2013-09-15 Sunday - Auto-Generating Documentation from DataPower Config Info?

I recently posed a question on the  IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliance forum:

Auto-Generation of Documentation?

It seems that zip2html is the only option available - and it seems to be a fairly minimal / brute-force approach at that.

2013-09-15 Sunday - IBM Integration Bus

Today I'm doing some research on the relatively new IBM Integration Bus (v9.0)

IBM Integration Bus

IBM® Integration Bus formerly known as WebSphere® Message Broker is an enterprise service bus (ESB) providing connectivity and universal data transformation for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and non-SOA environments.

IBM Integration Bus Information Center v9.0

IBM Integration Bus v9.0 documentation

IBM Integration Bus introduction

What's new in IBM Integration Bus (v9.0) for WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus users?

Download IBM Integration Bus for Developers

Converting WebSphere ESB resources for use in IBM Integration Bus: Part 1

Converting WebSphere ESB resources for use in IBM Integration Bus: Part 2

Extended Structured Query Language(ESQL) is a programming language defined by IBM® Integration Bus to define and manipulate data within a message flow.

2013-09-03 Tuesday - Technical Debt Conjecture

Recent observations and reflections prompted me to ponder this thought:
A Technical Debt Conjecture: 

For a given non-trivial project,

Given [z] budgeted sprints,
for [m] developers,
Where for sufficiently large [m],
[n] items of technical debt (or defects) are introduced - as the total for all [commits | builds],
which will subsequently require [x] additional sprints to fix.

One wonders if there are lower limits for [z], [m], [n] that would allow for approximations of [x]?

One wonders what recurring ratios of m:n might occur with some predictable frequency across different organizations, and if those ratios might vary to a greater (or lesser) degree if further considered within the specific vertical context of a given industry?

One wonders if these values are the same for on-shore vs. off-shore vs. hybrid project teams?

One wonders if there is a predictable relationship between m:n and x?

One wonders how the duration [t] of a given project might affect the trend line and predictability of these factors - and if there might be clustering of values around certain frequencies of [t]?

One wonders, given the planned / budgeted value for [z] - at what sufficiently large size of [x] do most organizations kill a project?

One wonders, what ratio of z:x does a project qualify for the 'death march' designation?

One wonders what minimum ratio of m:n should be sufficient, as a monitored metric, to serve as an indicator to management that one or more of the following might apply?

• Requirements may not be [sufficiently | clearly] defined or finalized
• One or more developers may need to be removed from a project team

2013-08-15 Thursday - Revisiting MySQL

It has been awhile since I last checked-in on new features in MySQL.

I last installed MySQL 5.5 - since then there has been a 5.6 and 5.7 release.

Here are a few selected notes out of the many changes that I found of interest...

5.6 MySQL Release

• MySQL now supports stronger encryption for user account passwords, available through an authentication plugin named sha256_password that implements SHA-256 password hashing
• The EXPLAIN statement now provides execution plan information for DELETE, INSERT, REPLACE, and UPDATE statements. Previously, EXPLAIN provided information only for SELECT statements. In addition, the EXPLAIN statement now can produce output in JSON format.
• Many interesting enhancements to the optimizer...
• Condition handling. MySQL now supports the GET DIAGNOSTICS statement

5.7 MySQL Release

• DDL performance for InnoDB temporary tables is improved through optimization of CREATE TABLE, DROP TABLE, TRUNCATE TABLE, and ALTER TABLE statements.
• InnoDB now supports MySQL supported spatial data types. Prior to this release, InnoDB would store spatial data as binary BLOB data. BLOB remains the underlying data type but spatial data types are now mapped to a new InnoDB internal data type, DATA_GEOMETRY. 
• Condition handling.  MySQL now supports stacked diagnostics areas.
• Optimizer.  EXPLAIN can now be used to obtain the execution plan for an explainable statement executing in a named connection                         

2013-08-14 Wednesday - Bret Victor == Inspiring

Looking for a bit of inspiration - something to shake you out of your rut and give you a breath of fresh thinking? Bret Victor's presentation from 2012 at CUSEC is pure brilliance 

Inventing on Principle
http://vimeo.com/36579366