Alain's Globosphere : Architecture

Tim O'Reilley: "one of the motivations to share -- the necessity of giving a copy of your source code (...) -- is truly gone"

alainler — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:02:00 GMT

Tim O'Reilley comes back to some interesting facts about Open Source software, software distribution and Web 2.0 considerations.

He's saying: "one of the motivations to share -- the necessity of giving a copy of the source in order to let someone run your program -- is truly gone. Not only is it no longer required, in the case of the largest applications, it's no longer possible."

He also presents three new ways to "Open Source" software in the new IT world:

Keep the application proprietary but Open Source the framework used to build it.
Figure out what "Open Services" means (pointing out the idea of Mashups that are coming now)
Adopt the "Cloneable application" model pioneered by Ning.

The final conclusion being: "It's a very interesting time to be in Open Source. Open source zealots need to realize that open source needs to be reinvented for the new platform architecture (...)"

This is blog post really is worth the reading time. Of course, if you like the conclusions or not is another story.

Office System and Architecture concerns

alainler — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:24:00 GMT

It's this time in the year where plenty of things have to be talked about with the managers.

It's my responsability to inform, train, help and lead Architects and Architect thoughts in Belgium. So, while organizing next year, my manager came to me and wondered if 2007 Office System potentially could have some impact on the work Architects are doing in their corporation.

Well, I can tell that this IS important, so important that there is a special web site on MSDN called Microsoft Office System for Architects.

Let me suggest a visit...

Let's define what an IT Architect is

alainler — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:50:00 GMT

Hans Hantson, a friend of mine, recently expressed his vision and understanding about what an IT Architect really is.

This is indeed subject to very many discussions and, in order to address that, Microsoft has tried to consolidate this understanding and has created a website that defines what an IT Architect is and what the different flavors (Solution Architect, Infrastructure Architect, Enterprise Architect, Industry Architect) are.

Have a look at Ron Jacob's new baby: www.skyscapr.net.

Oh yes, Ron also looks into what it takes to become an IT Architect.

Definately worth the visit!

Industrial Strength SOA Workshop registrations are OPEN

alainler — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 19:19:00 GMT

As announced in a previous Blog entry, the Industrial Strenght SOA Workshop will take place on Feb 22nd, 23rd and 24th in Brussels. All the details can be found on this site.

Registrations are now open ... and limited!!! ;-)

This is available to international attendees too.

Looking forward to spending those 3 days with you.

Belgium: Industrial Strength SOA Workshop ...

alainler — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 01:11:00 GMT

Hi guys,

I'm currently preparing a very specific event about "Industrial Strength SOA Workshop". This worshop is the result of the collaboration between Newtelligence and Microsoft EMEA, and will take place only in 4 countries in the whole EMEA region.

The speakers will be Clemens Vasters and a colleague from Newtelligence. I'm sure it's not necessary to talk about them as they are pretty well known and appreciated.

This workshop will take place in Brussels/Belgium, on Feb 22, 23 and 24 (a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - easy for your flights and time management during your week). There will also be a set of links and whitepapers made available to the subscribers to get ready for the training itself. Even though this preparation is part of the actual training, it is optional ... but highly recommended.

This is how this training officially shows up:

Building industrial strength applications based on Service Oriented Architecture principles and Microsoft® .NET requires a lot of knowledge. There are numerous technical and design oriented considerations spanning the whole application “stack” – from resource abstraction strategies and transaction control, business service and component design, presentation control logic, robust event logging, integrated security management, to performance and scalability considerations.

This workshop offers many benefits to application developers and architects. A few of them are:

n        Light speed Adoption: By focusing on first principles of what it takes to build complex systems using Microsoft .NET technologies and by providing easy-to-use micro-frameworks, components, and guidelines developers will learn consistent development strategies for high performance and scalability. The information and code provided is designed for extensibility and compatibility with forthcoming .NET programming models; allowing you to build on the .NET framework in the most productive manner.

n        Successful Software: Using the tools and guidelines discussed in this workshop will allow the developer to produce sound, working applications which perform reliably and scale.

n        Adaptability: We will cover various approaches for delivering adaptable front-ends targeting multiple delivery channels (browsers, LAN-connected workstations, mobile devices, etc.), and on the back-end, extensible database architectures are developed to support further adaptability.

n        Reusability: The application models we explore promote reusability of business components via composition of fine-grained primitive functions which can be aggregated into services.

n        Consistency: The majority of techniques and concepts discussed are illustrated in an application framework that you are free to take away with you. Combine this with patterns, application blocks and other micro-frameworks from Microsoft’s Patterns & Practices group, and your development projects will become more consistent and regular resulting in fewer bugs and applications which are easier build, test, and maintain.

n        Scalability: The application models used promote stateless, multi-tiered, load balanced architectures for maximum scalability.

n        Flexibility: In addition to the flexibility of Visual Studio .NET as a highly configurable environment, the architectures discussed in this workshop also highly configurable. As such, we develop management strategies for keeping these configuration possibilities under control without loosing the flexibility.

n        Leverage: The concepts used and technical artifacts of this workshop leverage a broad set of integrated Microsoft product technologies.

BTW, all attendees will come with their own machine (infrastructure will be put in place) so that they can take the actual exercises, demos, PPTs, etc back at the office to further work on them and reuse them.

This training will be charged at a very minimal fee, most of the costs being paid for by Microsoft itself. This training is obviously open to non-Belgian people. The number of seats is limited in order to allow the very best possible interaction between the attendees and the speakers.

Those of you who have interest in this training program can go there for the French version or there for the Dutch version to get more information and potentially subscribe to the event.

Looking forward to seeing you there ...

Javapolis was great

alainler — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 23:27:00 GMT

Hi all,

It's been a long time since my last post. I've been pretty busy those days and, on top of that, I decided to spend some time off with my family. That does not happen that often, so I try to make that a quality time.

Anyway, Javapolis was a real success. It's been a great conference and I must admit that the contacts we had there were really ... interesting! They were really wondering what Microsoft was doing at "their" event...

During 3 days, we had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of developers and CxOs who really were eager to see why Microsoft was there in a Java world. Yes, actually, we started with getting questions such as "Are you crazy, what are you guys doing here?". Hour after hour, questions became more like: "What can the reporting services do to help me better understand my data?", "How can I make use of my java applications from .NET?", "How can I reuse my Java knowledge on the Microsoft Platform?" ... as you can see, plenty of really good questions and a very high interest.

I had been very happy to hear that Sun Microsystems (through Tim Bray) officially recognized the use and support of multiple programming languages on their platform. They actually started the whole conference with a presentation with a title "When NOT to use Java".

Regarding my presentation, I had about 200-300 attendees. I got a lot of feedback and most of it was really positive, showing that neutrality pays off when it comes to integrating with other technologies. They actually liked facts very much. They have seen that integration is a fact, not just a marketing story.

After a little "show hands" survey, I found out that 1/3 of the audience already had touched our development platform but only say 5% of them had tried the integration exercise (with more or less success BTW). There definately is work to do there. The market offering is quite good though).

Last but not least, I had the opportunity to meet ex-colleagues; so people I had the chance to work with while working in other companies. Some of them are now working at BEA, Sun Microsystems, Cache Intersystems and Oracle. This ICT world is so small ... I was pretty happy to see them again (among which Rudi Vissers, Dirk Sommerijns, Johan Kenens ...)

But, as the marketing capaign of Javapolis said ... "Only the best got in! ;-)

I hope I'll have the opportunity to talk to all those people again. This was really great.

Thank you guys ...

.NET and J2EE Interop: Speaking at Javapolis in December 2004

alainler — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 01:34:00 GMT

I've been invited as a speaker at Javapolis. The subject will be "Interoperability between the Microsoft Platform and the Java Platforms". You can get the session details here. For the PPT's, you'll have to come! ;-)

The content of this presentation will mainly come from the work my colleague Simon Guest has done in his book "Microsoft .NET and J2EE Interoperability Toolkit" and will be very pragmatic. Simon has done a tremendous work around Interop not only with the J2EE world, but in general.

I must admit that I'm very eager to talk to non-Microsoft specialists and to show how the two platforms can nicely integrate. It's actually and excellent opportunity to hear feedback from them but also show the effort we do, day after day, to better integrate. There is also a number of technologies availabale to support this collaboration/integration. Among them, you can find:

Generic Web Services technologies (and all the work done by the WS-I organization)
Specific WS-based technologies (Apache AXIS 1.0, IBM WSTK 3.3.x, IBM WSAD 5.0.2, BEA Weblogic 8.1, The Mind Electric GLUE 4.1, etc)
Intrinsyc Ja.NET for Java 1.2+
JNBridge Pro 1.3 for Java 1.2+

Of course, I will address different scenarii around this collaboration/integration. We'll look at that from all the layers: presentation, integration, business and data layers. The challenges are numerous, the opportunities also.

We will also see what the future will bring to Interop (through Web Services) like Security, Routing, Reliable Messaging, Transaction support, attachment support, etc. More of those can be found at Microsoft in WSE 2.0, at IBM in ETTK 3.3.2 and at the Mind Electric in GLUE 4.1 which supports the WS-* in the latest drops.

A good information source at Microsoft can also be the Web Services Interoperability and Integration home page. There, you can actually find articles related to the Interop with BEA WebLogic 8.1.3 and also with IBM WSAD 5.1.2. Those are must-read.

Well, enough for now. Rest will come ... at Javapolis. I hope to see you guys there.

Cheers.

Strategic Architect Forum is now over ...

alainler — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 05:55:00 GMT

The Worldwide Strategic Architect Forum has come to an end. If I have to summarize what has been shown and said, I'd say one word: Waouw!

The keynotes:

Day 1

Modeling for Connected Systems by Norm Judah. Well, I think that no one can doubt about it: not only is Norm an amazing speaker but he is also very knowledgeable when it comes to business modeling. He has shown really where Microsoft is heading to. He has given a little preview of one DSL (Domain Specific Language) that will be put in Visual Studio.NET (Jack Greenfields' keynote will further develop the subject). The feedback that I got from customers and partners while leaving the keynote was really great: They loved it. They just regret it's not there yet!

Business Architecture by Jack Calhoun. I had the chance to talk to Jack while eating in the morning and he's a real business person. He delivers an amazing view and understanding of the business world. I'm very much convinced that his insights are very valuable and has helped and sure will further help Microsoft better prepare their toolset to meet Business Executives' expectations.

Day 2

Q&A with Microsoft's Chief Architect, Mr William H. Gates. Loud and clear, the 3 main priorities are: Web Services, Modeling , and Security. Actually, those 3 core elements play a fundamental role in the future. Web Services go beyond the Enterprise boundaries and will open a whole new era of businesses and business models (just have a look at what's gonna come with the RFID technologies); Modeling is a way to communicate (first and foremost) but also to automate and, more importantly then, to reduce the potential surface for errors (indeed, if we can automate task and agree on them formally, this reduces the risk of manual interventions and human misunderstandings); Security ... should I say something about that?

Software Factories by Keith Short and Jack Greenfield. Well, as I announced in my previous post, this is THE thing not to miss. Those two gentlemen have really taken a step back to restart from the whiteboard and put their huge experience in common. (and if you add their experience with the one of Steeve Cook and Stuart Kent, you really understand what it means "experience"). Keith and Jack have gone to the extend to show really how to create your own DSL in minutes and thust make Design part of your day-to-day IT practices. Watchout, making things easy to begin with will undoubtedly create a confusion and a proliferation of languages, but rules will come to help finding the best language to communicate. There is just one thing: As discussed with David Chappell when leaving the keynote: Factories are meant to create things ... are they as good at maintaining things? Well, I'll investigate the idea and will keep you posted! Thanks David.

Day 3

Interchangeability of Operations in the Service by Pat Helland. We did find a gigantic Pat Helland. All what he says makes good sense and is presented so simply that even I did undersand it! ;-) He has spent most of his presentation time trying to explain the fundamental shift between Service Orientation and CBD. That's all it comes down to. I'm sure it is essential to really understand that ... but I'm also sure that all the consequences of this SOA architecture are not anough understood. Pat makes an excellent job at explaining that. Oh, yes, he ended up with his now-famous performance "Mr CIO guy" that he will post on his site very soon.

Well, I think that's all I'll tell about it right now. It's been a great SAF.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Guido Van Humbeek and Mr Gary Cleal who have accompanied me to this unique event. I'm sure they have appreciated the experience. We'll have plenty of time to talk about it when we'll be back home.

Oh, one more thing before I forget: I'll have the unique opportunity to present the content of the WWSAF (at least a summary thereof) to the Belgium Microsoft Architect Council members no later than next Tuesday. ... They will definately have the latest news, hot from Redmond.

Software factories ...

alainler — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 00:23:00 GMT

I'm currently in Redmond, ready to attend the Strategic Architect Forum.

Yesterday, we had a chat with Jack Greenfield, co-author of the "Software Factories" book. I must admit that the maturity and the understanding those guys have about sofware production and design is just amazing. They have used their many years experience to evaluate the strenghts and weaknesses of today's approach to modeling and they have re-created it. I strongly recommend the reading of their book. To have a preview of the content, go read this article.

Next to that, I'd like to address my special thanks to Pat Helland who took us for a ride on his boat around Seatle/WA. This has been a great experience, full of emotions. Pat tought us the meaning of what it is to have a Family. It was full of lessons for all of us. Thank you Pat!

This week promises to be full of learnings ... I'll keep you posted!

TechEd Yokohama has been great and a nice experience

alainler — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 02:19:00 GMT

As I said earlier in my blog, I had the opportunity to speak at TechEd Yokohama. This was my first time in the far east and my first contact with the Japanese people in their own country.

First of all, I felt ... lost! Actually, very few of them can speak english. This was very surprising to me since basically in any part of the world I flew to, I could find real good english-speaking persons. Fortunately, there was someone to welcome me and guide me to the limousine bus. I bought the ticket, jumped on the bus and stayed there for 1 hour. Believe it or not, the person who was there to welcome me could hardly speak any english but had received very good instructions from the event company.

Then, from Narita airport, I hit Yokohama. Once in Yokohama airterminal, I really did not know what to do to go to my hotel (The Grand Inter-Continental close to the convention center of Yokohama). Someone at the bus terminal called a cab, took me to the cab stop and directed the chauffeur to my hotel. So that person I don't know anything about actually stayed with me and waited until the cab was there. Once at the hotel, I did not even have the time to catch my bags, someone from the hotel did it and took my bags to the reception desk. Once registered, another person to my bags right into my room without me asking anything. Waouh, I'm not used to that!

The organization of TechEd was simply amazing! Every single thing was prepared, planned, organized, ... no room for surprise. As a matter of example, let me tell you this anecdote: I sat next to the speakers room to prepare my presentation, do my work and I had been there from 7.30AM. At 7.30PM, I had to "register" at the speakers room to make sure that I would be there to talk to my translators. Believe it or not, even though I had spent the whole day with them, someone came and cought me up in the room, took me to the speakers room just to put a check mark in a box on a whiteboard! Another good one: Say half an hour before my presentation, I decided to leave the place and head to my presentation room; someone called me and said: "It's too early, you must stay here. Someone will pick you up in here and bring you to your presentation room.".

As far as my session is concerned, I did my little home work and introduced myself in japanese! The audience was so please that they even clapped! Then I started my presentation ... No feedback, no reaction, no laugh, no nothing! Japanese audience is quite calm but they listen very carefully! It took me about one hour to do my presentation and then, I left the room and sat in a "Ask the speaker" corner for some question! Just a couple of persons dared coming! They are very shy indeed.

My presentation took place one week from now and I just got the feedback. It seems that my japanese audience really appreciated my presentation. I'll then further work on it and, who knows, maybe I'll present it to you guys.

That's it for now. Before I leave you, let me recommend a visit in Japan. This is an amazing country with amazing very friendly people. I also want to thank Masashi Narumoto for having given me the opportunity to present in Yokohama. It's been a pleasure.

Cheers!

Tech'Ed 2004 - Yokohama - Conceptual Approach to Application and Platform Interoperability

alainler — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 07:20:00 GMT

I must admit this is absolutely great: I've been invited to Tech'Ed 2004 in Yokohama in Japan by my colleague Masashi.

The subject I'll be presenting will be "Conceptual Approach to Application and Platform Interoperability".

Simon has done a superb job focusing on the interop possibilities that exist between J2EE and .NET. This is of course the most important interop requirement of the moment and actually, my work looks more like a generalization of what Simon has done in his book. Of course, I look forward to sharing my thoughts with him.

However, interoperability is something that always had been required. Interop, a long time ago, was just based on data, then it evolved to allow application interop (remeber the good old COM days), we're now more and more heading into the direction of platform interoperability and the concept of service delegation in nowaday's architectures is quite realistic.

This session will actually look at most of the interoperability styles that have existed so far and some that, IMHO, could become really key for high development productivity and efficient application maintenance. Once again, there's nothing bad at looking at the past to better understand the future (look at what Pat Helland has done with Metropolis)

All the developments around web services and the different protocols around it (see WS-I) are really key to the success of global platform interop and this is the way to go. However, not everything is web-services-based or even web-services ready and there are many other types of interoperability styles and possibilities.

I hope that my audience in Yokohama will like my presentation. I'll keep you posted anyway ... even while traveling! ;-)

Meawhile, if you guys have great ideas about conceptual approaches to application and platform interop (IOW: How would you do interop?), please let me know.

About backward compatibility of XP SP2: Life has changed ...

alainler — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 05:42:00 GMT

I read a lot of comments about the backward compatibility "issues" of Windows XP SP2 and I understand that this could be quite frustrating that an application does not run the way it always did but let me try telling why by using a real life example, not related to IT at all.

I'm living in a very peaceful neighborhood in Belgium around Liège. My wife, Josette, and I really felt good at home. You know, when you want to buy a bread, you just jump in your car, go to the baker, buy your bread and come back home without worrying about anyhting. Of course, when you're back home, you leave your car in front of you home and you don't even close the windows. Life really was great!

However, not so long ago, I left my home, not to go buy a piece of bread but to go and meet my sister. We stayed together say, half an hour, not a long time anyway and when I came back home, what a frustration! All drawers open, DVD player, TV, home theater system all gone, jewelry gone as well ... what a mess! This is a terrible feeling that I had back then.

That feeling, I don't want to have it anymore, never, no, never again. I called a security company and asked for the very best security system allowed by the law. I managed to have such a system not only in my home but also in my car. I had to pull wires all over my house for sensors and video cameras and of course, I had to repaint every single room. I attached sensors to the windows, the doors, etc. I connected my alarm system to my telephone and I managed to have a monitoring contract with a security company. For my car, I installed a system that allowed me not only to locate my car wherever it is, but also to remotely stop the engine. The cost of all that was huge, believe me, but I felt better. Hmm, better ... how good is that? Not really as good as it was before my home had been visited, no really, far from being as good as it was!

Actually, life has dramatically changed! All the things I did, like going to the baker (remember?)... Now, when I want to go to the baker, I have to activate my alarm system, close all the doors with the security keys I have received, deactivate the alarm system of my car, etc, etc. Even simple things such as going to p... at night and you forget you turned the alarm system on! (:-o) Can you imagine, all the things I did before and that were that easy?

Sometimes I wonder why I have done all that. I'm sometime so pissed to turn on the alarm system to go see my sister for half an hour. But when I really think about it, all this energy and money I have put in my home, in my car, really is to feel ... secure and once for all, prevent that terrible feeling from happening again!

Life will never be the same, it has changed, but it's the cost for my new peace of mind after a dramatic experience with a thief!

But, you know, in computer science, we also know that life was easy, that it was very easy to send files by e-mail to a friend, that if was very easy to go read a document at home through RAS but when you get a virus, when sensitive information is stolen, you start understanding that security measures really are necessary. Those security measures cost an awful lot of money, take time to implement and test. After you have them all, you feel better but life has changed ... dramatically! If you understand that feeling, you understand why Windows XP SP2 potentially can prevent you from doing things as easily as you did them before ... but that's the cost for your new IT peace of mind!

Think about it!

Some readings:

Architect Journal #3 has been posted

alainler — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 20:09:00 GMT

Hi all, this is great Architect information ... thanks to our friend Arvindra