Enterprise

A Framework for REST in Java

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:45:00 EDT

Not long ago I worked on a team charged with building up a Java-based REST infrastructure. Our goals were to first support what was then an emerging specification for Java-based RESTful services called JAX-RS. Beyond that, we had thoughts of building an entire framework, both server and client, around RESTful services written in Java.

Join Me at the 1st Government IT Conference & Expo 6 Oct

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EDT

I hope to see you at the SYS-CON sponsored GovIT Conference and Expo 6 Oct 2009. I’ll also spend time during the day attending the day thinking through everything I’ve ever written and learned about Cloud Computing and Federal IT and hope to bring that to bear in my interactions with Jeremy Geelan, Terry Woloszyn and Barry X Lynn at the end of conference panel on Cloud Computing and Federal IT. Jeremy will focus this panel on the future and I’m sure this action-oriented panel will help bring clarity to this fast moving subject. Related posts:

Is Amazon EC2 As a Platform Secure?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Following on from my last post, Securing Applications on the Amazon Elastic Cloud, One of the biggest questions I often see asked is “Is Amazon EC2 as a platform secure”? This is like saying is my vanilla network secure? As you do to your internal network you can take some steps to make the environment as secure as you can, such as:

Current Trends in the Data Management Market

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EDT

In an interactive general session that forms part of its Data in Action virtual conference, IBM has really hit the jackpot. It has managed to snag Donald Feinberg, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, to talk about current trends in the Data Management market. There is a live Q&A session too, and all of it - both the general session and the Q&A - are well worth viewing.

Twitter 101 Guide for Business

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Twitter is a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you've had a great—or disappointing—experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

IT Architecture Is Not Enterprise Architecture

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:15:00 EDT

For many years I have observed lots of confusion with some basic definitions such as IT and Enterprise Architecture among other terms. I will not try to define the meaning of Enterprise Architecture by myself (despite I have my own view on this) as this is something being right now redefined by the Open Group (which by the way used to call their events “IT Architecture Practitioner Conference” and changed only recently to “Enterprise Architecture Practitioner Conference”).

Use The Source, Luke!

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Is ESB just an expensive integration hub or is there more to the story than we heard…

In the beginning, the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), was marketed as much more than an integration technology. While the core of an ESB is certainly about connectivity between services, there was – and still is – so much more to an ESB than just integrating disparate protocols and technologies. Transformation, parallel processing, content based routing, and service orchestration are among the more useful and beneficial capabilities of an ESB.

That’s why it was somewhat surprising to see the CTO of an organization that offers an (open-source) ESB essentially quoted as discouraging the use of ESBs unless it’s for use as an integration hub. Dana Gardner, in To ESB, or Not to ESB?, analyzes MuleSource CTO Ross Mason’s recent blog that actively discourages architects from leveraging an ESB unless it’s necessary.

While the conversation focused on the pitfalls of using an ESB where you don’t need one, the Mule CTO naturally believes there are architectures where the ESB makes sense. To begin with, you need to be working on a project where you have three or more applications that need to talk to each other, he explained.

“If you’ve got three applications that have to talk to each other, you’ve actually got six integration points, one for each service, and then it goes up exponentially,” Mason said.

The ESB technology is also needed where the protocols go beyond HTTP. “You should consider an ESB when you start using Java Message Service (JMS), representational state transfer (REST), or any of the other protocols out there,” Mason said. “When communications start getting more complicated is when an ESB shows its true value.”

I could disagree more, but not much. The reduction of a robust technology like ESB – once considered the backbone of SOA – to little more than an integration hub was painful to read.

But what’s more painful is that the paraphrasing in Dana Gardner’s article misses most of Mason’s guidance. Reading through the original blog clearly indicates that Mason believes an ESB is much more than an integration hub and even spells out a rather lengthy list of “selection criteria” to help architects understand when and ESB will be beneficial and when it will not. But Gardner’s article appears to make the case that the only good use for an ESB is as an integration hub.

SECOND HAND INFORMATION OFTEN LACKING NECESSARY CONTEXT

The only disagreement I have with Mason’s list is that some of the criteria seems to contradict other criteria. For example, he states: “Do you need to use more than one type of communication protocol? If you are just using HTTP/Web Services or just JMS, you’re not going to get any of the benefits if cross protocol messaging and transformation that Mule provides.” but then offers “Do you need message routing capabilities such as forking and aggregating message flows, or content-based routing?”

But what if I need aggregation of message flows and content-based routing between three or more HTTP/Web services? Oh the conflict!

Aside from that particular nit, which is really not all that much of one given that architects are smart enough to resolve that apparent conflict, Mason’s extensive set of questions not only offer proper guidance but also subtly lays out a comprehensive list of what an ESB can (and should) really do. He is not, as it appears from Gardner’s article, implying ESB is nothing more than an integration hub. In fact it appears that Mason is doing exactly the opposite as the list of criteria clearly leads the reader toward an understanding that if the only thing you need is integration, you might want to look at solutions other than an ESB. The problem is that the secondary article distills Mason’s guidance in an attempt to succinctly get to the point and in doing so oversimplifies the answer to the question “Should I use an ESB or not?”

The article about the original article is lacking the context necessary to properly interpret and understand Mason’s points. It’s much the same as we see in an application infrastructure, where multiple point products are chained together in an attempt to provide a variety of application delivery related services: security, optimization, load balancing, secure access, and acceleration. As data flows from one solution to the next, the original context is lost and the loss of that context means that most of the hops are bereft of all the juicy information (the lengthy list in Mason’s article) necessary to actually make intelligent decisions regarding the application of policies designed to improve application security, reliability, and performance.

The use of disparate solutions to provide related but separate application delivery functions takes the transaction out of context much in the same way second-hand sources tend to distill the original source until its context is nearly gone and changes its intended meaning. That leaves folks (and devices) interpreting information without the benefit of the original context, which can lead to the wrong conclusion (wrong policy, wrong decision, etc…).

Too, the simplification of a technology-related matter also bothers me not just because it does a disservice to ESB, but because it happens all the time with technology; I see it every day with load balancing and application delivery. Load balancing is certainly core to application delivery, the latter deriving from the former over time, but application delivery is, like ESB and any other evolutionary solution, comprised of much more functionality and value than its predecessor. Load balancing is certainly easier to implement, like point-to-point integration between two services, but the optimization, security, and acceleration benefits of application delivery are lost when focusing solely on load balancing much the same way the orchestration, processing, and management benefits of an ESB are lost when focusing solely on its integration capabilities.

Distillation is all well and good, and oft times necessary, but should not happen at the expense of the technology.

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,ESB,SOA,integration,application delivery,load balancing,optimization,acceleration,security,protocols,JMS,content-based routing,Ross Mason,Mule Source,Dana Gardner,web,internet,blog

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Categories: Development and General , SOA Delivery , General SOA

Three RIA Tools Examined: JSF, Flex, and JavaFX

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:00:00 EDT

2008 is going to be an important year for Rich Internet Applications. Most organizations are delivering or planning to deliver Rich Internet Applications; however, at the same time, most IT managers are facing a dilemma: which Rich Internet Application technology and platform to use? The number of different frameworks and libraries is too vast to even consider evaluating a fraction of them.

Slow Receivers in a Distributed Management System

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:00:00 EDT

A slow receiver is a node in a distributed system that can't process incoming messages due to network bandwidth issues, CPU issues, I/O issues or a combination of these factors. In all cases, the slow receiver either fails to pick up data from its incoming network buffers, causing the system to bottleneck, or fails to send application- or protocol-level acknowledgements that would let the sender proceed.

Spring and Java EE 5 (PART 1)

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:30:00 EDT

The Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, or Java EE, is the most popular middleware platform for developing and deploying enterprise applications. Java EE offers developers a choice of vendors, portability, scalability, and robustness. However, it has been criticized for its complexity and its need for a lot of redundant and procedural code. In addition, lightweight frameworks such as Spring and scripting platforms such as Ruby on Rails have emerged to challenge the platform's supremacy in the middleware world.

Spring and Java EE 5 (PART 2)

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:15:00 EDT

In the first part of this article you learned how Java EE 5 has simplified enterprise application development by adopting a POJO programming model and making use of Java 5 metadata annotations. You also discovered how the Spring Framework version 2.0 integrates with Java Persistence API (JPA) and makes it simple to use from enterprise Java applications.

Configuring WebLogic Server 9.x JDBC

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:00:00 EST

WebLogic Server 9.x provides database connectivity with data sources. A data source is a pool of database connections from which a connection can be obtained. A data source can be configured separately or as a multi-datasource. A multi-data source is collection of data sources. A data source is configured with a JNDI binding. A DataSource object is obtained with a JNDI lookup. A Connection object can be obtained from a DataSource object with the getConnection() method. WebLogic Server provides an administration console to configure a data source. WebLogic Server 9.x includes Type 4 JDBC drivers from DataDirect for DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, and Oracle databases. JDBC drivers for other databases can be incorporated in the server by including the JAR files for the JDBC drivers in the server classpath.

The Paradox of Writing Perfect Code

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 17:15:00 EST

Don't you love looking at a good piece of code? I'm talking about the kind of code where the design is so sound that the code practically wrote itself, where there were no nasty surprises at implementation, where it was 100% feature complete and bug-free, and you didn't have to patch it up a bunch of times. Maybe I'm squarely in the land of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but I believe, deep down, all developers want to write that perfect piece of code. Unfortunately, real life has other ideas. Deadlines, unclear or conflicting requirements, ridiculous scope, being human - all these things keep us from the promised land of perfect code.

Performance Management 101 for WebLogic Portal

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:00:00 EST

Even experienced Java Web developers are often surprised by how big a leap it is to develop a portal. The simple, slick interface that end users see belies the deep power and complexity provided by commercial products like BEA WebLogic Portal. This makes it extremely challenging to diagnose performance issues when portal applications go into production.

AOP, IoC, and OO Design Patterns Without Frameworks

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:00:00 EDT

I'd like to share some of the design highlights of a large-scale content distributing system I worked on a while back. Some of the highlights may seem trivial; some may be a little more complicated. To me, software design is a matter of finding a balance between applying available technologies and fulfilling real-world requirements and constraints. The goal of design is always to ensure both the runtime and development-time quality of the software.

Building a Simple VocabBuilder Application

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 16:30:00 EDT

To make a good impression, one needs to have a good vocabulary. Management Professionals, University Professors, or GRE/GMAT aspirants - we all benefit from a decent set of words in this competitive world. There are different ways we can improve our vocabulary, such as reading novels, articles, dictionaries and so on, but we often find very little time to do so.

Where Has My Data Gone?

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:00:00 EDT

With software architecture evolving toward SOA, many projects in this space have encountered challenges associated with accessing data.

Java Bookshelf

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:30:00 EDT

Finding and buying Java books online is great...as long as you know what to look for. The thing is in many cases it's not obvious from the book title what the book about (I'll give you some examples below). So visiting a real bookstore can be a much better experience. I'm lucky to work right by a large bookstore, so I have the luxury of visiting this store a couple of times a week. This is how it goes. You slowly move your eyes along the bookshelf...Stop, let me open this one. No hurry. I believe in the chemistry between books and readers: either you like it or not. This very moment. Without even reading it. No rush. Do you know that books are not put on the shelves randomly?

Tangosol Extends Data Grid Access throughout Enterprise

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:00:00 EDT

Tangosol, Inc., the leading provider of reliable data grid solutions, today announced the Coherence Data Grid Solution Set, which cost effectively extends enterprise access to the data grid with three new client connectivity options, each addressing unique business needs.

Parasoft Streamlines Java Enterprise Software Development

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:45:00 EDT

Parasoft has released Jtest, 8 which takes testing to a whole new level, well beyond any other testing solution, stated Luis Barbier, Software Consultant for ISO.

SOA Web Services - Data Access Service

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 15:15:00 EDT

Service Data Objects (SDOs) have become a foundation technology for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Recently, BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Iona, Siebel, and Sybase announced their support for an SOA-enabling framework specification named Service Component Architecture (SCA). SD O provides the primary data representation in this framework.

Dead Souls From Overseas

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:00:00 EDT

Today's topic is how to lead offshore programmers. To make this discussion a bit more interesting, let's go back in time into the first half of the 19th century.

Introduction to Acegi

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 08:30:00 EDT

I recently evaluated the use of Acegi as the security framework for a Web development project. In the end, we decided to move forward with Acegi but in the beginning it took a couple days to come to that decision. The amazing thing is: once you get over the initial learning curve, it's smooth sailing. Hence, I wanted to share my experiences with it because first, I wanted to expose the Acegi security framework to JDJ readers and, second, I wanted to make it easier for JDJ readers to get over the initial learning curve. Once you're over that, you should be well on your way with Acegi.

Exploring the Architecture of Javelin with a Dependency Structure Matrix

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:00:00 EDT

Javelin is a compiler framework written entirely in Java. It lets developers support new languages or extend current languages. It also provides interfaces to the parsing and compilation process. For instance, an IDE's editor can take advantage of Javelin to support syntax highlighting, code completions, and refactoring. Javelin could be extended to compile languages like XSLT, XQuery, and PHP. It already contains a Java compiler and an XML Schema compiler, which is fully integrated into BEA Workshop and provides support for various editing and compiling tasks. The JSP compiler also uses the Javelin framework.

JavaOne 2006 Notes

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 10:00:00 EDT

This major Java event was one of the largest conferences ever. Sun Microsystems deserves a lot of credit for accommodating the needs of thousands and thousands of people so efficiently and smoothly. The electronic registration for the show and receiving a special badge with an embedded chip took less than a minute. The auditoriums in which the technical sessions were held were huge - each holding between 700 to 1,000 people. How long did it take to check enrollment and let all these people into the room? Less than 10 minutes. This is clearly registration 2.0. For the most popular sessions, meeting planners arranged so-called overflow rooms in which people could watch a live video broadcast of the session on two huge screens. Serving lunch was another wonder. Fast food chains can only dream of being this efficient. Imagine hundreds of people moving into a huge food court non-stop. The entire lunch process took 10 minutes, unless you wanted to network with other people.

J2EE/.NET Interoperability

Sat, 13 May 2006 12:00:00 EDT

Due to the benefits of each, J2EE and .NET have penetrated most markets and companies to the point where 95% of medium and large-scale enterprises support both .NET and J2EE, and 30% or more of new application development will include both by 2009, according to a study published by Gartner. Data centers of these companies rarely work in 'silo' mode where J2EE and .NET work independently and don't need to interoperate with each other, but instead form a mesh of applications in what is termed a 'mixed-mode' deployment. These deployments have driven the emergence of standards such as Web Services to ease their integration.

Java Development Managers Stress the Need to Improve Software Quality

Mon, 08 May 2006 12:30:00 EDT

We've all experienced it - the 'get it out the door' mentality that seems to be the driving force behind many software application deliveries - a prime example of the software industry's immaturity that favors completion over quality, and an end user's preference for hot new features over stable, reliable systems. Deferring the QA process is an expensive way to operate and corporations are taking a financial hit for these software errors. According to the Washington, D.C., National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST), software errors cost the U.S. economy $60 billion per year. This report was issued back in 2002 and, since then, the software industry has done little to improve the situation.

Interesting Times in the Java Enterprise

Fri, 05 May 2006 11:00:00 EDT

Robert F. Kennedy once said, 'There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times.'' The enterprise Java space is 'interesting.' Not too long ago, folks like Bruce Tate, Gavin King, and Rod Johnson were pushing lightweight frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate, and there is still a lot of true innovation going on with AspectJ, Spring, Hibernate, WebWork, JBoss (method invocation handlers), and more. This lightweight POJO revolution shook the enterprise Java world.

Java Developer's Journal Feature: "Deadlocks in J2EE"

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 09:15:00 EDT

Most non-trivial applications involve high degrees of concurrency and many layers of abstraction. Concurrency is associated with resource contention and an increase in deadlock conditions. The multiple layers of abstraction make it more difficult to isolate and fix the deadlock conditions.

Future Proof Your Web Application Using Clustered Cache Services

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:30:00 EDT

Today's web developers have a lot of choices when it comes to web application platforms. Among them, Java EE has always stood out as a 'scalable' solution -- it may not be the easiest platform to prototype a web site, but it protects your software investment over longer terms. For instance, Java EE is a cross platform solution supported by many vendors. That means you can choose from many hardware, software, services vendors to accommodate the current and future needs of your applications. Java is also an OO language with well designed application frameworks / libraries, and a large pool of qualified developers. That makes your application cheaper to maintain over the long term. However, when it comes to enterprise features, the single most important differentiators between Java EE and competing solutions (e.g., from Perl, PHP, .NET, to the latest hype such as Ruby On Rails), is that Java EE servers are easy to cluster. You can simply add more hardware to handle more requests, without re-coding the application.

Java Developer's Journal: "Which Way?"

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 12:45:00 EST

The University of Southern California has a student body of about 40,000 people and a fairly large main campus. Around registration and graduation times, it often happens that parents or future students stop me asking for directions to buildings where they want to go. There are several large maps installed at key points on the campus and map leaflets are available at the Information Booths and are distributed during the orientation sessions. Although these maps are quite detailed, a visitor can be put off by the large number of buildings and, if the distance to the destination is long, people can get lost.

Don't Tell Me Cause It Hurts

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:00:00 EST

After one of my recent Java talks, a woman from the audience came to me and said, 'I'm being displaced. But that's okay; the company gave me enough time for retraining. I've been working with Java , but would you recommend that I learn .NET?'

Spring and EJB 3.0 in Harmony

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:45:00 EST

The new EJB 3.0 specification supports some notion of dependency injection via annotations. As an avid Spring user, I'm used to configuring fine-grained beans with Spring bean factories and XML. How does EJB 3.0 compare? More importantly, can we use EJB 3.0 POJOs and Spring POJOs side-by-side in applications? In this article, I'll try to answer those questions based on my own investigations and experiences. As it turns out, using a versatile application server like the JBoss Application Server (AS), Spring and EJB 3.0 POJOs can co-exist in harmony in your applications.

Moving to SOA in J2EE 1.4

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 10:30:00 EST

This past year the J2EE 1.4 specification enjoyed increased adoption by the industry, with most major application server vendors having released their J2EE 1.4 products and more and more enterprises upgrading their application servers and production applications to comply with it.

What CIOs Should Know About Outsourcing Enterprise Java

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:30:00 EST

Your manager Frank started the meeting by saying that the budget for the new project had been approved, but half of the project will be outsourced to a great team from overseas. Can you imagine, their rates for Java programmers can go as low as $15 an hour!

JAAS in the Enterprise

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:00:00 EST

Since 2001 when Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) was formally included in the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3 platform specification, the J2EE community has been grappling with the issue of JAAS/J2EE integration. On the surface, JAAS seems to be an excellent complement to J2EE: JAAS defines a pluggable Application Programming Interface (API) for authentication modules and a fine-grained Subject-based authorization model, which are both lacking in the existing J2EE security model. Since JAAS is officially part of the J2EE platform specification, it's not unreasonable to expect that you can now leverage the JAAS framework to build portable enterprise applications that have advanced authentication and authorization requirements.

Java Champions

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:45:00 EST

Recently I got an e-mail with the following header: 'Your nomination to Sun Java Champions.' My Java-intoxicated brain immediately started several parallel threads. Since I now use the Callable interface instead of Runnable, my threads can return results and throw exceptions.

Reporting Made Easy with JasperReports and Hibernate

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:30:00 EST

JasperReports is a valuable and viable reporting solution for Java Web applications. It simplifies report generation through the use of XML report templates that are then compiled using the JasperReports engine for use in reporting modules. These compiled report templates can be filled by data received from a variety of sources including relational databases. JasperReports can be integrated into Web applications and create reports in several file formats including PDF and XLS.

Managing Java Performance Across the Application Life Cycle

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 21:45:00 EST

A lot depends on J2EE applications - your company's future, for instance. Ensuring the performance of complex enterprise applications built on the J2EE architecture can be difficult. To meet that challenge, managing these strategic assets needs to be looked at as a process that spans the J2EE application life cycle.

Managing the Stack in Java Platform

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 14:30:00 EST

As the complexity of enterprise applications grows with the increased offerings in the Java platform, the management of the different building blocks that constitute the application also becomes very complex. The challenge in managing applications in the enterprise is posed from many fronts. Organizationally, the corporation has to decide whether they manage all the IT services for the applications in-house, or leverage the benefits of outsourcing to meet the needs of their environment. Typically the hosting of applications and the management of the lowest tier of the stack - the hardware - is outsourced. Next comes the management of the OS itself - administration of releases, patches, configuration, etc.