Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for April, 2007
Performance for Dummies
Apr 27th
This week I attended our AMIS Query on “How the Middle Tier is slowing the Database down” by renowned performance “problem solver” Anjo Kolk. When I saw the announcement for this AMIS Query I had no doubts I wanted to be there. It may seem a highly technical subject, yet, as a project manager, performance is often an issue I encounter. I like to know what’s going on and understand, if only a little, what issues may be in play. So, while I did not understand everything Anjo said, I learned a few valuable lessons. I paraphrase them in my own words. Any errors are therefore errors of mine.
A SAN may be a very modern part of the technical architecture. Yet: why put the cache far away from the database as a SAN cache and not as a cache on the database server. The SAN vendor certainly likes it (it is expensive). The connection between the DB server and the SAN is often high in bandwidth. The weakest link however is latency: how many requests per second can the line process. This puts the bottleneck
Read the rest of this entry »
New book shipment to further build our library
Apr 27th
This week we added more than 50 books to our ever expanding library of books on Design Patterns, Oracle Database Administration, Script Languages, Agile Development, Core Java, SOA, Security and even .Net. Some of the titles we received are listed below. If you have suggestions for other valuable titles, feel welcome to share them with us.
* SQL Hacks ILLUSTRATED (Paperback) by Andrew Cumming (Author), Gordon Russell (Author) # Publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc. (November 21, 2006) ISBN-10: 0596527993
* Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse (Developer’s Library) by Anil Hemrajani (Author)# Publisher: Sams; 1st edition (May 9, 2006) # ISBN-10: 0672328968 http://www.amazon.com/Development-Hibernate-Eclipse-Developers-Library/dp/0672328968/
* Model-Driven Software Development: Technology, Engineering, Management (Paperback) by Thomas Stahl (Author), Markus Voelter (Author), Krzysztof Czarnecki (Foreword)Publisher: Wiley (May 19, 2006) # ISBN-10: 0470025700
* Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML: Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle BI Suite seminar Utrecht
Apr 27th
Last Wednesday I visited the Oracle BI seminar in Utrecht. Underneath you find a brief description of the highlights.
First of all Wouter van der Brugghen presented the Oracle BI strategy. Main strategic focus of Oracle BI is summarized below:
- Primary marketing tagline is: Pervasive BI, meaning BI for everybody. As an example the Cisco organisation was mentioned, which started with 500 expert users, now has 20.000 users and will grow towards almost all 40.000 employees worldwide.
Read the rest of this entry »
EBS advanced topologies: Sharing APPL_TOP, ORACLE_HOMEs, err… heck, why don’t we share it all?
Apr 25th
Implementing a shared APPL_TOP with
E-Business Suite is common practice these days. Since 11.5.10, there
is also support for a shared technology stack (8.0.6 and iAS
ORACLE_HOMEs).
But what if you want to share the whole lot, also the ORACLE_HOME for the database, the ORACLE_HOME for Clusterware? Would you
want to do this, or is it better to have the ORACLE_HOMEs for the
database dedicated per node, on local storage?
Oracle supports sharing the ORACLE_HOME
for the database since 9i release 2 (I am not sure about earlier
releases).
I will try to explain a bit about this
feature in this article. Read the rest of this entry »
SAN, SUN and SOA, better run and hide – Likes and dislikes of Anjo Kolk – report of an inspiring AMIS Query on Performance
Apr 25th
Last night, we hosted an inspiring and thought provoking AMIS Query, with some 70 developers, project managers and primarily DBAs. The presentator was well known performance expert ("I just solve problems, I do not call myself performance expert") Anjo Kolk whose YAPP paper and thoughts on Response Time helped shape our current way of thinking about (database) performance. Anjo told a lot of stories from his experiences in the field, literally around the world, and painted a picture of how to approach performance ’situations’.
The main theme he seemed to radiate was: use your common sense. Do not blindly follow so called common and best practices, silver bullets and experts’ pearls of wisdom. Keep thinking! His primary method of analyzing problems: keep asking WHY? Do not focus so much on HOW operations are performed – trying to tune SQL statements to death -, start with WHAT should be done to begin with, as the best performing statement is the one you do not have to execute at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Back to the Future
Apr 23rd
Last week I revisited a client in the healthcare sector. A client where I delivered a project for a Central Laboratory Information System back in ‘97. I was the Information Analyst and later Project Manager.
Back in the nineties I loved this project. The previous system was over 20 years old and the plan was to rebuild this with minor modifications in Oracle’s (then) latest technology: Developer/2000 and Designer/2000 (we started with the 1.0 version). After an initial pilot we decided a complete functional redesign would be the best approach. So that is what we did: with a full user complement in a room with a whiteboard, we started sketching the foundations for the future. I had the privilege of facilitating this design, followed by the overall projectmanagement of ICT team and Client Team of the build and implementation phases. Of course all data of the 20 year old predecessor had to me converted as well!! (On data conversion I’ll probably blog some more in the future ). The project had its ups and downs, but we delivered. On time. On budget. With a little bit more aftercare than I anticipated, but still. A project I am proud of. Later, we added the bespoke Laboratory Informations Management System (bridging the tests in the Lab to the central system) with equal success.
As I said: I revisited the client last week. It was great to hear that the system was still fully functional and in use. By pretty much the same people that helped design and test it, by the way. The envisioned flexibility of new tests, intelligence in interpreting results and scheduling new tests, reporting the results with added conclusions, … It all worked! And it still did!
We strolled down memory lane together for a while, before discussing the latest BPEL trends in ICT. When I explained how how easy it is to set up your Business Processes as your Guide through the different laboratories, each with their own internal processes and expertise, their conclusion was that this was exactly what we had done with the intelligent follow-up testing we designed, back then.
BPEL with Designer/2000. Just design it right!
Supermanager!? Not!
Apr 19th
As a manager I had an encounter with myself today. Actually I had one with my team. Personally I thought I had it all figured out just fine. My clients are happy at the moment, my boss is happy with the current progress of my projects. So, everything is looking comfortable; at least that’s what I thought.
I forgot my team!
By focussing too much on my desire to please my clients and managing my team on that desire, I forgot that my team makes my clients’ wishes come true. And that it is not my job to take a decision to make changes in for example our release scheme without consulting my team. When a manager thinks it is all easy and he can do it all, hopefully your team gives you a hint!
Happily for me my team did. I forgot my job as a manager to ensure that my team has the right environment to work in. Instead I made their lives miserable by making it more difficult to fulfill my clients’ wishes.
Thanks team!
Unit testing Javascripts in Java 6 – Getting started with the javax.script api
Apr 19th
I intended to reduce
the things I do with Javascript. But maybe Javascript isn’t that bad when you
can run it inside java. I’m still working on a very ‘interesting’ project with asp and Javascript files. Since I didn’t create a single JUnit
for two weeks I thought it was time to unit test an updated Javascript. Replace
var with int and I was almost done.
But then I recalled
that I read a book about Java 6 and I didn’t have to change a single line of
Javascript.
Sjoerd Michels becomes our second Oracle Regional Director for Fusion Middleware
Apr 19th
Oracle has informed him this week that the nomination for Sjoerd Michels, expertise manager for SOA & BI, for Oracle Regional Director Fusion Middleware has been accepted! Sjoerd hereby becomes member of an elite group of 23 ‘technoloy evangelists for Oracle Fusion Middleware’ from all around the world. He is only the third with this title inside The Netherlands and the second one at AMIS to be awarded this title. You can find Sjoerd on the Oracle Fusion Middleware Regional Director homepage on OTN. 
Oracle’s statement on Regional Directors in general – and Sjoerd in particular – "Oracle Fusion Middleware Regional Directors are independent
technologists identified by Oracle for their leadership and ability to
share information about Oracle Fusion Middleware technology with their
local technical communities. Regional Directors are trusted by their
peers for providing an objective viewpoint and talking with developers
in their own "language."
While Sjoerd’s nomination is of course his own achievement, it also reflects the deep commitment AMIS has with technology and especially building up expertise as a team and also sharing that information, not just within our own organization, Read the rest of this entry »
Why you should never ever copy code – An example of complete chaos
Apr 18th
It seems innocent, a
few lines of code used twice in the same application. But before you know know
it those lines appear 272 times in your application! You guessed it right and
you’re probably wondering how could that happen. I’ll try to explain what
happened and how to prevent it.
When I started on the
Locatus project my colleague Erik warned me to never copy any code. What’s
wrong with twice the same lines I thought at that time, but luckily I followed
his advise and the Locatus application is still very maintainable thanks to
Erik, JUnit and Spring. When you start copying, it never ends. Three times is
still not much and quite maintainable, but what’s the limit? A few months later
I found out that one occurence is the limit, just don’t copy anything.
