Tag Archives: Packt

Books, Books & More Books

15 Tuesday Oct 2013

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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.

Java EE 7 Development with Netbeans videos

02 Friday Aug 2013

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Java EE Development with NetBeans 7 [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 to Securing the Enterprise – book review

02 Tuesday Jul 2013

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I have started to review another book, this time Enterprise Security: A Data-Centric Approach to Securing the Enterprise by Aaron Woody. Based on the interest that my review of Getting Started with Oracle Event Processing 11g I thought I’d follow a similar approach of reviewing one or two chapters at a time, although because of other constraints possibly not as quickly as last time.

As an enterprise architect, and having worked within some more sensitive environments which means security typically has a lock the world down, particularly at the perimeter. But with an increasingly less practical as we become ever more connected. Not to mention the tighter the old approaches are applied, the more the business will by pass IT (e.g. Go acquire SaaS solutions without IT support), the net result being a home goal in undermining the very thing you’re trying to achieve. So the killer question is, can the book show another way that works matching the challenges ranging from SaaS (software as a service) to BYOD (bring your own device – i.e. connecting your own smart phone to systems and work with them on the move etc) against the backdrop of increasing data legislation and commercial fallout (customer loss etc) as a result of security breaches becoming public knowledge.

Chapter 1 is very much a good scene setter, providing some of the background as to how security approaches have evolved over the last 30 or so years. It sets out some clear perspectives on the challenges of applying security such as

  • making cases for investment
  • Applying security as an overlay on a solution rather than being an integral part of a design and the impacts this can cause
  • The challenges of stakeholders involved
  • The mentality of just locking the perimeter (when statistics regularly show that increasing data leakages are a result of accident or malicious actions by those inside the organisation

The book also challenges the mentality of security is the network, which a grave mistake as security impacts processes and roles just as much as it does the software and physical infrastructures.

This sets up for the journey for defining an alternate approach starting with defining the boundaries that should be considered.

Review of Introduction to Oracle Event Processing – chapters 10 & 11

19 Wednesday Jun 2013

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The penultimate chapters don’t dive into the core Event Processing technology but look at some uses cases and the combination of CEP with Oracle’s spatial extensions and database capabilities. My initial reaction was that these chapters are perhaps more niche than I’d want, but when I thought a little longer it occurred to me that a lot of CEP use cases would include make use of spatial. Intact a system development I lead some years ago, if built today could be built using these features.

The book focuses on the idea of notifying people about a public transport service, but think about the great many mobile services evolving for smart phones given their push notification capability now you can see how e spatial features could offer a lot of value.

The chapters like everything else in this book are very well written, and worth reading.

If anything the questions left in my mind, are more commercial dimensions of such a technology – enterprise Oracle database which contains a number of the special feature is not cheap, and I’d imagine that the spatial cartridge isn’t cheap. This leads me to a natural next question, given the common application scenarios like e one described, has anyone stood up a SaaS service using this technology, and how cost effective/competitive/attractive would it be?

As you can see a thought provoking book.

Introduction to Oracle Event Processing – Chapters 3, 4 & 5

09 Sunday Jun 2013

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Continuing with the review of the Packt book Introduction to Oracle Event Processing (OEP) we find chapters 3,4 and 5 take a far more indepth dive into the product, what it can do and how to implement the features with examples of why you might want to use different features and capabilities.   Chapter 5 focuses specifically on the Complex Query Language (CQL) syntax which is a SQL based expression language for querying events and describing expressions with an obvious emphasis on time series data.

As the book isn’t a blow by blow, screen shoot by screen guide through creating an example application using OEP you are going to need to apply a bit of effort now in utilising the ideas and capabilities being explained here.

A very well executed set of chapters.

Introduction to Oracle Event Processing – Chapter 2

02 Sunday Jun 2013

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Chapter 2 of the Getting Started with Oracle Event Processing book is really two smaller chapters introducing the platform in terms of its history, building blocks and the challenges that have had to be solved in the creation of an event processing platform (such as managing the potential impact of the garbage collector when handling very high event rates).

Not many books go into the underlying details of how a product is created, but in doing so the authors have provided a lot insight into the art of the possible and avenues for developing further understanding.

The second half of the chapter walks through the use of a demo scenario. Rather than providing details from standard Oracle manuals in a click by click type of guide, the book uses the example to show a flavour of breadth and depth of the tool.

This chapter doesn’t try to describe the installation process, but points you to the Oracle documentation and explains what it should guide you through.

Even if you don’t intend to exercise the demo, it is well worth reading the chapter to understand the construction and breadth of the tool. Based on what has been shown here, I believe some of the Oracle products such as AIA tooling could learn from it.

Chapter 1 of introduction to Event Processing

29 Wednesday May 2013

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Although the book’s introduction says that its target audience is developers and architects the first chapter is a very good introduction to the ideas and goals of Complex Event Processing (CEP) for anyone in the IT industry. The chapter explains the ideas and goals of CEP  illustrating them with easy to grasp real examples.

Possibly one if the best starts to a Packt book I’ve seen.

If your going to get stuck in with the more practical pieces then I’d start downloading the tools from Oracle as early as possible as there is several GBs of software. You might also consider cheating by downloading a prebuilt VirtualBox with the majority of the software already installed and configured.

Getting Started with Oracle Event Processing – book review

28 Tuesday May 2013

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I shall be reviewing the new Packt book on Getting Started with Oracle Event Processing (details at http://bit.ly/ZTpzCh). The full review will be posted here, but will probably tweet as I go (www.twitter.com/mp3monster). Given one of the authors is Alexandre Alves I have high hopes for the book given what I found when reviewing of his OSGi In Depth book he wrote for Manning.

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