Mani's blog: Mani Chandrasekaran's Weblog

Has been a long time, since I posted on this blog. There has been a few product announcements, which are exciting:

1. Sun release new Sun Role Manager 5.0 and Directory Server Enterprise Edition 7.0. Click this link for more details
2. Sun Releases New Update for Solaris 10 Operating System : Builds on Solaris 10 Innovation With New Streamlined Administration Capabilities, Solaris ZFS Updates and Expanded Support for New Processors
3. Sun Announces New GlassFish Communications Server and Key Customer Wins Cedar Point Communications and Malden Labs Choose Sun for Next-Generation Network Platforms
4. Sun Announces Java Communications Suite 7 - Sun introduces Release 7 of Java Communications Suite that includes a robust and highly scalable indexing and search service, a new CalDAV compliant calendar server, and enhancements to Convergence, the state-of-the-art AJAX Web 2.0 client. Java Communications Suite is the #1 messaging and collaboration platform for service providers. Eight of the top nine operators and hundreds of enterprises worldwide have already deployed more than 170 million seats of the Java Communications Suite.

Lots of new releases, exciting new features ...

Credit: Image linked from http://www.oracle.com/features/suncustomers.html

I had a query recently from a partner, who was planning to integrate Microsoft .Net applications with MySQL. I am not an expert on .Net, but I looked around and found the following resources and pointers that will help:

1. There is an excellent webinar on Microsoft Entity framework and using MySQL at the Mysql website.
2. MySQL .Net connectors are available for download at the MySQL website
3. Another persistence framework, nHibernate can also be used for data persistence. I just googled, and found this useful link and this link about the integration.

Hope this helps ..

I and my team, were fortunate enough to get sponsored to attend a 5 day MySQL for DBA's training in Bangalore recently. Even though, I am not a DBA, nor do I intend to become one, but there is upswell of interest for MySQL in India, every customer and partner seems to want to know more about it and there is ever growing linkage between other Sun Middleware products and MySQL.

Lets take the following products and how MySQL fits in:

• Glassfish and MySQL - Apart from being the perfect fit in terms of price/performance etc etc, MySQL makes for a perfect choice, when you are building Web applications, intranet/internet apps, Web 2.0 apps. All you need is the MySQL JDBC driver, Create a connection pool for MySQL and there you go !! If you are using any of the popular frameworks like Struts, Spring, Hibernate or iBatis, its all very easy.
• Sun GlassFish Web Space Portal Server and MySQL: By default, Web Space Server is bundled with an HSQL database that is intended for evaluation purposes only. In most production environments, you will want to use a more robust database, such as MySQL.
• Sun Identity Manager: MySQL Enterprise server is a supported repository for Sun IDM. This makes great sense, when you are in a really price sensitive situations. I had blogged about this sometime back.
• Sun OpenSSO Enterprise: MySQL can be used as one of the supported authentication JDBC based user repositories .
• Java CAPS and Glassfish ESB: Of course, MySQL can be used with both Java CAPS (using eWay adapters) and Glassfish ESB, if you are building SOA based applications.

There you have it, there is a fitment with MySQL with almost all of our middle ware products !!

The following are some key things (in my personal opinion) which makes MySQL stand out, from other commercial or open source databases:

1. Everything and any server configuration settings can be changed/viewed using the my.ini (on Windows) or my.cnf (on Solaris and Linux) files. It is extremely simple. Just add it, under the appropriate headers and it will be picked up by MySQL when in starts. Plus, there are some sample, configuration files, which show sample settings for large or medium kind of databases.
2. The concept of Storage engines, and switching storage engines, having different storage engines in a single database, blows you away !!! Moving databases, renaming databases is a snap, as simple as renaming files (for Innodb) or changing directory names (for ISAM). Knowledge of different Storage engines can be a little intimidating at first, but for now, there are a few parameters like - what kind of applications will be using it? do you need transactions/ACID compliance? etc etc. Google "compare MYSQL storage engines"
3. Setting up a MySQL replication with a Master/Slave, is a breeze, and can be done in less than 10 mins for a simple setup. You will find good information in the MySQL documentation.
4. Every configuration variable setting, can be found using "MySQL>show variables like '%keyword%';" command.
5. Doing a backup and restore of MySQL data is so simple using mysqldump.
6. Tuning of MySQL databases seemed to be straightforward, will write up more stuff, as I experiment more. But generally, there are plenty of aids, which explain where time is being spent on queries, and how we can improve them
7. Creating Triggers, Stored procedures are simple, and like other databases.

This is it for, more later ...

We were at a potential customer last week, where the problem statement was:

1. We have several applications using RDBMS as the user repository, for user authentication. There are several databases for users, which may potentially have duplicates/li>
2. We are expecting to grow rapidly, the current requirement of users is large and expected to grow exponentially.
3. We would like to use Single sign on, in future

Considering the number of users required, and the primary requirement being user authentication, using an LDAP server like Sun Directory server enterprise edition (DSEE), seemed to make sense, and that's what we suggested. The next question was (similar to other customers), why do we need LDAP? and how does it compare it to a RDBMS? There are several, several reasons for using an LDAP server (like Sun DSEE or OpenDS) in these situations, like read's tend to be a lot faster, high availability situations like multi-master replication etc. Thanks to my friend Rajiv, we managed to get hold a fantastic technical white paper that highlights the difference's between LDAP and RDBMS, and where to use, what. I have uploaded it here, as I was unable to refer to the original Sun location.

I have reproduced this table here, from the whitepaper :

Of course, this does not solve the problem of removing user data duplication, which was the other requirement. For that, you will need a product like Sun Identity Manager, which will be used for data reconciliation, user synchronization, to basically create a "authoritative user repository" !! This is the key step, the next step, will be to roll-out things like single sign on etc ..

The Sun Partner Advantage Program with Open Access Channel Program and Software Specialties is being rolled out in India. Now it's easier than ever for resellers and Sun partners to offer the full range of Sun Microsystem's software to their customers. The Sun Partner Advantage Open Access Channel Program allows resellers to sell Sun software without entry barriers, and the Software Specialties Program provides partners with a simple framework for building profitable services practices, such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Glassfish, Identity Management and MySQL, utilizing Sun software.

We are kicking off this program with a two day Sales person focused event and a two week long technical bootcamp. If you are a partner in India, and would like to take advantage of this, let me know (email me at mani-dot-chandra-at-sun-dot-com). Seats are limited !!

One of the things that keep happening in the life of a person in Software sales and technical pre-sales(like myself), is answering the RFP's for various customers. This is specially true for Government and Public sector companies and also in some of the larger private sector projects. I will be compiling a list of handy blogs for the various Sun software products and how/where to look for various information when answering RFP's.

There are three IMPORTANT things that are part of the RFP process :

1. RFP - Answering the RFP. This is the most important part, as in a lot of situations, a specific vendor will have influenced the RFP. Its important to highlight to the customer, why those RFP questions are biased, and ask for changes. For example, there were RFP's for application servers, which specified that application server's should comply to .Net and ECMA standards. Obviously, this is totally biased against the Java/J2EE based application servers. One of things that I have learnt the hard way, is to ensure that the matrix we fill in, with the RFP responses, should also have links to actual documentation or articles or comments. Fortunately for Sun, there is a ton of information at docs.sun.com, bigadmin, blogs.sun.com and developers.sun.com
2. Solution architecture document : The key thing in the solution architecture, will be any third party software components and the sizing to fit in with their non-functional requirements. We do have access to some Sun internal data, but a ton of information exists in the internet as sizing guides and also in the various benchmarks published externally. The sizing should meet the key availability requirements specified by the RFP. If third party software is required, we need to do due diligence about the requirements of the third party software.
3. References - Most customers ask for references. We do have a lot of publicly referenceable customers available at http://www.sun.com/customers plus a a very large customer list that can be quoted in a private fashion.

We, in India, have been having some terrific wins recently by positioning Sun software, in some very large deals (both revenue and in size/complexity). Sun software being largely open source and always standards based, has been a great combination in these difficult economic times
I will be touching upon solutions, Enterprise architectures and responding to RFPs for Glassfish app server, Glassfish web space portal, Identity and Communication suite's in subsequent posts.

The CNN rankings for the World's Most Admired Companies for 2009 is out. Sun has moved up, and now ranks 5th in the list. The complete list is at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/mostadmired/2009/industries/10.html.

Our boss, Scott's column on Open Source and its relevance to India and the world , appeared in today's Livemint.com (a tabloid style business news paper, in a JV with WSJ) . Excerpts from the website:

Powering India’s economic growth requires a mix of software rights solutions, not proprietary ones alone - Scott McNealy

Today, nearly every corner of the world faces the challenge of a stagnant or shrinking economy. Bleak economic forecasts, shrinking budgets and increasing pressure on businesses and governments to meet the needs of their customers and constituents—often with less resources to do so—are becoming commonplace. While I’m not naïve enough to suggest a “one-size-fits-all” cure for these problems or that the solutions will be driven by only one industry or region, I do believe that, because technology and innovation drive global economic progress, the remedy for many of these challenges is in our hands.

India is, of course, not immune to these challenges. But the country is very well positioned to meet them. India is one of the world’s fastest growing tech economies and one of the leading participants in the global shift towards free and open source technologies—those eschewing the dependencies of cost and barriers to access that often “come standard” with proprietary technologies. As such, I believe India can play a central role in fostering and adopting the innovations driving its own economic and social growth as well as positioning itself for a larger role on the global economic and technological stage.

India’s use of open source technology and its part in the development and deployment of open standards is not new. Sun Microsystems estimates more than three-quarters of a million Indian developers are members of the Sun Developer Network, actively contributing to communities built around MySQL, OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org and Java. Indian companies such as Life Insurance Corp. of India, Axis Bank, Canara Bank and Tata Communications use open source technologies as a core part of their business. State governments are also embracing open source. Kerala took the lead in open source when it became the first state in the country to completely banish proprietary software in the mandatory IT test administered to half a million students every year. Even the voting systems for popular TV shows such as Kaun Banega Crorepati and Indian Idol run on open technology. In fact, a recent report from the India Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, seeking to quantify the economic impact of open source Java in India, estimates that the value of the “Java economy” in India is approximately 2.1% of the Indian GDP.

More at http://www.livemint.com/2009/02/17231746/India8217s-open-source-futu.html.

These questions come up in my discussions with Customers, Partners and also within Sun. I found this fantastic matrix on java.net at https://open-esb.dev.java.net/glassfishesb/features.html. This table has been displayed in an iframe for convenience.

Sun Messaging Server has published a new benchmark on the SPECmail2008 benchmark at spec.org. The details of the benchmark are available at http://www.spec.org/mail2008/results/res2009q1/mail2008-20081203-00002.html. Obviously, this is not on the new Sun Communication Suite 6, but things should definitely be even better in the new version But, if you see the spec.org website, there are NO benchmarks from any other vendor !!
Please see http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/world_record_specmail2008_sun_fire for more details on the benchmark and the highlights.

The highlights from bmseer's blog:

• The Sun Fire X4540 server, equipped with two quad-core 2.3GHz Opteron 2356, Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2 JES4, the ZFS File System and Solaris 10 Operating System, has achieved the overall record of 3300 SPECmail_MSEnt2008 SMTP and IMAP users at 15,868 SPECmail2008 Sessions/hour.
• This benchmark result clearly demonstrates that a single Sun's X4540 with integrated storage, together with the Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2 with ZFS on Solaris can support a large, enterprise level IMAP Mail server environment at the highest level of throughput performance, representing a compact, low cost and low power solution.

There are a bunch of fantastic webinars scheduled in the near future. The courses are listed at http://www.sun.com/software/webinars/. The courses include one's on OpenSSO (on Jan 21st 2009),Master Data Management (on Jan 28th 2009), Glassfish High Availability, Identity Manager, MySQL Enterprise.

There are several thousand users of the free MySQL community edition, around the world including India. MySQL Enterprise, the paid commercial subscription offering, is available for trial for 30 days. As part of the MySQL Enterprise Trial you will be able to evaluate the MySQL Enterprise Monitor which includes:

• NEW! MySQL Query Analyzer to improve performance by pinpointing and fixing problem SQL code
• MySQL Enterprise Monitor to monitor MySQL performance, sessions, connections, and more
• MySQL Replication Monitor that provides real-time information on master/slave performance and latency issues
• MySQL Advisors to implement security, performance, replication and administration best practices
• 120+ Advisor Rules that advise you on optimal settings for 600+ MySQL and OS specific variables

More details can be had at http://www.mysql.com/trials/

The Websynergy (our open source Portal based on LifeRay) docs (for Milestone 3 build) are now available at docs.sun.com at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1863.1?l=en&q=websynergy

There is a event planned in Chennai, India on November 7th 2008. I will be speaking on Sun software. The details of the event are:

Sun Microsystems, a worldwide leader in open network computing systems, provides proven, reliable, scalable solutions that manufacturers can rely on to help them collaborate, design and build smarter today and in the future. Sun understands the value of creating an open environment that can support systems from a variety of sources.

Sun Microsystems has been working with manufacturing customers since its inception, and has maintained a keen focus on delivering the right tools, technologies, strategies and solutions to meet the ever-evolving demands of the industry. Working closely with its manufacturing customers, Sun understands the value of creating an open environment that can support systems from a variety of sources.

Sun has the scalable, high-performance hardware and operating systems, network management software, and storage solutions to build flexible, agile, powerful, network-based information systems that enable all participants in the manufacturing process - including suppliers, customers, distributors, employees and factories - to tap into the Internet and leverage the full potential of e-manufacturing.

We take this opportunity to cordially invite you for an evening of technology demonstration and how superior advanced technology can contribute to your organizational needs and growth, followed by cocktails and dinner.

Let me know, if you want to attend the event. Drop in a comment below, with your contact information. Thanks !!