Shine Technologies Blog

Time to try Ganymede install again as the current version has got itself very confused! Install from scratch should take no more than 10-15mins (excluding any download times). This should give a good eclipse setup to do GWT and Maven work.

• Ganymede - Latest Enterprise install eclipse-jee-ganymede-macosx-carbon.tar.gz
• Sysdeo - I still use the old sysdeo plugin for basic tomcat running, used it for many years and its just easy. Installing 3.2.1 from sysdeo
• Cypal - For GWT work, get the latest cypal plugin
• Maven 2 - Update Manager new site, http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/update/
• Subclipse - Update Manager new site, http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x

We have a new release of the GWT/Spring Shine Reference project out here (ver 0.3), which is an important improvement on the previous releases.

• Now includes proper Data Layer : using Spring 2.5 annotations, Hibernate 3.2 and integrated HSQLDB runtime memory database.
• Upgraded GWT gui to include save/delete/select functionality linking into the exposed Spring services
• Maven now builds deployable war files for both the presentation (gwt) and service (spring) layers that can be dropped into a standard Tomcat install.

All of this should “just work” straight out of the box - tested on linux (fedora), mac and windows systems. Follow the “Getting Started” instructions on the project page.

This was just too painful! Unfortunately I would have to recommend to people to stay away from Ganymede if you use Subversion for version control until they sort out connectors, update sites etc. After installing on 4 machines (3 macs, 1 linux) i’ve finally got 3 out of 4 working - but one of them (one of the identical macs!) just wont fix and the others were such hit and miss affairs. In theory, all you need to do is add in the update site as detailed on the Polarian site

Update Sites - Direct your Eclipse update manager to both the following update sites…
* Subversive plug-in update site :
http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/

* Subversive SVN Connectors update site
http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/

I realise that its to do with license issues etc, but Eclipse really has to “just work” out of the box with Subversion soon. The update manager really needs work too. Whoever put the “Close” button where they did while hiding off the “Install” button needs to go on a design course - so fed up clicking “close” just when i’ve chosen “install”….!

Once in a while new technologies mature and coalesce together to provide a new and viable platform that radically change the traditional development landscape. In recent years Ruby on Rails has been the poster child of all that is new and groovy; the “must learn” skill for developers, leaving behind those “legacy” Java systems built over the last ten years.

It looks like GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is challenging those ideas. We’ve written an article explaining the steps involved putting together a multi-tiered system using GWT and Spring together (with both layers built by Maven). This also comes with an Open Source reference project showing in detail how to get up and running very quickly. Full details here.

What makes me particularly happy about all this is , is that it looks like there is still life in the old Java dog yet

One of the challenges working in a consultancy on client site, is adapting modern ideas and techniques onto existing legacy systems. The temptation can be to sweep away the old and replace with the new, but most times this is not possible (or even desirable as it introduces a whole new element of risk and cost). In the following article, I detail our successful attempt to bring “continuous integration” via Cruise Control into an existing Cobol system. Article :
Cruise Control & Cobol

Last month I attended a seminar about Virtual Worlds and in particular Second Life, during which it was suggested that Second Life had been through the hype stage, passed over the bell curve of growth and the “cool” factor, and was now on the other side of the curve with as many articles in the press concerning problems and issues than there were previously praising it.

Is the same happening with Rails?

For the last couple of years there has been a great deal written and tried with Rails which has been overwhelmingly positive (and in the main rightly so). However, I am detecting a swing in the coverage, and in particular the recent blog from cdbaby.com describing why a Rails re-write of a PHP system was completely abandoned, details here.

There have been a number of successes at Shine using Rails, and it is a great technology, but is it really that good a fit in the enterprise beyond new greenfield systems? Is there compelling reasons to replace the (in the main) Java systems we have built and maintained over the last 10 years? Is GWT a better solution for existing corporate systems - even just from the point of view that the retraining involved in GWT is trivial for a Java developer as GWT development is all written in Java? Or will improvements in Rails, for instance JRuby, allow greater integration into existing systems and hence speed its adoption?

So back to the original point, where on the bell curve is Rails….

Recently we completed a very interesting project with one of our major clients to develop a Firefox Plugin to give an alternative channel for information for the clients members. Some more details on the Press Release and here is a link to the actual plugin on the Flybuys Website.

During development process and promotion into production a number of points became very clear to us

• Its Easy! - Fundamentally writing plugins / widgets etc is very straightforward, with lots of documentation and samples available on developer forums and websites. If you are comfortable with a bit of Javascript and a small amount of AJAX then you should have no problems getting a plugin up and running in a short amount of time
• Its Only Easy on a good architecture… - We were in a fortunate position to be building upon a modern architecture designed by ourselves which had all the important attributes like security and clean interfaces already available to us. The system already has interfaces in place for IVR, WebServices, Public Website and so piggy backing on top of these ensured that the project only ran for weeks and not months
• Multiplatform - The pluging has been sucessfully tested on Linux, Mac and Windows - and the great thing is that this is a single build that works unchanged across all platforms as it relies on all the hard lifting being performed by the Mozilla community and the Firefox platform. And as predominantly an Enterprise Java Company its interesting there isnt a single line of Java code…
• Its Fun.The plugin has created alot of interest and sparked more ideas about how best to maintain relationships with your clients. For too long large institutions have relied upon single channels of communication - usually a single monolithic website - but the landscape is changing with channels such as Mobile, Interactive TV, Blogs, Forums etc becoming the norm for an increasingly savvy internet generation. We had a great time working with the marketing department on this one and are looking forward to version 2!

In summary, we are very fortunate to be working with such a forward thinking organisation who are willing to try new technologies and different approaches to their members. Using this and building upon a solid architecture with a bit of creative thinking has led us to a product which hopefully is useful to thousands of Flybuys members.

I attended a very interesting conference this week (although maybe not as fancy as Java One!) with three excellent important speakers, namely Andy Rowsell-Jones (Gartner), Catherin Bennett (IDC) , Sam Higgins (Longhaus)

Gartner
Survey of CIOs :

• 63% they will grow faster than the market, ie increase their market share
• 62% believe they have the right funds
• 29% believe they have the right skills

However the skills that are needed arent just hard core tech skills. Its the IT specialist who also has the whole rounded skill set, project management, analysis, customer relations etc that are required (and these people take 10-15 years to become skilled so there are no obvious solutions - 457 Visas over the last 3 mths are greater than the total for the last 3 years to try and pull in the right people from abroad!). Improvement of business practices is a key area of growth for IT systems, particularly systems that can give upto date complete snapshots across organisation

Overall though - its the “McDonaldisation” of the IT industry that is happening and those companies that adapt will be the ones that survive and grow. IT Components need to be simplified (from an external point of view) with ease of install, and short learning curve needed. Provide systems that mean that less skilled staff can do the same job…

IDC Australia

• Predicted Growth of sectors : SOA (+22%), VOIP (+39%), Virtualisation (+32%), Document Management (+51%)
• Role of the CIO is expanding across organisation, many CIOs are now reporting directly to CEO rather than CFO
• Automate business processes, but then be able to jump to scalable, repeatable and consistent systems
• 50% of CIOs have to demonstrate ROI < 24mths (out from 12mths last year)
• IT Projects still take too long! Need to speed up!
• IT Spend is 80/20 Operations/Innovation
• Large increase in IT budgets, 5.9% this year
• Recruiting, training and retaining senior IT staff very difficult in current environment
• Sales staff should be providing a “Business Case” for their product to CIOs
• And the best one, 50% of all IT projects still fail!!!

Longhaus

• SOA is inevitable. There is no choice as with latest upgrades of Office and SAP you immediately have SOA systems.
  The challenge is now managing those systems
• Open Source is now a mature market
  
  –Main sign being consolidation e.g. Redhat & JBoss, Novell and Microsoft agreement
  
  –$2.6 billion invested in open source since 1995
  
  –Paying for support is now the norm.
  
  –IBM have 7,000 dedicated Open Source developers and Oracle supposedly 9,000
  
  –However, local support is a real challenge and there is a growing market
  

Panel Discussions

• Multisourcing from vendors is the main model rather than outsourcing all of IT to a single shop
• Wage inflation of 30% a year in India is effecting reasons for offshoring
• Key players are lagging behind the Web2.0 wave in Australia. Blogs, Wiki’s etc are now the norm
• OpenSource is a really big player in the market, and companies that can support opensource products locally are doing well.
• Back to the skills shortages. Rounded IT professionals and Enterprise Architects becoming very valuable.

Overall
This was an excellent conference that I’d strongly recommend for people in the future, and for me showed that Shine are definately going in the right direction : from providing products in the Energy space that provide high level decision makers with correct information, supporting and investment in OpenSource training and products, and most importantly in providing IT consultants that are far more than just coders!

Last week I went to a very interesting presentation in Melbourne by Redhat and HP about the release of RHEL 5. This does seem to be quite a step forward for RedHat and Enterprise software - and it was quite noticable that the meeting had generated a great deal of interest (the room which could only really hold 50 people was jam packed with about 70). There were some good speakers, some of whom had been shipped over from america by Redhat who seem to have some genuine experiance with RHEL out in the field with some very big clients (washington area / stock exchange). There were two areas of technology which i believe could be very important

1) GFS - The Red Hat Global File System (GFS) is a filesystem like ext3 etc but lets many servers share a file system and seemed very powerful - the idea behind it is providing support for cluster storage

2) Xen - They have fully integrated virtualization into RHEL 5, providing kernels, gui support etc. Xen supports more than linux virtualisation including support for windows XP etc. More information here http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/

Using RHEL5, Clustering, GFS and Xen large amounts of processing power can be made available across multiple cluster nodes on varying hardware. Providing for example, multiple test environments without needing separate dedicated hardware or zero downtime for clients - the “servers” can be migrated live between nodes with users experiancing only a slight lag on some network requests (this was bravely demo’d at the presentation and seemed to work well).

The new Shine portal http://mobile.shinetech.com continues apace behind the scenes with a proper release coming very soon as we finalise our mobile development direction. And with the second of our internal J2ME certification courses completed last week we should have more SCMAD certified developers in the near future….