Brandon E Taylor's Weblog Cogitations, Meditations, and Ruminations

New Public SMASH Specifications

• DSP1052, Computer System Profile
• DSP1004, Base Server Profile
• DSP1010, Record Log Profile

In a related note, the DMTF made the 2.13 version of the CIM schema available last month. This version includes a number of interesting changes, including changes to model multi-core processors and to improve the modeling of network ports, boot configurations, and firmware. ( Oct 02 2006, 12:46:25 PM PDT ) Permalink

Early N1 System Manager Articles

The Inquirer: Sun votes AMD, puts hatchet into Red Hat Linux (05/04/05)
" The new and exciting bit [from NC05Q2] was something called N1 System Manager..."

The Unix Guardian: Sun Expands N1 Systems Management Programs(05/05/05)
"The interesting bit with this tool is that N1 System Manager has a combination command line and GUI interface, and when you do commands in one interface, they are shown executing in the other interface as well."
The System Manager user experience is a source of pride for us.

ServerWatch: Enterprise Unix Roundup: Sun's Line in the Sand (05/05/05)
"We ... came up with the following highlights [from NC05Q2]...
* N1 System Manager was introduced..."

ServerWatch: Sun Revamps Its N1 Strategy (05/03/05)

jax magazine: Sun Microsystems Announces Sun N1 System Manager (05/04/05)
( May 05 2005, 11:59:32 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

N1 System Manager

Now that N1 System Manager - a product that I helped to architect - has been announced at NC05Q2, I can finally start to talk about it. System Manager is a systems management product, as the name implies, intended to manage the lifecycle of hundreds of systems from initial provisioning, through monitoring and maintenance, to re-provisioning or decommissioning. With a solid feature set, well designed user interfaces, and an initial focus on Sun's line of impressive x64 servers (e.g. Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z), System Manager makes a great new addition to our N1 portfolio.

More Information:

• Product Page
• Features and Benefits
• Data Sheet
• FAQ

J2EE 5.0 - Early Draft

An Early Draft of the J2EE 5.0 (JSR 244) specification has been published for public review. The primary theme for J2EE 5.0 is "ease of development", a theme in which JSR 175 ("A Metadata Facility for the Java Programming Language") plays a key role. The specification can be downloaded here.
( Apr 07 2005, 08:35:29 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Joda

Current subprojects include:

• Joda Time - date and time API
• Joda Primitives - collections designed for primitive types
• Joda Beans - "next generation" bean handling API

Joda Time appears to be the current 'marquis' API of the project. At least one blogger has remarked on the interesting design decisions evident in the API.
( Mar 22 2005, 10:42:45 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

HTTPLR

B.de hOra has published a draft specification for HTTPLR. HTTPLR is "an application protocol for reliable transmission of messages using HTTP". Significantly, HTTPLR achieves a measure of reliability without requiring that both participants in the communication are HTTP servers.
( Mar 15 2005, 02:32:43 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Patterns in Enterprise Software

Martin Fowler has posted a "survey of various efforts to catalog patterns for enterprise software development" to his website. The survey can be found here.
( Mar 10 2005, 01:26:43 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

JavaToolbox

A new website, JavaToolbox, has been launched to serve as a directory for "tools, libraries and plug-ins for Java/J2EE development". The directory is organized into categories and contains freeware, open source, and commercial products.
( Mar 07 2005, 01:32:44 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Binary Data in SOAP Messages

The World Wide Web Consortium recently published three new Web Service Recommendations intended to improve the performance of Web Services applications that handle binary data.

XML-binary Optimized Packaging (XOP) defines a "means of more efficiently serializing XML Infosets that [include binary content]."

Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) defines a "feature for optimizing the transmission and/or wire format of SOAP messages".

Resource Representation SOAP Header Block (RRSHB) describes the "semantics and serialization of a SOAP header block for carrying resource representations in SOAP messages".
( Mar 03 2005, 12:01:56 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

PatternShare Community

The PatternShare community site "brings together software patterns from different authors in one place to show relationships between existing patterns and to encourage you to contribute new ones."

A large number of patterns are already included in the repository. Included are patterns from:

• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - M.Fowler
• Pattern Oriented Software Architecture - F.Buschmann, et al.
• Design Patterns - E.Gamma, et al.
• Patterns & Practices - Microsoft
• Domain Driven Design - E.Evans
• Enterprise Integration Patterns - G.Hohpe and B.Woolf

JSourcery

JSourcery is a website providing access to browsable javadocs and source code for an increasing number of open source Java projects. The source code browser provides hyperlinks from all class, object, and method references to where the identifier was declared.
( Feb 15 2005, 04:00:27 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Commons Transaction

The Commons Transaction package is a Jakarta Commons package providing "lightweight, standardized, well tested and efficient implementations of utility classes commonly used in transactional Java programming".

The 1.1 release of Commons Transaction provides transactional Maps, multi-level locks, and transactional file access.

Maybe I can finally get rid of those old 'transactional' file utilities I built ages ago. :-)
( Feb 14 2005, 10:23:57 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

PostgreSQL 8.0 Released

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has announced the 8.0 release of the PostgreSQL object-relational DBMS.

Some of the new features in the 8.0 release include:

• savepoints
• point-in-time recovery
• tablespaces
• Win32 native server

CIM Schema 2.9 Released

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) recently announced the release of the final version of the Common Information Model (CIM) Schema Version 2.9.

The primary focus of CIM 2.9 is to provide the new diagnostic components needed for the 2.0 version of the Common Diagnostic Model (CDM). CDM is a model for diagnostic services.
( Jan 11 2005, 02:32:18 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Java Persistence Mechanisms

Sun Labs has published a paper by Mick Jordan entitled: A Comparative Study of Persistence Mechanisms for the Java Platform (Sept 2004). This paper:

The comparison criteria used in the paper are:

• Orthogonality
• Persistence independence
• Reusability
• Performance
• Scalability
• Transaction support
• Operational complexity
• Evolution

The mechanisms compared in the paper are:

• Java Object Serialization
• JavaBeans Persistence
• Orthogonal Persistence
• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)
• Java Data Objects (JDO)
• Enterprise Java Beans (EJB)

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Hibernate version 3.0 is now in beta. One of the new features being touted is a new HQL implementation that uses an ANTLR parser to transform HQL/EJBQL to SQL. A full list of new features can be found here. The final version of Hibernate3 is scheduled for Q1 2005.

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The JDO Expert Group has announced the availability of the Public Draft of JSR 234: "Java Data Objects 2.0 - An Extension to the JDO specification".

Some of the more interesting new features include:

• metadata describing object-relational mapping of persistence-capable classes
• JDOQL enhancements, including projections
• support for instance attachment/detachment (e.g. detach a persistent instance, modify that instance, and attach that instance back into a persistence manager)