Tuesday at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara was a lot of fun. MySQL Cluster 7.0 announced their latest release of their high availability and scalable database architecture (read the release here). The carrier grade version of the product will provide support for OpenDS LDAP to MySQL Cluster driver. There were over a 100 people at Johan Andersson's presentation on using MySQL Cluster 7.0 presentation at 5:25 last night. The team walked through high availability reference architectures and a high level overview of the LDAP to MySQL driver options. It is powerful for companies that need a standardized way to integrate applications using LDAP and need transactional distributed data architecture for auditing or relational integrity.
At 7:30pm we had a Birds-of-a-Feather session with about 15 people who wanted to go deep on a couple of different ways to integration LDAP to MySQL. We talked about the value of virtual directories and the ability to connect to MySQL for authentication. We see this a lot with mergers and acquisitions. Additionally, we talked about building authentication and authorization routines for MySQL into LDAP. Lastly, we went deep with the Alcatel Lucent team on some high availabity and LDAP to MySQL. It was a great discussion. Here are the slides.
If you want to meet Ping Luo (a technology manager on the OpenSSO team and the celebrity that helped launch the Ping Identity vs. Sun video funfest last year) come by our booth. He will be in the Sun Identity Pod from 10-1:30pm today. Here is the video and Ping's response.
The Identity Management Team will be at the MySQL and RSA Conferences this week in Northern California. If you are into security or building innovative applications for the enterprise then this is an exciting week.
It is an exciting week as we will be talking about our work between MySQL and Identity giving customer's the maximum choice to build solutions. We have a Birds of a Feather presentation on Tuesday evening at 6:30 in Ballroom C, where Ludo Poitou, the Community Manager for OpenDS, will be talking about how to use MySQL and Directory together as identity repositories. We will be talking about some new news at this BOF and hope you will be there to hear this exciting news.
Twitter is a great tool during conferences as you can hear where the great presentations are occurring and in some cases and sometimes get advanced warnings of topics that might not be of interest to you. Here are the twitter accounts that I will be following: (or you can follow me @nwooler)
What is it like working on an open source project? A lot of people wonder how does it differ. The nightly builds, the open nature of communication and involvement, the external contributors and the community managers like Ludo Poitou make it a very dynamic environment. The best way to understand it is to watch this great video that Ludo put together that represents the last three years of activity.
The identity team was in London for the Gartner Identity Access Management conference last week which was a successful event. We had the opportunity to meet and talk with some great customers and hear about the Thompson-Reuters implementation of OpenSSO and Directory Server Enterprise Edition serving 300,000 concurrent users with persistent cookies. This implementation allows traders to get their Reuter's feed on their smartphone and their desktop without having to login twice. This reduces transaction fees and keeps their business model in tact. The OpenSSO team did some great engineering work to meet the performance and functional requirements for Thomson-Reuters. We video-taped the presentation and should have that for your soon.
Also, Ludo Poitou was recently featured in an article on OpenDS in the Architect Zone or DZone. He describes some of the exciting things happening in the community with MySQL and discusses how to embed OpenDS in applications. This is a great jump-off point for customers getting started with deploying OpenDS as an identity repository for their application or infrastructure serving email, calendar or network infrastructure. You can read the whole article here.
I must confess that I am an optimist. Although, recently I think we all have been tempted to take trip over to the dark side even if only for a moment. Two recent blog posts have pulled me back to the proper side and to see the Glass Half-Full again. One, by Jonathon Schwartz who in his extremely eloquent and illustrative style reminded everyone why Sun is more relevant than ever. Two, Daniel Raskin, who posted an interesting blog on Oracle's fortunes during the downturn. I encourage you to read both.
Each explains why Open Source software like OpenDS, OpenSSO, Glassfish and ZFS (btw...great podcast on ZFS with FLOSS Weeklyhere) are more relevant in this market than ever before. As developers around the globe search for a platform of innovation they choose based on capability and price of acquisition. They have more time than money. In the economic downturn that we are all suffering through globally may have impacted trade balances, balance sheets and salaries but it has not impacted people's inclination to innovate. This is why Sun and Open Source are more relevant than ever. As Jonathon points out in his overview of Finance 101:
Not to dip into finance 101, when the net present value
of a lifetime revenue cycle exceeds the value of a one time purchase, a
product or service that initiates the payment stream is either freely
distributed (if it has no marginal cost, like software), or subsidized
(if it has a hard cost). That's why you see so many free credit cards,
free checking account, free mobile phones, free month's rent, free
social networking, etc. In the technology world, free is the new black.
Juxtapose this with the news from Daniel Raskin's blog about the current fortunes of Oracle and you wonder who has the right competitive advantage for this current economic environment.
As I travel and talk to customers about Identity, I have heard similar stories from customers. One comes to mind where a customer shared that he had an intern that he asked to investigate OpenDS. Instead of coming back with a slide deck containing a cost benefit analysis and a feature comparison he came back at the end of the week with a working prototype. After showing it to key stakeholders, the decision was not about whether it was the right technical choice, rather it was about when to put it in production and how could they get budget to pay for support. The value of open source is breaking down barriers to innovation.
This is why I see the Glass Half Full. People in tough times don't stop innovating. They just choose different problems and different platforms to innovate upon.
Are you a Directory Hero? We want to know. In the last three months I have heard from several of you via the IRC chat on OpenDS.org at identity conferences or at user groups around the world about the great projects that leverage the innovations from the OpenDS community. We have been able to share a few of the great stories via the blogs story site. Everyone learns from hearing about the ways in which you are using LDAP in your organization. It is this sharing in the open that makes being a part of an Open Source Software project exciting and a great learning experience. I am reminded of a truism "Share comes before success".
Therefore, we are annoncing a new opportunity for you to share your stories with us at Sun. If you have deployed OpenDS and are using it please send us a story at the following email address. Here are some suggested questions that you can answer. Alternatively, blog or create a video about your implementation and send us the link. We want to show our appreciation for sharing so for the top 30 stories we receive we will send you a free t-shirt. Please include an address in your submission.
Here is what to do:
Step 1: Download the questionaire.
Step 2: Answer the questions that apply to your deployment
Step 3: Create blog or videocast and post somewhere
Step 4: Share: Send us the link at the email address above and include questionaire, link to your blog or video and an address for us to send the t-shirt.
Here is the suggested questionaire to guide you through what information the community would like to hear about your implementation.
Questions (Download here) and you don't have to answer them all:
Can you tell us more about your company ?
Can you tell us about the application, site, or service in which you have adopted OpenDS? [ Note: this is where you can hopefully get some publicity for your own business or project. So consider including any hyperlinks, screenshots, etc. that you would like for us to use in that context. Also, are you embedding OpenDS in your application?]
How and when did you first find out about OpenDS?
Did you go through an evaluation process before selecting OpenDS? If so, can you tell us a little bit about the process and results?
What specific version of OpenDS are you using?
On what operating system do you run OpenDS? Do you use the same OS for both development and production deployment?
On what hardware platform do you run OpenDS? Do you use the same platform for both development and production deployment?
Have you purchased a OpenDS license? If not, have you thought about doing so and do you know it includes access to patches and sustaining releases (more details from http://wikis.sun.com/display/sunopends)?
What specific features of OpenDS are you using?
What do you like most about OpenDS?
What would you most like to see improved in OpenDS?
Does your application also use a database? If so, which one?
Are there any figures about the scale of your adoption which you would like to share (such as how much traffic is being handled, how many entries are stored in OpenDS, how many servers are used)?
How has OpenDS performed since your application/service went live? Have you run into any production issues which you would attribute to OpenDS?
Would you recommend OpenDS to others? Why?
How does OpenDS figure in your future plans?
How would your describe your participation in the OpenDS project (e.g. user only, submitter of bug reports and RFEs, developer who has contributed code)?
Is there anything else you think would be of interest in a story about your OpenDS adoption?
March is going to be an exciting month with a number of events to help make it fun by joining us at one of the events listed below. The month get's started with an Unconference in New York sponsored by the OpenSSO team. The OpenDS team will be there as well leading a discussion on using LDAP and OpenDS as an identity repository. The event is free and only requires you to sign-up at meet-up.com. Here is the link and you can see how many people are attending. As of tonight there were 54 attendees. Sign-up here.
At the wiki page for the event you can add topics that you would like to discuss. There is already a suggested list that includes a presentation by Ludo on OpenDS as a datastore. You can access the wiki here.
Why are these cat's dancing? They just downloaded the latest release of Directory Server Enterprise Edition 6.3.1 which was released yesterday.
The 6.3.1 release is a patch to existing 6.x deployment that provides customers with a way to apply the latest fixes and updates found in Directory Server, Directory Proxy Server and Directory Server Control Center components in one installation event. Specifically, the Directory Server 6.3.1 provides fixes to replication issues in mixed DS 5.2 and 6.x topologies, on Directory Proxy Server it improves support for Virtualization (Join and JDBC) and includes additional performance related improvements. Furthermore this patch release improves patches that improve overall quality and robustness of deployments. You can read a consolidated view of all the fixes and updates contained in the release in the Release Notes located here.
You can also read the Directory Services Blog with all the download links here.
Gartner Identity Access Management Conference in London March 23-26 is fast approaching. As one of the fun extra-curricular events planned for the conference the Sun Identity Team would like to invite you to join us for some 10 Pin Bowling on Monday evening. We will pay for your cab ride from the hotel to the event, please come by our booth for more information. In the meantime, go to the meetup page and RSVP for the event.
Join Sun and Accenture for a Gartner IAM after-hours party in the Kingpin Suite at Bloomsbury Lanes where you can: * Bowl (top scoring bowler at the end of the night wins a prize pak) * Play pool and table tennis * Show off your Karaoke skills * Enjoy delicious food and beverages * Enter an onsite raffle to win a Wii console with WiiSports. Must be present to win.
Party details: When: Monday, March 23rd from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Where: Kingpin Suite at Bloomsbury Lanes (basement of Tavistock Hotel on Bedford Way, London WC1H9EU) Check it out here. Reserve your spot by March 20th here and your cab fare to the party is on us! * Gartner IAM Badge Required for Entry
There is a great webinar being offered on Wednesday, Jan. 21 which you may have missed the announcement because of all the excitement about the Inauguration and Martin Luther King Holiday in the US. Daniel Raskin, Product Line Manager OpenSSO, and Jamie Nelson, Director of Engineering for OpenSSO, will be talking about the current release as well as the plans for the next release of OpenSSO Express. There are already 200 registrants and there is a cap at 250 so register now so you don't get left out!
The Directory crowd should be interested as well, because OpenDS is bundled with OpenSSO and is used as OpenSSO's policy store and can be leveraged as a user store as well. Here are the details:
Sun Software Webinar: See how Sun's OpenSSO Enterprise provides a single solution for Web access management, federation, and Web services security.
Join Sun for a live webinar on one of today's most exciting aspects of identity management! During this session, we will discuss OpenSSO innovation and how it pushes access management, federation, and secure Web services capabilities to a new level. Learn how to solve challenges around these capabilities with a single solution.
This webinar will be presented by Sun's OpenSSO experts: Daniel Raskin, the senior product line manager, and Jamie Nelson, the director of engineering. We hope that you can join us!
If you have any questions or feedback, please send a message to SWI_Webinar_Inquiries@sun.com.
Gary Williams, a staff engineer and the QA lead of OpenDS,
published a great article with Marina Sum on the topic of how working
on an open source software project has improved quality in product
development. The process is without challenges which he outlines in
the article as well. However, he also gives great detail about the
test harness that is used, the amount of automation and community
involvement to address the challenges and get high quality product in
community hands more frequently. The full article is available on the Sun Developer Network here.
These
are the types of processes that quality open source projects do as a
part of the project development process. Indira Thangasamy, produced a similar
article on how they approach QA within the OpenSSO project.
As companies evaluate other open source projects, especially in these
challenging economic times where cost reduction provide stronger
rational's to consider starting projects using open source software.
The quality approach of communities becomes an important differntiator
as companies use open source in production and customer facing systems.
Here is a quick overview of the test harness used on OpenDS:
We use open-source, Java platform-based test tools, such as the
following, not only to demonstrate our support for open source but also
to ensure that they are accessible to everyone:
TestNG — For running unit tests, same as in OpenSSO
Checkstyle — For checking code style and rules before commitment
Unit Testing and Automation: "Testing starts in the programming phase with unit tests, which verify
that the code works as intended and which must exist for all features.
Today, we run 30,000 automated unit tests daily on different Java
virtual machines. No code can be integrated without satisfying the
precommit requirements."
Code coverage — With open-source EMMA, we find out the
number of code lines, blocks, methods, and classes that are exposed by
the unit and functional tests. Part of that information pinpoints the
amount of the code tested as a percentage of the total, defining if
we've met the quality criteria. We also define which areas of the code
are not tested, called coverage holes, and create new tests to fill
them.
Feature coverage — OpenDS delivers features that customers
want, that is, customer requirements. Each feature is recorded as an
issue in the Issue Tracker, a tool that monitors defects. This data
tells us the state the features are in and their status: Ready for Test
or Tested.
Documentation coverage — To ensure that the documentation is
reviewed according to the test plan, we adopt a two-phase documentation
review process: a technical review of the content followed by a formal
QA review. Like the product features, the documentation is divided into
categories—books, chapters, and sections—that are recorded in the Issue
tracker. Through this coverage, we measure the percentage of the
documentation reviewed over time and identify the reviewers and review
status.
Defect rates — This is a traditional measure. The goal is to
have no high-priority bugs open at release time. Our Bug Council
constantly studies the defects and assesses the risks to customers. We
also plot simple graph trends to gauge how well the project is
converging.
Thanks to Gary and Marina for publishing this article and allowing the community to learn from your experience.
As President-elect Obama announced his Energy Team yesterday, I was excited for two reasons. One, Steven Chu is a Californian from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and it is nice to see local citizens playing National and Global roles improving our environment. Two, I am proud to work at Sun because a large number of the energy innovators like Argonne Laboratory, which is also a part of the Department of Energy, are using Sun's Software to provide the backbone of innovation within these organizations.
Argonne Laboratory uses Directory Server Enterprise Edition to power their collaboration infrastructure. They also use MySQL, JavaES, OpenSSO Enterprise and Virtualization (e.g. xVM Server) to power their innovation. You can see a great video with David Salbego, Director of IT Infrastructure at Argonne National Labs regarding his experience and
business benefits resulting from Sun solutions.
BC Hydro also used OpenSSO Enterprise and Directory Server to reduce cost of providing a web portal for their customers to get interact with their organization. They reduced the use of paper and conserved resources for our environment. You can read about the solution here.
If you are a Facebook user that has received some crazy emails recently from "friends" with enticing subject lines to click on a video or picture should think twice before clicking the link. The Koobface virus has rared it's ugly head again and for some in the eweek article posted here have had to throw out their PC's because of being infected. Facebook has been great about identifying scams and exploits and maintains this page for users to get information about their security.
In the interest of spreading the word and propagating good usage of the internet:
Here are some ways to be smart and aware on Facebook:
If a link or message seems weird, don't click on it.
This is true of all spam—whether a chain letter, an ad, or a phishing
scam. If it seems weird for an old friend to write on your Wall and
post a link, that friend may have gotten phished. Let the person know,
and don't click on links you don't trust.
Be aware of where you enter your password. Just because
a page on the Internet looks like Facebook, it doesn't mean it is.
Learn to tell the difference between a good link and a bad one.
Report any spam or abuse you see on discussion boards and Walls.
Those report links are there for a reason. The sooner we find spam, the
sooner we can remove it and eliminate spammers from the site.
Don't use the same password on Facebook that you use in other places on the web.
If you do this, phishers or hackers who gain access to one of your
accounts will easily be able to access your others too. You might find
yourself locked out of your email and even your bank account.
Never share your password with anyone. Don't
do it. Facebook will never ask for your password through any form of
communication. If someone pretending to be a Facebook employee asks you
for it, don't give it out, and report the person immediately.
Don't click on links or open attachments in suspicious emails.
Fake emails can be very convincing, and hackers can spoof the "From:"
address so the email looks like it's from Facebook. If the email looks
weird, don't trust it, and delete it from your inbox.
Add a security question. If your account ever
does get stolen, you might need this to prove your identity to
Facebook. If you haven't already done so, you can add a security
question from the "Account Settings" page.
Also, if you are interested in avoiding scams during the holiday season here is a helpful site from CNET. The site can be viewed here.
BusinessWeek published an interesting article on Sunday titled "U.S. Is Losing Global Cyberwar, Commission Says". If you are interested in Identity Management or IT security this is an important topic. The plenary session was held this afternoon with press releases flying across the internet. You can find the MSNBC version here. BusinessWeek did a nice job of scooping the report and summarizing some of the recommendations which include creating a "CyberSecurity Czar". I am not sure we need more Czar's but if you are interested in the details of the report please take a look at the full report here.
Gartner Identity and Access Management conference is happening next week, Nov. 10-12 in Orlando, Florida. This is a great event that brings together analysts, customers and vendors to share knowledge and experience on important topics that shape the Identity and Security industry. I will be attending with a few of my notable Identity Product Managers at Sun including: Daniel Raskin, OpenSSO; Nick Crown, Identity and Role Manager; Craig MacDonald, Identity Manager; and our fearless leader John Barco.
Come by and spend some time with your favorite Identity team. On Monday, November 10 we will be watching Monday Night Football and talking identity in the Presidential Suite at the Gaylord Hotel at 9:00pm ET. There will be great food, drinks and music as well as a few discussions about Identity. We hope to see you there.
And, we will be having a few games of Identity Hero. If you want to practice, check it out here.
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at identity conferences or at user groups around the world about the great projects that leverage the innovations from the OpenDS community. We have been able to share a few of the great stories via the blogs 
March is going to be an exciting month with a number of events to help make it fun by joining us at one of the events listed below. The month get's started with an Unconference in New York sponsored by the OpenSSO team. The OpenDS team will be there as well leading a discussion on using LDAP and OpenDS as an identity repository. The event is free and only requires you to sign-up at meet-up.com. Here is the link and you can see how many people are attending. As of tonight there were 54 attendees. Sign-up 
about the current release as well as the plans for the next release of OpenSSO Express. There are already 200 registrants and there is a cap at 250 so register now so you don't get left out!
If you are a 
