elemental links

Informatica World May 1-2, Anyone?

Next week, I'm off to Orlando to attend Informatica World 2007.  As I've mentioned several (too many?) times, I think information strategies are critical to a business-driven architecture.  I'm particularly interested in Informatica's data services strategy (Universal Data Services) and on-demand data integration. 

If you are attending the conference and want to meet-up, drop me an email bmichelson at elementallinks dot com.

[Disclosure: Informatica is not a client of Elemental Links, however Informatica is providing my travel and accommodations to Informatica World.]

Elemental Links Research Survey on web services and/or SOA Testing

Update 5.7.2007 @ 7:50pm - The Testing Research Survey will close tomorrow, 5.8.2007 around 9:00pm ET.  Thanks to those who have participated to date.  For those that haven't, there is still time!

At the risk of shocking readers with multiple posts in one day, I'd like to invite you to participate in a research survey I'm conducting in partnership with SOASTA.  The survey was designed to identify key insights into how companies are testing web services and applications.  For this survey, 'web services' does not imply a SOAP implementation.

In designing the survey, we don't assume that web services means SOA, and vice versa.  Specifically, in our adoption questions, we separate "Using web services in production" from "Adopting service-oriented architecture design and development practices".  So, in addition to learning about testing practices, there will be interesting information on adoption.  Survey participants can choose to receive the final report of the survey results. 

To take the survey, go here.  (it's quick). 

[Disclosure: SOASTA is a client of Elemental Links]

Event Processing Conversation Shifts from Research to Practitioners

[Update July 5, 2008 June 2, 2008 March 26, 2008 September 8, 2007 August 19, 2007 August 6, 2007 May 15, 2007 - updated blog list]

In March, as I was sending through a bunch of event processing (EDA, ESP, CEP) related links , JT posted that he sensed CEP was due for an inflection point.  I concur.  While event-driven architectures and event engines (streaming, complex) are not exactly new, the discussions around them became more prevalent and business/practitioner focused after Gartner placed EDA in the August 2006  hype cycle. (EDA is plotted on the "technology trigger" upslope, with a 5 - 10 year mainstream adoption.)

Instead of just streaming event processing related links through, I thought I'd take a minute to post on a collection of event processing related blogs that have good content for practitioners.  Some, like Marco on ESP, have existed for awhile. Others are new.  Here's my first pass at a list:

Aleri CEP Blog - Scott Groenendal, Jack Rusher, Jeff Wootton and friends 

Apama Blog  - John Bates, Chris Martins, and Mark Palmer friends of Progress' Apama

CEP Technology Blog  - Mark Tsimelzon of Coral8

Complex Event Processing - David Luckham, Father of CEP

Marco on ESP CEP - Marco Seiriö of ruleCore

SOA and EDA - Jack Van Hoof, Enterprise Integration Architect

StreamBlog - Barry Morris Mark Palmer of Streambase

Tibco Complex Event Processing - Tim Bass (and others) of Paul Vincent of Tibco

Complex Event Processing - Tim Bass of Tibco SilkRoad

Database Management Services and Text Technologies by Curt Monash

Alexandre Alve's Blog - Architect for BEA WebLogic Event Server

Event Processing Thinking - Opher Etzion, IBM and Event Processing Technical Society (EPTS)

Magmasystems Blog - Marc Alder, CEP Initiative Leader, Wall Street Investment Bank

BAM Blog - Brian Connell and West Global crew

Please share other blogs that should be listed here. 

Blackberry Jam: Poor System Testing

RIM has released a preliminary statement on the Blackberry outage (the emphasis is mine):

"RIM has determined that the incident was triggered by the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine that was designed to provide better optimization of the system's cache. The system routine was expected to be non-impacting with respect to the real-time operation of the BlackBerry infrastructure, but the pre-testing of the system routine proved to be insufficient.

The new system routine produced an unexpected impact and triggered a compounding series of interaction errors between the system's operational database and cache. After isolating the resulting database problem and unsuccessfully attempting to correct it, RIM began its failover process to a backup system.

Although the backup system and failover process had been repeatedly and successfully tested previously, the failover process did not fully perform to RIM's expectations in this situation and therefore caused further delay in restoring service and processing the resulting message queue.

RIM apologizes to customers for inconvenience resulting from the service interruption. RIM's root cause analysis and system enhancement process with respect to this incident is ongoing and RIM has already identified certain aspects of its testing, monitoring and recovery processes that will be enhanced as a result of the incident and in order to prevent recurrence."

Ouch!

Maine Readers: Maine Java Users Group, Wed 4/25

Next Wednesday, April 25, I'll be at the Maine Java User's Group talking about SOA.  The official session title is "Trends and Directions in Service Oriented Architecture".  An appropriate sub-title might be "Brenda's SOA Soapbox Items".  So, that could include: SOA and EDA, SOA adoption and maturity, SOA journeys to business value destinations, operational implications, governance and compliance, service mashup toolkits, service provisioning, the irony of monolithic SOA infrastructure, and/or anything else that seems relevant/irksome between now and then.

If you are a Maine based reader, please stop by.  If nothing else, it's a good chance to see MESDA headquarters and visit Thatchers.