They went fast and furious. My years at Sun that is…
I just completed 10 years at Sun! I can‘t believe it, but I did receive this recognition certificate to prove it. Too many good things to write about all these years and rarely a dull moment to talk about. I recall when I joined Sun, my (senior) colleagues told me stories of meeting Scott McNealy in person when he used to meet 10 years @ Sun folks annually. And I remember thinking, “Man, you been here 10 years?”. And look who is talking now… I guess nowadays there are just too many folks to make this a rare occasion for Scott to meet all 10 year oldies around here.
In any case, it was a great 10 years for me and all thanks goes to the people (both Sun and our customers) I have worked with (where ever they are now) to make it a very memorable 10 years in my career.
And, thank you Sun!
January 31st, 2006
Hmmm…If Web 2.0 is nothing but read/write web as Hal Stern says it is, then I might as well disconnect my broadband and go back to reading good old fashioned printed material. At least, I know who the frick wrote and published that damn thing. Nicholas Carr points out some intersting muck about the amorality of Web 2.0 and you can see some examples of some of the mess created by good old human nature in the new Web 2.0. And then there is the news of tightening of the posting rules for Wikipedia, which is an often used example as a Web 2.0 site. If humans are going to be humans (a.k.a monkeys) and do their business good old fashioned way on the read/write Web 2.0, then this Web 2.0 will end up being a conglomeration of incoherrent, inconsistent, unreliable, uncorroborated bunch of crap. Or, the Web 2.0 will keep tightening up the rules until it is no longer the read/write web, which I think will be called Web 3.0. Or wait a minute, is that Web 1.0? Bah, Humbug!
Web2.0
December 11th, 2005
I am deeply saddened to hear that John Vlissides passed away during thanksgiving after a long battle with an illness (see here and here). I had the pleasure and good fortune of meeting him once and only once at OOPSLA a couple of years ago. I now recall how I was struck by his modesty and friendliness. He was a great author, contributor and an overall very nice guy. He will greatly missed by the community.
Read anecdotes and memories and even share yours on WikiWikiWeb here (See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JohnVlissides).
GoF Patterns Software
November 28th, 2005
Today, I presented on Sun SOA at our Software Summit attended by Sun and our partner folks. There were lots of comments and feedback on my presentation and there were some pretty good discussions.
A discussion touched upon the topic of SOA and Standards which I blogged about a while ago. On one of the slides, I was trying to address the confusion about SOA and Web Services by saying that SOA != WebServices, but that Web Services was the current popular implementation that seems to be gaining traction with our customers and the industry. And a few slides later I showed a picture (see image map below) to show how we were trying to grasp all the standards (approved, emerging, conflicting and so forth) mapped to different SOA aspects.
I might have confused my dear audience a little (can’t blame them!), because on one hand I was saying that SOA != WebServices, and on the other hand most of the standards I was mapping to different SOA aspects were Web Services related. But the reality is that SOA today is being mostly viewed from a WebServices implementation perspective. What do you think?
PS: On the plus side, it was great to meet the John Clingan and other Sun bloggers in person.
SOA Software Standards WebServices
November 11th, 2005
A picture is worth a thousand words they say. So, without much ado, here it is… having been with Java since the beginning, here is how I feel about it now.
And to justify with some concrete evidence, here is the page count from the Java In A Nutshell book that was one of my most beloved Java books in the last decade. Not anymore, the friggin book is 1252 pages!
- 1st Edition: 460 pages
- 2nd Edition: 628 pages
- 3rd Edition: 720 pages
- 4th Edition: 992 pages
- 5th Edition: 1252 pages
Hell, it should be renamed to “Java in a Coconut Shell”. And I am just talking about core of Java here, not all the other extensions around it. Because there are spawns of Nutshell books like “Java Enterprise in a Nutshell” and what not.
PS: Apologies to those who came here looking for some philosophical/technical discussion about how I really feel about Java.
Java Humor
November 7th, 2005
Just posted: For your sunday comic pleasure.
Check out Episode 5 at here.
Cartoon Comic
October 30th, 2005
You must not miss what Captain Bray posted,
here and here, to relate (in another way) to what I was trying to say in my previous post. Very funny, Captain Bray!
Humor
WebServices Software
Standards Specifications
October 24th, 2005
One of the things I often hear about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), when compared to past architecture styles, is how it is based on industry standards
and sets you free from all kinds of burdens related to integration and interoperability. But, just the mere number of standards and specifications that one has to consider when attempting to SOA is mind numbing. I happened to chance upon one of Thomas Erl’s (I realized later he has many similar) websites called specifications.ws which shows a (stained-glass-like) mosaic of standards that can put you in a kind of a trance or even a coma if you are not careful. I do like his attempt at distinguishing first and second generation web services. Not only are there many many standards/specifications to consider, you also have to consider:
- Which ones are specifications (not yet standards) by one or more vendors?
- Which ones are specifications (not yet standards) submitted to standard bodies?
- Which ones are specifications ratified by the standard bodies as industry standards?
- Which ones (standards or specifications) overlap (some do) and which to choose / use in such cases?
- And worst of all, there is not a single place to go to for these standards!
On that last note, some of the several standard bodies you run into when investigating SOA standards are W3C, OASIS, DMTF, BPMI, WFMC, IETF, Liberty Alliance, to name a whew! And you will definitely not miss the WS-I effort underway to develop and publish interoperability profiles (not standards) based on accepted standards in the industry. (Note:WS-I is not a standards body.)
In reality there is not any holistic standard for SOA. And I seriously doubt there ever can be, will be such a holistic standard. Although there seems to
be an effort underway at OASIS to create a SOA Reference Model, you won’t learn much about how to do SOA and how all the standards relate in typical SOA environments.
Anyway, after reviewing several specifications and standards, I am exhausted. I am working on putting together a list of all relevant standards and specifications and will publish my take on all this sometime soon.
Meanwhile, if you have any words of wisdom, I am listening.
SOA Software
Standards Specifications
October 22nd, 2005
Posted a few more episodes of Dick@Work last night to lighten your friday. Enjoy!
October 21st, 2005
It
is encouraging to see James Gosling blog
about Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). It is encouraging because:
- We are not alone in this confusion about the overlaps and differences between
all things in SOA.
- Hey! It is James Gosling talking about SOA!
I agree with James that there is a camp that things SOA and OO are distinct
camps. To me SOA is a goal and Object Orientation (Design/Programming/Modeling)
is one of the fundamental ways to get there. SOA is the destination and the
journey, and OO is the vehicle to get there in good shape. I say in good shape
because you can still get there without using OO, but you might not be in as
good of a shape as you would have if you had used OO.
For example, say you want to go from point A to point B and you have a choice
between using different modes of transportation (car, bicycle, skateboard, Segway,
on foot, etc.). Which one would you use? What? You want to know how far you
are going? Ok. Let’s say you are going to the next block to meet a neighbor.
What do you use? What if you are going a few blocks to get a carton of milk
from a neighborhood store? What if you are going the same few blocks but to
get your groceries for the whole week? What if you are going a few hundred miles
to visit your family? Would you use a skateboard or a Segway to travel a few
hundred miles to visit your family? (Not unless you want to make a new world
record). Now, would you choose to use the same mode of transportation for all
of these? Of course not. [If you do, you need to go back to the beginning and
read again until you get it right. :-)]
Why not think about SOA the same way? If SOA is the goal, the destination,
and the journey, then which means (modeling, design, programming, language)
would you choose to get there?
The following is an informal comparison of SO and
OO and how things fall in or out of place:
| Compare |
Service Oriented |
Object Oriented |
| What is it? |
Modeling, Design, Architecture |
Modeling, Design, Architecture, Progamming (Languages) |
| Exposes |
Services |
Methods |
| Granularity |
Business-Level (Very Coarse) (also see this) |
Object/Component-Level (Fine to Coarse) |
| Interaction |
Service-Level, Inter-Service via service requests |
Object/Component-Level, Inter-objects/components via
method calls |
| Interaction Model |
Document-based exchanges with services |
RPC
parameters exchanges with objects/components |
| Programming Languages |
You choose - OO Languages (see
here), Procedural Languages (see
here) |
Java, C++, C#, Smalltalk (see
more here)
Scripting: Ruby, Python (see
more here) |
| Standards |
No Holistic SOA standard. Bits and pieces based on Web Services Standards.
You have to figure it out on your own. Plenty of competing and overlapping
standards and specifications in Web Services space. (also see this) |
CORBA (for
language-neutral distributed objects), J2EE
(for Java based distributed programming), .NET |
| How to model/design it? |
Emerging best practices. No standards yet. |
Lots of patterns and best practices. Excellent tools.
Mature knowledge base in industry. |
| Overall Maturity |
Low-Varies |
High |
| Overall Complexity |
High - lots to worry about - standards, interoperability,
integration, etc. |
Medium to High depending on what you are building |
| Development Tools |
Emerging, Varied. |
Established Mature IDEs in the market |
| Hype Factor |
As high as Mount
Everest - but it is not all into thin air |
As low as Death
Valley - but it is not all under the sea |
To reiterate what James said,
I quote him: "Proper OO structuring is always a good idea."
Great advice from the wise. I for one am going to follow it.
SOA OO
Software
Architecture Programming
October 18th, 2005
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