2007-08-07 Tuesday

A lot going on these days...

I'm beginning an evaluation of IONA's Artix 5 release of their SOA Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

As a small mental diversion (and just for fun), I've started doing some research on algorithms for solving Sudoku puzzles. This is of interest as a possible seed to form some ideas as the basis for developing a utility library that would provide methods for solving scheduling, optimization, planning, time table, and resource allocation problems based on Constraint Programming / Local Search approaches.

I'm also interested in exploring approaches to developing Rich Internet Application (RIA) user interfaces - using Flash / Flex technologies. A few resource links:

Creating rich Web service clients with Flash and Flex

Flex Wiki

Flex 2 SDK

Wikipedia ActionScript

Programming ActionScript 3.0

actionscript.org

kirupa.com

I've also recently completed a preliminary analysis for a client of the integration capabilities and challenges for the following applications:

Primavera's P6 suite (Project Manager, Contract Manager, Operational Data Store)

OpenText LiveLink Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

WinEstimator

Ares/PRISM

2007-07-15 Sunday

Sometimes small things that are trivial can still be irritating. For example...

Tonight I downloaded the Sun Glassfish EE Server, Version 2, Beta 3, Build 50. In the process of executing the installation procedure - it appeared as if the install was hung. I canceled it - and then tried again. This time it just so happened that the planets aligned, the stars were in the proper conjunction - and the screen focus happened to be such that the COMMON DEVELOPMENT AND DISTRIBUTION LICENSE (CDDL) VERSION 1.0 License Agreement screen got the focus - and remained visible. Ahhhh. That's why the previous install appeared to be hung. The CDDL agreement was "hidden".



If you'll notice, this License Agreement prompt does not give the user the option of printing or saving it. The widget used to display the agreemnt - also does not allow you the ability to right-click with the mouse and copy the text. You can however, to copy text - and then to transfer it to another document which can be printed. It would seem intuitive to me, as a business executive, that this is a legal document that should be printed and filed by any corporation that might be interested in using this software. A small matter though.

[begin_sarcasm]
Unless or course you don't happen to really care about complying with such silly things like the legal constraints of licenses.
[/end_sarcasm]

Some Articles / Products / Links:

Mashups and Semantic Mashups - The Value Of RDF: Taking the Web to the Next Step

TopBraid Composer™ is an enterprise-class platform for developing Semantic Web ontologies and building semantic applications

Opinion: SOA doesn’t need a Common Information Model

2007-07-14 Saturday

I recently downloaded some XML tools from Altova (Altova® MissionKit™ 2007 for Enterprise Software Architects) from what I have found so far - the tool set seems to be a good value for the $1,790 USD price. It includes the following:

XMLSpy® 2007 Enterprise Edition
MapForce® 2007 Enterprise Edition
StyleVision® 2007 Enterprise Edition
UModel® 2007
DatabaseSpy™ 2007
DiffDog® 2007
SchemaAgent™ 2007
SemanticWorks™ 2007

I've been looking for resources to incorporate into an Enterprise Ontology for a client's Enterprise SOA project. One of the resources that I think may be of use:

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc (OGC) is an international industry consortium of 348 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications.

See the OGC Schema Repository.

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Sometimes we as technologist are guilty of over-engineering solutions. The goal of retaining architectural "purity" can be a sin when it results in more complexity than is required to solve a particular problem. This "evil" may manifest itself in various forms. The following was humorously posted on slashdot - but illustrates the kind of over-kill that can arise:

2007-07-12 Thursday

IBM pledges access to its IP for standards: List of Covered Specifications

2007-07-09 Monday

Someday, when I am retired and sailing around the world aboard my next boat - I want to have the luxury of time to spend time developing software for robotic applications. Until then, I will continue to enjoy reading about developments in the field: RoboCup 2007

I haven't had a chance to digest this article yet, but it is in my inbox of things to-do: Creating doc-lit WSDLs that "unwrap" nicely