Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
KC IT Architecture
Automatic testing Oracle Service Bus using Hudson, maven and SoapUI
Feb 23rd
A lot of current projects are implementing some sort of service based architecture. Testing in this architecture becomes more complex. When implementing an OSB project with Scrum you test-automation is imperative. Scrum will require more frequent testing of your system. This is only feasible (in time and money) when you automate as much as possible.
Using soapUI you are able to create visually SOAP tests on your OSB implementation and running them against the defined infrastructure (develop, test, acceptance). SoapUI enables with easy tools to implements verification and validation of the responses of your OSB implementation. When running the test you are also able to set limits in SLA response times on all the calls. This way you are able to monitor depreciation of performance in older parts of your OSB implementation when adding new services.
You can record and edit your SOAP test easy with the soapUI interface and edit it later. When you maven-enable your project it is quite easy running your tests when you implement the “maven-soapui-plugin” (see my other posting http://technology.amis.nl/blog/3061/automated-soap-testing-with-maven). In the meantime version 3.0 of this plugin is released.
When implementing this with Hudson you do not have to convert the results.xml into a Surefire report. Hudson will manage this for you. Hudson will also enable you with an historical overview of all your test results.
Agile software development, the principles. Principle 11: The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
Dec 14th
This is the eleventh of 12 posts about the principles of agile software development. Purpose is to go back to the start of the agile manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html) and discuss the implementation of the 12 principles in real life software engineering. Goals of agility are to go deliver software of higher quality, faster, with a higher acceptance to end-users and able to follow the changing business requirements to strive for competitive advantage.
The question is: is this going to work in practice or is this only based on a nice marketing and sales story.
Principle 11: The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
For a long time the engineering expertise (and also software engineering) was based upon the condition that you worked with specialists. These specialists emerged from the principle of division of labour and made it possible for these specialists to focus their attention on their specialism and create the best solution within their field of expertise. The Interaction designer designed a user interface, the architect created a global systems model, developers created code and infrastructure specialists created the necessary environment to run the application on.
Everyone was specialized and delivered the best solution within their capabilities. However when all these components where put together, noting worked. It is an illusion that specialists can design and foresee everything beforehand.
Within agile projects the solution is to use a self organizing team to perform these tasks. This team may consist of specialist, but this is not a requirement. The requirement of this team is that they work together and self-organize all aspects of the systems to be delivered. This team is permitted to make errors and invent their solutions, provided that they deliver and evaluate frequently (retrospective) and learn from their successes (and errors).
Oracle Enhances XBRL Reporting Capabilities with UBmatrix, Inc.
Jun 27th
Oracle posted a press release about their involvement and commitment for UBMatrix XBRL technologies last Wednesday saying (among others):
"To help publicly held companies facilitate the preparation, publishing and automatic exchange of financial statements in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), Oracle will embed UBmatrix, Inc.’s leading XBRL technology into Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System, Oracle announced today."
"Oracle and UBmatrix are also working together to provide enterprise class storage and management for XBRL-based information in Oracle® Database 11g. Using Oracle Database’s XML DB feature, organizations can easily and quickly store, access and query their XBRL data."
A lot of you might ask themselves: "Who are or what is UBMatrix?" and "How does it all fit in…?"
UBMatrix is one of those small but cool companies that have an idea and drive that idea to bigger heights. Their ideas about how to deal with XBRL and how to make it more succes full are very innovative. XBRL is an open standard to exchange and/or embed business and financial related data via XML. "Nothing more and nothing less…", but applying it has a great impact to other systems, sometimes called "the ripple effect".
XBRL is becoming the standard for financial information exchange and reporting demonstrated by the XBRL programs being driven by the SEC, FDIC, and the European Central Bank Supervisors. My Dutch Tax Office has embraced it and among others setup a taxonomy for XBRL (The Dutch Taxonomy Project). This "central hub" (the Dutch Tax Office) will eventually cause more and more organizations to exchange their data via XBRL (therefore the "ripple effect").
The setup for the Dutch Taxonomy project background is simple…
Enhancing fast queries using “Tapio-Indexes”
Jun 4th
During the years I have a lot of times encountered performance problems that ended up to be fast queries (less than 10ms) which are executed very much. In these situations the execution plans, from such queries can look like:
OPERATION OPTIONS OBJECT# NAME
-------------------- -------------------- ---------- -----------------------------------
SELECT STATEMENT .
SORT ORDER BY .
TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID 120713 XXX.TABLE_WITH_MANY_COLUMNS
INDEX RANGE SCAN 121558 XXX.INDEX_WITH_FEW_COLUMNS
In a lot of cases we deal with a query for example which is returning fewer columns than exists in the involved table like four, from an involved table having twenty columns. Although the execution plan looks already pretty “OK”, it still results in a query which is in top three most resource taking queries.
To enhance the query we can use “Fat Indexes” or nowadays better known “Tapio Indexes” (I call them like that nowadays). What are these kind of indexes…. In principle nothing really new, but for me a couple of years ago an (re)eye opener by Tapio Lahdenmaki. This Finish independent database performance consultant and instructor gave a presentation at Miracle Open World 2007 in Denmark, I attended. Tapio can present this topic in a very special way, and in my opinion “his message” should be known by all developers and dba’s.
Schrijf je in voor de ODTUG Sneak Preview op 15 juni 2009!
May 26th
Op maandag 15 juni 2009, een week voordat in Monterey de ODTUG 2009 plaats vindt, heb je de mogelijkheid om alvast te horen wat negen sprekers in de VS gaan presenteren, onder hen twee Oracle Aces en twee Oracle ACE directors.
- Aino Andriessen (AMIS Services) – ADF Development: More tales from the Trenches
- Lonneke Dikmans (Approach Alliance) – Top Ten Tips: Best Practices for Designing Services, Events, and Business Processes
- Olivier Dupont (iAdvise) – APEX at the Belgium airport
- Dimitri Gielis (APEX Evangelists) – Mastering an APEX page
- Roel Hartman (Logica) – How to integrate APEX and Oracle Forms?
- Lucas Jellema (AMIS Services) - Truth and Dare—The Story of How an Oracle Classic Stronghold Successfully Embraced SOA
- Toon Koppelaars (Rulegen) – Fat databases: A layered approach
- Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Approach Alliance) – Customer case: Implementing SOA in a database-centric environment
- Alex Nuijten (AMIS Services) – SQL Holmes – The case of the missing performance
In drie rondes kan steeds een keuze worden gemaakt uit drie presentaties over een aantal uiteenlopende onderwerpen, onder andere APEX, ADF, SOA en de database.
Dit jaar staat er zelfs één presentatie geprogrammeerd (van Dimitri Gielis) die exclusief op de ODTUG Sneak Preview bij te wonen is en uiteindelijk niet op de ODTUG te zien zal zijn.
Het is mogelijk om gratis deel te nemen aan deze unieke ODTUG Sneak Preview (aanmeldingsformulier)!!! Maar schrijf je snel in, want vol is vol!!!
De locatie van de Sneak Preview is het AMIS kantoor in Nieuwegein. De toegang tot de ODTUG Sneak Preview, het diner en de verfrissingen zijn gratis. Meer informatie over de presentaties vind je in de activiteitenagenda.
AMIS Query 18 Mei – Een Terugblik op Hotsos 2009
Apr 22nd
Begin maart 2009 werd in Irving, Texas, het internationale Oracle Performance Symposium Hotsos gehouden. Ook dit jaar stond het symposium garant voor inhoudelijke hoogstaande presentaties en discussies over performance. Vier Nederlanders, Jeroen Evers (Fameus), Toon Koppelaars (RuleGen), Gerwin Hendriksen (AMIS) en Marco Gralike (AMIS), hadden het genoegen om ter plekke te zijn en in de gelegenheid om al deze, over de aanwezigen uitgestorte (Oracle) performance verbeterende informatie, in zich op te nemen. Dit jaar was het Symposium sowieso bijzonder vanwege de 2 presentaties van Chris Date en een volledige in-depth training dag met Jonathan Lewis.
De AMIS Query “Een terugblik op Hotsos 2009”, op 18 mei aanstaande, zal een terugblik geven over het Hotsos Symposium van dit jaar en in gaan op vier, door de presentatoren, uitgekozen presentaties, onderwerpen, die op het Hotsos Symposium werden gegeven en die door ons Nederlanders als opmerkelijk werden ondervonden en/of een erg interessant onderwerp is om (ook) over te presenteren.
Jeroen Evers, een van de weinige Oracle Certified Masters in Nederland en OakTable lid, zal inhoud geven op deze avond aan de door hem bijgewoonde presentatie van Amit Poddar over “One Pass Distinct Sampling”. Een pittig onderwerp. Het is echter aan Jeroen toevertrouwd dat hij ons, netzo als in zijn dagelijkse werkzaamheden, een helder beeld kan schetsen m.b.t. de “in’s and out’s” over dit onderwerp.
Toon Koppelaars, zelf dit jaar ook weer presentator op Hotsos, mede auteur van het door velen geroemde boek “Applied Mathematics for Database Professionals” en OakTable lid, gaat deze avond presenteren over zijn visie t.a.v. de presentatie van “Using the PL/SQL Hierarchical Performance Profiler” van Bryn LLewellyn (Oracle) over een van de nieuwe performance profiler tools van de firma Oracle.
Gerwin Hendriksen, Principal Database Consultant en een van de Expertise Managers van AMIS, zal in de rebound, zijn presentatie “Practical Use of Method GAPP to Find Performance Bottlenecks for Business Processes in Complex Architectures” ten gehore geven. Dit jaar werd Gerwin voor de 2e maal gevraagd om te presenteren op Hotsos, maar door het ter plekke kapot gaan van hardware, was hij niet instaat om zijn presentatie kracht bij te zetten en in kleur en geur uit de doeken te doen. Nu eenmalig op herhaling.
Marco Gralike, AMIS, Principal Database Consultant en Oracle ACE voor het specialisme Oracle XMLDB, zal deze avond verhalen over het Symposium zelf door middel van een korte introductie over het fenomeen “Hotsos” en, later op de dag, over Christian Antognini’s presentatie over “Bloom Filters”.
Zie voor meer informatie over de Hotsos sprekers en de gegeven presentaties: Hotsos 2009
Zoals altijd is iedereen van harte uitgenodigd om gratis de AMIS Query “Een terugblik op Hotsos” bij te wonen en aan het begin van de avond zal er eten aanwezig zijn om het navolgende performance presentatie geweld snel en stabiel te kunnen doorstaan.
Schrijf je in via de: AMIS Activiteiten pagina.
Marco
Session announcement: Oracle Service Bus (25 feb 2009)
Feb 23rd
Just wanted to draw your attention to a "Knowledge Center" session at AMIS this wednessday (25 feb 2009, starting at 16:30). It concerns the new Oracle Service Bus (previously the BEA Aqualogic Service Bus), and will be presented by former collegue Jeroen van Wilgenburg, now working at Xebia. Jeroen has worked with the OSB on his current project, so he will be able to give us real-life experiences, not just a "summary of features"! For more information, and information on how to register, take a look at the AMIS Agenda: http://www.amis.nl/activiteiten.php?id=681&preview=&draft=
Extreme performance introduced by patchset 11.1.0.7 smart scan
Sep 25th
Larry yesterday did his keynote here at Oracle Open World introducing the "Oracle(R) Exadata Storage Server". This morning I attended a session about the technical details behind the server. In principal the server works with 8 nodes running RAC on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5. For the storage management ASM is used and since 11.1.0.7 smart scan has been introduced. Smart scan has been designed for very big data sources used in queries, like in Data Warehouses, where tables from tera bytes are common. In principle the following is accomplished using smart scan:
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AMIS Query – Preview Session Oracle Open World 2008
Aug 25th
We try to do our best, so some extra practice never hurts. If we think such an event or session can be interesting for our Dutch peers, we call it an AMIS Query. An AMIS Query is an in house event; one or more presentations from our AMIS colleagues or outside specialists from other companies. Everyone can attend and AMIS Query, at least, as long as we can logistically can manage it. Drinks and a dinner are provided during these sessions.
We asked the other Dutch Oracle Open World presenters if they also were interested in such an event and this resulted in the following impressive list:
- Steven Davelaar, Oracle Consulting, Nederland – Oracle JHeadstart R11: Unprecedented Productivity in Developing Best-Practice Fusion Web Applications
- Douwe Pieter van den Bos, Caesar Groep B.V., Technology Manager - Designer2APEX: Migrate Your Forms UIs to Oracle Application Express
- Roel Hartman, Logica – Developing a Real-World Logistic Application with Oracle Application Express
- Ronald van Luttikhuizen en Lonneke Dikmans, Approach Alliance - BEA AquaLogic Versus Oracle Fusion Middleware Shootout
- John Copier, IT-Eye – ESB Central: Applying SOA to Master Data Management in the Dutch Public Sector
- Lucas Jellema, AMIS – Optimal Use of Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Database 11g for Modern Application Development
- Peter Ebell & Lucas Jellema, AMIS – Did We Spoil the End User? Building Personalization into JavaServer Faces Technology-Based Applications
- Gerwin Hendriksen, AMIS – Jumping The GAPP
- Marco Gralike, AMIS – Real World Experience with Oracle XML Database 11g: An Oracle ACE’s Perspective
- Marco Gralike, AMIS – XMLDB: Building Blocks and Best Practices
- Frits Hoogland, Interaccess – Automatic Storage Management
We are still hoping for some extra presentations / presenters to be added on the list. Not everyone from the Dutch presenters could be reached yet, because of the holiday season. So expect one or two presentations to be added on this list. The presentations will be given in multiple session tracks, this because of the amount of participants and time restraints. If needed, we will cut down the AMIS presentations to a total of 3 sessions.
Interested in this all OOW 2K8 Dutch preview event?
- An overview in Dutch can be found here: Donderdag 11 september: Preview sessie Oracle Open World 2008
- And if you are interested in attending then please register here: Aanmelden evenement
We hope to see you there and / or during Oracle Open World.
Marco
The influence of the experience economy on IT architecture
Jul 23rd
AMIS is puting more and more emphasis on IT architecture. That is one of the reasons why I am doing my Masters in IT architecture and why AMIS is starting a knowledge center about IT architecture. The following paper is written for one of the masterclasses (Applying Architecture) that I have followed so far.
Introduction
Companies that are able to provide their customers an experience by providing emotionally and psychologically gratifying products perform well in the currently very competitive marketplace (Free, 2006). Companies like Apple, Disney and Starbucks are able to sell their products based on an added user experience. Customers are willing to pay more for products largely based on the emotions that these products raise to their buyers. Maybe Apple is one of the most well known companies that excel in delivering an added experience with their products. Apple customers identify themselves with the companies’ products. They want to show that they are different (European Centre for the Experience Economy, 2005).
This paper describes how the experience economy influences the role of an IT architect.
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