Radu's corner

2012-05-27T20:39:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I discovered a new band whose music went straight to our souls (me, daughter and wife). Yes, I took my daughter to a live jam of Rupa & The April Fishes. Rupa, yes, it was us, me and my friends, grabbing the kids to your play. Hope you enjoyed it as much as they did :)

Total admiration for this band and the organizers, http://www.cavalleria.ro, for making the effort to have them play, though the initial day and location changed on the last minute due to flight delays. This shows respect to the audience. Hope you'll have a good stay in Romania, two more concerts in Cluj, despite a troubled start.

Looking forward to your new real concert in Bucharest, this has been more like 'Rupa's music being discovered'.

For friends wondering how they're sound like, here's a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Ixa0hE6JA&feature=related

jazz savings - figures

2012-04-19T22:17:00.001+03:00

As sometimes happens, looking for something and hit another one. I'm posting this just to back the findings with my feelings, don't take it for granted:

http://dtoczala.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/real-world-jazz-results-our-customers-are-not-kind-of-blue/

These figures just might be true, and that is because of RTC flexibility. You can do whatever your project tells you to. The problem domain shifts from the tool focus to how to best make use of it.

After getting your way around (I'd estimate two weeks of playing for a seasonable architect) with workitems / source control / process setup, you start discovering that you're asking different questions to yourself, like: what am I going to do with it ? I have everything in one place:

- epics / stories (or whatever your process is saying) for business users to tell their needs to the nerds (that is the crowd making things happen ... ha)
- tasks for your crowd to track their work against
- defects for business/tech to track bugs -> unavoidable ... :)
- source control to manage the code

So you see, bridging the gap between business and tech staff adds savings to your company, I'd dare to say ...

RTC and RRC

2012-04-14T21:16:00.000+03:00

Just spotted an excellent article about Rational Team Concert (RTC) and Rational Requirements Composer (RRC), which actually fills a gap to my knowledge.

Article is on devworks, a favorite place to look for interesting stuff. It touches a few points, go have a read.

From some time I've been using RTC quite extensively, handling the process / workitems definition, together with its source control system. The point is that the more I know, the more I do understand that a tool isn't enough.

I also came to understand that while tooling isn't enough, adoption is what counts in the evolution of the project.

As the PM or Architect, you can define for the project:

- template for deliverables
- process and roles in project area
- source control process for streams/components
- development conventions
- architectural decisions
- (...) add here countless items from any imaginable methodology

If your team does not adopt above items (which btw, should be tailored to suit the project needs), you're doomed to fail.

What a great PM/Architect does (I haven't seen many ... ), is convince the team that their additional work (like filling fields in workitems, write according to templates) is needed because .... (give the reasoning). And if you manage to convince that stubborn smart team member so that he freely complies and adopt your things, you're on the right track.

Development in small team of friends is one thing. Development in international teams of people only familiar to eachother over the phone, is another.

blog template change time

2012-04-13T08:07:00.001+03:00

I've applied the Dynamic Views of the blogger to my corner.

Beside the place to rant, I use this as a bookmarking place to remember stuff. And yesterday, I could not find squat on my own blog !!! this was annoying :)

So, my old template being like several years old, in the meantime Google bought Blogger, did some stuff with it (not sure I like it, though ...) ... however, I've set to experiment this fancy new feature.

I specifically like the Flipcard view from the top left hand.

started mocking with DB2 Express-C

2012-04-12T21:17:00.000+03:00

While I'm so lacking the db skills, which I freely admit, I've installed the free edition of DB2, called DB2 Express-C.

Installed it on my *buntu, running and playing with it, everything cool.

But look at these books right on the front page ! http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/getstarted.html

Seems like I have some reading to do for the next period, just to keep me in shape

met a Big Data ironman

2012-04-10T08:18:00.000+03:00

Last week (6th Apr.) I had the pleasure of watching Jeff Jonas live, on stage, speaking about the things he does.

I'm trying to raise awarness, since this fella speaks simple and straighforward even for non-tech people. Big Data is not my domain and I personally think it's gonna take years for certain parts of Europe and their businesses to even start thinking on that.

However, the things Jeff's addressing are fascinating, have a look on the following links:

http://www.research.ibm.com/theworldin2050/bios-Jonas.shtml

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/big-data/

http://gigaom.com/2010/10/11/jeff-jonas-big-data/

Lotus Notes for beginners. reloaded

2012-03-30T22:49:00.000+03:00

Nice to see these articles on Lotus Notes for beginners. http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/xpViewCategories.xsp?lookupName=IBM%20Lotus%20Notes%20Client%20v8%20for%20Beginners People taking part in the "I hate this crap" club should take a look at the shots in these articles. If their screen does not look the same and they know they're using Lotus for applications (well, mail included), they should form the club "I hate my IT dep. for not performing the Lotus upgrade to 8.x"

Portal L2 Support

2012-03-07T09:10:00.001+02:00

I've just spotted on some internal communication that the L2 team for WebSphere Portal maintains their own blog !!

Here's the link: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/PortalL2Thoughts?lang=en

Fellas, I missed your blog back in 2009/2010, but here are my congrats for your initiative.

On a side note, maybe other IBM L2 teams would share their thoughts with tech tips for their products, I'm sure our customers will appreciate it.

OSGI / Eclipe / WAS 8

2011-11-10T22:35:00.000+02:00

Someone challenged me today into asking: what is OSGI ?

That reminded me that I didn't read enough to better answer this question. For that reason, here's a list of links I make as well to myself and to others curious enough to learn further:

http://www.osgi.org/

http://eclipse.org/osgi/

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/was/features/

and the search for osgi keyword through the ibm's site, which recently got an redesing, which I kinda like:

http://www.ibm.com/search/csass/search?sn=mh&q=osgi&lang=en&cc=us&en=utf

happy reading !

Notes 8.5.3 tweaks - linux style

2011-10-31T06:14:00.001+02:00

1. The now classic tweak for increasing the Notes underlying IBM JVM heap.

sudo vi /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/framework/rcp/deploy/jvm.properties

This is the location now.

update:
This first point needs an update. Seems that Lotus Client 8.5.3 is also incorporating eclipse helios, thus OSGI, thus new tweaking for performance (search saint google for eclipse helios performance tweaks)

Experimental, in above file I now run the following old/new stuff:

vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1152m
vmarg.Xms=-Xms1152m
-Dosgi.bundlefile.limit=75
-XX:+UseParallelGC

Performance gain ? have no idea except that's now even snappier than before :)

2. I noticed an annoyance: when starting, client would not open my local replica mail db for about half minute, staying and doing .... something...
Turned out it was looking for the remote servers where I have the mail db replicas. Once I deleted the shortcuts from the Notes Workspace, it all regained the speed, directly opening the local replica and leave me alone to do my stuff in the mail db.

So, if you experience delays after you've entered the Notes client, you might as well remove some shortcuts from your workspace, to Domino servers not working or not available or something like this...

Notes 8.5.3 out for a week now, looking good

2011-10-09T21:07:00.000+03:00

howdy, I'm happy to report upgrading to 8.5.3 on ubuntu 10.04 LTS went well. 8.5.3 CD5 packages needed to get uninstalled before the new one could have been applied using synaptic. Even the Notes client crashes I had when laptop switched connections in Network Manager seems to be gone now (hey, I'm on linux, using Notes, not Outlook on Windoze ! ). I actually got used to that BUG, but now it's FIXED !

So, do not fear, go for client upgrade.

I love to see this progress, since I'm now totally disconnected from the Domino/Lotus world. Well, except advices I give occasionally, and client upgrades for which I'm always looking forward :)

While I'm on this subject, one article draw my attention, in the same spirit of "not worth leaving Notes world", check this, also tweeted about it since I loved it: http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/dotdomino/entry/replacing_notes_here_s_how_it_really_goes_down4?lang=en

BrowserID: breakthrough for identity SSO on web ? this just might be ...

2011-07-27T00:34:00.000+03:00

Via my RSS feeds, I stumbled on this. Whose description mentioned PKI ?! As in public/private key ?! WOW !

This might be the breakthrough I've been personally waiting for, when speaking of annoyance multiple accounts on web. I've been looking at openids past year or so, however PKI "embedded" in the current browser seems more like it. Let's keep an eye on it.

As always, adoption guides technology, so this new kid on the block needs to evolve, and be adopted by mainline, however on a first glance looking promising.

rambling social software

2011-07-01T23:32:00.002+03:00

It's rather late here in .ro, but since twitter does not allow me to post more than ... uhmm 30 chars ?! ... uh perhaps more ... insufficient, I've got this ideas to share with you.

[btw, got this twitter account, not very happy, except I can follow interesting people posting interesting articles, and me sometimes posting ... what did I post ? almost nothing. Good, parenthesis closed]

Question: Social software - what is the difference between enterprise social software and , let's call it public social software ?

Enterprise social software: Lotus Connections, and ... not knowing much else
Public social software: google+ (yes, yes, the new one), facebook, hi5 [anybody remembering hi5?] and possibly many others that I'm not aware of.

When you're part of an enterprise (IBM is one, right ?), you have:
1. a job. You're kind of known by people, you know ? If you embarrass yourself by posting stupid things, you're risking something tangible. your job.
2. a reputation to live up to. no comment necessary here.
3. rules for using the social software. Like, you're now allowed to post embarrassing pictures, or whatever crossed one's mind after long night of drinking. See rule 1.

Now, let's see the "public social software". As I said, I'm not using them, nor I think I will ever will, so this is my imagination:
1. you can use dummy accounts. You can no longer be pretty anonymous these days, however you can.
2. you also can post pretty much everything. Except, of course the normally prohibited things.
3. you also have rules, who cares ? get another dummy account if you're banned.

And here comes my 2 cents:
Using enterprise social software, you're actually connected to what's happening to your job. So, you don't waste time. You find things, you get connected, you build your personal network, maybe new opportunities came across.

Using public social software, after a while at least, you're actually wasting time. I know, facebook is different. My wife has an account and she reconnected with people she lost contact with. But still, waste of time. If I have friends, I do because I call them and meet them, not because I put pictures or write updates on a site.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a regular user of: linkedin, gtalk, yahoo, blogspot, and more recently twitter. So I'm public socially connected. If someone wants to get in touch, send an email. My personal address available on this blog.

And here's what I found at this late hour about why is it that I don't like public social software: ...I don't like wasting time ...

resistance is futile

2011-06-24T21:57:00.001+03:00

I think this was a line from some movie, but in my case I resisted since 2009 to not tweet

I finally gave in ... I created my Twitter account, I also added the widget to this site in order for you to see what I'm up to. However I'd like more to follow others, I tweet if I have short messages not suitable for blog.

I will for no reason tweet about me zipping coffe in the morning, nor about me jogging (which I also intend to start, btw)

The reason to create the account has to do with the direction social software is going, specially with IBM software which I use internally, and recently (well, not quite so) on the ibm.com site.

Facebook will not see me, though, I found absolutely no reason to use it.

WAS 8 for Developers - yes it's free

2011-06-18T10:12:00.000+03:00

It might be that IBM's announcements are not targeting prospective customers or students that much, since I do encounter people saying WAS is not free to use for development and learning activities.

Yes it is, go get it: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/wasdevelopers/index.html

JazzHub Beta

2011-06-06T16:51:00.003+03:00

now, this is something worth space on my blog, in order advocate good technology.

I've been increasingly using Jazz and RTC, it actually rocks, so next things have to get better ...

https://jazz.net/hub/manager/

update: Following Dan's comment below...

My first thought is that IBM is now following a better strategy into making its smart technology popular, starting with college and university levels, where it should start. And not necessary with students, but with their professors, lectors and whoever theaches them.

One personal example: I've been recently speaking to a group of 20 students in a workshop held in Bucharest, sort of internal event. These students are learning IT applied to economics. It came to no surprise that they are NOT learning practical things, and the only key concepts they were aware of are those from their own personal lives: working on windows desktops, developing sites, some hearing about freelancing. And that's about it. Their IT general knowledge was so limited that I have spoken things they didn't understood: Ant ? What's that ? Development ? Yes, I've made some html pages, at home ...

Why ? Because they did not learn at school, and that's because their teachers are also limited in their knowledge.

Same thing here: Jazz as technology is lowering the gap between business and IT when it comes to development. It's smart technology, should be made popular. This is a smart move, so get your students there and challenge them, ask them to learn the new things, give them the bigger picture, out of their homes. Some day they might want to follow a development path, and they'll come to interviews telling us how they did development at home and not know what svn or git or ant is ...

Enterprise Architecture (EA) view from an IT Architect

2011-05-22T01:28:00.000+03:00

This post wants to share with you my take on EA, after attending a course led by some smart people. I won't share their names without permission, but they're smart, that I can tell you.

Note: this work may change over time as I read more. I actually didn't had the time to read topics/articles on EA before attending this class. This is why I might be biased or even wrong. Feel free to comment or send me emails, critics make me better.

Here we go:

1. Who is EA for:
- those companies who lost track of applications and systems
- those companies having no or sparse governance
- those companies having stakeholders which feel like wanna change things: either by their IT or their business
- those companies loosing money, market share or customers. So, all of us ? The answer is yes.

2. What EA is NOT:
- it's NOT a miracle, but a discipline / practice of doing things with more rigorous approach.
- it's NOT a method, but a journey.
- it does NOT starts in point A and finish in point B, its an ongoing effort which ends with the business itself.

because:

1. EA tries to get the business near to the practices and methods of software development, by means of change management, governance and agility.
2. EA is trying to become the link coupling together the business (your business, any type of it) and the IT.
3. EA discipline is trying to find out what you're doing wrong so you might start change things. When you start and how you start makes the difference between bad and good consultants (either yours or your collaborators/partners).

What you need:

1. an understanding that you're doing something wrong. This requires brains, only smart people admit they're wrong.
2. an understanding that IT might not be the part that needs to change, but perhaps your organization and/or business processes need to change first.
3. good consultants on doing things technically and/or knowing your industry. These are rather hard to get and usualy speak beautiful words, however, they're diplomats enough to they tell the truth in your face. If you're also smart, you get the message and you'll also recognize them. I also start to recognize BSers from professionals, so wouldn't be that hard, I guess :)
4. stakeholders willing to change things. This might be the toughest part. On the saying that "if it works, don't break it", resistance to change is usually what stops organizations to pursue such changes.

With these things out in the air, next time you receive a mail with signature from an "enterprise architect" you'll know something is wrong. Because EA is about the change we perform each day. Hell, I am as well practicing EA with some of my customers. I will never be an enterprise architect, there is no such profession, as far as I consider. There are good or bad consultants, that I know.

projects failing. lessons learned.

2011-04-20T23:25:00.000+03:00

Having been involved in several engagements past months, I took some lessons from what I consider to be good technology with bad implementations. These were not necessarily failed projects but I had a feeling of unaccomplished work. And this is because I am usually passionate about the technology I work with and I want to drag people with me, which didn't happened. Why I had these mixed feelings and the lessons I draw:

Lesson 1. Project Scope. Define the scope of your project and DO NOT cease to pressures by either your sales or customer. DO NOT accept further changes in scope without estimating impact and effort implied. Otherwise you will usually end up with more effort spend, which will translate into business issues on your side.

Lesson 2. Team skills. This is a point where the project itself needs to be planned around building or gathering the proper technical skills. Without that, I learned the hard way that nobody on customer side will ever be able to takeover your work. On the other side, not having the proper team skills upfront will again end up with more effort spend on the project.

Lesson 3. Project Setup itself. If you're working with people not willing to listen or not able to understand what you're saying, project will not end up in good conditions.

Lesson 4. I give pretty good estimates on activities part of different WBS. This last one is for me to compensate the above three points :)

IBM WebSphere clip

2011-04-20T23:03:00.002+03:00

Didn't knew WebSphere emerged in 1998, the year I started my career in IT.

However, WebSphere is currently laying around in most IBM products, across all IBM brands. Such examples I'm aware of: WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Process Server, Tivoli Access Manager, DB2 CM, FileNet.

One good piece of technology which worth the learning effort. Java developers will eventually hit some WebSphere install to code against. And when they do, they usually have a steeper learning curve, where is the point to guide them towards InfoCenters and Redbooks :)

update: right, just related to above paragraph, any java dev can use it, for fun or business.

IBM systems fell but didn't stop

2011-03-31T07:07:00.001+03:00

The pictures from Timothy's article below are a testimony not only on resilience but on the difference made by proper solution design.

http://mainframe.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/earthquake-in-japan-ibm-machines-kept-running.html

was recommended readings

2011-03-22T20:12:00.001+02:00

I just found this list of developerworks articles and redbooks:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0305_issw/recommendedreading.html

Something struck me on the article: "Date: Dec 2010 (Published 25 Feb 2003)" ... pretty impressive, isn't it ?

I'll parse the list, could it be something I didn't knew ? :)

RSA 8.0.2 on the horizon

2011-03-14T21:27:00.000+02:00

Being to busy lately to post new stuff, this is my way to let you know that RSA 8.0.2 hit the Eclipse update. Yummy, bugs fixed :) http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27018962#802

celebrating 100 years.

2011-01-23T08:38:00.000+02:00

cool videos to watch. Some of the things presented I didn't knew were build into IBM's labs. Good for culture. I'm also a proud IBMer, for what it's worth :)

awarness. rational.

2010-12-01T06:52:00.000+02:00

It popped into my RSS feeds, I liked and agree with the message from the video, I'm sharing:

gist.com with Lotus Notes plugin. Good, but needs improvement.

2010-10-07T15:23:00.000+03:00

Having purchased my Android (Desire) phone, and using Ubuntu as the primary workstation, my main frustration is waiting for Android Lotus Traveler, which I've seen is work on progress.

While waiting, one of my colleagues pointed me towards gist.com, which aggregates contacts from gmail, gmail contacts, linkedin, android (my choices, there are others like facebook and twitter which I don't and will never use). So, besides that, which is looking good, back at my frustration: sync contacts and calendar from my business client to the Android phone.

On gist.com site there's a plugin which installs as a plugin into the Notes 8.5.x client. However, it wants to search my business mail to gather contacts ? WTF ? No way, this is trouble. So I did a pronto uninstall and decided to post here the use-cases I see for such plugin, maybe the dev team will listen:

1. This Notes plugin would allow me to configure a local Notes database containing contacts. Be it the default local names.nsf or another .nsf, which is my case.
2. This Notes plugin would allow me to configure a local database for calendaring information.

More comments:
- Do not scan my business mail as I will not allow it, for obvious reasons: security compliance, confidential information which goes into your site, and so on.
- Storing my personal contacts on your site is my choice. Business information is not my choice.

So towards the gist.com dev team: thanks, this is good work, please improve the Lotus Notes plugin before Lotus Traveler for Android hits the market :)