Wayward Craniometrics

Attunity Oracle-CDC for SSIS - A Great Product

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:41:00 +0000

Despite a year of Azure, MVC/MVP/MVVM extravaganza, the promise of .Net 4.0 with declarative WCF/WF, CQRS confusion, and of course Oslo's purported subsumption into EF, it's clearly been awhile since I've felt absolutely compelled to write about something until now.

Anyone who has toiled in SSIS knows the many faces of frustration. Whether with the product itself, or with 3rd party drivers and addons which disappoint. But every now and then a real winner comes along giving hope and respite - Attunity is just that sort of vendor. Their 'Oracle-CDC for SSIS' product is solid and their customer support highly responsive. It would be hard to ask more of a vendor.

The product simplifies not only the process of setting up CDC for Oracle (requiring minimal Oracle DBA involvement), it also generates SSIS packages that make consuming the captured data changes to a destination database table a snap. Throw in an admin console and a straightforward mechanism for deploying to a production SSIS machine and it simply can't be beat.

At this point I couldn't imagine doing 'raw' CDC - the product is that good.

OakLeaf Systems Objects to a Red Dog "Skunkworks"

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:38:00 +0000

From Roger Jennings' blog:

I don’t believe the skunk works approach is appropriate for Azure. Developers need a full description and timeline for required features. Failure to deliver promised features in a timely manner is what led to A Mid-Course Correction for SQL Data Services.

My reply: As an ex-DEC SE and someone who has also been prodding Global Foundation Services management for Cutler press access and more RD details, I would disagree with you in regard to your skunkworks comment.

First, Cutler only works one way - with a small, expert and tight-knit teams; you never get anything out of him or his team until they're ready to release. Second, if the problem they're addressing - virtualizing and automating a compututational fabric over and across data centers - required a bunch of developer level interactions then they will have essentially failed.

And last, the RD project / team is in no way associated with the typical MS app-stack confusion (especially the lingering cloud of indecision around persistence) - Cutler would have walked before subjecting his team to such vagaries. I also very much doubt they get particularly involved in the Azure / .NET Services app layer sagas and tribulations in more than a passing way.

More on Sagas with Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:52:00 +0000

A bit more conversation around extended transactions and Sagas on Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz blog.

Sagas of the Service Bus...

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:38:00 +0000

A recent comment I made in response to Oren's 'Rhino Service Bus: Sagas and State' post:

"My understanding of sagas has always been from the perspective of long-lived transactions (LLT) and typically those running / orchestrated across multiple enterprises within some supply / value chain. That the [various] transactions and compensating transactions within each enterprise involved in an LLT are 'bundled' into a saga which is bound to an LLT by some mechanism.

The idea essentially being that each saga is responsible for maintaining the consistency of its [component] state thereby contributing to the consistency of the parent LLT state. But after all this discussion I can now see this saga pattern / notion exhibits somewhat of a 'fractal' characteristic relative to its application at various scales both within and across enterprises."

Rules Server Post Tweetstream

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:29:00 +0000

healyje @anupriyo @ChrisRomp The last 1/3 is around authoring of the rules / policy which should, like Oslo, expose views for both analysts and devs about 8 hours ago from web in reply to anupriyo

healyje @anupriyo @ChrisRomp Another 1/3 is similar to the infrastructure around managing /versioning / deploying services about 8 hours ago from twhirl in reply to anupriyo

anupriyo @healyje @ChrisRomp What is the rest 2/3? I'm thinking you mean rule management, health & activity monitoring, authoring tools, etc. about 8 hours ago from web in reply to healyje

healyje @anupriyo @ChrisRomp There are .NET Rules APIs / ports of engines, but the engine is only about a 1/3 of the entire enterprise picture. about 8 hours ago from twhirl in reply to anupriyo

anupriyo @healyje @ChrisRomp Java has a Rule Engine API. http://is.gd/eOyR I would like to see something similar in .NET -- for interoperability. about 9 hours ago from web in reply to healyje

healyje @martinfowler Managing those rule bases w/o a formal enterprise Rules / Policy management infrastructure is a relentless & endless nightmare about 8 hours ago from twhirl in reply to martinfowler

healyje @martinfowler The are many business domains with thousands of rules and thousands more exceptions to those rules all mutating slowly or fast about 9 hours ago from twhirl in reply to martinfowler

healyje @martinfowler Issue is of thresholds - at what point do rules engines make more sense than home spun libraries, DSLs, or smaller frameworks. about 9 hours ago from twhirl in reply to martinfowler

martinfowler RulesEngine: Should I use a Rules Engine? A rules engine is all about providing an alternative computational mo.. http://tinyurl.com/8azkl3 about 9 hours ago from twitterfeed

healyje @anupriyo You can consume rules from your code, but that is not on the scale of what comprises real enterprise rule / policy management. about 9 hours ago from twhirl in reply to anupriyo

anupriyo @healyje Doesn't BizTalk already have a separately deployable rule engine? I thought I read that somewhere but I may be mistaken. about 10 hours ago from web in reply to healyje

ChrisRomp @anupriyo The BRE is standalone, technically, but is licensed/sold w/ BizTalk Server. There's a robust API for calling it via code. about 10 hours ago from OutTwit in reply to anupriyo

healyje Blogged: Microsoft BizTalk Rule Server 2010 - http://is.gd/eNWq about 11 hours ago from twhirl

Microsoft BizTalk Rules Server 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Ok, I'm back on the same 'Rules Server' rant I've been on for the past ten years or so.

I would very much like to see Microsoft to develop an MS Rules Server 2010 and an accompanying Enterprise Rules / Policy Manager - it could certainly be branded under 'BizTalk' as far as I'm concerned. However, this server should be [structurally] independent of, but used by BizTalk / SharePoint / WF / WCF and other Microsoft products as well as by .NET developers directly in code (yes, I know we can do that today after a fashion). Ideally it would utilize Oslo's DSL and Repository capabilities as well. This could either be a head-on competitor with ILOG and OSS rules software or simply be an open framework everyone could plug their implementation into (open like Oslo). Either way would be o.k. with me.

In some respects it's like rules / policy management are software's final frontier and gets little traction despite the obvious enterprise imperative in industry after industry. Insurance and Healthcare alone would make it worth doing. But every other year when I've revisited the issue with friends I know at Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM I've always heard the same refrain: "TURF, TURF, TURF" is the reason none of them can work through the space to a product. With the advent of Oslo and a major refactoring of BizTalk, it seems like there is an opportunity now for Microsoft to move beyond whatever obstacles have been in the way of the development of such a product.

How the PDC ended up costing $18k extra...

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:49:00 +0000

I was blissfully attending Oslo sessions at the PDC in LA when I began to feel like someone had placed a bicycle innertube around my chest at armpit level and was progressively tightening it down with a stick behind my back. This started about 11am and by 2pm I was fairly disconcerted by this strange sensation and found myself pressing on my sternum with both hands as if to try and dislodge something. By 3:30pm it was getting alarming and I now had the added lovely symptom of feeling like something the size of a ping-pong ball was stuck in my throat.

It was at this at this point I tried calling my Sister who, by happy coincidence, is an ER doc in LA; but, she didn't pick up and I decided to just persevere through the end of the day's session. I did finally get ahold of her around 5pm as we were boarding the bus back to the hotel and was told in no uncertain terms to "get off the bus and take a cab to Good Sam's ER.

I did just that and by 6pm was fully embroiled in all manner of prognostications by a flurry of doctors, nurses, and techs in Good Sam's ER. I was nitro'ed (tongue spray and chest patch), aspirined (baby), lidocained (milkshake), Nexium'ed (intravenously), Xrayed, blood tested, and subjected to other kinds of other interesting interrogations - all the while never more than three feet from a set of defribulator paddles.

At the end of my six hour ER ordeal I was transferred up to the cardio unit for observation and to do a echocardiogram stress test the next morning given it was going on midnight by then. The stress test was interesting in and of itself in that you got to watch your heart beating from all angles even if you were desperately gasping for breath for half of it. I did somehow survive it, however.

A couple of hours later my new cardiologist concluded the combination of the flu shot I'd gotten four days prior, along with 'unspecific stress' (clearly Oslo excitement), had triggered a gastric reflux event which I'd never experienced before. But, given my blood workup was clean and I had maxed out their stress test system (which he said was unusual for anyone let alone an old guy) they relented and let me get back to the PDC. So I made good my escape, but not in time to catch the Quadrant session, which was a bit of a bummer, though being alive was a bonus.

Anyway, the bill just arrived for my 20 hour stay in the hospital - where nothing more invasive was done to me than a blood test - and by the time you rolled the doctor's bills on top of the hospital it came in at $18k, or $900 per hour. I'm pretty sure the docs and nurses aren't getting much of that so I'm still wondering where it's all going. That, and I think I really need to up my rates before the next PDC.

The final word from my Sis - and the point of this post - is never wait that long if you start getting weird sensations in your chest / throat. I was lucky in that I'm in good shape and nothing bad was going on cardio-wise, but she said many folks aren't so lucky and a lot of them don't make it when they [unwisely] try to ride out their symptoms the way I did...

[ P.S. Good Sam's cardio unit was outfitted with cell phone jammers, had no WiFi in range, and anyway I'd left the USB cable for cell CDMA connections at the hotel. Damn if I didn't actually have to read - good thing I'd just nabbed one of the Oslo books... ]

[ P.P.S. Yes, I do have insurance as a self-employed person, so it's not all on me - it's on all of us. Will be having a 3rd party claims auditor go over it all now... ]

Azure Layer Zero

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:43:00 +0000

There is a deafening silence around Azure Layer Zero - aptly named given that's how much information was released at the PDC about it. Here's David Chappell's response on asking him about it:

J Healy : November 06, 2008 10:50 PM

David, is there likely to be detailed information available on Azure Layer Zero. I know Cutler doesn't 'do' talks, but I felt some sort of presentation on this was a glaringly absent from the PDC.

David Chappell : November 06, 2008 11:03 PM

I think it's likely that Microsoft will talk more about this at some point, although I'd bet they view some aspects as proprietary. There's nothing at this level of detail in my talks, though--I'm focused on what the Azure technologies expose to the world.

Dave Cutler - Red Dog

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:53:00 +0000

All of us ex-DEC, ex-VMS folks have wondered if Dave simply fell of the edge recently, but after the PDC keynote it's clear Dave has simply been busy. He's been off writing a global operating system. Given it's up and running, I basically consider it a global operating system deployment, or "GOD", for short. Dave was never short on ambition and not everyone gets to create a god in their own image (isn't it normally the other way around...?).

Can't believe he isn't here doing any of the Azure / Red Dog sessions...! Bummer, but I don't think he's into crowds...

In L.A. for PDC 2008...

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:53:00 +0000

With a few highly lamentable conflicts yet to be resolved, these are the sessions I'll be trying to hit:

- "Oslo": The Language

- "Oslo": Building Textual DSLs

- "Oslo": Customizing and Extending the Visual Design Experience

- "Oslo": Repository and Models

- "Dublin": Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server

- "Dublin" and .NET Services: Extending On-Premises Applications to the Cloud

- Architecting Services for the Cloud

- A Lap around Cloud Services Part 1

- A Lap around Cloud Services Part 2

- Live Services: Building Applications with the Live Framework

- Architecture of the Building Block Services

- Logging, Diagnosing, and Troubleshooting Applications Running Live in the Cloud

- Messaging Services: Protocols, Protection, and How We Scale

- Service Bus Services: Connectivity, Messaging, Events, and Discovery

- Services Symposium: Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications

- Services Symposium: Cloud or No Cloud, the Laws of Physics Still Apply

- Workflow Services: Orchestrating Services and Business Processes Using Cloud-Based Workflow

- Architecture without Big Design Up Front

- Framework Design Guidelines

- Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale

- Managed Extensibility Framework: Overview

- Improving Code Quality with Code Analysis

- Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML

- WF 4.0: A First Look

- WCF: Zen of Performance and Scale

- WCF 4.0: Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0

- WF 4.0: Extending with Custom Activities

- PowerShell: Creating Manageable Web Services

I really think the next PDC needs to run for a full five days, rather than four, with more duplicate session in order to resolve lots of unfortunate session conflicts. As it is, Andy Sherwood and I are going to have to split some of them up so we get good coverage between us and we'll still miss some good ones. Hope they record all the session so we can catch the ones we miss as can all those who couldn't attend...

Sure, blame the Democrats

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:19:00 +0000

This is a rare, off-topic cross-post on my part from the Yosemite rock climbers' forum site, SuperTopo.com (yes, they are as split as anyone else...). I wrote up this analysis of the current crisis in response to Republican claims that Democrats are really to blame for this mess. Sure they are...
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Let's be real clear here. Reagan (and Bush I) expicitly and enthusiastically embraced financial socialism in the housing market to boost a lagging economy. Only under their administrations, the mortgage giveaway was exclusively aimed at the middle class. In 1992, the Democrats were just finally saying so long as you're giving away government largess, how about at least spread it marginally wider. Their intentions were good, and in fact the Clinton Administration put breaks on the whole affair in its first term, though loosened up in their second while under siege.

But the party really only hit high-gear after Senator Phil Gramm killed Glass-Steagal's Depression-era firewalls. And once the hyennas in W's administration got in office, they further greased the tracks of the runaway train by crippling much of the remaining oversight and enforcement. They deliberately did nothing to stop it because they realized the housing market 'bubble' was the only thing that could prop up their long-planned war in Iraq.

Note in particular, the rise of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) issues coincides with the war; just in time to prop up the economy as it started to correct itself in the face of that crisis. Oh, and it wasn't just mortgages - those ABS issues also comprised the Student Loan Crisis which saw a parallel frenzy of fraud as the banking community figured they could roll those loans into the ABS mix along with autos and credit card debt. Essentially, all forms of our common debt were rolled into the MBS/ABS slice-and-dicer to feed a very large and all encompassing Ponzi scheme built on 'vanishing' risk.

In fact, if your read the details of the 'technical analysis' currently all the rage in the financial sector today, it all revolves around the fact that all our debt was sliced-and-diced so finely and repeatedly that it is now largely impossible by almost any means for the ABS holders to trace those instruments back to individual houses, automobiles, students, and cardholders - the whole debt market effectively acted as a massive money laundering operation the scale and scope of which the Mafia could only have wet dreams about.

A good friend, who in the late 80s got his Ph.D. in Accounting (Auditing / Regulatory Oversight), summed it all up succinctly:

"Corporations, absent appropriate regulatory oversight, are indistinguishable from organized crime."

He said it was pretty obvious from the go-go, junk-bond 80's where this was all headed. He noted that that same crowd mounted sustained and continuous attacks against government oversight from the 90's on once the 'easy money' and lootable piles of unprotected cash of the 80's dried up and they were all faced with the prospect of actually having to go back to [honest] work.

So, while there is plenty of blame to go around, make no mistake about it - this was all a socialist party thrown by Republicans and then crashed at the eleventh hour by financial felons in the banking industry and the hooligans on Wall Street...

MEFz - The Little Blue Pill For That Certain Part Of Your Application...

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:27:00 +0000

Glenn Block threw another MEF post up on his Technobabble blog. This one corrals a couple of links to examples beyond those up on the MEF CodePlex site. He also has some links to new posts in the ongoing [community] attempts to differentiate MEF from the usual IoC suspects which I believe is beginning to get some traction. I'm personally very excited over all the potential MEF's metadata interrogation unlocks. This should be a fun ride between now and when .NET 4.0 hits the street.

No Unit Tests For Rocket Scientists...

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:27:00 +0000

Bummer. The rocket scientists at SpaceX beefed up the the power and runtime of the their first stage booster before Flight Test 3, but then forgot to add a comensurate delay to the timing of the Stage 1 seperation. The result? The first stage separated clean, but then still had enough juice to come back at the rocket and bump it wildly off course. I would have thought they'd be modeling their systems and simulating launches, but it looks like maybe not so. A remarkable video of the unfortunate flight can be seen here. Flight Test 4 will be at the end of the month and I bet they make orbit.

Programming For The Rest Of Us...

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:18:00 +0000

An interesting discussion has twittered by and flowed on to Oren's blog with his post titled: 'Coddling is consider harmful'.

In reality it's a difficult problem and one that highlights the current state of software development. I liken that 'State-of-the-Art' to us having emerged from the Dark Ages into a Renaissance where a relatively small number of great minds feverishly trade ideas amongst themselves, each putting out a great product. But that is still a long way from an 'Industrial Age' where knowledge then becomes something easily systemitized, packaged, and delivered in forms useful for ordinary folks to accomplish heretofore remarkable tasks.

In other words, we're a long way from the day bright sixth graders or entry level devs are writing solid enterprise apps...

Roman Kiss on CodeProject - Contract Model for Manageable Services

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:46:00 +0000

The redoubtable Roman Kiss has dropped another big one on CodeProject - 'Contract Model for Manageable Services'. Pretty much a pre-Oslo, manageable services tour de force (akin to Gregory Leake's .NET StockTrader Configuration Service 2.01 reference app). This is just the latest in a spate of great articles he's crafted for CodeProject. Here's some recent gems:

VirtualService for ESB
NullTransport for WCF
Fire WorkflowEvents from AJAX

Great stuff, and you should head over to CodeProject for a complete listing of Roman's contributions. I personally can't wait to see what he does with .NET 4.0 and Oslo (and things like MEF, if he's so inclined).

Oslo, Red Dog, and Virtual Computational Substrates - Oh My!

noreply@blogger.com (Available Systems) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Of late I've been contemplating the interplay between Oslo and lower level aspects of Microsoft's cloud initiative. This recent Microsoft job listing provides some insight into those basement levels of Microsoft's 'cloud stack':

"The Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) team is responsible for creating the Microsoft Utility Computing Platform, also known by its early codename Red Dog (RD). This platform is one of the lowest levels of the services software/hardware stack and includes an efficient, virtualized computational substrate, a fully automated service management system and a comprehensive set of highly scalable storage services. The platform will enable services to scale to millions of machines distributed globally throughout Microsoft data centers. Further, it will provide the lowest operating costs per-node, and will lead the marketplace as the best platform for rapid development, deployment, and maintenance of internet services and applications. CIS is a young and hungry team that is on the path to delivering a V1 product to external customers in the coming year."

What I'm curious about is what role Oslo's modeling and repository plays within this 'v1 product' and in the command and control of 'virtual data centers'. I'm interested because that is the implication of what is represented in the following image - just how far down the 'cloud stack' will Oslo's modeling language and repository reach?

My own guess is - really deep - as in the possibility we'll see some new infrastructure variants of XAML related to the configuration, deployment, provisioning, and administration of not only the 'Red Dog' cloud application layer, but also the lower 'virtualized computational substrate' layer. One can also guess PowerShell will play a leading role managing this 'cloud stack' as well, so I'm equally curious about how PowerShell will be woven into the mix with Oslo's modeling and repository.

All in all, it will be interesting to see exactly how things unfold as it looks like Microsoft is counting on a high level of [virtual] data center automaiton being key to the success, reliability, and differentiation of their cloud initiative.

.NET StockTrader Configuration Service source to be released...

noreply@blogger.com (Joseph Healy) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:59:00 +0000

Gregory Leake of the Connected Systems Division, and author of the .NET StockTrader sample app, has announced that the previously unreleased [full] source for the accompanying Configuration Service will indeed be posted up on MSDN in the coming weeks. Should be interesting to get a look at this code.

But with PDC2008 around the corner it does beg the question: what will configuration look like in a .NET 4.0 / Oslo world? Inquiring minds really do want to know!

Welcome to the shelter for wayward musings...!

noreply@blogger.com (Joseph Healy) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:18:00 +0000

With occasional diversions, this blog will be devoted to software development with an emphasis on .NET technologies. I have to date successfully resisted joining the wording fray, content to simply lurk and devote any time available for blogging instead to rock climbing and other futile pursuits. Why the change? I'm not entirely sure, and I also can't say that this blog won't offer more questions than answers over time, but then I suppose that's the nature of the journey we're all on...