bit of researching this morning to answer a colleague's questions about HTML 5 - here are a few interesting links that I collected:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/

http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_reference.asp


HTML 5 Reference
A Web Developer's Guide to HTML 5
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/



http://googlecode.blogspot.com/search/label/html5


http://playground.html5rocks.com/



http://www.html5ftw.com/html5_code_examples/



http://www.dankantor.com/html5/

http://blog.dankantor.com/post/731977640/html5-and-the-write-once-run-anywhere-dream


http://ajaxian.com/archives/extensionfm-a-case-study-on-a-sexy-app-turn-extension




http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/html-5-canvas-the-basics/


http://html5gallery.com/


http://html5demos.com/


http://thenextweb.com/2010/04/03/5-html5-sites/


http://html5tutorial.net/




http://www.whatwg.org/

http://xhtml.com/en/xhtml/reference/


http://xhtml.com/en/future/x-html-5-versus-xhtml-2/


http://css-tricks.com/


http://www.quackit.com/html_5/tags/

http://html5code.com/




http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/04/designing-a-html-5-layout-from-scratch/


http://www.alistapart.com/articles/get-ready-for-html-5/


http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taking-advantage-of-html5-and-css3-with-modernizr/

2007 article....
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/previewofhtml5

http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/

Internet Explorer 9 Preview 3 Has Better HTML5 Support

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/06/IE9-Preview-3;jsessionid=38E79C966216E1A2C247D857ACEA6AE8

2010-06-12 Saturday - Oracle OpenWorld 2010, Oracle Develop, and JavaOne

2010-06-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

I've submitted my registration request today to attend the September 19-23 Oracle OpenWorld 2010 (which includes JavaOne and Oracle Develop) as a blogger.

In my role as an Enterprise Architect (specializing in Integration challenges), I am particularly interested in the following tracks during the conference:

Middleware for Enterprise Applications
Service-Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management
Data Integration

In addition to publishing articles to this blog, I will also plan on submitting articles CNET, Linux Magazine, Developer.com, and Dr. Dobbs Journal.

2010-06-06 Sunday - Cryptography Resources

2010-06-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

Some recent design work in the area of securing data-at-rest, and data-in-motion - particularly in relation to the requirements for Payment Card Industry (PCI) [i.e. credit/debit card information, bank account information, etc.] and Personal Information / Highly Confidential Data (i.e. social security number, driver license, passport, etc.) has raised my awareness of some new regulatory and legal compliance challenges (new MA law: Chapter 82 of the Acts of 2007) in designing security into an effective architecture.

State Security Breach Notification Laws

A few resources that may be of interest to others working on similar efforts:

PCI Quick Reference Guide

http://www-03.ibm.com/security/cryptocards/

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/security.index.html

http://www-03.ibm.com/security/products/cryptotools.shtml

2010-06-12 Update:
I came across this link today (via Slashdot):
Computing with Secrets, but Keeping them Safe

In 2009 Craig Gentry of IBM published a cryptographic proof that was that rare thing: a true breakthrough. He showed that it was possible to add and multiply encrypted data to produce a result that--when decrypted--reveals the result of performing the same operations on the original, unencrypted data. It's like being able to answer a question without knowing what the question is.

Called "fully homomorphic encryption," it has been dubbed the holy grail of cryptography.

2010-06-06 Sunday - Useful MD5 / SHA1 Utility

2010-06-06T15:43:00.001-07:00

I have an old command-line utility that I use when I need to compute an MD5 hash for a file (it was written by an ex-NSA employee) - but recently I found myself wanting a more user-friendly tool - and also needed to check an SHA1 hash for a file I downloaded.

This utility seems to fit the need quite nicely:
http://raylin.wordpress.com/downloads/md5-sha-1-checksum-utility/

2010-05-09 Sunday - Exploring Apache Cayenne 3.0

2010-05-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

I spent just a little time exploring the latest release of Apache Cayenne 3.0 today.

From the Apache Cayenne project home page:

Apache Cayenne is an open source persistence framework licensed under the Apache License, providing object-relational mapping (ORM) and remoting services. With a wealth of unique and powerful features, Cayenne can address a wide range of persistence needs. Cayenne seamlessly binds one or more database schemas directly to Java objects, managing atomic commit and rollbacks, SQL generation, joins, sequences, and more. With Cayenne's Remote Object Persistence, those Java objects can even be persisted out to clients via Web Services. Or, with native XML serialization, objects can be even further persisted to non-Java clients - such as an Ajax-capable browser.

Cayenne is designed to be easy to use, without sacrificing flexibility or design. To that end, Cayenne supports database reverse engineering and generation, as well as a Velocity-based class generation engine. All of these functions can be controlled directly through the CayenneModeler, a fully functional GUI tool. No cryptic XML or annotation based configuration is required! An entire database schema can be mapped directly to Java objects within minutes, all from the comfort of the GUI-based CayenneModeler.

Cayenne supports numerous other features, including caching, a complete object query syntax, relationship pre-fetching, on-demand object and relationship faulting, object inheritance, database auto-detection, and generic persisted objects. Most importantly, Cayenne can scale up or down to virtually any project size. With a mature, 100% open source framework, an energetic user community, and a track record of solid performance in high-volume environments, Cayenne is an exceptional choice for persistence services.

As part of my exploration, I needed to install the maven plugin for Eclipse m2eclipse - and discovered that the Apache Cayenne Tutorial Setup needs to be updated with the latest links.

2010-05-02 Sunday - Git and GitHub

2010-05-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out "Git on Windows" (msysgit): http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/

http://help.github.com/win-git-installation/

http://learn.github.com/

2010-04-30 Friday - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

2010-04-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

http://aws.amazon.com/

Developer Guide (API Version 2009-11-30)

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)

2010-04-24 Saturday - Storing Passwords

2010-04-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

2011-06-25 Update:

Today I came across this article by Coda Hale:
http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/

...which referenced this paper:

Proceedings of the FREENIX Track:
1999 USENIX Annual Technical Conference
Monterey, California, USA, June 6–11, 1999
http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos.html
http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos/provos.pdf

A fellow consulting colleague was chatting with me over a cup of coffee a few weeks ago, and the topic of application security came up.

Some of the obvious things to avoid:
- storing passwords in plain-text in databases
- storing passwords in plain-text in property/configuration file

Using a unique salt for each user's password is one of the optimal mechanisms.

Here are some interesting postings that review various strategies:

http://wblinks.com/notes/storing-passwords-the-wrong-better-and-even-better-way

http://dustwell.com/how-to-handle-passwords.html

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/09/rainbow-hash-cracking.html

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Security-Best-Practices

Some resources that might be of interest to developers:

http://oauth.net/

http://www.cert.org/cert/information/developers.html

http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/

http://isis.poly.edu/

http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/default.aspx

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/420843/need-some-help-understanding-password-salt

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/536584/non-random-salt-for-password-hashes/536756#536756

You might think that at this point in the evolution and maturation of Computer Science and Software Analysis and Design - that no commercial software vendor would store passwords in plan-text. Apparently you would be wrong...

http://rondam.blogspot.com/2010/03/danger-will-robinson-rackspace-cloud.html

http://ronrothman.com/public/leftbraned/password-security-its-not-that-hard-but-you-still-cant-get-it-right/

http://web.archive.org/web/20070109023445/http%3A//reddit.com/blog/theft

Event those that don't store passwords in plain-text, still have trouble getting security right...

http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/02/godaddy-store-your-passwords-in-clear.html

more great stories at...http://blog.sucuri.net/

Credit Union National Association, Inc. has a nice write-up on Password Safety Tips:

http://www.nihfcu.org/filestore/section/227/Password_Safety_Tips.pdf

Microsoft Online Safety
Check Your Password - is it strong?

https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx

2010-04-24 Saturday - Android Development

2010-04-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

Tom Thompson recently published an article in Dr. Dobbs Digest, The iPhone Isn't Easy (April 2010) - which led me to one of his previous articles: The Android Mobile Phone Platform (September 2008).

Some further reading led me to:

http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html

http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html

http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html

http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.0-highlights.html

http://code.google.com/android/

Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications that run on Android-powered devices.

http://code.google.com/android/add-ons/google-apis/mapkey.html

2010-04-16 - Interview with ZeroTurnaround.com (JRebel 3.0 Release)

2010-04-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

The JRebel team (http://www.zeroturnaround.com) is scheduled to release JRebel 3.0 on Friday, April 16th, 2010. I had a chance to meet David Booth, the CEO of ZeroTurnaround, in San Francisco last year during JavaOne – and he was kind enough to arrange for me to spend some time talking with him and Jevgeni Kabanov (Founder, and Chief Technical Officer) about their upcoming release.

Why should someone care about JRebel?

DB: JRebel is one of those tools that every Java EE developer should have in their toolbox. We've seen reports like these two that show that JRebel saves hours of development time right from the first day that it's setup. There are new reports of people reducing their dev time everyday, just search twitter for JRebel and you'll see. But I guess it's probably a good thing to say what JRebel actually is and does eh? Here's the short story: JRebel maps your project workspace directly to your running application. When you change any class, configuration, or resource in your IDE, you can immediately see it in your application, skipping the build and redeploy phases. Last year we surveyed 1100+ java EE developers and found out that most people are spending 3 to 7 weeks on the redeploy phase alone... We consider that to be wasted time, which can be spent better. The flip side of using JRebel to eliminate redeploys is that development actually becomes more fun.. you get to see the results of your changes right away, instead of waiting for an average of 2.5 mins, just to find out that you've gotta fix some tiny detail. Change code - see changes - fix it - move on.

What are the major changes in JRebel 3.0?

JK: JRebel 3.0 has focused on three key areas: ease of use, more support of key Java EE technologies, and new features. To be more specific, we now support changes to EJB 1.x-3.x interfaces, JSF configuration, JPA entities, JSP scriptlets and even CDI annotations. All of those are picked up on-the-fly, without any visible delay. We also now support changes to Seam beans and configuration as well as to Hibernate entities. Another cool new feature is that now if you add a new static field or enum value, it will be properly initialized. And lots of work went into making the installation and configuration easier, starting with the new GUI editor for the only necessary JRebel configuration file -- rebel.xml.

Last year you changed the name of the product - what prompted that?

DB: Right, in August of 2009 we followed our community's advice, and changed the name JavaRebel to JRebel. I'm sure you've heard that some firms, groups, and even conferences got in trouble for using the trademarked word "Java" in their names.. we just wanted to pre-emptively avoid any issues. We received about 190ish comments and suggestions for names, some of which we quite creative.. like Diponegoro (a Javanese prince that led the rebels in the Java Wars of 1825-1830).. but the most often voted for name was JRebel - so that's what we went with.

Has the product name change been well received?

DB: You know, a year ago from today, we got 70%+ of our keyword-driven site traffic from words like JavaRebel and Java Rebel, and none from JRebel, since it didn't exist yet. Now, we get about 8% of our keyword traffic from those words. "JRebel" has been adopted quite naturally - probably due to the similarities with it's old name, and the fact that this isn't a new naming convention - you see "J"something products all over the place.

JK: I think the biggest #fail was that the "jrebel" Twitter account was taken by someone, so we ended up using the "javarebel" Twitter acount, which is a source of some confusion.

Any interesting case studies / success stories to share since we talked at JavaOne last year?

DB: It's been a busy year for us, and we've gained a lot of new customers, as well as seen major customers renew their licenses. I wish I could name names, but that's not something that the big US banks allow too often. I can say that one of the major East Coast financial institutions told us that they have developers who save 2-3 hours per day, just by using JRebel. European banks are more open, and we've got a multi-year licensing agreement with DnB NOR, Norway's largest financial services group. They're using Jetty for development and WebSphere for test and production, and even though Jetty is one of the fastest containers in terms of turnaround time, they've found success with JRebel. I've been told that what makes JRebel attractive for them is " more than just saving time spent on waiting. The problem is that when the developer is waiting for the container to start - he is doing a "context switch" and starts to do something else. And when the container is restarted - he has to switch his attention back to the development. The benefit of JRebel is both saving time and the advantage of the developer staying in "programming mode" all the time. " - IT Department Manager, former Sr. Developer, DnB NOR Bank

What are your plans for the next release?

DB: We'd like to take what we're doing for development teams with JRebel, and apply similar principles to live production applications, with our LiveRebel product line (currently in Private Beta). We envision being able to make small changes to live running applications, while maintaining state, and not affecting user experience. JRebel development will continue as well, and we'll continue to focus on supporting key Java technologies & making JRebel easier to use.

JK: There's no such thing as the next release, cause that would imply that this one isn't perfect :) Truthfully we don't really have plans yet, though we have a feature request list contributed by our users and the team. At the moment all our focus is on kicking 3.0 out of the door.

What is your impression so far of how Oracle has handled the acquisition of Sun? Do you want to comment on Gosling's departure from Oracle?

JK: So far we haven't heard anything conclusive on the governance of Java and JCP, which is the most interesting part for the Java community. If the same confusion keeps going on, Java will continue to stagnate.

As for James' departure -- I have no idea what his responsibilities were at Sun, so I'm not sure if it will have a significant impact on Java. I do know that Java badly needs a BDFL, but I don't think James wanted to fill that role.

Will you have a booth at JavaOne this year?

DB: We will. We've been at JavaOne for the last few years, and always get a lot of people talking about either how awesome they think JRebel is, or saying that they can't belive something like this exists and they hadn't heard about it before. It will be interesting to see how the Oracle folks merge the JavaOne + Develop communities & events. They've got big shoes to fill! Among other places, there's a LinkedIn group for JavaOne for folks who are interested in discussing JavaOne.

Any suggestions you would like to share with Oracle on the direction Java?

JK: Well, not so much suggestions as some hopes :) I really hope that Oracle will end the design-by-comittee nature of Java and assign a single person to oversee its development. Another hope is that the JCP would be transformed into an Eclipse Foundation-like entity. The Eclipse Foundation managed to bring together a lot of partners who are innovating at a truly stupendous pace, I'd like to see the same happen to Java middleware. I don't think that the Apache meritocracy model works as well.

Will JRebel 3.0 work with other languages such as Scala?

JK: JRebel has been working with Scala since the first Scala liftoff in May 2008, in fact, we provide free licenses of JRebel for Scala use. JRebel supports a few other languages as well, with Groovy, we had to integrate with the inline caching to support all the changes that we wanted. Clojure was also recently tested with JRebel, but results were mixed. We might take a closer look in the near future and figure out what went wrong.

Are there any new major collaboration efforts with other vendors in the works?

DB: ahhh yes.. how can I answer this one? We've got something big that we're working on, a collaboration that has been in the works for about a year now, and it's all starting to come together. It's probably not a pairing that you'd expect, but it's with a well-recognized name, and the project is ambitious. It's going to shake up a few folks once released, and make a lot of end-users really happy, since we'll be tearing apart what we consider a customer-insulting business model (even though it makes certain firms quite wealthy). Unfortunately, that's all I can say for now, but stay tuned in early 2011 for an announcement on that.

Summary

I’ll have more to report on the JRebel 3.0 within a few weeks - as I work through an evaluation for a current large-scale client engagement.
The company offers a free 30-day evaluation of their product (http://www.zeroturnaround.com/jrebel/current/).

2010-04-14 Wednesday - JRebel 3.0

2010-04-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

My friends over at zeroturnaround.com will release JRebel 3.0 on Friday, April 16th.

JRebel 3.x Changelog

5 JRebel features you couldn’t do in the JVM

2010-04-14 Wednesday - AWS SDK for Java

2010-04-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

AWS SDK for Java
http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforjava/

The AWS SDK for Java provides a Java API for AWS infrastructure services, making it even easier for developers to build applications that tap into the cost-effective, scalable, and reliable AWS cloud. Using the SDK, developers can build solutions for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon SimpleDB, and more. With the AWS SDK for Java, developers get started in minutes with a single, downloadable package that includes the AWS Java library, code samples, and documentation. Eclipse Java IDE users can get started with the SDK easily using the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse.

2010-03-27 Saturday - Gen'ing XML from XSD

2010-03-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

I spent a little time today researching tool alternatives to Altova XMLSpy for generating sample XML from XSD definitions.

The Eclipse XML/XSD editor provides the ability to generate XML - but it appears to have some limitations - it only generates an example for the first element it finds in the file.

Here are few other resources:

oXygen XML Editor

WMHelp.com - XMLPad

http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema

XML Schema Definition Tool (Xsd.exe)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x6c1kb0s.aspx

XML in .NET Generating XML Documents from XML Schemas
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302296.aspx

2010-03-27 Saturday - Excel Tutorials

2010-03-27T18:44:00.001-07:00

A friend asked for suggestions on some links to tutorials on advanced functions in Microsoft Office Excel. Here are a few resources I found after a quick search:

http://spreadsheets.about.com/

Excel Conditional Formatting
http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/advancedexcel/tp/090822-excel-conditional-formatting-hub.htm

Microsoft Excel 2007 Tutorial - Advanced Formulas

http://www.mstipsandtricks.com/tips-and-tricks/ms-office-tips-and-tricks/ms-excel/ms-excel.html

http://www.mstipsandtricks.com/tips-and-tricks/ms-office-tips-and-tricks/ms-excel/advanced-formulas.html

Advanced Excel Tutorial
http://www.ehow.com/topic_2573_advanced-excel-tutorial.html

http://www.lacher.com/toc.htm

2010-03-09 Tuesday - Python Resources

2010-03-09T07:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.python.org

Dive Into Python 3

Python Web Services

Interoperable Python ZSI WSDL/SOAP Web Services tutorial

JIRA CONF-6720: SOAP Interface not working well from Python

Python SOAP Tutorial - Creating a WEB Service with ZSI

Doug Hellmann's blog: http://blog.doughellmann.com/

Blog: Coders Who Say Py

Python Game Development: http://www.pygame.org

Box2D Physics Engine

wxPython

OpenGL > PyOpenGL

PyCon 2010 Atlanta - link to conference talks / presentation materials.

Learn Python in 10 minutes: http://www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python

Python Tutorial: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/index.htm