Monthly Archives: August 2015

API catalogues

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in General, Oracle, Technology

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I have been looking at API catalogue tools to help facilitate reuse particularly given we use a lot of 3rd party vendors and System Integrators where having a tool that can be used to easily pickup integration points. We don’t monetise the interfaces but having a means to harvest the interfaces and generate documentation that can be published.

It is interesting that a lot of the tooling requires manual loading of the interface information and focuses on monetisation and security (Apigee, 3Scale etc). Oracle provides these capabilities through the API Management product. But the API catalogue offers the documentation, publication and critically the harvesting capabilities. The only downside is the API Catalogue can only describe SOAP and REST interfaces today.  It would be great to be able to describe other interfaces such as XML over JMS as well. The one advantage that 3Scale and Apigee have at present is the fact they are cloud solutions, Oracle’s API tools are presently not offered as discreet solutions, that said I’d not bet against Oracle launching API Management and API Catalogue as cloud services.

Oracle & Xamarin Hookup

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

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When I first heard about the Oracle & Xamarin tie up to support Oracle’s Mobile Cloud Service  – MCS(to use one of those xaaS acronyms we’re talking MBaaS – Mobile Backend aaS) I was little surprised and puzzled as for any Java/Javascript developer Oracle already their Mobile Application Framework which includes Apache Cordova and some Xamarin style cross compiling for native capabilities for Java.

It’s when you look at information such as that provided by DeveloperEconomics.com some sense becomes apparent. Oracle aren’t so much as abandoning MAF as trying to create conditions where all roads lead to MCS as the 2 most popular cross platform/x-compile mobile frameworks which represent 75% or more of the framework usage.  It is also likely (but I speculate here) that providing an Xamarin API and SDK probably isn’t that significant an investment given all of it has been built to support MAF already.

As late comers to the cloud service market, his sort of approach stands to increase Oracle’s potential to gain market share. The fact that they have got Xamarin onboard and the commitment (regardless of how easy it may have been to leverage existing work) Oracle’s decision to seek global domination in PaaS and SaaS markets. For this to pay off though Oracle need to shed the image of its only for the big boys with deep pockets.

Some helpful other resource:

Just trusting security to VPNs

20 Thursday Aug 2015

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I regularly encounter arguments where people justify relaxed security in a design with the argument of – well the connection between systems will be protected by a VPN (Virtual Private Network) – so everything is fine.

Trying to dissuade a someone like a project manager or business end user that just trusting to just a VPN is challenging, after all private networks are safe aren’t they. So I have tried to identify a few resources – that can simply and clearly explain why this approach alone is not good. Just pointing to the principle of ‘security in depth’ is difficult to sell. So hopefully the following will help:

Packt Java EE with Eclipse 2nd Edition

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Book Reviews, Books, Packt

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Might be a little early for Packt, but I have completed reviewing the 2nd Edition of Java EE with Eclipse for Packt now.  So the book should be available in the next couple of months.

On the subject of Packt, the Free Learning scheme they are running continues. I’ve seen a couple of books repair since the start of the promotion. But for main part each day is new and different and covers a wide range of things from JQuery and Node, to Hadoop and into Drupal and WordPress. So worth checking back on a daily basis.

All of this means time to do some more Oracle writing.

Free eBook

15 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Books

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 book 
Designers must understand user needs to create any product. But what type of data should you look at?While we’ve all heard about big data, talk of “thick” data remains scant. Generally speaking, big data is quantitative; it gives you the what, where, and when, while thick data provides the qualitative perspective—the how and the why.

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