#!/bin/sh
cat > /tmp/tidyxml.conf <<EOS
add-xml-decl:yes
add-xml-pi:yes
alt-text:Image
break-before-br:no
doctype:AUTO
drop-empty-paras:no
drop-font-tags:yes
fix-bad-comments:yes
hide-endtags:no
char-encoding:raw
indent:yes
indent-spaces:2
input-xml:yes
output-xml:yes
quiet:yes
tidy-mark:no
uppercase-attributes:no
uppercase-tags:no
word-2000:no
wrap:100
wrap-asp:yes
wrap-attributes:yes
wrap-jste:yes
wrap-php:yes
write-back:yes
EOS
tidy -config /tmp/tidyxml.conf

I’ve created the following vagrant folder structure:

The rpm for Oracle XE can be manually downloaded from OTN: Oracle Database Express Edition 11g Release 2

The vagrant configuration file, Vagrantfile, looks like this:

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|

  config.vm.define :oraxe do | db1_config|
    db1_config.vm.box = "vagrant-oneiric-v3"
    db1_config.vm.host_name = "oraxe"
    db1_config.vm.forward_port 22, 41022, :adapter => 1
    db1_config.vm.network :hostonly, "33.33.33.10", :adapter => 2
    db1_config.vm.provision :puppet, :module_path => "modules", :options => "--verbose"  do |puppet|
      puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"
      puppet.manifest_file  = "site.pp"
    end
    db1_config.vm.customize [ "modifyvm", :id, "--name", "dev_env_oraxe" ,"--memory", "2048"]
	db1_config.vm.boot_mode = :gui
  end

end

The vagrant box that is used is a clean ubuntu 11.10 64bit server box.

The puppet site.pp configuration file:

node oraxe {
	include oracle::server
	include oracle::xe
}

The puppet module oracle has the following init.pp file:

class oracle::server {
  exec {  "/usr/bin/apt-get -y update":
    alias => "aptUpdate",
    timeout => 3600
  }
  package {
	"ntp":
	    ensure => installed;
	"htop":
	    ensure => installed;
	"unzip":
	    ensure => installed;
	"monit":
		ensure => installed;
	"rsyslog":
		ensure => installed;
	"curl":
		ensure => installed;
	"alien":
		ensure => installed;
	"libaio1":
		ensure => installed;
	"unixodbc":
		ensure => installed;
  }
  service {
	"ntp":
	    ensure => stopped;
	"monit":
		ensure => running;
/*		subscribe => File["/etc/monit/conf.d/monitrc"];*/
	"rsyslog":
		ensure => running;
	"procps":
		ensure => running;
  }
  exec {
		"/usr/sbin/ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com":
			alias => "ntpdate",
			require => Service["ntp"];
  }
	file {
		"/etc/sysctl.d/60-oracle.conf" :
			source => "puppet:///modules/oracle/xe-sysctl.conf";
	}
	user { "syslog":
		ensure => present,
		groups => ["syslog","adm"];
	}
}

class oracle::xe{
	file {
		"/tmp/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip":,
			source => "puppet:///modules/oracle/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip";
		"/tmp/xe.rsp":
			source => "puppet:///modules/oracle/xe.rsp";
		"/etc/init.d/oracle-shm":
			mode => 0755,
			source => "puppet:///modules/oracle/oracle-shm";
	}
	exec {
		"unzip xe":
			alias => "unzip xe",
			command => "/usr/bin/unzip -o /tmp/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip",
			require => File["/tmp/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip"],
			cwd => "/tmp",
			user => root,
			creates => "/tmp/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm";
		"alien xe":
			command => "/usr/bin/alien --to-deb --scripts /tmp/Disk1/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm",
			cwd => "/tmp/Disk1",
			require => Exec["unzip xe"],
			creates => "/tmp/Disk1/oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb",
			user => root;
		"configure xe":
			command => "/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure responseFile=/tmp/xe.rsp >> /tmp/xe-install.log",
			require => [Package["oracle-xe"],Exec["update-rc oracle-shm"]],
			user => root;
		"update-rc oracle-shm":
			command => "/usr/sbin/update-rc.d oracle-shm defaults 01 99",
			cwd => "/etc/init.d",
			require => File["/etc/init.d/oracle-shm"],
			user => root;
		"oracle-shm":
			command => "/etc/init.d/oracle-shm start",
			user => root,
			require => File["/etc/init.d/oracle-shm"];
	}
	package {
		"oracle-xe":
			provider => "dpkg",
			ensure => latest,
			require => Exec["alien xe"],
			source => "/tmp/Disk1/oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb";
	}
}

The Oracle-shm file is copied from the OTN message:

#! /bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/oracle-shm
#
#
case "$1" in
  start)
    echo "Starting script /etc/init.d/oracle-shm"
    # Run only once at system startup
    if [ -e /dev/shm/.oracle-shm ]; then
      echo "/dev/shm is already mounted, nothing to do"
    else
      rm -f /dev/shm
      mkdir /dev/shm
      mount -B /run/shm /dev/shm
      touch /dev/shm/.oracle-shm
    fi
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping script /etc/init.d/oracle-shm"
    echo "Nothing to do"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/oracle-shm {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          oracle-shm
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Bind /run/shm to /dev/shm at system startup.
# Description:       Fix to allow Oracle 11g use AMM.
### END INIT INFO

Kernel setting need to be set using a xe-sysctl.config file:

# Oracle 11g XE kernel parameters
fs.file-max=6815744
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range=9000 65500
kernel.sem=250 32000 100 128
# kernel.shmmax=429496729
kernel.shmmax=107374183

And finally the configuration parameters for creating a new database xe.rsp:

ORACLE_LISTENER_PORT=1521
ORACLE_HTTP_PORT=8080
ORACLE_PASSWORD=manager
ORACLE_CONFIRM_PASSWORD=manager
ORACLE_DBENABLE=y

To create a clean ubuntu virtual machine with a new oracle xe installation all you need to do is:

vagrant up

Ready for use:

$ sqlplus system/manager@//33.33.33.10:1521/xe
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Tue Feb 28 12:06:32 2012
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
SQL>

PAAS is now a big boost for NoOps. Operations is handled automatically by the platform. Developers no longer have to manage infrastructure. They can just deploy their applications. You just build, deploy and run. The result is even more productivity, and faster time-to-market.

These are all great developments. The biggest risk to project success, delivering requested functionality on time and within budget, is coordination and collaboration of large team effort. The bigger your project, the higher the risk of going over budget and over time, without actually delivering what users need.

Collaboration with operations used to be like this. Me: “i need a continuous-build server.” Them: “Why do you need to introduce something new? How big does it need to be? What software does it need to run? Does this software comply with our standards? We don’t have anybody available to manage this software right now. We first need to send somebody on a training to be able to manage this. We can have the hardware in three weeks, and it’ll take two weeks to install all your required software.” That’s a long time for something I could have installed in half a day.

Removing project dependencies, collaboration and coordination should be main priority for architects. Don’t try to design the whole system. Try to specify modules that can be created independently. The goal should be to get rid of large projects, by replacing everything with small projects, that don’t need to coordinate their efforts.

On most large agile projects you see a lot of upfront design and coordination, followed by small agile teams doing implementation. At the end of the project all the separate components are integrated, and tested.

The following image shows what I mostly encounter in larger projects working with multiple agile teams. In this example, four agile teams are working in small iterations, within a waterfall project.

Before IAAS and PAAS one (or more) of those blue teams would have been operations working on ordering and installing the infrastructure needed for your project. If one of the four agile teams has problems and delays this impacts the whole project, as testing and deployment is delayed.

When you remove dependencies and the need for coordination between teams, you may get the following. Four teams delivering value for the users independently. No need to create an overall spec, overall design or do overall testing afterwards.

This was one of the points i tried to make in my presentation for LAC2011: Scrum under Architecture. To do large scale Agile and Scrum you need to define teams and projects that can operate largely independently from each other. Every team should be able to have its own product owner, managing an independent product backlog and release calendar.

Turns out, Jan Bosch did a keynote at LAC 2011 on this type of architecture: Speed and Innovation through Architecture. He calls it composition oriented software engineering or Architectural Compositionality.

Speed and innovation is triggered by having an ecosystem of independent components. Every component team is self-directed. The product owner of each team has to determine the backlog of the project based on what he thinks the users of that component need. User can be internal or external. Big projects should not try to coordinate efforts from multiple teams. Instead they should just focus on adding a little extra on top of existing results from other teams.

In the illustration above, the blue team does three iterations to build something using the results of the other, gray, teams. The blue team could be a team implementing a mobile store application. It uses already delivered results of the product catalog team, the order entry team, the shopping-card team and the customer registration team.

By not trying to coordinate effort of all five teams in one project, but just using what has already been delivered, the project can be delivered much faster, and with less risk. At the same time each team can focus on improving their own component.

IAAS and PAAS are proving that small teams can be very productive and fast. The key element here is less coordination through self-service. Even if you’re not considering moving to the cloud with your IT, self-service and composition oriented architecture should be a priority.

vagrant package --base <name-in-virtualbox> --output <package-filename>
vagrant box add <box-name> <package-filename>

Littleproxy is a java proxy that you can use to replace the real proxy with a testing proxy. This avoids you having to install a proxy on your development machine and on the continuous integration server.

The following is part of a mule config. It defines an http connector that is configured to talk through a proxy.

<http:connector name="http.connector"/>
<http:connector name="http.connector.proxy"
                proxyHostname="localhost" proxyPort="50103"/>
<flow name="http.gateway.and.proxy">
    <http:inbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="50102"
                           path="gateway.in"
                           exchange-pattern="request-response"
                           connector-ref="http.connector">
    </http:inbound-endpoint>
    <logger message="http.gateway - #1"/>
    <http:outbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="50100"
                            path="dummy.service"
                            connector-ref="http.connector.proxy">
    </http:outbound-endpoint>
</flow>

Include little proxy in your maven pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.littleshoot</groupId>
    <artifactId>littleproxy</artifactId>
    <version>0.4</version>
</dependency>

Here’s the unit test. First i start the proxy (you could also use @Before or @BeforeClass), and then i run a regular mule unit test:

public void testShouldReturnHelloWorldThroughGatewayAndProxy()
    throws Exception {
    String msg = "Hi!";
    HttpProxyServer proxyServer = new DefaultHttpProxyServer(50103);
    proxyServer.start();
    /*
    * send message
    */
    MuleClient client = new MuleClient(muleContext);
    MuleMessage result = client.send(
            "http://localhost:50102/gateway.in?connector=http.connector"
            , msg, null);
    String payload = result.getPayloadAsString();
    proxyServer.stop();
    Assert.assertTrue("Did not receive HelloWorld!: " + payload, "HelloWorld!".equals(payload));
}

A product owner is also responsible for the succesful execution of a project. He manages a team, determines the requirements, the order in which the team delivers these requirements, and he determines when and how often these requirements are released.

The difference between a product owner and a project manager are the instruments used to manage a project.

Scrum is based on the fact that projects have large number of unknown aspects. Requirements may be unknown, productivity is unknown upfront, technical challenges will be unknown. Because of all these unpredicatable aspects, it’s impossible to draw up a plan upfront which predicts time, budget and delivered features.

A product owner manages the project by focussing on the requirements. What do the customers need? He makes sure that the most important aspects as done first. If you don’t know exactly what you need to ship to your users, and you don’t know exactly how long it will take to create it, you need prioritize.

“Do we still need a project manager if we’re doing scrum?”

Yes, scrum needs a project manager. It’s the product owner.

I wanted to see if you can use webfonts in an svg drawing in Inkscape. Found out it is doable. You can download fonts using the css rule @font-face. SVG supports css @font-face.

Here’s an example with four different fonts, all webfonts downloaded from google web fonts.

Inkscape doesn’t have official support for webfonts, but you can add the required css to the xml source. Here is an example, usually the defs element already exists and you need to add the style element:

  <defs id="defs2987">
    <style
       type="text/css"
       id="style7">@font-face {
  font-family: 'Shadows Into Light';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: normal;
  src: local('Shadows Into Light'), local('ShadowsIntoLight'), url('http://themes.googleusercontent.com/static/fonts/shadowsintolight/v3/clhLqOv7MXn459PTh0gXYHW1xglZCgocDnD_teV2lMU.woff') format('woff');
}
</style>
  </defs>

You can import fonts that you don’ have installed locally, but Inkscape will not allow you to select the font. You can however edit the svg source code to modify the style of some text to use the webfont. In the drawing above the first three fonts i used i have installed on my laptop, the fourth isn’t on my computer. Inkscape will show an error icon, but you can ignore it.

I’ve created a small javascript script that can be used to directly use the svg image as a presentation. It allows you to navigate through all the layers of a drawing. Here’s a demo: Inkscape-presenter demo. Use the arrow keys, your mouse, or a logitech remote presenter to move forward and backward (tested with firefox and chromium).

The code is on github: inkscape-presenter / slide-animation.js.

After some googling i found the following blog post by Claude Mamo: ReplyTo in a Mule flow. Adding the org.mule.routing.requestreply.ReplyToPropertyRequestReplyReplier processor does indeed solve the problem.

The weird thing is, i can’t find much documentation on the need for this. I searched the Mule User Guide, but it isn’t mentioned there. Also googling it, just returns a lot of links to source code.

Is this the correct way to implement a request response jms endpoint, or is this a workaround for a bug?