Microsoft has at long last delivered a new version of its SQL Server JDBC Driver, with support for JDBC 4.0 and SQL Server 2008. The license looks complicated, but if you're using SQL Server then you're probably comfortable with Microsoft's licensing anyway.
Recommendations for JDBC Drivers for SQL Server most be one of the top 10 customer support requests sent to CodeFutures.
Big Blue pulled out of acquiring Sun due to the size bonus payments for executives. Larry Ellison has no such problems with huge bonuses and swooped in.
So now we have "Big Red", as some industry commentators are now calling Oracle (expect lots of headlines about the Sun setting ....).
So Larry gets his hands on Solaris and Java - THE operating system and programming lanaguage of choice for the dotcom boom in the 1990s.
The hardware business will allow Oracle to get into the application and database appliance business.
By accident, Larry also becomes the biggest open source vendor. Any guesses for what he'll do with MySQL?
"Software Pipelines uncovers a new and unique way of software design for high-performance development. Where other methodologies and frameworks have previously been describing the problem, Software Pipelines is focusing on the solution. Simply put, Software Pipelines addresses the developer’s needs for parallel computing and uncovers the throughput offered by multi-core processors.”
— Filip Hanik, Senior Software Engineer, SpringSource, Inc.
"This is an essential read for any company and software developer serious about developing software that will survive scalability and longevity."Read more...
—Karol Blanchard, VP Engineering, Consumer Health Advisers
“There are some books that tout vision but provide no pragmatic, hands-on details. Software Pipelines and SOA offers a does of both. Isaacson is an authority and practitioner, who understands that the promise of SOA is not fulfilled simply by embracing an architectural style of loosely coupled, network-based services but in how the applications and services that support this architectural style are developed and deployed. This book will help support a pragmatic approach to SOA.”
“Isaacson offers a fresh approach to componentize and parallelize software applications in a way that is easy to debug and easy to maintain. Using the high-level abstraction of Software Pipelines, development managers need not worry about the complexities of concurrent programming or the challenges in dealing with maintaining threads, interprocess communication or deadlocks. Any software architect dealing with performance and scalability issues with complex transactional flows must consider the Software Pipelines design paradigm.”
—Venkat Pula, Field Application Engineer, Telelogic, an IBM Company
"This text is a leader in [software pipelines] technology. With domain expertise and strong background in implementation - this technology will pave the road for years to come. It is current now and will be applicable for as long as businesses are interested in scalable, distributed computing."
—Nicole Nemer Ph.D, Software Consultant
“Multi-core computing offers a unique opportunity to deliver dramatic scalability in modern business applications; but the task is not an easy one, presenting significant challenges to the software developer. Software Pipelines provides an easy-to-implement, concrete strategy that enables service-oriented applications to really deliver on the promise of this new hardware paradigm. A must read for any developer or architect stepping up to the challenge of high-performance business transaction processing.”
— Henry Truong, Chief Technology Officer, TeleTech, Inc.
An interesting wiki has been published with "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know". The articles were also edited and published in an O'Reilly book - although there's no real point in buying it since they are available on the wiki. The articles are very general, but it's still a surprise to see nothing about Enterprise Mashups or Software Pipelines.
Phil Wainewright of ebizQ has conducted an interview with John Crupi on Delivering Real-Time Data that Users Can Act On where he discusses SOA and enterprise mashups. The text is available here and a podcast is available here.
Java EE 6 is another big step in the journey towards the ideal of a simple, streamlined and well-integrated platform. Java EE 6 also includes a rich set of innovations best reflected in the technologies that comprise the platform including brand new APIs like WebBeans 1.0 and JAX-RS 1.1 or even mature APIs like Servlet 3.0.
As usual, the list contains broad concepts that are no surprise like "Green IT", some hot technologies like "Enterprise Mashups", and some cryptic references that required further reading of Gartner's material to understand. Sadly, no mention of Database Sharding, although the general area is covered well by Web Oriented Architecture - the driving force behind Database Sharding.
Any customers that have requested new features or bug fixes will know that CodeFutures uses agile development. The primary benefits of agile for customers are fast turnarounds on requests. CodeFutures' positive experiences are not uncommon - there's a massive amount of material written about the benefits of agile development.
That makes Brian Marick somewhat revisionist keynote address at the Agile Development Practices conference interesting for anyone deeply committed to agile practices.
Microsoft has released version two of its Flex-killer called Silverlight. Microsoft is pushing the technology for use in businesses - essentially for developing enterprise mashups and the types of interactive sites currently built using Flex.
It would be nice to compare Silverlight with Flex, but you need to agree to giving Microsoft "standard computer information" that seems pretty invasive:
Internet-enabled features in software will send information about your computer ("standard computer information") to the Web sites you visit and Web services you use. This information is generally not personally identifiable. Standard computer information typically includes information such as your IP address, operating system version, browser version, your hardware ID which indicates the device manufacturer, device name, and version, application version and your regional and language settings. In this case, the application version would be the version of Silverlight installed on your device. Silverlight contains an update notification feature that sends standard computer information to Microsoft.
Information that is sent to Microsoft by this software will be used to provide you with Silverlight features and services. This information may be used to improve Silverlight and our other products and services, as well as for analysis purposes. Except as described in this statement, information you provide will not be transferred to third parties without your consent. We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as packaging, sending, and delivering purchases and other mailings, answering customer questions about software or services, processing event registration, or performing statistical analysis of our services. We will only provide those companies the information they need to deliver the service, and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose.
Looks like the safest option is to check out the video demos on YouTube!
The Economist today contains a Special Report on Corporate IT that says that the first 'computers' were actually real people who solved equations in large companies (for example, working in aviation). The term 'computer' only later described electronic hardware.
The same special report refers to a McKinsey report that says that only 6% of server capacity is used. This is hardly too surprising since enterprise architects need to design for peak loads and provide backups and failover. But the really surprising fact is that nearly 30% of servers are no longer in use - at all!
Item 10 is subjective - Flex is easy to get started with but like everything else, experience does count. Item 5 should be promoted to the top of the list - Flex-based applications can often look stunning. Item 9 is true as far as the SDK is concerned. And of course, the list does not mention how Flex fits in with enteprise mashups.
Today’s InfoWorld Off The Record proposes that improving the performance of any application starts with optimizing the slowest thing. The stories are from 40 years ago. Nowadays, almost every business application uses a database and it is almost always the database that is the bottleneck. With the speed of multi-core processors, only exceptionally complex business logic could possibly take longer than even simple database reads or writes.
So that means that the rule “Optimizing the Slowest Thing” means database optimization. This is why CodeFutures is rolling out a free database performance analysis service, starting with MySQL.
The elements of the performance analysis are:
-MySQL configuration analysis -Strategies for database reorganization and optimization -How to perform database optimization without taking your application down -Database size optimization (reclaiming unused disk space) -Long-running query analysis -Indexing strategy -Reliability/availability/failover evaluation
CodeFutures has already developed a tool to gather the necessary information about a specific MySQL deployment. At the moment, the data analysis is manual. The tool will eventually evolve to include features providing immediate performance and configuration feedback. However, full analysis of the data requires someone with significant MySQL optimization experience - so there will always be a limit to what a tool can do.
You can your request free MySQL performance analysis here.
The Industry Standard has posted in interesting story about Dell trademark the term 'cloud computing'. The story makes it clear that it's not a specific configuration or design - they want to own the term 'cloud computing' in general. While you can't blame the lawyers for not knowing any better, it means that there is at least a few technical staff in Dell that honestly believe that they invented cloud computing? And no, I checked, and the article is dated August 1st, not April 1st.
Microsoft has acquired DatAllegro. As well has creating problems for any DatAllegro customers that have avoided the Microsoft stack, the acquisition raises some interesting questions:
Why has it taken so long for Microsoft to realize that SQL Server does not scale well?
What will Microsoft say to DatAllegro's current customers that bought an open system based on the open source Ingres database and running on open source Linux?
Will the DatAllegro engineering team have to port its product over to .NET and how long will it take?
In addition to using Ingres and Linux, the DatAllegro engineering team presumably leveraged many open source products. Will these all have to be replaced due to Microsoft's stance against open source.
How will the DatAllegro's customers feel about the engineering team concentrating on a platform port that they probably do not want instead of delivering new features?
One fact is certain: the winners in this deal are DatAllegro's shareholders and the losers are DatAllegro's customers.
