IT Strategy @ GM

Posted on June 17, 2009 by sureshkrishna

GM is in bad economic shape now and selling it’s some of the famous brands.  Looks like Pontiac, Hummer , Saab and Saturn are officially dead now. So, GM probably has the other 4 great brands – Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick. GM has enjoyed the supremacy of No 1 Car  manufacturer for more than 70 years and now the moment of truth has come and its pretty hard for GM to take it.

One of the challenges for the executives at GM is not only to stay where they are but also to put efforts to regain their No 1 position, sooner or the later. There is an immense challenge ahead of GM’s CTO Fred Killeen to make sure that the GM stays in control of the IT costs.  According to a recent article in the eWeek, GM is doing a variety of things in IT to achieve it’s financial goals.

I really liked a statement of Killeen that “If you don’t invest in future of company, you won’t have one“.

Looks like before Killeen took over as CTO, there used to be thousands of applications at GM and now they are trying to consolidate and standardize the applications. Following software stack is core for GM…

VM Ware ESX and Sun’s virtualization technologies are implemented at its data centers. GM is not yet into the band wagon of the Cloud Computing. Perhaps GM may be skeptical about the reliability of the cloud computing from Google, Amazon and Salesforce.

In any case i am very surprised that GM is not adapting any of the open source solutions in the area of the Virtualization, Communication and Team Collaboration. I am sure many of the GM’s current strategy is falling into the expensive category and i believe GM can definitely benefit from the open source strategy. Of course, if i were Kelleen things may have been different 😉 .

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XML Processing with Oracle JDeveloper 11g : Book Review

Posted on May 23, 2009 by sureshkrishna

Oracle XML Developer Kit (XDK) is a set of components, tools and utilities in Java which is available in Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server and on OTN that eases the task of building and deploying XML-enabled applications with a commercial redistribution license. XDK has several useful components such as XML Parsers, XSLT Processors, XSLT VM, XML Schema Processors, XML Java Beans, XML Class Generator, XML SQL Utility and XSQL Servlet.

Oracle JDeveloper provides a rich set of tools and utilities for the XML processing. JDeveloper includes the XDK and any developer can make use of its powerful features to develop any XML based applications. Processing XML Documents with Oracle JDeveloper is a great book and i would highly recommend for everyone working with XDK, and JDeveloper.

The author Deepak Vohra did a good job in describing the various steps for the XML Processing, XML Schema Validation, XPath Support, XML and XSLT Transformations. For more advanced users of XML, this book also talks about the topics such as Java XML Binding (JXB), API for comparing the documents, Converting XML to PDF, Converting XML to MS Excel, and finally storing the XML in Oracle Berkley DB XML.

This book provides a quick reference guide to any developer who starts their XDK development using JDeveloper. Author emphasized well enough about the small details that every developer should know in XML processing. Author gives a good introduction about all the technologies that he talks and mentions the APIs in detail. I really liked the part where the author gives  a complete java source code (in almost each chapter) along with the comments to explain the purpose of the following code. This book did a good job in setting up the context for running the applications. Author describes the steps to setup the extra environment variables to bet set, jars to be added and how to navigate in JDeveloper. With this sort of detailing, any developer could just look at the book and will be able to start the development right away. Also, the publisher, Packt extracted chapter (Chapter 4: XPath) from the book and you can find it here: http://www.packtpub.com/files/processing-xml-documents-with-oracle-jdeveloper-11g-sample-chapter-4-xpath.pdf.

I would definitely recommend this book for the XML developers using XDK and JDeveloper.

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Oracle + Java = Harmony

Posted on April 20, 2009 by sureshkrishna

Everyone in the silicon valley is talking about it. Someone is excited more over others. However, this is not a shock or surprise to anyone. Sooner or the later this has to happen. Oracle has been VERY STRONG player in the middle-ware with its acquisition marathon, it built “near to complete” business vertical empire. Oracle has a complete stack of the enterprise software and is a REAL “Information Company”.

With the Oracle agreeing to buy Sun, there are plethora of possibilities for Synergy. Many view Oracle as an enterprise software company and till now all the databases, products are tuned to number of servers such as Sun Solaris, Linux, HP and Windows. With this acquisition, there would be greater and tighter integration along with  performance tuning for the Oracle products on Solaris OS + Sun hardware. This will also launch Oracle in the hardware race with the IBM and HP. Oh ya… Cisco has just started, but now Oracle is already in it (with this acquisition).

Oracle now will be able to steer the JCP along with IBM and other major players. Java would see a major boost and a new direction with focus on the Enterprise Software. I am specially interested to see if there would be more developments (and innovation) in JVM and other languages based on it such as JRuby, Scala, etc…

Sun has been very keen in technology innovation and result is the full stack of Web Services, JVM, JRE, GlassFish, JavaFX and last but not the least NetBeans. Of course Sun is one company that entered into the IDE market in the earlier stages but could not make a great IDE out of NetBeans when compared to Eclipse. Along with JDeveloper, Oracle contributed great plugins to Eclipse and has been a long term supporter of Eclipse. This is one area, i am curious to see what would happen to 3 IDEs (JDeveloper, Eclipse, NetBeans).

The next big thing Oracle will definitely gain in my perspective is Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing is relatively new and has a great potential to be the next wave in the  Infrastructure + Software + Internet technology. With the stack of its enterprise products + cloud computing Oracle and Sun could both have a great synergy in this area.

Not sure what would happen to MySQL database. This is a free, open source database also available in Enterprise flavor. The good thing about the MySQL is that is has a small eco system fo developers and tool vendors. Unlike Oracle, MySQL is targeted to wards small/medium scale applications and enterprises.

Finally, Oracle acquiring Sun is definitely good for struggling Sun. Oracle is very good at the business and it has a very good sales team. This, combined with the Sun’s technology would be a good news for the customers. It is too early to predict what would happen to the other technologies at Sun. But, customers are sure going to benefit from this acquisition.

Disclaimer : This is my personal opinion ONLY. None of these ideas or statements correspond, reflect or transform to any of my current or previous employers.

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EclipseCon 2009 Day1-Day2 Round up

Posted on March 25, 2009 by sureshkrishna

EclipseCon is one of the cool conferences that i want to attend every year. Even if you don’t use all the technologies and projects, this is a good time for you to get to know what’s happening in the community and see some cool demos and case studies. I attended first 2 days and gave my talk on “JSON Viewer and XPath Workbook” on Tuesday afternoon.

My long time friend Annalmalai gave a talk on the “India and Eclipse Eco System“. India has a great potential for any Eclipse based product vendors. Annamalai highlited some of the industries that use Eclipse and the technology usage (RCP, EMF, GEF and GMF) aspects. ANCIT Consulting is doing a lot of training and actively conducting DemoCamps all over India. For any one, who would want to get into Indian market and dont know where to start, i guess ANCIT Consulting will be the right point of contact.

Oracle released the Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g (OEPE)  with many cool features. This has a rich set of features and enhancements in Oracle WebLogic Server plugins and Eclipse based Database dev tooling.

Got a demo from Wayne Parrott and Jens Eckles from Genuitec on the FireFly Mobile Web Developer Kit Project. The cool thing is that the demo uses an iPhone simulation for the developers. I am waiting for the development kit to come out and play with.

Last but not the least, the tutorial by Kai and Benjamin was a very realistic and solution oriented presentation. They both talked about the finer aspects of the RCP development and the Mp3 manager is a nice application to start with and play around. I would highly recommend anyone who is struggling to convince your bosses about RCP to see this presentation.

Waiting for the Galileo release…

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Plugin Release : XPath Workbook (beta)

Posted on February 24, 2009 by sureshkrishna

Last couple of months have been quite hectic with my job and also in my personal life. Effectively this is my first blog entry this year on Eclipse. In the last one year i have been deeply involved creating XML manipulations and Eclipse plugins. XML and XPath development usually involves lot of experimentation with the XPath expressions and in the real time situations different functions and namespaces can get real creepy.

I could not afford licensing costs for the professional XPath and XML IDE integrations, i wrote one small “XPath Workbook” utility by my self. Even if would have got the license, i might not need all the features that a sophisticated plugin might provide. I am hoping that this is very helpful for others too, who would want to use it as-is or extend it further. I provided the downloads for update site and source on google code and in a short time i am planning to provide the documentation too. If you are working on XML/XPath centric projects, would encourage you to try this plugin and provide me feedback. I am also open, if anyone wants to participate or contribute to this project.

I am providing few screen shots of the plugin…

#1 XPath Workbook as a View

xpathworkbook-1

#2 XPath Workbook with Source XML to be tested

xpathworkbook-2

#3 Xpath Workbook with dynamic content assist

xpathworkbook-3

#4 XPath Wrokbook with Results

xpathworkbook-4

Happy Eclipse’ing.

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2008 Year Roundup

Posted on January 2, 2009 by sureshkrishna

The year 2008 has come to an end and i am excited to look into the New Year with a review of the year 2008. This has been a mixed bag starting with loosing my back pack in New York, moving to Oracle in February, very nice technical sessions at EclipseCon 2008, happiness of becoming a father in May 2009 and finally with preparations to attend the  EclipseCon 2009 again.

This year has been terrific with the proliferation of new technologies and frameworks. I have been hearing a lot about the following technologies in the year 2008.

Mashups : JackBe is an Enterprise Mashup software company and has the series of products like Presto Server, Presto Composer and Presto Connectors. They also have a great Eclipse Plugin to support the advanced developer. This gives Java programmers complete control to design, debug and deploy mashups, all powered into the Eclipse IDE. As opposed to the simple consumer oriented content feeds and screen scrapping, JackBe does lot of serious work on the Enterprise level. I am extremely happy to know the Mashup company JackBe. Though in the current job i don’t work on Mashups, i have seen and understood the power of Mashups for the Enterprise/Business users and would like to really follow and see that  this technology goes a long way in 2009.

Mashups space also has the known players like Yahoo (Pipes), IBM (QEDWiki), Microsoft (Popfly), Google (MashupEditor), etc….

Cloud Computing : A generic concept involving SaaS, SOA and Web 2.0 to provide the technology independent IT capabilities as a service. Many technology platforms have emerged this year or become famous like Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s EC2, Salesforce’s Platform and others. I am probably imagining that the Cloud Computing will be a huge phenomenon as compared to SaaS or SOA or Web 2.0, as this brings in too many perspectives like Servers, OS, Platforms, Frameworks, Development Tools, etc… specialized for working in Cloud.

Domain Modeling : Oops… no fumes please. I know this is not a new topic at all. I have seen too many presentations on the Domain Modeling and in general Model Driven Development (MDA) compared to last few years.  A real good thing is that EMF is lot matured and is of production quality now. When i was working with Robert Bosch, we built an entire automotive IDE with the help of EMF and it was amazing to see the power of EMF and its tooling around it. Thanks to Ed Merks and others who made this modeling journey wonderful.

As i see in Europe, there are many companies using the modeling techniques to solve their business problems. Looks like in other parts of the world is yet to embrace modeling or in general MDA for the commercial products. I see fewer presentations and general discussions about this topics. Probably companies will look at the power of the domain modeling and soon will become main stream architectural philosophy.

Eclipse Community : There have been real great technologies and frameworks that have come from the Eclipse Community. I would like to name a few and i am sure that others are also equally good.

Equinox is runtime project  with the reference implementation of the OSGi 4.1 and JSR 291 specifications. This year’s Ganymede release consists of the Equinox p2 component with the provisioning framework for Eclipse based applications. Many thanks to Neil Bartlett for providing a practical OSGi book in PDF under a Creative Commons license. With the help of the OSGi/Equinox, Eclipse is made available on the server too with the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP). This is a great project which focuses on running Eclipse on server side and enabling almost all the Desktop widgets on the Web Browser with the Qooxdoo Java Script library.

Single Sourcing is really exciting for me as i was involved in many projects converting Desktop Application -> Web Application and vice-versa. Of course with eRCP, now its possible to have a single source code for the Desktop application (RCP) and with minimal changes, the application can be run on the Web Browser(RAP) and Mobile Application (eRCP). Recently i worked on a three part tutorial on the IBM devWorks with full step-by-step instruction and source code.

The EclipseLink project is a runtime project to provide persistence solution focused on leading standards for enterprise Java and SOA application development. Dali Java Persistence Tools, to support the building of extensible frameworks to simplify, define, and edit Object-Relational (O/R) mappings for EJB 3.0 Java Persistence API (JPA) Entities. Oracle has many other cool runtime and tooling projects ranging from JSF Tooling, Teneo (now part of EMF) and others.

Other Products i liked : EclipseCon 2008 gave some insights into the IBM’s Jazz platform with Jazz Server and Rational Team Concert. Jazz is a software collaboration platform built on the Eclipse, OSGi and other technologies. Jazz provides a seamless integration of the work flow and software development.

MyEclipse has a powerful feature set with the support for RESTful Webservices, Maven, Java Script Tools, Spring Tools, Reports, JSF Tools and others. MyEclipse always tries to simplify the user development effort by bringing valuable plugins and services together. MyEclipse also has a Blue edition for IBM RAD and websphere developers.

I am sure i would have missed to mention a lot more exciting technologies here. I am hoping to get more time in the year 2009 to look into other technologies. Currently i am reading “The Pragmatic Programmer” and seems to be a concise book to read. Authors organized the information in a very easily consumable way and everything seems to be having a very good flow. In the first two chapters the authors gives some tips and tricks to increase and improve programmers knowledge and profile. These suggestions seems to be very intuitive and helpful, hopefully planning to implement some of them in the new year.

Wish everyone a very safe, wonderful and healthy new year 2009.

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Process hell in Vista

Posted on December 27, 2008 by sureshkrishna

There are numerous processes that recide in my Vista machine and it’s unfortunate that sometimes i could not kill the process from the services window. Very often i get a message that i can not kill the process and i should ask administrator.  Recently i have seen a hit on the performance on my system and i explored a bit to see how i can stop the unwanted process and found a way to do it.

Go to the control panel -> administrative tools -> system configuration.

admintools-sysconf

Once you are in the System Configuration, select or deselect the process that you don’t need at the start up. Be sure that you know what you are doing.

sysconf-startup

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My EclipseCon 2009 submissions

Posted on December 17, 2008 by sureshkrishna

Today i received one “acceptance” and one “declined” message from the EclipseCon 2009 selection committee. My short talk has been accepted and the tutorial has been declined. I was just hoping that if my tutorial got accepted, i would have definitely attended EclipseCon 2009. With this year’s economy and the way companies are responding to the future training needs, my chances of attending the EclipseCon 2009 have touched ground.

I will definitely have a peek into the EclipseCon 2009 presentations. If i can’t attend, i can at least view the content.

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I STRONGLY CONDEMN MUMBAI ATTACKS

Posted on December 14, 2008 by sureshkrishna

This is in response to sad and anger provoking incidents happened in India. I pay tribute to all those heroes, who have fought and gave their lives for this country in rescuing many innocent lives in Mumbai. I would not want to talk more about this fearful incident, but want to remind everyone a small message.

“Please do not forget such incidents and move on. This kind of ill cultured and brutal behavior should be stopped. If not done or if we (YOU, ME and Others) relax thinking that nothing happened to me , a time will come when the same incident might happen to one of us or to our near or dear. And, that time we will just be in agony and nothing else. We all as part of the India and Indian community in different parts of the world, please spread this message across and let everyone know that we STRONGLY CONDEMN these brutal acts.”

Most of us has been thinking that, “As long as i am safe; i don’t care”. But PLEASE come out of these thoughts and be aware that we are all part of the same system and society. If we don’t bring out our frustration, thoughts, ideas and kill our fears and URGE a result oriented action and thought process, nothing is going to happen. We have seen so many riots, bomb blasts and still we are passive. We and Media would like to talk about it when the incident happens and after few months, “EVERY THING IS NORMAL”. People behave as though nothing has happened and we are living in a perfect world. A time comes for every one, when they loose their patience, let their ACTIONs speak with no fear. “YOU FEAR, YOU SUFFER”.

When i talk to few people recently, they dont even want to talk about it. Some people feel sad about this indicent and they dont want to talk and some dont care about it. The attitude is like, “I am in XYZ country; I dont care”. With all the due respect to your personal feelings, i would urge such people to come out of their coward clothes and behave as a responsible citizens. One need not be patriatic, to feel bad about these issues and raise a voice. It just takes a meaningful, sensible human being to condemn such things and “EXPRESS THAT WHAT HAPPENED IS REALLY BAD”.

This is the question of the “Terrorism” and WE CAN NOT FIGHT it, if we have so many differences among ourselves and “fear even to speak out”.  Do speak out about “WHAT YOU FEEL” and have a result oriented thought process. World needs to know what each and every one of us feel.

Finally, i salute to all the heroes of the attacks and my sincere condolences to all those families who have lost their near and dear. Being away from my country, i am trying to do what i can.

26/11 MUMBAI ATTACK MARTYRS

India pays tribute to its heroes

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Applications have mysterious processes !!!

Posted on December 13, 2008 by sureshkrishna

Even after these many years of software development, there are some applications that still bother user with a lot of processes and memory consumption. I am not surprised if such applications are from the novice software vendors, but the matured technology companies like Google and Real Networks do develop some applications that annoy me.

googleupdate

realnetworks

As soon as i boot my windows machine, these process would start and sometimes i wonder how does my machine hit on the performance. Now, i go and kill both of the Google Updater, Real Networks processes in the process explorer.

kill_both

Recently Google has the Video plugin and it still sucks (:-(). There are so many times that i kill this process and i get the same process spawned multiple times. I cant kill this process for some reason and it always spawns a new process, each time i kill (Google might think it is a smart thing to do) . I was under the impression that Google does some magic by not using any dlls or exes but i was wrong. They do use the gooletalkplugin.exe directly attached to the browser.

googletalk

I am sure that a simple home user would not mind (to some extent) having all these *^$*^$ processes around, but as a programmer i do not feel this is a good practice and as a consumer, i feel cheated. e.g. Google could have just asked users to install the Google Talk and use it for the Video chat, instead of giving an impression that it runs right from the browser.

This is a good example for me how NOT to build products and how NOT to ignore what goes inside the processes and memory. I am sure many of the readers would have seen similar situations and sometimes even would have felt frustrated. Do you think such sort of things from software vendors is fair ? What are your experiences ?

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