2008-12-28

2008-12-29 Sunday - Recommended Books for Enterprise Architecture

An email arrived today from someone in Australia, asking for recommendations on Enterprise Architecture books.

The topic is so broad that I am almost hesitant on where to begin. It seems likely that this is a person who is beginning their journey toward architect from the perspective of a software developer background - and wishes to develop a foundation of knowledge and expertise with a broader architectural perspective.

Security is itself such a deep and specialized topic that I will defer touching upon recommendations for that area of enteprise architecture [for now].

To be sure, this list is incomplete - but please recognize it is a first draft - and is subject to change as I have more time to reflect...


The first book that comes to mind, Martin Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture:





The practice of enterprise application development has benefited from the emergence of many new enabling technologies. Multi-tiered object-oriented platforms, such as Java and .NET, have become commonplace. These new tools and technologies are capable of building powerful applications, but they are not easily implemented. Common failures in enterprise applications often occur because their developers do not understand the architectural lessons that experienced object developers have learned.

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture is written in direct response to the stiff challenges that face enterprise application developers. The author, noted object-oriented designer Martin Fowler, noticed that despite changes in technology--from Smalltalk to CORBA to Java to .NET--the same basic design ideas can be adapted and applied to solve common problems. With the help of an expert group of contributors, Martin distills over forty recurring solutions into patterns. The result is an indispensable handbook of solutions that are applicable to any enterprise application platform.

This book is actually two books in one. The first section is a short tutorial on developing enterprise applications, which you can read from start to finish to understand the scope of the book's lessons. The next section, the bulk of the book, is a detailed reference to the patterns themselves. Each pattern provides usage and implementation information, as well as detailed code examples in Java or C#. The entire book is also richly illustrated with UML diagrams to further explain the concepts.

Armed with this book, you will have the knowledge necessary to make important architectural decisions about building an enterprise application and the proven patterns for use when building them.

The topics covered include:

  • Dividing an enterprise application into layers

  • The major approaches to organizing business logic

  • An in-depth treatment of mapping between objects and relational databases

  • Using Model-View-Controller to organize a Web presentation

  • Handling concurrency for data that spans multiple transactions

  • Designing distributed object interfaces




  • The second book, Thomas Erl's Service-Oriented Architecture, Concepts, Technology, and Design:





    This is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches fundamental and advanced SOA design principles, supplemented with detailed case studies and technologies used to implement SOAs in the real world.

    Erl uses more than 125 case study examples and over 300 diagrams to illuminate the most important facets of building SOA platforms: goals, obstacles, concepts, technologies, standards, delivery strategies, and processes for analysis and design.


    My third recommended book, although a bite dated (2003) is Enterprise Integration Patterns, by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf:




    Utilizing years of practical experience, seasoned experts Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf show how asynchronous messaging has proven to be the best strategy for enterprise integration success. However, building and deploying messaging solutions presents a number of problems for developers. Enterprise Integration Patterns provides an invaluable catalog of sixty-five patterns, with real-world solutions that demonstrate the formidable of messaging and help you to design effective messaging solutions for your enterprise.


    The Coad Series book, A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture, by James McGovern, Scott W. Ambler, Michael E. Stevens, James Linn, Vikas Sharan, Elias K. Jo, provides a nice concise general overview of many enterprise architecture topics:




    In my experience, many people that move into an architect role often let their technical skills lapse. Theory and strategy all too often consume the majority of the architect's time and attention. To maintain that technical edge, you need to keep your hands in the code and continue to maintain hands-on practical implementation knowledge.

    One practical book for this might be Mark D. Hansen's SOA Using Java Web Services:



    Or, the more recent, Service Oriented Architecture with Java: Using SOA and web services to build powerful Java applications, by Binildas A. Christudas:




    (not that I'm specifically suggesting Java as the only language - there are plenty of books on other programming languages that are just as applicable)

    To balance the above recommendations, I would throw in three additional must-reads:

    Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises, by Dean Leffingwell:




    Although the next recommended book may not appear to be relevant to the writer's inquiry - the concepts that are covered in Large-Scale C++ Software Design, by John Lakos, are so important to developing maintainable systems that I consider it an essential text.




    What architect can call their bookshelf complete without a solid book on algorithms?

    Introduction to Algorithms, by Thomas H. Cormen, is my preferred text:




    My final book recommendation for this list, although it has only recently been released (December 22, 2008), is Thomas Erl's newest book, SOA Design Patterns, which is also high on my own list of books to read next.







    The above is what I consider essential for the beginning of a solid foundation for an entperise architect. Beyond these initial stepping stones on the journey, there is the need to add a solid foundation in the areas of security, performance, and testing.

    Additional research topics for further study would include spending time developing expertise with the design of applications using:


    I've also assembled a short list of Cloud/Grid computing resources that may be of some interest.

    Update: 2008-12-30 Tuesday
    Martin Cooke and Vimal Bana contributed suggestions on a LinkedIn discussion of this topic that I thought were noteworthy.

    Martin noted the distinction between Enterprise Architecture and Solution Architecture:
    "Of course depends on what one means by 'enterprise architecture'. If it ('enterprise architecture') is the set of models required to support the development of IT Strategy in support of business strategy (as opposed to 'solution architecture' - the set of models needed to support the development of working solutions - in which case SOA, EAI, Data etc books are relevant) then I would recommend starting with an understanding of 'strategy' as understanding this ('strategy') gives purpose / defined outcomes / requirements to the 'enterprise architecture' activity."


    He also suggested a book, Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton:




    Vimal suggested Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, by
    Jeanne W. Ross, Peter weill, David C. Robertson


    2008-12-29 Sunday - Windows Recovery Tools

    I happened to visit PC World web site today and came across this article on their home page: Reinstall and Restore Your Windows PC in Eight Easy Steps

    Some of the following are mentioned in the article:

    PC World: Editor's Review of Norton Ghost

    PC World: Acronis True Image Home 2009

    PC World: DriveImage XML

    PC World: Editor's Review of [Ultimate Boot CD for Windows] UBCD4Win

    List of Tools on the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows - wow(!), nice(!)

    2008-12-27

    2008-12-27 Saturday - Business Development

    Business Development in Tumultuous Times



    I've lived through some tough business cycles: 1984, 1987, 1997, 2001-2004, and now 2008. 2009 is looking like it will be a very tumultuous year - and may exceed anything I've seen before.

    But I am very optimistic.

    Here's why: Just like we saw in the dot.com boom-bust cycle - too much money has been flowing into the wrong hands and was grossly mis-managed.

    We are where we are today because of Wall Street greed & malfeasance, Mortgages that were handed out like candy to children (nonsense like interest-only, adjustable rate), Credit Cards (given out like candy to children), and Real Estate (that was treated like a casino). What we are seeing in the news, the U.S. and world economies, and the global financial markets is simply the hubris, dross, and underbrush being burned away.

    What will remain will be weakened - but what will thrive afterward will be stronger and more sustainable.

    Companies and organizations will have to do more with less. They will have to do it faster (and better!) to stay competitive in this increasingly globally competitive marketplace. Poorly designed IT systems will kill or cripple companies that do not invest in improving their infrastructure. Poorly designed processes will be a crucial competitive dis-advantage. The false sense of comfort that many organizations have lived with - accepting sub-optimal performance from business units (and trading partners) - will no longer be par for the course.

    Growth will prevail, value will prevail, waste will not.

    Now is the time to sharpen your tools for increasing sales, for adding value.

    Here are some recommendations to help you prepare:

    Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts




    The One-Page Proposal: How to Get Your Business Pitch onto One Persuasive Page




    Powerful Proposals: How to Give Your Business the Winning Edge




    Handbook For Writing Proposals




    Request for Proposal: A Guide to Effective RFP Development




    Writing Winning Business Proposals: Your Guide to Landing the Client, Making the Sale and Persuading the Boss




    Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants: Breakthrough Tactics for Winning Profitable Clients




    Federal Contracting Made Easy, 3rd Edition




    Successful Proposal Strategies for Small Businesses 4th edition




    Writing Killer Sales Proposals




    Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice




    Million Dollar Consulting (TM) Toolkit: Step-By-Step Guidance, Checklists, Templates and Samples from "The Million Dollar Consultant"




    Process Consulting: How to Launch, Implement, and Conclude Successful Consulting Projects




    The Ultimate Consultant: Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner




    How to Acquire Clients: Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner




    The Consultant's Toolkit: High-Impact Questionnaires, Activities and How-to Guides for Diagnosing and Solving Client Problems




    Also, you may want to consider subscribing to the following:
    Consultants News

    Consulting Magazine

    2008-12-26

    2008-12-26 Friday - Link Harvest

    Excel Financial functions for .NET
    This is a .NET library that provides the full set of financial functions from Excel. The main goal for the library is compatibility with Excel, by providing the same functions, with the same behaviour. Note though that this is not a wrapper over the Excel library; the functions have been re-implemented in managed code so that you do not need to have Excel installed to use this library.


    Microsoft F#, September 2008 Community Technology Preview
    F# is a type-safe, scalable language for the .NET platform that supports both functional and object-oriented programming. This CTP release includes the F# compiler and tools, as well as Visual Studio 2008 integration for F# development.

    2008-12-23

    2008-12-23 Tuesday - 2009 SOA Predictions

    2009 SOA Predictions

    (work in progress, more coming...)


    1. A shift in corporate IT's interests and spending - with more frequent references to Cloud/Grid computing - and less mention of SOA.


    2. Premise: Many corporate IT departments are already stretched thin with existing obligations and responsibilities to support their existing infrastructure and deployed applications.

      SOA is more complex.

      The effort to establish, communicate, train, support, sustain, and manage the infrastructure necessary to implement a SOA-enabling environment is an additional cost - in terms of staff time and budget costs.

      That additional complexity/cost/effort impacts the total cost required for the management of development, testing, and production environments.

      That additional cost/effort will exceed the technical capacity and financial budgets for many IT departments.

      Many organizations will be driven to offload the cost and burden to a 3rd party (Cloud/Grid vendors) - where the operating overhead can be spread across the subscriber base.


    3. SOA Consultants, Vendors, Writers...will attempt to drive a whole new set of buzz-words, perhaps abandoning the term SOA altogether, as they struggle to generate Sturm and Drang in their quest to sell more software, articles, books, and generate billable revenue.


    4. Premise: Without a strong perceived need/mandate for change, organizations are less likely to perceive a need for expensive consultants.

      Observation: Too many consultants appear to be mired in waging religious debates over their differences in defining the The One True Definition of SOA. The focus of the conversation needs to be refocused on the business value - not on the techno-mumbo-jumbo.


    5. UDDI will finally be recognized for the bloated pig that it is.


    6. Premise: The business need to get things done in as simple and painless a way as possible will finally convince the major SOA solution vendors that they need to deliver a registry-repository solution that is affordable, understandable, simple to use, and doesn't consume a significant percentage of the total SOA program budget. A "light" version of their products will be offered (which will more likely than not be based on a RESTful service model).


    7. Business managers will be driven to define an ROI for their SOA initiative before obtaining continued funding of the program.


    8. Premise: The cookie jar lid will be slammed shut on IT folks that just want to play with the latest software toys (just because it is "cool technology").

      I am extremely doubtful of any SOA justification based upon the claim/expectation of a high-level of service reuse. Loose coupling, perhaps (if you spend enough time getting the semantics of the messsage models right).

      Focusing on improving the processes and efficiencies of Enterprise Value Chains seems a better candidate approach for ROI justification.


    9. IT management of large-scale enterprise organizations will realize that they can't obtain the benefits of agility and reuse if their fundamental software development processes are still mired in chaos.


    10. Premise: If you don't have the fundamental processes nailed (e.g. Source Code Management, Iterative/Agile Development, Automated Testing, Continuous Integration Build, Issue/Bug Tracking, etc.) - then all that adopting SOA will do (with its greater complexity and number of moving parts) - will simply decrease the organization's agility and increase its inefficiencies.


    2008-12-22

    2008-12-22 Monday - Windows Vista - ISATAP adapter error

    Microsoft Support: Article ID: 932520
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932520
    On a Windows Vista-based computer or on a Windows Server 2008-based computer, the Microsoft ISATAP adapter appears with a yellow exclamation mark next to it in Device Manager, and you also receive an error message
    Symptoms:
    On a Windows Vista-based computer or on a Windows Server 2008-based computer, the Microsoft ISATAP adapter appears with a yellow exclamation mark (!) next to it in Device Manager. Additionally, when you open the properties dialog box for the device, you receive an error message that resembles the following:
    Windows cannot load driver (Code 31)
    (...)
    Resolution:"You can safely ignore this error message. This error message does not indicate a problem with the adapter. The adapter will continue to work correctly. "

    2008-12-21

    2008-12-21 Sunday - Link Harvest

    Will Cloud-based Multi-Enterprise Information Systems Replace Extranets?

    Servlet 3.0 Public Review Sparks a Debate

    The Gundersons get us ready for Basil, the robot of our dreams

    Interview with Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation

    Jim McCarthy's classic presentation to Microsoft: The 23 Rules of Thumb - here's a link to the rules broken down as 23.5 individual podcasts.

    I've caught a show on PBS a few times: Animusic - and have been amazed at the animation of musical instruments. Being a geek, I was curious what tools they use to do it.


    IBM Developerworks Library Series:
    Services-based enterprise integration patterns made easy
    "This series of articles explains services-based enterprise integration patterns in an easy-to-understand, step-by-step way. In this installment, Part 1 of the series, you learn about the two earliest integration patterns—data sharing only and remote procedure call (RPC)—which help introduce the concepts of service provider and service consumer, platform independence, and connectivity. Exploring RPC helps you get familiar with the basic steps necessary for two applications to share functionality. This article also includes a general description of the concepts of loose coupling, code reuse, and layering and componentization. Part 2 of the series continues the discussion of the early patterns, while Part 3 and Part 4 cover the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based integration patterns, including examples."

    Part 1: The evolution of basic concepts

    Part 2: More on the evolution of basic concepts

    Part 3: Web services and registry

    Part 4: Enterprise service bus

    2008-12-21 Sunday - SOA Challenges, SOA Pain v2

    RedmondDeveloper: Will SOA Fly in 2009?

    What to do when insanity reigns

    Q&A: Miko Matsumura on the State of SOA
    (Miko Matsumura, vice president and deputy CTO, SOA products at Software AG webMethods)
    Khan: "If you had to take a pause and assess the state of the SOA today, what do you see?"

    Matsumura: "People have gone through all of the Kubler-Ross stages now and have come to acceptance of SOA. SOA isn't utopian in the sense that Adoption is painful and difficult. We have been through a lot of cycles where people look for escapist alternatives. But when you get down to it, IT System and Organizational sprawl is a disease, and if you don't cure this disease, your IT systems will become ossified, atherosclerotic, and will slowly become the cement boots that will drown your business. People are understanding both that the cure is as painful as the disease, or perhaps even more painful"


    Joe McKendrick wrote in August 2007:
    How do we really know when SOA ‘fails’?
    "Lack of a true SOA...."

    "Lack of reuse or sharing by multiple business units...."

    "More money spent than gained — over the long run...."

    "More, not less, vendor lock-in...."


    From a March 2007 podcast (transcript): BriefingsDirect SOA Insights Analysts Explore SOA's Role Through Failure, Governance, Policy and Politics

    Udi Dahan's recent presentation: Avoid a Failed SOA - Ness Tziona Usergroup meeting #2 - (pdf)

    David Linthicum wrote in November 2007: Are You in SOA Project Hell?
    "...a few key issues..."

    • "Not enough budget..."

    • "Not enough influence..."

    • "Wrong people..."

    • "Bad schedule..."

    • "No plan, approach, or method..."



    More recently, David Linthicum wrote in September 2008: SOA Deployments: What Actually Works

    • "People: From Leadership to Staff, the Right Aptitude and Commitment Is Critical..."

    • "Processes: SOA Requires a Change in How You Develop, Manage, and Test Applications..."

    • "Architecture: The Core of SOA Is Usually Given Short Shrift..."

    • "Technology: Your Technology Should Follow the Requirements, Not Drive Them..."



    Anne Thomas Manes recently wrote: SOA vs SOI
    Service oriented architecture is hard work. It's disruptive. It's a political minefield. It involves going through the application portfolio and identifying redundant applications that can be decommissioned and replaced by a single service. But no one ever wants to open that can of worms. Many folks live by the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There's way too much other stuff to do. But each additional application increases the annual maintenance and operations budget. And for many of those applications, the cost of maintaining the application exceeds the value it brings to the business.


    Also worth reading: Burton On Real World SOA Experiences

    And just for the record, in general, when I find myself sometimes disagreeing with something Anne has written, I carefully review my assumptions and usually find myself altering my conclusions.


    Mike Kavis: Top 10 Reasons Why People are Making SOA Fail
    "1. They fail to explain SOA's business value...."
    "2. They underestimate the impact of organizational change...."
    "3. They fail to secure strong executive sponsorship...."
    "4. They attempt to do SOA "on the cheap"..."
    "5. They lack the required skills to deliver SOA...."
    "6. They have poor project management..."
    "7. They think of SOA as a project instead of an architecture..."
    "8. They underestimate the complexity of SOA...."
    "9. They fail to implement and adhere to SOA governance..."
    "10. They let the vendors drive the architecture...."



    Two SOA Projects That Can Pay For Themselves in Six Months


    Frank Kenney (Gartner Analyst): Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A Failure

    The Laws of SOA

    Nicolai Bonne's blog: Thoughts on SOA successes and failures

    Eclipse kills open-source SOA projects (After the hype, the hurt)

    2008-12-21 Sunday - My Next Laptop...

    I know what I want in my next laptop:


    • Quad-Core cpu processors

    • 1TB of storage, via solid-state drives


    • 2009-03-06 Update: Hmmmm...SSD Disadvantages

    • Running a 64-bit version of Linux (Fedora or perhaps Ubuntu)



    This looks like a promising candidate:

    Lenovo to release ThinkPad laptop with 2 LCD screens
    The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two LCD screens -- a 17-in. primary and a 10.6-in. secondary screen.

    The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes with customers' choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive bays for up to 960GB of storage.

    The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.


    Perhaps by next summer there will be even more competitive choices.

    2009-03-10 Update:
    Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows

    Living free with Linux: Round 2

    Installing Linux software 101 for Windows users

    2008-12-17

    2008-12-17 Wednesday - Communicating SOA Concepts

    In my SOA consulting practice I recently needed to find a better way to communicate the concepts of SOA and the benefits its realization can bring to an organization - without requiring extensive, acronym-laden, reading by the very busy executive management team.

    In my research, I came across this excellent animated presentation that beautifully captured the essence of what I wanted to communicate:

    http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/eframework/soa

    (JISC develops partnerships to enable the UK education and research communities to engage in national and global collaborations to overcome the challenges of delivering world-class ICT solutions and services)

    2008-12-17 Wednesday - Microsoft Business Intelligence

    A recent question asked on LinkedIn:

    Business Inteligence costs
    How costs are lowered with Microsoft Business Inteligence?



    There are several links to white papers and case studies on the Microsoft Business Intelligence web site: http://www.microsoft.com/bi/

    You may also be interested in this Gartner report:
    Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008
    http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol7/article3/article3.html

    Case Study: Community Health Network Saves Time and Improves Performance of IT Services Using Microsoft Business Intelligence Solution
    http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002023

    2008-12-14

    2008-12-15 Sunday - Presentation Tools

    I've given a lot of presentations in my career. Often those presentations were given in well designed multimedia-equipped board rooms and conference rooms - and quite often - using a wireless mouse and a laptop was sufficient. But I've noted the benefits recently of other presenters relying on a wireless presenter control, so I stopped and picked one up today:

    Targus Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer




    Product Description
    The Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer features all of the necessities that other competitive presenters offer. This presenter has the ability to page up, page down, escape slide show, darken screen and resume screen. It also has a laser pointer button and an on/off switch. It also includes an alt tab application switch. The long-range 2.4GHz wireless technology has up to a 30 ft. range, which is ideal for a large conference room. The preset RF connection enables true plug-and-play capability


    Sweet.

    2008-12-12

    2008-12-12 Friday - Link Harvest

    Challenges in Adopting Scrum

    TeamCity 4.0: Distributed Builds and Continuous Integration

    Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Released

    Presentation: Ian Flint Explains Yahoo! Communities Architectures

    Scaling memcached at Facebook

    Free website templates: http://andreasviklund.com/templates/

    2008-12-12 Friday - QCon 2008 Special Report

    Infoq has just published this article, Key Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned from QCon San Francisco 2008, with many links to some good blog commentary from the attendees (and they kindly included several links to my own blog posts about the conference).

    In over 25 years in the Information Technology industry - which has included attending such conferences as Object World East, Software Development West, Java One, No Fluff Just Stuff, Seattle Code Camp (v3, v4), etc. - QCon 2008 was by far the very best conference I have ever attended. I will be going back!

    One of the personal highlights of the trip was a chance meeting with Martin Fowler during one of the breaks between sessions and being able to tell him how much of an inspiration his writing has been to me personally. The other was a chance to catch-up with my old friend and former Mercata.com colleague, Dr. Dean Wampler, now a consultant with Object Mentor.




    As a small side note, I had an interesting exchange awhile back with someone on a certain message forum, in which I had initiated a thread of conversation around the question of "What conferences do you find most useful?".

    It was suggested that conferences were useless - and that better value would be obtained by reading books and reading blogs of others.

    In general, I agree that the level of technical information retained from attending a conference pales in comparison to reading a book. However, those who dismiss conferences on the basis of such thinking miss important (and not inconsequential) benefits of attending conferences:


    • The synergy of ideas that occurs in conversations with other attendees


    • The revitalizing "enthusiasm" that arises from being in the presence of others who share a like passion


    • The serendipitous knowledge that is acquired by spontaneous conversations

    • The opportunities to network with peers


    • Hearing the experiences that others may not feel disposed to post to public blogs

    2008-12-07

    2008-12-07 Sunday - SOA Semantic Resource Links

    Semantic Community Wiki
    http://semanticommunity.wik.is/

    Knoodle.com
    http://www.knoodl.com
    "Knoodl is sort of an ontology editor, registry/repository, and wiki all rolled into an easy to use online application"



    SOAInstitute.Org’s
    Service-Oriented Architecture Conference Series
    A Brainstorm Event in Washington, DC
    Brand Niemann, Senior Enterprise Architecture, US EPA
    June 25, 2008
    Ontology for Segment Data Architecture: E-Rulemaking Case Study



    Ontology for Segment Data Architecture
    http://gov2.wik.is/Ontology_for_Segment_Data_Architecture

    2008-12-07 Sunday - Link Harvest

    A friend sent me a link to the OBM.org Open Source project - which looks interesting:
    http://www.obm.org/doku.php
    OBM is enterprise-class messaging and collaboration platform for workgroup or enterprises with many thousands users. OBM includes Groupware, messaging server, CRM, LDAP, Windows Domain, smartphone and PDA synchronization…

    OBM is licensed under the GNU General Public Licens


    http://www.magentocommerce.com
    I also came across the site for the Open Source Magento eCommerce solution. The feature set looks impressive.

    I came across Alexander Ananiev's MyArch Solutions tonight - I like a lot of what he has written about SOA and ESBs.

    2008-12-01

    2008-12-01 Monday

    Last night I upgraded my soapUI SOA / West Services / SOAP testing tool to the latest 2.5 release. A most excellent tool.

    2008-11-28

    2008-11-28 Friday - Linux based SOA Demo Platform

    Tonight I downloaded VMware Player 2.5.1 - which is an update over the previous version 2.0 that I had installed.

    I also have downloaded the Fedora 10 release of Linux. (Release Notes)

    Tonight I'm starting the process of creating a VMWare image that will be an integrated demonstration platform of a number of Open Source SOA tools - here are a few of the things I plan to configure as the base:


    • Glassfish ESB

    • Apache Synapse

    • JBoss Drools

    • Mule Galaxy

    • MySQL

    • memcachd



    I'm experimenting with the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 virtual machine software - since the VMWare Player does not allow for the creation of a new virtual machine.

    2008-11-29 Update

    Fedora 10 Inside Windows: Screenshots Tour

    EasyVMX!: Create Virtual Machine
    Super Simple Edition

    2008-11-28 Friday - XML Schema Versioning

    I cam across the following document today:


    Evaluating a Service-Oriented Architecture
    Phil Bianco, Software Engineering Institute
    Rick Kotermanski, Summa Technologies
    Paulo Merson, Software Engineering Institute
    September 2007
    TECHNICAL REPORT
    CMU/SEI-2007-TR-015
    ESC-TR-2007-015
    Software Architecture Technology Initiative
    http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/07.reports/07tr015.pdf

    See page-44

    5.12 WHAT IS THE APPROACH FOR SERVICE VERSIONING?



    ...which points to an external document in the Refernces section:



    [xFront 2007]

    xFront. XML Schema Versioning.

    http://www.xfront.com/Versioning.pdf


    ...which is a 5-page pdf discussion of this topic.


    A closely related topic is the issue of WSDL versioning - which is covered quite well in an Iona Best Practices white paper: http://blogs.iona.com/sos/20070410-WSDL-Versioning-Best-Practise.pdf

    2008-11-27

    2008-11-27 Thursday - Writer Tools

    I am starting to do some writing for an online magazine (Developer.com) - and found the need to do some screen captures for the first article that I'm writing.

    Windws Screen Capture Frustation

    After trial-and-error and more than a wee bit of frustration at the limitations of using the built-in capabilities of Windows to capture screen images (e.g. hit the ALT-Print-Screen button, and then copy from the clipboard into Microsoft Paint) - I decided to look for a better tool more suited to the task.

    Why can't it just be easy?


    A Craftsman Uses the Proper Tool

    Many, many, years ago I used a tool called SnagIt - and remember how well suited it was to the task. A quick Google search landed me on the TechSmith web site - where I was able to download a 30-day evaluation copy of SnagIt 9.0.2

    Within about 10 minutes I was happily capturing images, doing various transformations of the image, and saving them in a variety of popular formats (and some not so popular).


    Highly Recommended:



    2008-11-27 Thursday - GIS Books

    I've created a GIS category in my Amazon recommendations bookstore.

    I've also created a short-list of GIS resource links.

    Here are a few of the selections that look interesting or are Open Source related:





    Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools
    by Gary Sherman


    Desktop GIS explores the world of Open Source GIS software and provides a guide to navigate the many options available. Discover what kind of GIS user you are and lay the foundation to evaluate the options and decide what software is best for you.
    Desktop GIS examines the challenges associated with assembling and using an OSGIS toolkit. You'll find strategies for choosing a platform, selecting the right tools, integration, managing change, and getting support. The survey of OSGIS desktop applications provides you with a quick introduction to the many packages available. You'll see examples of both GUI (Graphical User Interface) and command line interfaces to give you a feel for what is available.

    This book will give you an understanding of the Open Source GIS landscape, along with a detailed look at the major desktop applications, including GRASS, Quantum GIS, uDig, spatial databases, GMT, and other command line tools. Finally, the book exposes you to scripting in the OSGIS world, using Python, shell, and other languages to visualize, digitize, and analyze your data.










    GIS for Web Developers: Adding 'Where' to Your Web Applications
    by Scott Davis


    GIS for Web Developers introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in simple terms and demonstrates hands-on uses. With this book, you'll explore popular websites like maps.google.com, see the technologies they use, and learn how to create your own. Written with the usual Pragmatic Bookshelf humor and real-world experience, GIS for Web Developers makes geographic programming concepts accessible to the common developer.

    This book will demystify GIS and show you how to make GIS work for you. You'll learn the buzzwords and explore ways to geographically-enable your own applications. GIS is not a fundamentally difficult domain, but there is a barrier to entry because of the industry jargon. This book will show you how to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of a geographer.

    You'll learn how to find the vast amounts of free geographic data that's out there and how to bring it all together. Although this data is free, it's scattered across the web on a variety of different sites, in a variety of incompatible formats. You'll see how to convert it among several popular formats including plain text, ESRI Shapefiles, and Geography Markup Language (GML).










    The KML Handbook: Geographic Visualization for the Web
    by Josie Wernecke
    KML began as the file format for Google Earth, but it has evolved into a full-fledged international standard for describing any geographic content—the “HTML of geography.” It’s already supported by applications ranging from Microsoft Virtual Earth and NASA WorldWind to Photoshop and AutoCAD. You can do amazing things with KML, and this book will show you how, using practical examples drawn from today’s best online mapping applications.









    Beginning MapServer: Open Source GIS Development
    by Bill Kropla


    Beginning MapServer: Open Source GIS Development...offers a comprehensive introduction to MapServer, the development platform for integrating mapping technology into Internet applications. You'll learn how to build and extend dynamic applications using popular languages like PHP, Perl, and Python.

    After a thorough introduction to installation and configuration, you'll uncover basic MapServer topics and examples. You'll also learn about advanced MapServer features, and how to query and incorporate dynamic data into your application. The book culminates with the creation of an actual mapping application.










    Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach
    by Markus Neteler, Helena Mitasova


    Thoroughly updated with material related to the GRASS6, the third edition includes new sections on attribute database management and SQL support, vector networks analysis, lidar data processing and new graphical user interfaces. All chapters were updated with numerous practical examples using the first release of a comprehensive, state-of-the-art geospatial data set.

    2008-11-25

    2008-11-25 Tuesday - JBoss ISV Program

    Press Release: Red Hat Expands JBoss Certified ISV Program With 250 Partners

    For more information about the JBoss Certified ISV Program:
    http://www.jboss.com/partners

    2008-11-25 Tuesday - Book Review: Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM

    Book Review: Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM
    (full disclosure: I was provided a free copy to review)




    If you are a manager and need a good book to help you sell the idea of BPM to upper-management - and explain the value (and the practical application) of BPM tooling to solving real-world problems, then this book is a very good entry-level text - with a concise and practical approach to walking you through the current best practices in this technology space.

    Here's a quick chapter overview of what's covered in the book:

    Chapter 1: Introduction
    - BPM approach to software development

    Chapter 2: Understanding the target process
    - Setting up the project
    - Analyzing the process

    Chapter 3: Develop the process in JBoss jBPM
    - jBPM architecture
    - Installation
    - jBPM concepts
    - Buliding the example process

    Chapter 4: The Prototype user interface
    - Build the prototype
    - Investigating the web console interface
    - Adapt the web console

    Chapter 5: Iterate the prototype
    - Set up for the proof of concept
    - Iterate the sysstem

    Chapter 6: Proof-of-concept to implementation
    - Preparation for implementation
    - Monitoring the process

    Chapter 7: Ongoing process improvement
    - Project assessment
    - Process analysis and improvement
    - Business process documentation
    - Ideas for further development

    On November 24, 2008, the Drools team posted a video presentation:

    Whats new in Drools 5 video and Q&A session
    http://blog.athico.com/2008/11/whats-new-in-drools-5-video-and-q.html

    There are some very exciting new developments in JBoss Drools - and this book is still a good text for communicating the process and concepts of JBM development.

    2008-11-24

    2008-11-24 Monday

    Esther Schindler (Senior Online Editor at CXO Media / CIO Magazine) posted a question on LinkedIn a few months ago that I just came across: What are the burning issues in SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)?

    There were 21 responses...some of which were quite interesting.

    2008-11-23

    2008-11-23 Sunday

    soapUI 2.5, The REST Release is out

    NetBeans IDE 6.5 Available for Download

    Zviki Cohen's "Either You Succeed or Explain" blog
    Eclipse 3.4 Hidden Treasures

    Five ways for tracing Java execution

    2008-11-21 Friday - QCon 2008 Afternoon

    Disclaimer: There may be some many mistakes/errors in my blog notes for QCon over the next few days - as I am writing these posts while I'm sitting in sessions - and much of these notes are stream-of-consciousness - as I try to keep up with the presenters.

    I'm in San Francisco attending QCon 2008 this week.




    Bringing the enterprise to the web with Mule
    Dan Diephouse, Architect, MuleSource


    Research: SideNote.net (?)

    No prescribed message format

    zero code intrusion
    - mule does not impose an API on service objects
    - objects are fully portable

    Existing objects can be managed

    Easy to test

    1) Declare a service
    2) Define inbound router
    3) Define Outbound router

    Used to connect components and external systems together

    Endpoints use a URI for addressing

    Inbound Routers
    - Idempotency
    - selective consumers
    - re-sequencing
    - messag aggreagation

    Outbound Routers
    - message splitting


    Core Concepts: Transformers
    - converts data from one format to another
    - can be chained together to form transformation pipielines

    Building Services
    - Annotations to expose your classes as RESTful service
    - implements JAX ...?


    Jersey - JAX-RS implementation
    - simple annotations to create a RESTful web service


    Integrating into your Messaging Layer

    You can modify messages while filtering

    ATOMPUB
    - service
    - workspace
    -

    ABDERA (collection adapters)
    - ???
    - JCR
    - JDBC
    - FileSystem

    jcrAdapter allows instant creation of an Atom store
    allows posting to the AtomPub log


    Creating Atom Transformers

    *** Research RSS Bandit ***

    Chris Barry - research Atom Server usage
    - used for vacation reservations
    - used by Google?

    Polling vs. Messaging

    HTTP has a polling connector builtin - that supports eTags (*** need to research eTags ***)

    Mule Books
    --------------------
    Mule In Action
    Open ESB
    ???


    There is an open debate in the REST community about what might be the best practice for communicating
    the schemas for RESTful services.

    WADL - Mark Hadley, WSDL for REST

    Return the schema if the request is only a Head

    Galaxy supports a feature called Netboot - which can facilitate deploying / synchronizing config files / components (?) - and JMX can be used to communicate an event to the servers that need to receive the update.








    Ning
    Jay Parikh, SVP of Engineering & Operations

    AskANinja.com
    TwitterMoms
    Hoffspace
    TheListProject.org
    DIY Drones (robotics)
    PickensPlan

    Constraints:
    - each network is different
    - applications from scratch
    - features built as platform APIs
    - deny abuse of APIs
    - support backwards compatibility
    - scale BOTH individual applications and the platforms as a whole

    Original Tools Used
    ===================================
    Nagios
    Splunk
    Zenoss
    Cacti
    Keynote
    EM
    DDFM
    InformMC
    Cohesion
    JMX
    Segue
    Loads of log files
    Network gear (F5, Cisco,

    Reboot
    ----------------------------------
    Reduce MTTD and MTTR
    more flexible monitoring
    higher resolution
    consolidate
    self-service
    unified infrastructure


    Real-time Monitoring Overview


    Visibility Challenges
    ---------------------------------
    Real-time monitoring overview
    - Erosebo (?) - custom built?
    - Monitoring agent
    - Archive to Hadoop
    - Dashboard / Collector, aggregated event stream

    2008-11-21 Friday - QCon 2008 Morning

    Disclaimer: There may be some many mistakes/errors in my blog notes for QCon over the next few days - as I am writing these posts while I'm sitting in sessions - and much of these notes are stream-of-consciousness - as I try to keep up with the presenters.

    I'm in San Francisco attending QCon 2008 this week.




    9AM-
    Social Architectures

    MySpace presentation
    Dan Farino, Chief Systems Architect, MySpace.com



    __The traditional distribution channels are being redefined...__
    SMB Channels are out pacing large channels

    Transacting within the community being redefined

    Small producers can now compete with the large industries


    __Social Fuzziness__
    - the boundaries fo the social sites aree not as clear sa the preceeding slides suggest
    -- myspace and facebook transactd
    -- ebay has a thriving community
    -- digg and ing are about networking


    __Social Architecture Challenges__
    - worry not that no one knows of you - seek to be worth knowing -- confucious

    Shared joy is a double joy - shared sorrow is half a sorrow - swedish proverb

    connections between people are transitive and lack affinity

    partitioning for scale is always problematic


    Tools are sparse for large-scale windows server management

    Traditional Plan:
    - Plan
    - Implement
    - Test
    - Go Live
    - Manage growth


    MySpace plan as executed
    - implement
    - go live

    result:
    - reboot servers - often
    - "Shotgun debbugging"
    -- a process of making relatively undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug will be perturbed out of existence.
    -- need to resolve the problem now and collecting data for analysis would take too long


    Windows 2000 Server
    IIS

    Operationally - where they were...
    - batch files and robocopy for code deployment
    - "psecec" for remote admin script execution
    - Windows Performance Monitor for monitoring

    No formal, automaoted QA process



    Current Architecture
    - 4,500 web serves, windows 2003 IIS 6.0 ASP.NET
    - 1,200 "cache" servers - 64-bit windows, 2003 (key value pair, distributed)
    - 500+ database servers


    QA Today
    - unit tests/automated testing
    - don't fuzz the site nearly as thoroughly as the users do
    - there are still problems that happen only in production

    Ops Data Collection
    Two types of systems:
    - Static: collect, store, and alert based on pre-configured rules (e.g. Nagios)
    - Dynamic: Write an ad-hoc script or application to collect data for an immediate or one-off need


    (Very interesting: Windows Performance counter monitor display in their Ops Data Collection)

    Cons of static system:
    - relatively central configuration managed by a small number of administrators
    - bad for one-off requests: change he config, apply, wait for data
    - developer's questions usually go unanswered

    Devlopers like to see their creations come to life

    Cons of the dynamic system:
    - it's not really a "system" at all - its an administrator running a script
    - is a privileged operation: scripts are powerful and can be potentially make changes to the system
    - even run as a limited userr, bad scripts can still DoS the system
    - one-shot data collection is possible but learning about deltas takes a lot more code (and polling, yuck)
    - different custom-data collection tools that request the same data point caused duplicated network traffic

    *** They use Powershell a lot ***

    Ideally, all operational data avaialble in the entire server farm should be queryable

    New Operational Data-subscription platform for Ops Data Collection
    - on-demand
    - supports both "one-shot" and "persistent" modes
    - can be used by non-privileged users
    - a client makes __one__ TCP connection to a "Collector" server
    -- can receive data related to thousands of servers via this one connection
    -- like having all of the servers in a Jabber chat room and being able to talk to a selected subset of them at any time (over __one__ connection)



    Agents provide...
    - Windows Performance Counters
    - WMI Objects
    -- event logs
    -- hardware data
    -- custom WMI objects published from out-of-process
    - Log file contents

    On Linux, plans are to hook into something like D-Bus...

    All C#, asynch I/O - never blocks a thread
    Uses MS "Concurrency and Coordination Runtime"
    Agent runs on each host
    Wire protocol is Google's Protocol Buffers
    Clients and Agents can be easily writtten to the Agents wanted to see if C#+CCR could handle the load (yes it can)

    Why develop something new?
    - there doesn't seem to be anything out there right now that fits the need
    - requirements include free and open source

    To do it properly - you really need to be using 100% async I/O
    Libraries that make this easy are relatively new
    - CCR
    - Twisted
    - GTask ==> Need to research this (for Linux asynch callback processing)
    - Erlang

    What does this enable?
    - the individual interested in the data can gather it theirself.
    - its almost like exploring a database with some ad-hoc SQL queries
    - "I wonder"...questions are easily answered without a lot of work
    - charting/alerting/data-archiving systems no longer concern themselves with the data-collection intricacies
    - we can spend time writing the valuable code instead of rewriting the same plumbing every time
    - abstract physical server-farm from teh user
    - if you know machine names, great - but you can also say "all servers serving..."
    - guaranteed to keep you up to date
    - get your initial set of data and then just wait for the deltas
    - pushes polling as close to the source as possible
    - eliminates duplicate requests
    - hundreds of clients can be monitoring the "% processor time"
    - only collects data that someone is currently asking for

    Is this a good way to do it?
    - having too much data pushed at you is a bad thing
    - being able to pull from a large selection of data points is a good thing

    For developers, knowing they will have access to instrumentation data even in production encourages more detailed instrumentation.


    Easy and fun API's

    Using LINQ: Language Integrated Query
    LINQ via C# and CLINQ ("Continuous LINQ") = instant monitoring app (in about 10 lines of code)

    var counters = ...
    MainWpdfWindows.MainGrid = counters;
    // go grab a beer

    Tail a file across thousands of servers
    - with filtering expression being run on the remote machines
    - at the same time as someone else is (with no duplicate lines being sent over the network)
    - multicase only to the people that are subscribed (?)

    Open Source it?
    - hopefully

    Other implementations?
    - may write a GTask / Erlang implementation









    2008-11-21 Friday

    10:45AM

    Digg: An Infrastructure in Transition
    Joe Stump, Lead Architect, Digg


    35,000,000 unique
    3,500,000 users
    15,000 requests/sec
    hundres of servers

    "Web 2.0 sucks (for scaling)" - Joe Stump

    What's Scaling?
    - specialization
    - severe hair loss
    - isn't something you do by yourself

    What's Performance?
    - who cares?

    Not necessarily concerned with how quick - but can they store everything they need - and return it in a reasonable amount of time.

    Clusters of databases are designated as WRITE - others are READ

    Server Tiers
    - Netscalers
    - Applications
    - Lucene (for search)
    - Recommendation Engine (graph database)
    - MogileFS - distributed web-dav store
    - Database servers clusters - which serve different parts of the site (LULX, AFK, ZOMG, WTF, ROFL)
    - IDDB

    A normal relationship database doesn't work well for certains types of views into your data

    MySQL has problems under high write-load

    Messaging framework
    - XMPP? - stateless - can't go back in time
    - Conveyor (allows rewind of data?)

    IDDB
    - elastic horizontal partitions
    - heterogenous partition types
    - multi-homed
    - IDs live in multiple places
    - partitioned result sets

    MemcacheDB
    - Memached + BDB
    -- supports replication, keyscans
    - 28,000+ writes per second
    - Persistent key/value storage
    - Works with Memcached clients
    - used in areas where de-normalization would require more writes than MySQL can handle

    War Stories...
    - Digg Images
    -- 15,000 - 17,000 submissions per day
    -- crawl for images, video, embeds, source, and other meta data
    -- ran in parallel via Gearman <== Need to research this...


    - Green Badges
    -- 230,000 diggs per day
    -- most active Diggers are also most followed
    -- 3,000 writes per second
    -- ran in background via Gearman
    -- Eventually consistent

    2008-11-20 Thursday - QCon 2008 Afternoon

    Disclaimer: There may be some many mistakes/errors in my blog notes for QCon over the next few days - as I am writing these posts while I'm sitting in sessions - and much of these notes are stream-of-consciousness - as I try to keep up with the presenters.

    I'm in San Francisco attending QCon 2008 this week.




    5:15pm

    Designing Enterprise IT Systems with REST: A (Cloudy) Case Study
    presenter: Stuart Charlton, Chief Software Architect, Elastra

    Web architecture helps to burst silos

    Classical "Good SOA" interfaces

    FEA - large dictionary for Canonical Semantics


    Conway's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

    "...organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations"

    "Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it"

    "It is a consequence of the fact that two software modules A and B cannot interface correctly with each other unless the designer and implementer of A communicates with the designer and implementer of B. Thus the interface structure of a software system necessarily will show a congruence with the social structure of the organization that produced it."



    The Hypermedia Alternative
    - create a document that describes a "state machine"

    Problem Domain
    (Elastra is a cloud computing vendor)
    - IT Services Management & Provisioning

    Architectural & Change Considerations
    Designs: Architectural Views
    - Lifecycle: birth, growth, failure, recovery, death


    Organizational & Geographic Distribution

    Governance Fallacy:
    ...Federation: there is a chief at the top that has the will and the control authority

    versus

    ...Confederation

    The Decentralized, Declarative Data Center

    You don't need a registry in a RESTful collection of services - by definition, a REST request is self-describing (?)

    Graph of Information and Interfaces

    The agent (browser) surfs the graph of information and interfaces -- nodes of which may expose Dynamic Interfces - which results in a new or changed bit of information (and may modify the graph of information and interfaces).

    Hypermedia is a mix of data and control

    Data Out (GET)
    Data In (PUT)
    Interface Out (GET)
    Process Something (POST)

    ==> returns Response Codes


    What's a Dynamic Interface?
    - Interaction port that is bound at runtime
    -- CORBA Dynamic Invocation interface
    -- java.lang.Reflect
    -- capability to negotiate (e.g. TELNET)

    - Agent matches what they know to what's available

    - The Big Ddifference? Metadata over Methods
    -- The semantics are in the context of the link

    How can I describe my interfaces?
    -Tightly Couples
    -- XML Schema Definition with minOccurs > 0

    - Looser Coupled
    -- Dynamically generated XML Schema Definitions
    -- Edit Link Relations (e.g. AtomPub Media Entries)
    -- Forms (e.g. XForms, HTML)
    -- Annotate each field with a Persisent URL


    What about Versioning and Provenance?
    - "Metabase" Intermediary
    -- Annotation
    ---- Collections, Search, SPARQL Query
    ---- Shredded historical representations

    Tooling is a bit sparse...

    Security: Federated Identity
    - SAML (very robust in a Java world) - complex
    - WS-Federation (for Microsoft integration)
    - OpenID (mind the phishing)
    - Point-to-Point (sadly)

    - OAuth has promise but is very young - the current flavor for RESTful implementations

    Towards the Semantic Web
    - Its not crazy - its just
    -- layering logic on top of the web (an Open-World RDBMS)
    -- enabling querying and mashing of web pages without neurosurgery

    - SPARQL ("sparkle") is very big win for RESTful implementations
    -- query database or the web of hypermedia
    -- same syntax - nothing changes
    -- declarative integrity enforcement for PUT and POST

    - RDFa and GRDDL are easy to use (microformats?)
    -- just annotate your HTML or write your own XSLT

    Semantic Web Client Library - Query the web
    -- http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bizer/ng4j/semwebclient


    To Research: RDF serialization of JSON

    2008-11-20

    2008-11-20 Thursday - QCon 2008 Morning

    I'm in San Francisco attending QCon 2008 this week.

    Disclaimer: There may be some many mistakes/errors in my blog notes for QCon over the next few days - as I am writing these posts while I'm sitting in sessions - and much of these notes are stream-of-consciousness - as I try to keep up with the presenters. I will attempt to clarify/correct any errors within the week.




    9AM...
    The morning keynote speaker is Tim Bray.

    Tim Bray's morning keynote

    MemCacheD - distributed hash table
    (is there a .NET plugin available???)
    - used by facebook, wikipedia
    danga.com/memcached

    tbray.org/ongoing

    ruby.gemstone.com

    MagLev: "Ruby that scales"

    Drizzle - a lightweight SQL Database for Cloud and Web computing
    fork of MySQL


    Apache CouchDB - restful HTTP accessed database
    (database is implemented as JSON name/value pairs)
    - distributed, fault-tolerant and schema-free document-oriented databaes accessible
    via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API. Provides a robust, incremental replication with bi-directional
    conflict detectdion and resolution, and is queryable and indexable using a table-oriented view engine
    with JavaScript acting as the default view definition language.
    - Implemented in Erlang
    - incubator.apache.org/couchdb

    AtomPub (REST) RC-123 (?) - built by Tim Bray

    Bonnie, developed by Tim Bray
    - applications need to read/write files
    - sometimes they use smart I/O - somethimes they process characters and rely on buffering libraries
    - sometimes they need to update files in place
    - sometimes they need to seek around


    Sun 7410 server has some very interesting performance characteristics for I/O

    presentation slides
    tbray.com/tmp/QCSF08.pdf







    Thursday, November 20, 2008 - morning sessions

    DSLs in Practice

    Jay Fields, DRW Trading
    5Ws of DSLs

    Domain Specific Language
    - a computer programming language of limited expressiveness focused on

    - a DSL supports a bare minimum

    examples of DSLs: sql, regular expressions, spring config, linq

    Prgrammerr Read/Write DSLs
    -JMock
    -Mockito
    -Active Record

    Domain Expert Readable
    -RSpec
    -Your domain model


    -ignore programming best practices

    -language noise should not exist
    -domain experts design language


    DSLs to research: JBehave, JQuery, RSpec Scenarios, Mockito, Rake, Rhino MOcks, db deploy, Prototype Effects, YUI widgets, Thrift,

    Seamless resource pub/sub

    2008-11-19

    2008-11-19 Wednesday - QCon 2008 Day-1 conclusions

    QCon 2008 Day-1 impressions and conclusions

    I have found Mecca...the Holy Land.

    So often I've paid to attend a conference - and felt that there were spots of "goodness" in the sessions that typically stretch on throughout a long day/week - but rarely felt that I was really getting my money's worth for the not insignificant time and expense that I sacrificed to travel and to attend a conference.

    Not so today. Every session I have attended today has been right on target with the particular interests I have as an enterprise architect.

    The speakers assembled for QCon 2008 are top-shelf, world class, industry recognized heavy-weights.

    I look around the conference session meeting room - and during lunch today - and in every conversation that I have overheard or been engaged in - I have found thoughtful people that have similiar concerns and interests relative to the topic of enterprise architecture.

    2008-11-19 Wednesday - QCon 2008 Day-1 afternoon

    Disclaimer: There may be some many mistakes/errors in my blog notes for QCon over the next few days - as I am writing these posts while I'm sitting in sessions - and much of these notes are stream-of-consciousness - as I try to keep up with the presenters. I will attempt to clarify/correct any errors within the week.




    I'm in San Francisco attending QCon 2008 this week.


    Session: Golden Rules to Improve Your Architecture, 1PM-2PM

    Alexander v. Zitzewitz
    hello2morrow, Inc

    created hello2morrow in 2005

    "The Dragon of Complexity"
    - invisible
    - snatches you from behind
    - your enemy


    "You can never kill complexity"

    "The friend of the dragon is the Law of Entropy"

    Erosion of architecture - a fundamental law?

    Architecture erosion is quote a known problem
    - System knowledge and skills are not evenly distributed
    - Complexity grows faster than size
    - Unwanted dependencies are created without being noticed
    - Coupling and complexity are growing quickly

    Typical symptoms of an eroded architecture are a high degrees of coupling and a lot of cyclic dependencies
    - changes become increasingly difficult
    - testing and code comprehension become more difficult
    - deployment problems of all kinds

    "The Truth can only be found in the code"

    Mapping of physical elements to logical elements
    - Each package is mapped to exactly one subsystem
    - If package's contain types of several subsystems, virtual refactorings are helpful
    - a good naming convention for package's can make your life every simple
    -- com.company.projectName.verticleSlice.layer
    - Subsystems should have interfaces
    - Work incrementally
    -- start with your layering
    -- then add the vertical slices (if applicable)
    -- define subsystem interfaces
    -- fine tune the rules of engagement on the subsystem level

    How to measure coupling
    - ACD = average component dependency
    - average number of direct and indirect dependencies
    - rACD = ACD / number of elements
    - NCCD: normalized accumulated component dependency

    (from the large-scale C++ design book)

    __BIG IDEA__
    Robert C. Martin: Dependency Inversion Principle
    (invert dependencies, add interfaces)

    Spring is a big abstract factory pattern

    Average component dependency should be below 7% - heuristic target

    Spring has no cyclic dependencies greater than +1

    __Cyclic dependencies are evil__
    - No cycles between packages
    - the dependencies between packages must not form cycles
    - cyclic physical dependencies among components inhibit understanding, testing, and reuse.

    Introducing interfaces allows you to break cyclic dependencies

    __Six Golden Rules for a successful project__
    Rule 1: define a cycle free logical architecture down to the level of subsystems and a strict and consistent package naming convention

    Rule 2: do not allow cyclic dependencies between packages

    Rule 3: keep the relative ACD low (<7% for 500 compilation units, NCCD < 6)

    Rule 4: limit the size of java files (700 LOC is a reasonable value)

    Rule 5: limit the cyclomatic complexity of methods (e.g. 15)

    Rule 6: limit the size of a java package (e.g. less than 50 types)

    Tools
    - JDepend





    Neal Ford's presentation: 10 Ways to Improve Your Code, 3:45PM

    #1 - Composed Method
    Divide your program into methods that perform one identifieable task

    refactoring to composed method


    __Benefits of composed Method__
    method names become documentation
    large number of very cohesive methods
    discover reusable assets that you didn't know were there



    #2 - Test-Driven Development (TDD)
    (also Test-Driven Design)

    __Benefits of TDD__
    - first consumer


    #3 - Static Code Analysis

    - byte-code analysis: findbugs


    #4 - Good Citizenship

    singleton is bad because it mixes responsibilities, untestable, the object version of global variables

    avoiding singletons
    - create pojo for the business behavior (simple, testable)
    - create a factory to create one-and-only-one


    #5 - yagni
    (agile term)
    You-ain't-going-to-need-it

    build the simplest thing that we need right now

    don't indulge in speculative development

    increases software entropy

    only saves time if you can guarantee you won't have to change it later

    if features are weight - then anticipatory design decreases the velocity of the rate of change that is sustainable in a code base.


    Top 10 Corporate Code Smells
    10 - we invented our own web/persistence/messaging/caching framework because none of the existing ones were good enough

    9 - we bought the entire tool suite (even though we only needed about 10% of it) because it was cheaper than buying the individual tools.

    8 - We use WebSphere because...(I always stop listening at this point)

    7 - We can't use any open source code because our lawyers say we can't

    6 - We have an Architect who reviews all code pre-checkin and decides whether or not to allow it into version control

    5 - The only JavaDoc is the eclipse message explaining how to change your default JavaDoc template

    4 - We keep all of our business logic in stored procedures..for performance reasons

    3 - We don't have time to write unit tests (we're spending too much time debugging)

    2 - The initial estimate must be within 15% of the final cost, the post-analysis estimate must be within 10%, and the post-design estimate must be within 5%

    1 - There is a reason WSAD isn't called WHAPPY


    #6 - Question Authority

    test names - use underscores (not Camel Case)

    non-intuitive

    pair-programming studies - pairs produce code 15% slower after adjustment, but with 15% fewer defects


    #7 - Single Level off Abstraction Principle (slap)
    everything should be at the same level of abstraction
    jumping abstraction levels makes code hard to understand / maintain


    #8 - Polyglot programming
    leveraging existing platforms with languages targeted at specific problems and applications

    looming problems/opportunities
    - massively parallel threading
    -- use a functional language:jaskell, scala (inherently thread save, immutable)
    - schedule pressure
    -- jruby on rails
    - writing more declarative code via dsls
    - build fluent interfaces
    -- swiby:jruby + swing
    --- (swiby is a DSL for UI programming)

    "Java will become the glue language"


    #9 - Learn Every Nuance of your chosen language/tool

    - java's back alleys
    -- reflection

    - regular expressions


    #10 - anti-objects
    OOPSLA 2006 - collaborative diffusion presentation

    "The metaphor of objects can go too far by making us to create objects that are too much inspired by the real world"



    Dr. Dean Wampler's presentation: Radical Simplification Through Polyglot and Poly-Paradigm Programming, 5:15PM

    Simplification of code is necessary

    Ola Bini's Three Layers

    Functional Programming avoids multi-threading/concurrency issues

    Functional programming: Declarative rather than imperative

    DSLs tend to be very declarative

    Examples of Functional Languages:
    - Erlang
    -- 9-9's reliability for AXD301 switch
    -- for distributed, reliable, soft-time
    -- All IPC is optimized messaging passing
    -- very leightweight and fast processes

    -Scala
    -- hybrid language (object and functional)
    -- targets the jvm
    -- "endorsed" by James Gosling at JavaOne
    -- could be a popular repalcement for Java

    "Is a hybrid object-functional language better than using an object language with a functional language"?

    Disadvantages of PPPP
    - N tool chains, languages, libraries, "ecosystems"
    - impedance mismatch between tools

    Advantages of PPP
    - use best tool for a particular job
    - can minimize amount of code required
    - can keep code closer to the domain
    - encourages thinking about architectures

    Why go mainstream now?
    - rapidly increasing pace of development
    - pervasive concurrency
    - cross-cutting concerns

    2008-11-19 Wednesday - QCon 2008 Day-1 morning

    Disclaimer: There may be some many mistakes/errors in my blog notes for QCon over the next few days - as I am writing these posts while I'm sitting in sessions - and much of these notes are stream-of-consciousness - as I try to keep up with the presenters.




    I'm in San Francisco attending QCon 2008 this week.

    Martin Fowler gave a good keynote (with Rebecca Parsons) this morning - which I arrived 1/2 way through due to a slight flight arrival delay.

    Ruby

    10:15AM...Gregg Pollack kicked-off the Ruby track

    11AM...I'm sitting in a Ruby presentation that is currently covering Merb
    Presenter: Matt Aimonetti, he maintains blogs at:

    merbist.com
    railsontherun.com

    One interesting point made during this morning's Ruby presentations: Ruby's historical bad performance reputation may not be currently valid given certain performance improvements (e.g. Merb compared to raw PHP, leading PHP frameworks, Django, Rails, Code Igniter, etc.)

    Merb has three architecture layers (extension points ?):
    plugins
    slices
    API

    Merb's adaptability allows replacing core functionality with custom implementations

    Benefits of Merb for developing/deploying Ruby applications:
    - scalability
    - performance
    - modularity
    - small memory footprint


    Take-aways:
    - Ruby is not slow
    - Merb is flexible
    - Merb is modular
    - Merb is very scalable

    - Yellowpages.com is using Merb for some backend components

    - Wikipedia is investigating possible usage of Merb

    - Matz (developer of Ruby) "Merb has a bright future...[thinks] will give users more freedom in a Ruby-ish way of programming"

    2008-11-17

    2008-11-17 Monday

    SEI publishes report integrating CMMI and Agile

    The Open Source Enterprise: Its Time Has Come

    I will be in San Francisco Wednesday thru Friday attending QCon 2008. The schedule is an incredible jam-packed 3-day fest for enterprise architects.

    Frank Kenney has a funny, but poignant, blog post over on the Gartner site: Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A Failure

    2008-11-16

    2008-11-16 Sunday

    My presentation at Seattle Code Camp v4.0 (held in Redmond, WA at the Digipen facility) went well yesterday. The topic was well received - and there was plenty of discussion amongst the attendees. During my previous presentation at Code Camp v3.0 I gave away some nice prizes - the best of which was a 320GB external USB drive. Yesterday I raised the bar - and gave away a 500GB external USB drive. My next presentation door prize will include a 1TB external USB drive.


    Tonight I downloaded Drupal-6.6 - and must say it looks very very slick.
    Drupal won Packt’s annual Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award



    I happened to come across a new blog tonight: SOA Probe, by Robert Morschel, Chief Architect at Neptune Software. He's written some very interesting posts - as well as some articles that have been published on SOA World Magazine: Is SOA Non-Trivial?

    Another very useful blog I came across tonight: Sara Ford's Visual Studio 2008 Tip of the Day - as well as JasonHailey.com

    This coming week is an important SOA event:
    14th International SOA World Conference & Expo 2008 West will take place on November 19-21, 2008 at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA.

    DeviceGuru.com - 16 interviews with Linux Kernel hackers

    2008-11-14

    2008-11-14 Friday - Continuous Integration with Hudson, Subversion, and Glassfish

    I'm giving a presentation at this year's Seattle Code Camp, 4.0 on November 15th, 9AM, Saturday morning in Redmond, Washington on the topic of Continuous Integration (with Hudson, Subversion, and Glassfish). In preparation for giving my talk, I've assembled a collection of links to resources that may be of interest to others:


    Continuous Integration

    Martin Fowler's CI paper

    ThoughtWorks CI Feature Matrix



    Hudson

    Hudson at https://hudson.dev.java.net/

    Meet Hudson

    Hudson Best Practices

    Getting started with Hudson

    Writing a Hudson plugin (Part 6 - Parsing the results)

    ...more tutorials on developing Hudson plugins

    Improving the Engineering Process Through Automation by Hudson

    Continuous Integration and Code Inspection with Hudson and FindBugs

    Rama Pulavarthi's Blog: Hudson@JavaOne 2008

    Java Power Tools

    The Java Power Tools Bootcamp courses

    Eric Lefevre-Ardant on Java & Agile

    Installing Hudson,Ssh,Svn,Trac,Tomcat,Maven,Ant from Scratch on my Ubuntu 8.04 Machine

    Hudson - Tips and Tricks

    Handy Dandy Hudson trick

    Carlo Bonamic's presentation: Continuous Integration With Hudson

    Hudson embraces Python
    Using Hudson as a Continuous Integration tool for Python

    Installing Hudson,Ssh,Svn,Trac,Tomcat,Maven,Ant from Scratch on a Ubuntu 8.04 Machine

    Matthew McEachen: Getting started with Hudson

    [Howto] Setting up a Continuous Integration Server for Grails with Hudson on VMWare

    Hudson Gant plugin

    A system tray icon for monitoring Hudson with Eclipse RCP

    Running Gant builds in Hudson

    testearly.com - Hudson’s so Groovy

    testearly.com - CI with Hudson tutorial

    Versioning a Hudson job configuration



    Some alternatives to Hudson...

    Apache Continuum

    Atlassian Bamboo

    CruiseControl

    Want more alternatives?




    Subversion

    Subversion

    TortoiseSVN

    webSVN

    statSVN

    AnkhSVN

    VisualSVN




    Glassfish

    Glassfish at
    https://glassfish.dev.java.net/







    Other Continuous Integration / Build Related Resources

    IBM Developerworks: Technical library view: Code Quality series

    IBM Developerworks: Forum: Improve Your Java Code Quality

    IBM Developerworks: Spot defects early with Continuous Integration

    What's Wrong with Build Systems in Java Today?

    Interview: John Ferguson Smart, Author of Java Power Tools

    IBM Developerworks: Distributed compilation

    One build platform to rule them all?

    CruiseControl Best Practices: not just for java

    fusemetrics - Build Metrics Dashboard





    2009-01-31 Updates

    I've come across a few interesting links recently:

    Sonatype blog, John Casey: The Hudson Build Farm Experience, Volume I

    Git Integration with Hudson and Trac

    My friend Nicholas Whitehead's JavaWorld article: Continuous integration with Hudson
    (examples are given for Windows XP with Tomcat 6 or Ubuntu Linux with JBoss AS)


    Kohsuke Kawaguchi's Blog: Hudson usage analysis




    2009-02-02 Monday Updates

    Automatically deploy to Glassfish using Hudson





    2009-02-16 Monday UPdates

    Guide to building .NET projects using Hudson

    Monitoring External Jobs

    Distributed Builds

    Fingerprint

    Securing Hudson

    Remote Access API

    2009-05-16 Saturday Update:
    Continuous Release and Upgrade of Component-Based Software
    Tijs van der Storm
    Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI)
    Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    2009-06-27 Saturday Update:
    Ryan de Laplante: Creating a Windows service for Glassfish V2

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