Tuesday June 29, 2004 IT SOX...
No... This is not a poke at Sun IT. Well... Not (quite) a poke at Sun IT. They are currently going through some extremely difficult times, and it would not be (quite) appropriate to critic them (too) harshly. They are after all keeping Sun's infrastructure going and are doing some pretty amazing things, in a CFO driven, process obsessed, cost cutting kinda way. They are also one of the best reference accounts that we have for our technology.
SOX is the TLA for the Sarbanes-Oxley act, which is the US Congress's knee jerk that followed the Enron, Worldcom and other scandals. Mainly, it asks for the CxOs of a company to certify that the financial statements are correct and that the controls surrounding them are working correctly. Granted, this is an over-simplification of SOX, but it will do for now. A quick search on Computer World will help to fill the holes...
Now... What does SOX has to do with IT? Many of the applications that are supported by IT have to do in a direct or indirect way with financial reporting or have an impact on Sun's ability to generate and book revenue. As a result, Sun IT is driving a policy where a strict seperation of duty is occuring between the developers and the people supporting and administering these applications.
And it is a great thing!
It might sound weird to hear this from a developer. After all, I will loose a lot of control and flexibility on what I can do. It will definitively make my life more difficult as I will have to give a lot more training to my IT counterparts instead of just being able to reach out to the server and fix what is causing the problem.
On the other hand, it will drive the adoption of technologies such as JMX, standardized logging and other different standards that will provide more information and more control to the support and administration teams and free up my time and the time of other developers to solve the problems, write the software and do amazing things rather than support all of the hacks that they ever did while at Sun.
-- Fred ( Jun 29 2004, 11:10:19 PM MDT ) Permalink
Monday June 28, 2004 JS Creator on Mac OS X!!!
It's looking like I am getting my wish!. It was announced today that an early release previous of Java Studio Creator is being released for the Mac OS X!
I guess it's time to start downloading ;)
-- Fred ( Jun 28 2004, 12:40:15 PM MDT ) PermalinkOh I Wish I Was at JavaOne...
Being busy with work, I don't have the time to attend JavaOne in person. I wish I could though, as it seems to be quite an exciting time and place to be.
A good thing is that Sun is webcasting the keynotes on it's intranet, so I will not be missing everything. It still can't replace the excitement of being there though. My understanding is that the webcast is also available through the Internet, but viewers need to be register on the JavaOne Online program.
Maybe I'll make it next year...
-- Fred ( Jun 28 2004, 09:41:28 AM MDT ) Permalink
Thursday June 24, 2004 Comcast: So Far So Good...
After my self-googling, I realized how often a search on Comcast came up with this blog. After my adventures with the "not-so-self-install" kit, I didn't want to leave everybody with a poor impression of Comcast's service.
The Comcast technician was very timely and very competent. It was a pleasure to deal with someone who not only knew what he was doing, but also was able to get the problem resolved really, really quickly. I think even more important was the fact that once his work was done, he know to head back to the office so I could migrate my home network to the Comcast network.
I must say, the service is screaming fast. I get better access to resources on Sun's network through the VPN than I do at the office. It is scary at times. Email scream, web pages load fast, files are loaded rapidly into my editor from the NFS shares at the office.
Would this be the end of my SOHO networking adventures? Hardly. I am sure that I'll find something to upgrade, change or just plain turn off. Beside, I still have to tear down the remains of the Sprint Broadband network from my room. For someone who is very much afraid of heights, it will be quite an adventure.
-- Fred ( Jun 24 2004, 11:55:24 PM MDT ) PermalinkGoogle This...
From time to time, I like to Google for old friends' names. It's interesting to find mention of them here and there.
When I feel either a bit narcissistic or just plain curious, I go ahead and Google myself. Up until recently, I had to go through quite a few pages before I found a referrence to myself. Oh, there were plenty of Frederics, Jeans, and other variations.
Just for the fun of it, I googled myself. This blog came up as the 7th result. Interestingly, I have participated on a single thread on The Server Side.
Another interesting result, a search on Comcast and filters also returns this blog.
I guess I am kinda celebrity by association...
-- Fred ( Jun 24 2004, 11:38:45 PM MDT ) Permalink
Monday June 21, 2004 GC Portal
Here's a suite of really cool tools for people who are trying to figure out what is happening within the Java Virtual Machine: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/GCPortal/index.html.
I am just about to get it installed on my workstation so I can play with it. If all goes well, I could install it on a couple of development servers and to see what is really happening out there.
-- Fred ( Jun 21 2004, 02:12:20 PM MDT ) Permalink Comments [1]An amazing recovery...
Apple does some great hardware...
I was sitting in the middle of an otherwise unpleasant meeting when I somehow hooked my sleeve on my coffee cup and spill it...
... all ...
... over ...
... my POWERBOOK!!!!
After a few moments of panic and frantic attempts to clear the table, I turned off the laptop and set it so that the remaining coffee would drain off the system. I was obviously quite concerned... But the laptop survived the incident. I am now using it to type this entry.
Apple, thank you for some amazing and very resiliant hardware!
-- Fred
( Jun 21 2004, 01:30:46 PM MDT ) Permalink
Thursday June 17, 2004 Macs! They Are Everywhere!
There is an interesting trend within the Customer Networked Services organization within Sun. Macs are popping up all over the place.
Not that I mind. I am an avid Mac user. I love my nice PowerBook 15" laptop. I am using it right now to write this entry. It's a beautiful machine, it is fast and it runs circle around my older P4 1.5Ghz desktop. Mac OS X is one of the most eye pleasing Unix-like system around. And I don't have to deal with the virii that is affecting Windows machines.
It also has great support for Java. It ships with support for J2SE. Mac OS X is supported my most major OSS IDEs. And they do run fast on it.
One thing that it doesn't have is support for the Sun Java System applications and servers. Oh sure, you can run NetBeans 3.6 on it (good IDE) and get close to what Sun Java Studio Standard Edition gives you, but you up a creek without a paddle if you need to use the features of the Enterprise Edition or if you want to play with Creator. It's even worst if you want to deploy against the SJS Application Server or the Web Server. Tomcat and JBoss are good, but they are not the platform that I am targetting at work.
So please, oh please... Can we get a Sun Java Studio Enterprise and a Sun Java Studio Creator for the Mac?
Thanks!
-- Fred
( Jun 17 2004, 10:51:18 AM MDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Wednesday June 16, 2004 Send that SPAM Away!!!
There are a lot of advantages in running your own mail server. A big one is the ability to decide what to filter and what to let through.
Sometimes, it is easy to decide. Porn: spam. Enlarging different parts of my anatomy: spam. Financial scams: spam. A message from my sister about her ongoing pregnancy: not spam. Spam Assassin and procmail are great help in keeping the tide of spam away from my inbox.
But spammers are persistent and sometimes they manage to slip through. Including a persistent email campaign from a certain Frank Czeck advertising some form of pyramid scheme that keeps going through my filters. I guess that I could go ahead and email Frank (if that's his real name) to ask him to stop. That would only encourage more spam from dear Franky.
An other option would be to use technology to rid my inbox of that garbage. So I added a rule to my .procmailrc file. I'll be sending his emails straight to my SPAM folder which I'll use to train Spam Assassin. The beauty of this approach is that I never have to see Franky's emails again.
One last thing. Frank, I am not interested. Period.
-- Fred
( Jun 16 2004, 08:22:57 AM MDT ) Permalink
Monday June 14, 2004 Speaking of Filters...
It might surprise some people that Sun doesn't always use the greatest and the latest to host internal applications. A good example is my current project. It will still be hosted on the Sun Java System Web Server 6.0 when it goes live. The main reason is inertia. People tend to stay with what they know best, and it is a non-trivial exercise to migrate from one web server to the next. Of course, you are already looking into deploying application on the Sun Java System Application Server 8 and you don't have to worry about "legacy" software...
One feature of the Servlet 2.3 specifications that I really wanted to use is the Servlet Filters. I was pleasantly surprised when I did discover that the SJS Web Server 6.0 does support servlet filters. You need to move the filter and filter-mapping elements from the web.xml to the web server's web-apps.xml. The filters themselves work great, but there is a bug where enabling the filters remove the ServletException stacktraces from the errors log file.
This doesn't mean that you should abandon servlet filters. It is really easy to write a filter that wraps the whole chain in a try/catch block:
public class CatchFilter implements Filter {
...
public void doFilter(ServletRequest request,
ServletResponse response,
FilterChain chain)
throws IOException, ServletException
{
try {
chain.doFilter(request, response);
} catch (ServletException se) {
// Do something with the exception.
// Oh, common! You didn't really think I would give you *everything* now, don't you???
}
}
....
}
This worth doing in the catch block would be to generate an exception report, log it, display it to the user and send an email to the support team that something went wrong.
This technique allows me to log and display much more detailed information about what caused that server error. I also avoid getting change requests that state "I got a Server Error. Can you fix it?".
Sometimes every bit helps.
-- Fred ( Jun 14 2004, 11:01:48 PM MDT ) PermalinkCaching, Compression & Web App Performance
As you might guess, web application performance can be a hot ticket issue with my internal users. As a result, I am always looking around for tricks to improve the performance of the application I write.
A quick and easy way is to use a GZIP Servlet Filter to compress the HTML sent back to browsers that support GZIP compressed streams (Mozilla does). The end result is a page that appears to load a lot faster in the browser. I have been surprised more than once while testing one application that was rather slow. A good thing is that the source itself is available, so it is possible to customize the filter to add niceties such as logging.
Another method is to cache some objects in memory. This TSS article describes how to use the flyweight pattern to design a basic object caching system where different users are able to share a list of objects rather than to each maintain their own.
-- Fred ( Jun 14 2004, 10:40:08 PM MDT ) Permalink Comments [3]
Sunday June 13, 2004 More Adventures in Home Networking: It's Alive!!!
Friday morning came, and the Comcast guy showed up within his appointment window (pleasant surprise #1). He went down stairs to look at the modem. We discuss what I had done to get it to work so far. He then went along and took care of the problem. There was indeed a filter on the line. As soon at the filter was removed, the cable modem got a lock (pleasant surprise #2).
A good thing with having a cable tech coming to your house for the install is that he is able to do an inspection of the cable and correct any issue that might arrise. He installed a new splitter on my line (yes, I still have the splitter I originally bought. It would have done just fine, but hey! why argue with the cable guy?) and a new grounding block. So now, not only do I have cable modem broadband, I also have clearer cable tv too!
I had to take care of some business on Friday before leaving for the Western Slopes, so I didn't really had a chance to migrate my home network over to the comcast connection. This was one of the first things that I did once we came back. After some agravation with my WAP54G, I managed to get it all working and migrated all of my services over to the new correction.
I must say something about Comcast High Speed Internet: it is FAST! I have measured speeds up to 5-6 times faster than my previous ISP. I was most impressed (pleasant surprise #3). Even things like reading mail over the VPN and downloading files was much, much faster. It will be a pleasant experience I am sure.
-- Fred ( Jun 13 2004, 11:36:05 PM MDT ) Permalink
Wednesday June 09, 2004 Adventures in Home Networking
When I first moved into my house in Thornton, the only available option for broadband Internet access was Sprint Broadband. ATT Broadband didn't offer high speed Internet access in my neighborhood and DSL was just a dream around here. Since I really needed broadband access (it was the early VPN days here at Sun) I went with Sprint.
A couple years ago, Sprint announced that they were no longer provisionning new customers. This really concerned me despite repeated statements by Sprint that they weren't planning to cut off service to their subscribers. I had looked at different options in my neighborhood. After much thought, I decided to move over to Comcast HSI.
The real trigger though was the cost of my phone line. I had already moved to MCI in order to save cost, but I still thought that I could do better. So I decided to give Vonage a try. After trips to Circuit City and other electronics and computer stores, I had all of the gear I needed, including a brand new cable modem, a Comcast self install kit and that precious Vonage box (Actually a Motorolla device, but why be too picky here...)
The Comcast self install kit was a disappointment. I went ahead, hooked up everything, called the phone number provided to register my modem and get registration and access information.
That's when the trouble started.
After many calls, modem rebooting, plenty of hold time, I finally talked to a knowledgeable person at Comcast who discovered that there was a filter on my cable line. This prevented 2 way communications and didn't allow the modem to lock and synchronize with the MSO. I got an appointment for later this week, and we will see then if this will take care of the problem. I guess that makes the Comcast kit a "not-so-self-install" kit.
Not all is lost though. I decided to hook up the Vonage device on my current Sprint Broadband connection. I must say that I have been very much impressed with the quality of the calls that I made. I have attended multiple conference calls and called a few people through Vonage. You can't really beat the price too. $30 a month for unlimited local and long distance calls to the US and Canada for a residential line.
I guess that I'll see what happens once I get Comcast to remove that filter. Hopefully, the technician should be coming in on Friday morning to remove the filter and complete the installation. I'll report back afterwards. -- Fred ( Jun 09 2004, 01:13:41 PM MDT ) Permalink
Tuesday June 08, 2004 I can run but...
I had a quick stroll on Planet Sun. On the right side of the page, there are a list of blogs that people can go to. And guess what, there I am listed. I guess it's official, I am a blogger.
-- Fred
( Jun 08 2004, 12:41:11 PM MDT ) Permalink
Monday June 07, 2004 Stepping out into the great unknown
I have been looking into blogging since Tim Bray published his entry on putting together a Sun policy on blogging. Now that blogs.sun.com has been setup, I am jumping into these waters with both feet.
I guess I should probably introduce myself. On the professional side, I am a software developer here at Sun, mainly working on internal tools that deal with account management. These tools are used to generate reports that are then presented to the different accounts, integrate multiple pre-emptive services tools together and hopefully one day become the foundation of how Sun manages accounts and how Sun associates systems to the account.
One of the most challenging aspect of my work involves integrating applications written in multiple languages (Java and Perl mostly). It is not so much the technical aspects (SOAP makes it a lot easier than it was before), but the communications, influencing and negotiating aspects that interest me more. I am really pushing stepping away from what I call "integrating through databases" and pushing services as the integration point. I usually roll them out as both SOAP and RMI.
Other projects that I have worked within Sun involves a tool that keeps track of our contract booking backlog, a hold time and other call center related stats portal as well as a notification tool.
On the personal side, I am still a newly wed. I got married more than 6 months ago to a wonderful woman called Mollie (Pictures are available at http://fredjean.homeip.net:8080/gallery . Please be kind to my poor broadband link and old PII home web server). It was such a beautiful day :)
Here are a few things that I will probably discuss on this blog:
- Java (of course)
- Home networking
- Teleworking
- Cool things that happen to me.
I'm looking forward to see where this leads. It will probably be an interesting journey!
-- Fred
( Jun 07 2004, 12:06:54 PM MDT ) Permalink