Feature

A Security Analysis of Cloud Computing

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:22:00 EST

With its ability to provide users dynamically scalable, shared resources over the Internet and avoid large upfront fixed costs, cloud computing promises to change the future of computing. However, storing a lot of data creates a situation similar to storing a lot of money, attracting more frequent assaults by increasingly skilled and highly motivated attackers. As a result, security is one – if not the – top issue that users have when considering cloud computing.

A Key Phase in SOA Executed Programs

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

Today, every IT enablement and business transformation task has an element of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) embedded in it. However, even with matured SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) processes for IT execution, the gap in identifying business services for an SOA implementation still remain. Architects and business stakeholders are generally found struggling with questions such as “When should we identify a service?”; “Who should be identifying them?”; “What should be a service and why?” Service identification in enterprise architecture involves realizing the enterprise's business vision.

Down-to-Earth Contracts that Keep the Cloud Aloft

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:45:00 EST

This article looks at the basic interoperability requirements when communicating with the Cloud, and in particular at techniques and standards used to express and enforce wire-level contracts between communicating parties, as these parties are increasingly also contracting parties in a Cloud environment. Many standards already developed for Web services and service-oriented architectures provide to the communicating parties a good understanding and control of the expected quality of service at the most basic level of the interaction.

Oracle & Cloud Computing: Exclusive Q&A with SVP Richard Sarwal

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:15:00 EDT

"We believe that cloud is an important trend that we will support. We have two objectives. The first is to ensure that cloud computing is fully enterprise grade, meaning high performance, scalability, reliability, availability, security and standards-based for portability and interoperability. Second, we will support both public and private cloud computing in order to give customers choice," says Richard Sarwal, SVP Product Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager - and upcoming Keynote Speaker at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo - in this Exclusive Q&A with Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan.

Build Reliability into Cloud Computing for SMBs

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

With IP networks taking on many new challenges from VoIP, rich multimedia and other high-bandwidth consuming and high-priority applications, SMBs need to be sure the network connectivity between their business and Cloud Computing provider is protected with controls for reliable Internet circuit availability, and for optimizing delivery of traffic to critical applications.

Tips for Efficient PaaS Application Design

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EDT

On yet another application review with a prospective client the issue of potentially troublesome data entity relationships came up. A number of our clients are existing QuickBase users who have made an initial attempt to design their applications and find that some assistance is needed. The first thing we look at to understand their application requirements are the data entity relationships.

Eight Gates to Great SOA Governance

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:00:00 EDT

While there’s certainly no shortage of opinions on the future of SOA, the reality is that SOA is very much alive. The core principles of what SOA can do in terms of cost savings, increased productivity, and the virtual elimination of information and application silos won’t go away. However, the term “SOA” will likely evolve into something else, as it becomes more and more a part of the computing landscape.

ESB Pattern: What Is the ESB?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:00:00 EDT

ESB products emerged around 2002 from message-oriented middleware (MOM). Faced with market domination by IBM, MOM vendors were the first to jumpstart the ESB concept with the aim of developing a unique selling proposition. They added Web service and EAI capabilities on top of existing message broker capabilities, and with analyst support coined the term ESB. ESB was positioned as a low-cost alternative to EAI and panacea for all integration needs – tell-tale signs of hype.

XPath Support in Oracle JDeveloper 11g

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:45:00 EDT

XML documents can be used to transfer data. The data in an XML document can be retrieved either with the JAXP (Java API for XML Processing) DOM and SAX APIs, or with the JAXP XPath API. Addressing an XML document with XPath has the advantage of selecting a single node directly without iterating over a node set. In this article, we’ll explore XPath support in Oracle JDeveloper-XDK 11g.

An Introduction to Abbot

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:45:00 EDT

The common methods for functional GUI testing are the "record and execute" script technique and writing test programs for different scenarios. In the "record and execute," the test designer interacts with the GUI and all the events are recorded in a script. The script can later be replayed to re-create user interactions for a particular scenario. In the test programs, the test designer tries to understand and write tests for the various GUI decision points. This article discusses how Abbot can be used to quickly and effectively come up with a comprehensive GUI test framework for Swing GUI applications. Abbot (http://abbot.sourceforge.net/) is a JUnit extension for Swing GUI testing. It provides an interesting framework that can be used for test case generation as well as "record and execute" scripting.

Why SOA Is a Good Fit for CRM Solutions

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:15:00 EDT

Online commerce is no longer just for consumer products, but also for direct and indirect goods and services. As a result, new demands are placed on classic customer relationship management (CRM) applications. While most have successfully automated customer-facing interactions (such as order capture, configuration, pricing, and order query), they still rely on external systems to process subsequent steps (such as invoicing, fulfillment, and pick-pack-ship), which are completed in a back-office enterprise resource planning (ERP) application.

Configuring JDBC in Oracle JDeveloper

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:45:00 EDT

The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API is used to access a SQL database from a Java application. JDBC also supports tabular data sources, such as a spreadsheet. Oracle JDeveloper is a free Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for modeling, developing, debugging, optimizing, and deploying Java applications.

Improving the Efficiency of SOA-Based Applications

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:30:00 EDT

According to Moore’s Law, processing speed and storage capacity have been doubling about every two years since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958. Yet it seems that our propensity for building larger more complex software systems that anticipate these improvements inevitably outpace the exponential growth in capacity to support these systems.

Book Review: Processing XML Documents with JDeveloper 11g

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:30:00 EDT

The thing about book reviews, like movie reviews, is the interpretation by the reviewer is subjective. The trick is for you the review reader to work out does the reviewer have the same tastes and likes as you. If yes that should mean that the book review will be relevant to you potentially giving a recommendation that suits your needs. If no you might miss a really good book or waste a couple of those hard earned squid.

The Future of SOA

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:30:00 EDT

As consumers we are accustomed to the end-user experience of the Internet. With HTTP and XML, you don’t need to have a specific application on your computer to make use of external data – you can just open a browser window and do a search or visit a particular Web site to find the information you need.

Java Persistence on the Grid: Approaches to Integration

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:00:00 EDT

The Java Persistence API (JPA) is the enterprise standard for accessing relational data in Java. JPA provides support for mapping Java objects to a database schema and includes a simple programming API and expressive query language for retrieving mapped entities from a database and writing back changes made to these entities. JPA offers developers productivity gains over writing and maintaining their own mapping code allowing a single API regardless of the platform, application server, or persistence provider implementation.

A Guide to Ensuring the Success of Your SOA Governance

Mon, 04 May 2009 14:15:00 EDT

SOA is continuing to gain widespread adoption and find success beyond pilot and project implementations, according to recent surveys. There is a steady increase in organizations moving to enterprise-wide SOA deployments. Those that have found success maturing to large-scale SOA have one thing in common: they all have effective governance practices to keep SOA on track with the business.

Building Private and Hybrid Clouds with Ubuntu 9.04

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) has been released today bringing highly interesting new features, specially in the Cloud Computing and Virtualization area. The new Ubuntu server distribution includes two complementary cloud tools, OpenNebula and Eucalyptus, so providing the technology required to build the three types of Cloud architectures, namely private, hybrid and public clouds.

Supporting Oracle Failover in PowerBuilder Applications

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:15:00 EDT

Oracle has provided support for failing over database connections and, through Transparent Application Failover (TAF), doing so in a way that allows connected applications to continue functioning relatively uninterrupted during and after the failover. The connected application has to work with the Oracle client layer to participate in the failover, rather than just erroring out when the original connection is lost.

Universal Middleware: What's Happening With OSGi and Why You Should Care

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

The Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) Alliance is working to realize the vision of a 'universal middleware' that will address issues such as application packaging, versioning, deployment, publication, and discovery. In this article we'll examine the need for the kind of container model provided by the OSGi, outline the capabilities it would provide, and discuss its relationship to complementary technologies such as SOA, SCA, and Spring.

SOA and eXtreme Transaction Processing (XTP)

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:45:00 EDT

Financial institutions are pushing the envelope and require more processing capability, but without requiring exponential increase in hardware costs. The growth of extreme transaction processing (XTP) in areas such as fraud detection, risk computation, and stock trade resolution are pushing current solutions such as those based on the mainframe to the limit. These new applications require a new computing paradigm.

Why an Application Grid?

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:00:00 EDT

Application servers, those dependable workhorses that run most enterprise Java applications, are rarely a hot topic of conversation these days. As a technology category, the application server appears to be fairly “established” and that the focus has moved elsewhere in the stack, but appearances can be deceiving.

Innovate with SOA - I

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:00:00 EST

The 80/20 rule has negative implications for traditional IT reousrce allocation, with the 80 percent going to maintenance, and only 20 percent to innovation. How can you innovate with SOA to flip this ratio on its head?

Managing Complexity Within a BPEL Environment

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:45:00 EST

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has become mainstream technology for integrating disparate systems and applications. For building composite applications, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) has emerged as the standard for business process flow orchestration and application integration within organizations. Many IT organizations are deploying composite applications that use BPEL to automate critical business processes.

Tooling Up for Web 2.0

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:00:00 EST

Most of the discussion surrounding Web 2.0 applications revolves around the way it revolutionized end users' interaction with applications and with other users. An area that is sometimes left out of the discussion is the impact Web 2.0 had on the developers who are actually building these applications. Creating Web 2.0 applications involves a variety of technologies and standards from UI technologies such as AJAX and DHTML to back-end technologies such as SOA and other mash-up technologies.

Engelbart's Usability Dilemma: Efficiency vs Ease-of-Use

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:15:00 EDT

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

Virtualization, SaaS & SOA: Introducing Service Oriented Programming

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:15:00 EST

The advent of SOA and standard-base Web services together with Internet based delivery models has provided the essential base for facilitating new software platform innovations. One of these innovations is a breakthrough software componentization technique that we have coined Service Oriented Programming (SOP). While SOA focuses on communication between systems using 'service operations,' SOP provides a new technique to build agile application modules using in-process, native service operations as the 'units of assembly.'

Oracle WebCenter Embraces SOA Concepts and the Latest in Web 2.0 Technology

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:00:00 EST

M&S Consulting is a technology and strategy consulting firm that delivers enterprise process and technology solutions for mission critical objectives. As adopters of other Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings including Application Server, Portal, BI, and SOA Suite (BPEL/ESB/BAM), M&S Consulting has also embraced Oracle's new Fusion Middleware offering called ?Oracle WebCenter?. In this review, we take a closer look at the recently announced Oracle WebCenter Suite. We checked out the capabilities that are included in the current release and mapped them to a set of requirements that are common among the majority of our customers.