With the Oracle Technet Virtual Developer Day coming up a great VirtualBox appliance came available. The developer day focusses on developing Java EE6 applications and Oracle WebLogic Suite 12c.
WebLogic Server 12.1.1 VirtualBox Appliance
The virtual machine contains:
- Oracle Linux 5, JDK 1.6 +
- Oracle WebLogic Server 12.1.1
- Oracle Coherence 3.7
- Oracle TopLink 12.1.1
- Hudson 2.2
- Subversion 1.4.2
- Apache Maven 3.0.1
- NetBeans IDE 7.1 RC2
- Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 12.1.1 / Eclipse 3.7
- Easter Egg: Introductory Labs for Oracle Coherence 3.7
All details on download and importing the appliance can be found on the VirtualBox instructions page. No need to say that the appliance has been released for development and testing purposes.
Labs
The image contains four Labs:
- Total Oracle WebLogic Server Development with Eclipse, Maven, and Hudson
- Hands on with an end-to-end Java EE6 Application
- A Step-By-Step Guide to Oracle Coherence
- Running the Coherence Examples Project in Eclipse
These can be found in the /home/oracle/labs/ directory. Web links to these Labs can be found here.
Categories: Oracle, Tools, VirtualBox, WLS
Tags: Eclipse, Hudson, Java, Maven, NetBeans, OEPE, VirtualBox, WLS
About 2 months ago InfoWorld published 11 programming trends to watch. I’d like to share three with you since they are close to home for me:
- No code is an island
- Bandwidth is no longer free
- Energy is no longer free, either
No code is an island
Having worked in integration project for almost a decade the idea that there is little code living on an island is not strange to me. However InfoWorld points out that besides that more and more software developer are creating products to enhance other products
Our code is living increasingly in ecosystems. Many PHP programmers, for instance, create plug-ins for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or some other framework. Their code is a module that works with other modules.
The same goes for development for mobile devices that rely increasingly on modules or apps created by others, whether they run on the device or in the cloud. This increases the demand for stable interfaces and contracts. Besides that the requirements for availability and scalability will weigh in heavier.
An urge for lean programming
Or create programs that deliver value in an efficient way. New releases of software programmers tend to demand always more resources (just a small example). The cost of keeping a computer plugged in has never been an issue. It never mattered how much energy your rack of servers sucked down because the colo just sent you a flat bill for each box.
The Cloud trend tends to make cost more transparent. Some of the clouds — like Google App Engine or Amazon S3 (example) — don’t bill by the rack or root password. They charge for database commits and queries. This adds a new perspective for software developers. We might need to start thinking about the cost of each subroutine in euros, not in lines of code, function points or milliseconds of execution time.
On the consumer side more and more ISPs adding bandwidth caps and metering. To a software developer this means that optimizing bandwidth consumption when designing apps is becoming imperative. Besides the cost issue this will also be needed because of the customer experience (loading speed etc).
Since this blog is also dedicated to sharing resources that are valueable to me I decided to share my reading list of 2011 with you.
Lean Integration: An Integration Factory Approach to Business Agility
A great best practices book on integration. The first part provides description of the business value of Lean. It introduces the core concepts. As a manager that doesn’t need all the details you could just read this part and you can get a good grasp of the ideas presented.
The second part translates the lean principles from the world of manufacturing to the world of systems integration. It has great case studies that shows the principles applied in a real world context.
Part three of the book provides a “how to” guide. This can be used as a reference and as such is a great desk-top reference manual. This book is great and a must read for all technology and business practitioners and innovators.
Web Service Contract Design and Versioning for SOA
Great reference (not a book that I read front to back) on Web Service Design from Thomas Erl and his co-authors. This book focuses exclusively on the contract part of the service. Due to the depth it is a extensive resource to use besides others. The book is filled with extensive examples on how to meet the goals of SOA properly using contract design.
Via the site of the publisher and on iTunes are additional service design podcasts by the authors of the book. Could be a great resource to start with.
The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
This is a great book on problem solving, extremely useful and in a sense thought provoking. It structures problem-solving into a six by five visual codex. This makes sense; you can literally see the evolution of the thought processes and the development of the insights take shape through the pages. Fun read as well.
Recently I engaged with a customer who experiences (among other problems) the following. Since there is hardly any info on Oracle Support or blogs I thought I’d share some info here:
WSIF JCA Execute of operation 'SomeService' failed due to: Unable to create control directory.
Unable to create control directory: "/mnt/queues/controldir/bpel/fileftp/controlFiles/epajYGFxPFPErSM8HcN8HQ==/outbound".
; nested exception is:
ORABPEL-11075
Unable to create control directory.
Unable to create control directory: "/mnt/queues/controldir/bpel/fileftp/controlFiles/epajYGFxPFPErSM8HcN8HQ==/outbound".
Please make sure that the directory name is valid and that there are adequate permissions to create the directory.
Solution
As the last part of the error message suggests, check for file system stuff:
- Is the share and/or mount your file / ftp adapter is pointing to still available?
- Can the share be reached from your SOA Server?
- Does the directory name exist?
- Are the required permissions available?
Correct inaccuracies.
Common Issues and Workarounds for File/FTP Adapter
There is an extensive document on solving issues with file and FTP adapters on Oracle support. The documentation for file and FTP adapters can be found:
- 11g JCA File / FTP adapter
- 10g File / FTP Adapter
Wishing you and your loved ones all the best for 2012!
That you may enjoy life’s little (and not so little) miracles each and every day.
Just uploaded the presentation I gave at the Seminar “Architecture and Governance”:
Certificate Professional Scrum Master I
Maybe you noted that there was a growing number of post on subjects like
Scrum,
Agile and
Lean on my blog. Because of my renewed experience in this field. I decide to go for certification on the subject.
Besides the Scrum Guide and a training, you can find additional Scrum resources i like here.
As you can see in the picture in this post I succeeded.
Congratulations on passing the PSM I assessment! You have demonstrated a fundamental knowledge of the Scrum process. This qualifies you for certification as a Professional Scrum Master I.
Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.1) is available for download. The main themes of the new release are according to Oracle:
- Java EE 6 and Developer Productivity
- Simplified Deployment and Management with Virtualization
- Integrated Traffic Management
- Enhanced Availability and Disaster Recovery
- Much Higher Performance
- Seamless Upgrade
WebLogic Server 12 is available as installer or ZIP distribution. Download WebLogic Server 12c. Other useful links:
Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (12.1.1) available
Shortly after WLS 12c Oracle also has released OEPE 12.1.1 – Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. It is certified on Windows 7/XP/Vista, MacOS, and Linux. OEPE is supported on JDK 6.
Update: WebLogic 12.1.1 VirtualBox Appliance available
With OTN Virtual Developer Day a WebLogic 12c VirtualBox appliance became available. On the appliance there are Labs and other Java development tools like: Hudson, Subversion, Maven, NetBeans IDE, and Eclipse (including OEPE).
Still wanted to share some thought and ideas with you I took from the LAC 2011 – the largest symposium in The Netherlands on architecture in the digital world. The larger part of this post is taken from the key note on Speed and Innovation through Architecture by Jan Bosch. He states:
Speed trumps any other improvement R&D can provide to the company.
Speed and time to market deliver far more value than increasing the efficiency of a process. This especially holds for non-repetitive process like (software) product creation. To increase the speed and reduce time to market we should focus on the following aspects:
- Small teams
- Architecture
- Release process
Small teams
Small teams work on the people side because a team member can experience the fruits of his or her individual efforts while on the other hand they contain the rewarding social element of camaraderie. Both are necessary for people to see their work as fulfilling.
On the process side, small teams increase speed because of the lowered need for coordination within the team and the existence of complexity. A team larger than three is required because of the need to learn from each other, the ability to deliver significant work and enable preservation of knowledge from the feedback the team has encountered. To get speed in the team at a high level the team needs to be self directed and managed.
Architecture – Keep it simple
First and foremost make sure your architecture enables you to simplify things! Keep in mind that rules and constraints can create complexity. And that is something you wanted to avoid when you started with architecture in the first place.
Architecture provides simplicity, compositionality and is designed in parallel with software development
An example would be to limit the number of things a team has to worry about during development. This could be done by applying the 3 API rule and there are other ways as well. Allways ask the questions whether the architecture enables the development team to perform.
Release process
In order to get speed into your development process you need to know/measure what people do, not what they think. Factor out opinion and chose data. To get proper results here you need a short PDCA cycle. Check and measure to get results back into your development process. This requires that you release early and often. Which in turn demands automated deployment and test.
The basics of Scrum can be found in the Scrum Guide. Besides that there are loads of resources available on the subject. In this post I’ll share a few with you I recently discussed with my colleagues:
- The Nine Boxes – Interviewing technique to help you understand problems and opportunities faced by others.
- Tools, tricks, and tips for great retrospectives can be found in the book: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
- The classic on The Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Optimized Production Technology (OPT): The Goal. Very interesting book on ongoing improvement written in an easy to read novel style.
Besides these the online library of one of my colleagues gives some other great hints. You might also like to read his selection of 10 from ‘Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U.S. Marines’.
