2009-05-15 Friday - Mule Galaxy SQL Server Notes

I spent some time this week exploring the integration of the Mule Galaxy Enterprise Edition (Registry/Repository) with external relational databases (the default configuration uses Derby).

My first exercise was to see if I could get Galaxy to work with MySQL. That was very straightforward and worked with no hiccups.

My next exercise was to see if I could configure Galaxy to work with Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

It appears that I've encountered something unusual - and so submitted two potential bug reports to the Mule Galaxy development team:

GALAXY-422: Using Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 2.0 (sqljdbc4.jar) will throw java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file


GALAXY-423: Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver 1.2 (sqljdbc.jar) will throw java.lang.NumberFormatException: multiple points at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.readJavaFormatString

I'll update this posting as my research continues...

2009-05-06 Wednesday - WCF Web Service Development

A few questions came up among some of the SOA team members on a recent client engagement - asking about some of the features in Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). For example:

- how to expose an inherited class object in the resulting WSDL contract?
- how to alter the .NET tool's default behavior of making message contract fields optional or required?
- how to alter the order that fields are presented in the WSDL message contract versus the order they are defined in the class?
- how to include/exclude selected class member variables as fields in the message contract?
- how to define the soap faults in the C# class that can be thrown?

The following links are some of the more interesting resources I came across in my research:

Eric Nelson's blog
Understanding Windows Communication Foundation and Workflow Foundation

endpoint.tv - "Dublin" what is it and why should I care?

A Quick look at the Windows Communication Foundation

Demystifying Windows Communication Foundation

WCF Services—Data Contracts

Exposing objects that are inherited

Data Contract Versioning

Best Practices: Data Contract Versioning

Design Patterns for .Net (Rob Daigneau), Patterns for Flexible WCF Services

Solving the "disappearing data" issue when using Add Web Reference or Wsdl.exe with WCF services

Building a raw xml request for a RESTful WCF Service operation which accepts a Generic DataContract type

The Tale of WCF, MessageContract, and JSON

How to: Improve the Startup Time of WCF Client Applications using the XmlSerializer

How to create a WCF client for asmx web service without using web proxy

How to: Expose WCF service also as ASMX web-service

Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo) Hello World Tutorial

Windows Communication Foundation Tutorial - Part 2 (DataContract vs Serializable)

DataContracts without attributes (POCO support) in .NET 3.5 SP1

WCF serialization with MSMQ

10 Tricks and Tips for WCF

2009-05-02 Saturday - MSDN Virtual Labs

I gave the MSDN Virtual Labs a trial this last week to learn more about the recent release of some new Microsoft technology - and I have a few words to share: Wow, Amazing, Well Done, Excellent.

"Welcome to the MSDN Virtual Labs! Quickly evaluate or learn how to build great applications for Windows and the Web through a series of guided, hands-on labs which can be completed in 90 minutes or less. The best part is, the MSDN Virtual Labs don’t require any installation and are available to you immediately for FREE. Start by selecting the lab you’re interested in from the list below."

2009-05-02 Saturday - Wolfram Alpha

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

WolframAlpha.com announcement...going live May 5th someday...

Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, TechCrunch article: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big

Wolfram Alpha is a system for computing the answers to questions. To accomplish this it uses built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, that represent real-world knowledge.

(...)

...knows about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music...has a natural language interface for asking it questions.

(...)

The scientific and philosophical underpinnings of Wolfram Alpha are similar to those of the cellular automata systems he describes in his book, “A New Kind of Science” (NKS).


(...)
The system is beautiful, and the user interface is already quite simple and clean. In addition, answers include computationally generated diagrams and graphs — not just text. It looks really cool. But it is also designed by and for people with IQ’s somewhere in the altitude of Wolfram’s — some work will need to be done dumbing it down a few hundred IQ points so as to not overwhelm the average consumer with answers that are so comprehensive that they require a graduate degree to fully understand.

YouTube: A Sneak Preview of WolframAlpha

YouTube: Stephen Wolfram discusses WolframAlpha: Computational Knowledge Engine

An interesting question is asked at 1:40:39. The response has some very interesting possible implications.

2009-05-02 Saturday - SOA Governance

I spent Friday upgrading a client's evaluation of the Mule Galaxy Registry/Repository from the Community Edition to the Mule Galaxy Enterprise Edition (1.5.3) - which I installed with a MySQL backend. I'll have a lessons-learned posting in the near future - hopefully by the end of next week. A fellow on it.toolbox.com posted his view of how Mule Galaxy compares against Forrester’s report on SOA Life-Cycle Management, Q1 2008.


Erich Roch posted recently on it.toolbox.com: SOA Registry Repository Tool Integration which provides a link to the IBM DeveloperWorks article: IBM SOA Registries and Repositories Portfolio Overview

The CBDI Resource Portal has a short article on Service Asset Management


Masters Thesis: SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE; THE IMPORTANCE OF SERVICE REGISTRY A CASE STUDY AT IBM
(School of Business, Economics and Law, GÖTEBORG UNIVERSITY, The Department of Informatics)

Roman Stanek chief software architect and founder of the SOA registry supplier ´Sysnet` is quoted by Windely (2006) and Stanek says: “Without SOA governance, you end up in a Web services version of DLL hell. SOA governance gives consistency, predictability, and allows big applications to be built from small pieces”

Service Oriented Government: 7th SOA For E-Gov