Features

Reflections on Java Command Line Options

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:15:00 EST

Abstract

There are many different types of command line options that programs need to recognize. Many languages (e.g.: bash and perl) has built-in processing of command line options; Java does not. The Java Command Line Options (JCLO) package performs this task for a variety of option styles. It also uses Java's reflection capability to automatically assign values to variables in a specified class.

Using Ext JS, Servlets, JSON, MySQL and Tomcat on Fedora

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:15:00 EST

These days the popularity of Ext JS (a JavaScript library) is gaining momentum. One of the most popular widgets within Ext JS is the DataGrid. The reason – displaying data from a database is one of the most common tasks of a web application. “Out of the box” the DataGrid has functionality (for instance ascending or descending sorting and reordering of columns by dragging it) that otherwise would require some effort from developers.

Showcasing the Key Design Principles of SOA

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST

WS-BPEL 2.0 is the dominant specification to standardize orchestration logic and process automation between Web services. The BPEL model is used to assemble a set of discrete, essentially disparate, services into an end-to-end process flow to transform the existing stateless and uncorrelated Web service infrastructure into cohesive, process-centric applications based on a service-oriented architecture. Under this model, new applications are developed “on-the-fly” by wiring together external “partner” services that leverage existing enterprise assets.

Hybridfox: Cross of Elasticsfox and Imagination

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST

Now we have a Eucalyptus' Private Cloud installed and running on our premise, and it remained kinda of an artifact in our data-center for sometime. So I thought why has not someone written anything about how make to make Elasticfox work with Eucalyptus. But there were quite a few pointers to what version will be ideally suited to use for Eucalyptus, like this one, thanks Ajmf. I took the cue from there, I enabled debugging on elasticfox, and used firebug to dig deeper. And I came up with Hybridfox, yeah, and it works.

Completing the Virtual Revolution

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST

We are in the midst of the virtualization era. In fact, VMWare reports that all Fortune 100 companies are using their virtualized data network products, as well as more than 90 percent of Fortune 1000 companies, and Yankee Group’s 2008-2009 Global Virtualization Deployment and Usage Survey found that approximately 72 percent of businesses surveyed said they have already deployed or plan to deploy virtualization solutions.

Open Source Compliance: Getting Started Guide

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:45:00 EST

This article discusses Open Source compliance and the challenges faced when establishing a compliance program, provides an overview of best practices, and offers recommendations on how to deal with compliance inquiries.

Plone and Drupal: Different Approaches, Different Results

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:15:00 EST

Plone and Drupal are two leading open source Content Management Systems (CMS). Both were recognized in the 2009 Open Source CMS awards, run by Packt Publishing. Both also have large installed bases and large developer communities. This is made evident by some quick searching on Google: A search for LinkedIn profiles that mention Plone (search for 'plone site:linkedin.com/pub/') turns up 1350 pages—a large increase from 500 results in 2006.

Understanding the Role Storage Plays in Virtual Environments

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:15:00 EDT

In 1998, a little-known company called VMware had just opened the doors of its Palo Alto office. Ever since computing moved from the mainframe to the desktop, the push had been bigger, faster, and more – more CPUs, more servers, more power, more cooling – and ultimately more complexity, more cost, and more waste. In the early 2000s, studies found that average utilization of CPUs across both data center and desktop was a meager 15 percent.

What Is an OpenCloud API?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:30:00 EDT

When it comes to defining Cloud Computing I typically take the stance of "I know it when I see it". Although I'm half joking, being able to spot an Internet centric platform or infrastructure is fairly self evident for the most part. But when it comes to an "OpenCloud API" things get a little more difficult.

Testing Virtualization: What’s Really Going on in There?

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:30:00 EDT

It’s no secret what’s driving the move to virtualization in data centers. The demand for new and expanded software systems is growing, but the geographic and carbon footprint required for scaling underutilized dedicated servers is too costly on many levels. This issue has led to the maturation of the virtual server, where increased reliability and stability means reduced risk, making virtualization of the data center a viable solution. Virtualization makes it possible to replace physical servers running at 10 percent capacity with fewer, more powerful servers running at 60 percent capacity or more.

Using a Perl Debugger with Server Side Triggers

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:30:00 EDT

This article describes a method to use a perl debugger on trigger scripts without advanced interprocess debugging tools. Using a perl debugger with a V4.x server side trigger launched by the server is very difficult and encounters two known obstacles: The server will fire the trigger and the debugger will run in a thread of the detached server process; the debugger will start but will probably not communicate with you. However, if you manually started the server via a shell command then the perl debugger will start, accept input from the keyboard, then you will loose contact with the debugger; it does not have exclusive access to the keyboard because it is running in the context of the detached server process. The next command you type will go to the shell, not the debugger. It gets messy from there.

Making Cloud a Reality for Enterprises via SOA Governance

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:15:00 EDT

Cloud computing is slowly gaining credibility and traction in the enterprise world. As giants such as Google and Amazon productize their massive cloud infrastructures, moving enterprise applications to the public cloud seems a more realistic possibility. The advantages of an enterprise application leveraging the public cloud sound like utopia – lowered total cost of ownership and overhead costs, ease of maintenance, inherent high availability and scalability that is built into the infrastructure.

The Investment Virtues of "SOA in the Cloud"

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:45:00 EDT

In today’s economy, an enterprise must have strong financial motives for transitioning to SOA. SOA’s superior technical capabilities are a strong motive for information technology professionals to make that transition. However, enterprise stakeholders are motivated by solid investment opportunities. Software architects have learned how to express the technical virtues of SOA. What they need to learn next is how to express the investment virtues of SOA.

More SOA Transition Bang for Your IT Bucks

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:15:00 EDT

This article explains how an Open Source SOA Roadmap can use a typical Web application project’s funding as the basis for a successful SOA transition effort. It is the first of three articles that explains how open source technologies and techniques can be leveraged to successfully deliver SOA solutions given the current economic downturn.

New Features in PowerBuilder 11.5

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:45:00 EDT

I plan to make this the first of a series of articles that discuss the new features in PowerBuilder 11.5, which was released late last year. Of course, they won’t be the first articles we’ve run on the topic, as we ran an article on the new Code Access Security features back even before 11.5 was released and a more recent article on New DataWindow Features. This series of articles is intended to discuss the major hitters of the remaining features.

Java Kicks Ruby on Rails in the Butt

Sat, 16 May 2009 22:00:00 EDT

“What would you think if I told you that you can develop a web application at least ten times faster with Rails than you can with a typical Java framework?” Oops! Ten times faster! Well, after these comments I decided to learn Ruby on Rails. I need to know the true key of the productivity and programmer happiness.

SOA Pattern of the Week (#5): Service Decomposition

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:45:00 EDT

A service inventory is a living body of services that individually will need the freedom to evolve independently over time. What we learned when documenting the SOA design pattern catalog is that there are patterns that emerged not only at design-time but also during this post-implementation evolutionary stage in a service’s lifecycle.

Why People Like Open Source Software

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:15:00 EDT

Why developers want the software to be open sourced? I like quotes by great minds. Here's my favorite quote by Henry Ford: If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. Some of these chapters of our upcoming O'Reilly book "Enterprise Development with Flex" had opening software-related quotes. Our editor suggested that for consistency, it should be done in every chapter, which makes sense. Chapter 6 of the book is titled "Open Source Networking Solutions", which begs for a specific quote on open source software, but I'm not aware of any pundit who said something short and catchy in this field.

Which CMS? Don't Forget Content Modeling

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:00:00 EDT

A key task in the scope of Content Management, is Content Modeling - this is when you get raw content to fit into some common model of types and elements. Once defined, the types and their elements fit into a hierarchy (A.K.A - Taxonomy or "Content Tree"). To break this down a little further, let's first take a look a "types".

Stretching 2009 Budgets Using Open Source

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:30:00 EDT

With a global recession looming, software development managers are being asked to slash resource budgets in 2009 while maintaining schedules. When you need to deliver more features with fewer coding resources, there is only one answer: hybrid development. Hybrid software development involves the combination of internally developed code with external code from vendors, partners, and, especially, the open source community.

A Practitioner's Approach to IA-64 Linux Migration

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:30:00 EST

High-performance databases are optimized for transaction processing and used by several industries around the world, notably financial services and health care. They are more commonly available on 32-bit Unix platforms (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux). The trend is to 64-bit-enable them and migrate them to the IA-64 architecture.

Building the Open SOA Platform

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:45:00 EST

The open source community includes many early advocates of the recent wave of emerging SOA-related technology projects. Historically, however, open source has sometimes been considered a "late follower," with commercial products first to hit the market, and then followed by "me-too" open source alternatives. One reason frequently cited by critics of open source is that open source projects are often not innovators, but imitators (of course, some might argue Microsoft has done very well by following the imitation model).

JavaOne 2008: Uncommon Java Bugs

Fri, 16 May 2008 11:45:00 EDT

Any large Java source base can have insidious and subtle bugs. Every experienced Java programmer knows that finding and fixing these bugs can be difficult and costly. Fortunately, there are a large number of free open source Java tools available that can be used to find and fix defects early in the development life cycle. In this article, we'll look at a few examples of specific uncommon[1] or unusual defects that can happen in code and see how different Java static analysis tools detect them.

Open Source & Commercial Software: Both Are Crucial

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:45:00 EDT

Is software development a science or an art? The software industry treats it as a science. It uses processes like MRDs, PRDs, and functional specs to convert customer needs into software that solves their problems. Various roles like product managers, engineering managers, project managers, architects, and programmers work together to drive the process like an efficient machine.

Engelbart's Usability Dilemma: Efficiency vs Ease-of-Use

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:15:00 EDT

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

The 'Best of Both Worlds': Running Fedora 8 on Legacy Windows XP

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:00:00 EDT

One of the beauties of Linux from a business point of view is that it doesn't require the 'latest and greatest' hardware to run properly. This means you can increase the return on investments (ROI) for legacy hardware. As I'll show in this article, as in the case with virtualization, the 'latest and greatest' software is not required either.

The Greatest IT Bottleneck of Them All Is Finally Falling: Vendor Lock-in

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:45:00 EST

One of the most exciting things about the software industry is how fast it moves. Software is constantly optimizing itself around the state-of-the-art. Inherent industry bottlenecks change cyclically every five years or so. Architectures and solutions change too. CPUs too costly? Enter dumb terminals. Network running slow? Build client/servers.

Service Management and Enterprise Architecture

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:00:00 EST

Governance is currently a key topic for many IT functions. Its definition varies, but its key themes are true for all companies: effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability. Business value and risk mitigation are also at its center and represent a significant part of enterprise governance overall.

How Open Is "Open"? – Industry Luminaries Join the Debate

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:00:00 EST

In order to describe itself as an 'open source' company, need a company merely be 'a company that will help you make the switch to open source in your company' - or does it have to be one that lets users feely download, compile, and use the software in question? Where is the dividing line? How open is 'open'? At Enterprise Open Source Magazine we contacted a range of FOSS luminaries for their take on the issue.

The Development Power of Open Source AJAX Tooling

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 14:00:00 EST

Understanding the complexity of AJAX at the browser level is critical to refining and debugging rich AJAX applications that leverage Web technologies such as JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and XMLHttpRequests. Adding a third-party AJAX runtime heightens the complexity and sufficient browser tooling becomes critical when attempting to build a rich Internet application around existing libraries. The Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) provides both a multi-faceted set of browser tooling features as well as support for integrating and building on existing AJAX runtimes.

ATTAP Technologies Introduces Open Source Toolkit Jitsu

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:15:00 EDT

The team at ATTAP Technologies announced that it is previewing Jitsu, a new web-development framework. Jitsu is an open source user-interface toolkit that enables developers to build and deploy sophisticated user interfaces for web applications. Jitsu tools include an XML markup language, a page compiler, a client-side data binding engine, JavaScript runtime, control and cross-platform libraries, an animation engine, and Ajax support.

How to Bring Eclipse 3.1, J2SE 5.0, and Tomcat 5.0 Together

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 13:15:00 EST

We'll build a servlet that will demo some new Java 5.0 features and do some basic tasks like creating a session to track user visits to multiple Web pages. This code can easily be extended to store a user ID in the session that will travel with her as the site is navigated. The value of the visit counter is stored in the session so multiple visits to the page will be counted (this includes the page refreshes after pressing the browser's 'Reload' button). If the counter goes over five, the counter gets cleared.