Gaps in Oracle’s Cloud Cover?

20 Monday Jan 2014

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AWS, Cloud, connector, development, integration, Oracle, Salesforce, SOA Suite

As an Enterprise Integration Architect I need to get my hands dirty with products such as Oracle’s SOA suite and AIA Foundation Pack. In the past, I’ve dealt with this by talking with our infrastructure team – obtaining a VM or a laptop with sufficient guts to host SOA Suite (and it doesn’t have a small footprint). This is all well and fine, but means I have to lug a big old laptop (our current standard laptop spec’s are lovely light machines with SSD’s but just don’t pack the punch for SOA Suite when it comes to memory) or have to leap through a series of security steps to get remote access – again not a problem unless I want to share my skunk works with someone outside the organisation. Nor, do I really want to invest chunks of time building a SOA Suite environment to work with – I don’t do it enough to be able to throw these things together quickly. Even Oracle recognise that with the support for a prebuilt VirtualBox with SOA Suite and BPM. The only problem with VirtualBox is I’ve saved on the build time, but still need that heavy laptop or remote access.

Oracle Cloud Java

With the rise of the cloud, particularly Oracle’s big push (announcements at Open World 2013), Amazon offering small footprint dev platforms more or less for free I thought we’d be able to get a PaaS deployment of SOA Suite – after all Oracle offer a range of Fusion Apps in the cloud (built on top of SOA Suite technologies), have launched development of Java and ADF solutions in their cloud and even offer Weblogic on Microsoft’s Azure. How I wrong could I have been. So I started looking around, perhaps someone has an AMI ready to go – well sort of if I want 10g. So I’ve dug around, and found the odd provider who could deliver what was needed (e.g. Titan GS) but we’re talking big bucks – not a low cost dev/skunk works environment.

This is very surprising really, and sort of ironic, given Oracle’s recent announcement for SaaS Adapters for the likes of SalesForce and WorkDay along with convenience tooling to connect to Oracle Cloud solutions such as HCM. I say ironic, because to use the cloud adapters you can’t have a SaaS middleware; in fact the whitepaper Oracle published on Simplifying Cloud Integration infers/assumes that you’d be hosting your own middleware. So if a midsized business has Has HCM, Taleo etc for their staffing management, SalesForce for the Sales/CRM operations and perhaps EBis or JD Edwards to move your business into the cloud you have to either go IaaS and carry the labour of maintaining the middleware platform or self host (one of the things the adoption of SaaS is trying to free you from).

All of this seems to be a really missed opportunity for Oracle. If the oracle wants to host the world (and I think Larry Ellison would like that) and definitely get into that midmarket sector that JDEwards particularly tries to inhabit they need to make it easy for businesses to cloud all aspects of their IT solution, that includes orchestrating specialist solutions that will be hosted by someone other than Oracle (shock, horror). All of which means SOA Suite (and ideally AIA) need to be in the cloud.

As for my problem, its either the pain of building something on Amazon or setting up several copies of the VirtualBox deployment linked to a common GIT repository, and hope those I would like to collaborate with can also get their hands on the virtualbox and connect to GIT.

Enterprise Security – A Data Centric Approach – Chapters 5 & 6

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by mp3monster in Book Reviews, Books, General, Packt, Technology

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Aaron Woody, Enterprise Security, security processes

Continuing with Enterprise Security: A Data-Centric Approach to Securing the Enterprise by Aaron Woody Chapter 5 gest into some of the security processes and technologies to securing you compute platforms covering topics such as:

anti-virus (or not),
network lock down through the use of local firewalls built into the OS (so people can’t then just access the server by any means they desire SSH, RDP, telnet etc)
user permissions
auditing (so you can see what is happening/happened and by whom)
detection of file change in parts of the system that shouldn’t change except through specific mechanisms e.g. OS files should only change when patching the OS

But more importantly the chapter links these kinds of activities to the analysis of risk and previously developed trust models. So that you can understand how much security is suitable and justifiable. The ideas along with the pros and cons of each activity are well explained and clearly presented.

Chapter 6 takes us back to central theme of the book – data. With our policies and models identified we need to locate the data – this is harder than it may sound, not everything is in a database (the amount of business operation that runs on spreadsheets on people’s desktops, is endlessly amazing and then compounded by how we make the data collaborative – emailing, moving with personal USB storage, cloud services and on and on). To help find, track and potentially constrain it (prevent undue leakage) the book walks through the ideas of classification and ownership/accountability and then really starts to tie together the earlier chapters, as well as introduce some additional technology concepts such as the encryption of data when in transit and at rest. Like chapter 5, you don’t need a PhD to understand where to apply security and why – the doing maybe a different kettle of fish of course.

Previous blog entries:

There is also a supporting website for the book athttp://www.datacentricsec.com/
Enterprise Security - A Data Centric Approach

Enterprise Security – A Data Centric Approach – Chapter 4

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by mp3monster in Books, General, Technology

≈ 3 Comments

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Aaron Woody, book, data, Data-Centric Approach, enterprise, Enterprise Security, network security, Security

Continuing into a chapter 4 of
Enterprise Security: A Data-Centric Approach to Securing the Enterprise by Aaron Woody we start to look at some technical aspects of security and technology covering things like the capabilities of new generation of firewalls, DNS security and so on. The information is presented in a very readable manner.

As an Enterprise Technology Architect, and having security specialist friends I thought I was reasonably well informed in this aspect of IT, but the book still taught me me things. Interestingly, perhaps not intended but the chapter left me with a number of things that could be incorporated into development governance that would make the work of network security a lot easier.

The chapter continues with lots of really helpful references many, maybe all are incorporated into a series of appendices that are full of helpful information references and links. If these are made available on the book’s website (see below) it would likely become a must go to site for security resources.

It does leave me asking one question how does this all fit in when using a PaaS solution such as those offered by the likes of Amazon and Rackspace?

Previous blog entries:

The book has been published by Packt (who at the time of writing are running a promotion – more here)

There is also a supporting website for the book at http://www.datacentricsec.com/
Enterprise Security - A Data Centric Approach

Enterprise Security – A Data Centric Approach — Chapter 3

29 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by mp3monster in Books, General, Technology

≈ 5 Comments

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Aaron Woody, book, Data-Centric Approach, review, risk, Security

So I’m back to reading Enterprise Security: A Data-Centric Approach to Securing the Enterprise by Aaron Woody. I’ve not finished reading the book yet but as I’m reviewing one or two chapters at a time, I thought I’d blog about Chapter 3 – particularly given its value (previous blog entry here and here).

Chapter 3 goes by the name of Security As A Process, which addresses the processes to determining security risk, the analysis of cost benefit of implementing security features to address those risks. The chapter then goes on to provide guidance on defining good policies and standards.

In hindsight the process for determining and analyzing the security risks and classifying them is fairly obvious – it took the reading to to draw the points and the mechanisms into focus. But the fact it makes sense in hindsight suggests that the approach the workability and the chance for the business to understand the risks and challenges being taken on.

The chapter also provides some really good information sources for people to use to support the adotion of the processes described. Some I’ve known about such as the SANS Institute others I hadn’t.

I have to say that based on the strength of this chapter alone I’d recommend the book to any architect who is seeking to develop practical appreciation of addressing security considerations or understand what they should be looking for what to ask for in a new organisation. Those trying to drive up the quality of processes or get across the need for a more proactive security strategy that is also pragmatic – reading this chapter alone should help provide some serious points to get a handle on things.

The book has been published by Packt (who at the time of writing are running a promotion – more here)

There is also a supporting website for the book at http://www.datacentricsec.com/
Enterprise Security - A Data Centric Approach

SOA Pattern Books

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by mp3monster in Books, General, Technology

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Books Oracle reviewing SOA BPEL SCA

Just as I wrap up the tech reviewing of one book, Packt invite me to start another. This time a book has the working title of SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform (no link yet – too early). This is certainly going to be a substantial book with about 12 chapters running to about 50 pages per chapter (certainly for the first 4 chapters). Unlike a lot of the more functional Oracle books I’ve seen from Oracle this is low on graphics and screen shots and high on textual content.

So far the book has given me cause to stop and think hard about the points the author is trying to make and then demonstrate. In some respects like the definitive texts by Thomas Erl, however where Erl is solution agnostic, this book is trying to bring the patterns to life through placing them into a scenario and describing the challenges and implementation approaches in terms of the Oracle platform, particularly BPEL, Mediators, rules engines and SCA (i.e. Oracle SOA Suite). I have laughed, as I found the book referencing back to Apache Camel.

All of this does mean that the review process is more time consuming than I had anticipated, if the review feedback is taken then I think it will have been a very worthwhile experience. Watch this space, and I’ll blog on this one once we see the final copy, if not before.

Books, Books & More Books

15 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by mp3monster in Books, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

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Apache Camel, Apache Camel Developer's Cookbook, book, camel, Camel Enterprise Cookbook, COL50, Jakub Korab, Packt, Packt Publishing, review, Scott Cranton

The blog posts have been a bit slow of late as I’ve been deep into reviewing books for Packt Publishing. But thought I’d share the fact that Packt are running a big promotion at the moment, offering 50% off all their books if you use the discount code COL50 as part of the celebration of Columbus Day. The offer currently runs until the Thursday 17th October.

As for books, well I’ve just finished reviewing the Apache Camel Developer’s Cookbook by Jakub Korab and Scott Cranton (Amazon have it currently listed as Camel Enterprise Cookbook.

The version of the book I’ve reviewed was very, very good. I have to admit I went into reviewing this book with high expectations given the fact I’ve worked with Jakub and know the calibre of his output whilst he was consulting for FuseSource (now part of RedHat JBoss) and I’ve not been disappointed.

You can read the book as either a guide to Apache Camel as each recipe builds upon the preceding recipe; or as a dive in as you need a solution to a problem as each recipe pretty much stands up in its own right (cross referencing other supporting recipes or key preceding recipes). The book explains not only how to do something – from simple routing & filtering through to XA transactions with one of the leading orchestration technology frameworks.

From Jakub & Scott’s fine technical guide, I’ve started to look at a book on Applied SOA Patterns on the Oracle Platform part of Packt’s Enterprise series of books. I cant say too much on this book yet – it is going to be a fairly chunky book at around 500 pages. Will post more once we’ve got well into the book I’m sure.

SQL Static Code analysis for MySQL

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

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analysis, app, code, MySQL, sql

With MySQL now capable of features such as stored procedures and functions the need for tooling to support SQL code quality is greater than ever. A number of tools provide editors with syntax support and all the fancy features you’d expect from a modern IDE (see Toad as a leading product).

However the means to assess the quality of the procedures or scripts written for MySQL or the divergence from ISO standards doesn’t exist, although plenty of options exist for T-SQL (MS SQL Server), PL/SQL (Oracle) and even some tooling for DB2 and Informix.

The value of the static analysis tool means you can implement quality measures, controls and reporting through Continuous Integration tooling such as Jenkins, Sonar etc. All of which is a little ironic when you consider a lot of energy in CI (and Continuous Delivery appears to come from the open source community) which usually supports MySQL as one of the 1st options for databases.

Does this mean there is a gap in the market? Such capabilities dont seem to be in the MySQL WorkBench roadmap. Would love to know what people think?

Of course if you can support MySQL, then the offshoots such as MariaDB wouldn’t be too difficult.

Book Review – MySQL Workbench: Data modelling & Development by Michael McLaughlin

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by mp3monster in Book Reviews, Books, General, Technology

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development, modeling, MySQL, Oracle, workbench

MySQL Workbench Data Modeling and Development

Having reviewed several books recently, and currently working on another book – I was offered the chance to look at MySQL Workbench: Data Modelling & Development by Michael McLaughlin which I took up as I was interested to know more about the Workbench tool (despite having worked with MySQL on and off for about 10 years, I’ve only really used command line and SQL editors or Eclipse plugins when working with MySQL).

From a pure readability perspective, this is undoubtedly technically well written. My difficulty with the book comes from the style, and presumed level of intelligence of the reader. The difficulty comes from several perspectives’ firstly the author can feel a little condescending, to illustrate my point on page 180 the book says ‘Select Schemata step (that’s a fancier word for the fancy word schema) ‘. Do you really need such a statement? Further the book spends the best part of the first 100 pages on walking through UI based installers for Windows 7, Linux (Debian and Fedora), and Mac OS X. Although the look and feel of these installers will differ slightly, aside from some of the environmental considerations (configuring your hosts file for example) the installation process is consistent enough (and obvious enough given it is UI wizards) to only need to explain the end to end process for one platform, and then just address the differences for the other platforms, not repeat the entire process. The only blessing in these first couple of chapters the author has thought to highlight a few common install issues and their resolutions (addressing my classic complaint people only think about the happy path). During the installation, the book makes reference to the use of DNS, but I don’t believe the use of DNS in a production environment is particularly well explained.

Having waded through to chapter 3 we can get started with the modelling aspect of the workbench. The chapter sets out first to explain some modelling concepts – starting with Object Orientation (OO) but doesn’t do a great job of it, starting out making reference to a number principles but then talking about the ‘principle of the one’, given my experience I did understand what the author was trying to express but, for someone experienced it could have been more simply expressed. after OO, Normalisation is explained, and what defines the different levels of normalisation, but not the mechanics that can be followed to go from the levels of normalisation (something I was taught over 20 years ago). Given that book talks about modelling, I had expected the book to at-least touched upon other modelling approaches used for delivering the needs of data warehousing (star schemas etc), but his didn’t even obtain an aside. Having spent nearly 100 image heavy pages on installation, all of these concepts are introduced in a single very text heavy chapter, which feels like we’ve swung too far the other way.

As the book goes on into development aspects it errs away from addressing SQL at all, and focuses entirely on designing with INNODB table behaviours. Admittedly INNODB is the common engine (and the default assumed behaviour when thinking about database tables) but isn’t the only table type. All of which is a shame as if you want to get the most out of MySQL the other table types have their value and benefits.

So, what value does the book bring. Well for a student learning about databases for the 1st time (hard visualize when you think how pervasive the technology is today – even smart phones carry DBs now) this book along with a good guide on SQL and you’d be well on your way to getting some practical experience with MySQL. to be honest the book would have setup far better expectations if it had been called MySQL Workbench for Dummies. For the seasoned engineer who has worked with MySQL, understands database design then you might want to think twice about getting this book; that said I did pickup a few useful titbits – but getting them was hardwork.

Useful Links for the book:

Oracle Press URL http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0071791884.html
Michael McLaughlin’s blog (author) http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/
Book at Amazon co.uk

Java EE 7 Development with Netbeans videos

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by mp3monster in Books, General, Technology

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Heffelfinger, JavaEE, netbeans, Packt, video

Java EE Development with NetBeans 7 [Video]

Earlier this year I reviewed some videos by David Heffelfinger on Java EE Development with Netbeans 7 . I’m pleased to say that the videos have now become publicly available on the Packt site – http://www.packtpub.com/java-ee-development-with-netbeans-7/video The videos come in neat bite sized chunks that allow you review how to do a particular task, with the videos back to back providing a solid joined up view of a range of activities using a common set of examples. I’d recommend checking them out if you want to know more about either Netbeans or common web development approaches with Java 7.

David also has a book out on the subject of Java EE 6 with Netbeans as well http://www.packtpub.com/java-ee-6-development-with-netbeans-7/book and his author page at packt – http://www.packtpub.com/authors/profiles/david-heffelfinger

Enterprise Security – A Data Centric Approach

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by mp3monster in Books, mindmap, Packt, Technology

≈ 6 Comments

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book, mindmap, Security

As I work my way through the Aaron Woody book Enterprise Security: A Data Centric Approach to Securing the Enterprise I’ve been building a mind map of helpful notes -to help serve as a reminder or means to quickly drill back into the book for future reference.