…. For Dummies

23 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by mp3monster in Books, General, Oracle

Tags

'For Dummies', book, Cloud, Dummies, ebook, HR, Oracle, SaaS, virtualization

It seems to becoming the done thing to license the use of the ‘For Dummies’ brand and publishing books (or are they large booklets) on a specific subject. These can then often be picked up as print freebies at conferences. I saw a couple at the Oracle Cloud Event today – though I’d share the ebook versions here:

Oracle & Xamarin Hookup

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by mp3monster in General, Oracle, Technology

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"mobile cloud service", Cloud, MAF, MBaaS, MCS, mobile, Oracle, Xamarin

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:

free MAF training and YouTube resources
Xamarin development guides

Oracle iPaaS news

26 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by mp3monster in General, Oracle, Technology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cloud, demographics, integration, iPaaS, Oracle

On Friday I attended Estafet‘s UK leading 1st open session on Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS). A great session run by Phil McLoughlin from Estafet.It was good to hear people’s perspectives on the capability and value proposition. The session included an update from the Director of Product Management James Allerton-Austin. So aside from ICS having gone live, we can expect several more of the middleware services previously mentioned launched in the second half on 2015, including:

SOA Suite (possibly OSB as a discrete service)
Business App Developer
Node JS

The messaging around far faster cloud release cycles was reaffirmed again with cycles in 6-12 week time frame. For example support for REST based web services will be in the next update – so no more than a month or two from now.

In addition to this I’ve heard that if you want to have ODI in the cloud it is certified to run on the Java Cloud Service – this is no surprise given that until the full SOA cloud is available you can deploy SOA into JCS. The question is will there be a ODI cloud offering.

My Praise for Cloud Patterns Book

17 Tuesday Mar 2015

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

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book, Cloud, Patterns, servicetech, ServiceTech Press, Thomas Erl

This book continues the very high standard we have come to expect from ServiceTech Press. The book provides well explained vendor agnostic patterns to the challenges of providing or using cloud solutions from PaaS to SaaS. The book is not only a great patterns reference, but also a worth reading from cover to cover as the patterns are thought provoking, drawing out points that you should consider and ask of a potential vendor if you’re adopting a cloud solution.

Phil Wilkins, Enterprise Integration Architect

Useful Links:

Cloud Design Patterns

05 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by mp3monster in Books, Technology

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Cloud, Cloud Design Patterns, CSA, design patterns, forthcoming book, Oracle, Patterns, Prentice Hall, Thomas Erl

The book reviewing opportunities are coming thick & fast. In addition to currently providing review feedback on a forthcoming book on Apache Camel to be published by Packt (previous blog entry), I’ve been fortunate to get the opportunity to review another book in development as part of the Thomas Erl Technical Series, this time on Cloud Design Patterns. From what I’ve seen before, the books is unsurprisingly going to have a similar style to the other patterns books in the series. It is also living upto the same high standard of insight. You can see some information from the website that will be supporting the book at http://www.cloudpatterns.org/ and the from the publisher at http://servicetechbooks.com/cloudpatterns.

In looking at some background to one of the patterns, it was also interesting to note that despite Oracle now having focused a lot of its massive resources at cloud offerings, has no apparent involvement with the Cloud Security Alliance, even though most of the other businesses that Oracle could consider to be potential competitors or are premier partners are associated with it (CSA Corporate Membership).

Oracle Java & Node.JS Cloud Blogs Coming

23 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by mp3monster in General, Java Cloud, NodeJS Cloud, Oracle, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cloud, java, node.js, Oracle

Over the coming months I’m planning on running a series of blogs on getting setup and using Oracle’s Java Cloud and the upcoming Oracle Node.JS Cloud when we can get access to it.

In both cases we’re aiming to demo the capabilities, setup eyc around the classic Hello World – but with a bit of a twist. Rather than simply sending to the console we’re going to use a mobile push notification – without resorting to having to build a mobile app.

By taking this approach to hello world aside from keeping it simple we can see how to bring 3rd party APIs into the mix. The first couple of posts wont need to much on the Oracle front – as we’ll walk through getting things setup and running a proof without the cloud stuff. As they say keep it simple stupid.

So that you can see the blog entries for each of this two stories, I specifically setup in my blog two entry categories:

A few posts will obviously be common to both.

Enterprise Architect Cloud

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

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Cloud, EA, EA Cloud, Enterprise Architect, modelling, software, Sparx, tool

With version 11 of Sparx‘ Enterprise Architect tool a new cloud feature was introduced to support team working, which previously had been achieved using a shared Database.

When we heard about EA Cloud, both myself and my colleagues got rather excited, thinking that this would be the opportunity to offload the effort of looking after a central DB (making sure backups happened, fine tuning the DB settings and so on) plus maintaining the platform’s patching for security etc. Not only that through the cloud capability we could host the repository that made it very easy for the team to access the repository on the move without needing to have another whole in our corporate firewall etc.

Unfortunately, EA Cloud provides all the software to establish a cloud based repository – which can be used through firewalls etc – HTTPS traffic rather than DB connectors on unusual ports but not the hosting. This seems to a bit of a missed opportunity for Sparx who already have to deal with all of these points to host 3 demo cloud servers. So the next step of instantiating a server for a regular on going fee doesn’t seem too challenging, not to mention promotes customer tie in, plus the ability to capture some potentially interesting metrics about its users (e.g. which modelling techniques are most popular etc). Having looked at Sparx partners they don’t offer the capability either which is a shame.