I Wish I'd Said That

is still moving along and is still providing great comic relief in a stressful time. It’s like watching a reality TV show, it has no basis in reality and the outcome is a huge who cares.

The Left can’t figure out what they want to do or how to do it. The President wants change, the Speaker of the House won’t pass legislation without a public option which no one else seems to want, Harry Reid wants to get re-elected and there are usually 3 or 4 different bills floating around Congress and the Senate. It seems that the Democrats would rather run around in chaos instead of sitting down and putting together a single coherent plan. The Right knows exactly what they are doing, simply discredit everything that comes from the Left.

The most fascinating part of the debate for me though, is the way the story changes over time. Initially I was astonished to find out just how bad the Canadian health care system was when I first heard Sean Hannity, Dick Morris and others on the Right talk about it. Now, being a Canadian and having used the health care system for 47 years as did all my family and friends I was quite surprised to hear how awful it was. The folks on the Right started by arguing against the Canadian system using specific facts and figures that supported their argument. Over time, however, their argument has changed, now they just say bad things about the British and Canadian systems with complete disregard for any facts at all. I suppose the pundits on the Right believe that they have made their case so now they can just make any statements they want , even if it is a complete lie. The truth, it seems, has no place in politics or cable news.

The reality is that from a patient’s perspective the Canadian health care system is superior to the U.S. system in every way. First of all the cost is almost nothing in comparison to any plan in the U.S. When I lived in Alberta 10 years ago we paid $90.00 per month per family. Some friends in British Columbia tell me they are currently paying $100.00 every 3 months and the rates are probably similar across the other provinces. The other financial win in Canada is that you never get a bill. If you go to the doctor for the sniffles or you spend months in a dialysis machine and then have your kidney transplant you never get a bill. The concept of bankruptcy because of medical bills doesn’t exist in Canada. I also like the fact that I can go to any doctor any time any where in Canada. Here in the U.S. insurance companies like to dictate which doctors you can go to. I was rather surprised when I got my first health insurance card in the U.S. and it had a physicians name on it. I was surprised and asked a co-worker, what’s this, do doctors advertise on health care cards? He laughed and said, no, that is the doctor you have to go to. I was even more surprised the first time I went to a doctor and actually got a bill afterwards. It was a delightful pile of paper carefully explaining what had been done, what was covered by insurance and what I was responsible for. Personally I’ve seen little difference in the quality of care between Canada and the U.S., my experience has been about the same in both. My wife, however, has seen a rather large difference. In 10 years here she has never actually seen her doctor, she has alway seen a Nurse Practitioner, the cost, however, remains the same. Folks in the U.S. like to tell me about the long waits in Canada which is always good for a laugh. The longest waits we’ve ever experienced, even for a basic appointment, are here the U.S.

I could go on writing volumes about the differences but having used the U.S. system for 10 years and the Canadian system for many more than that, I can honestly say the Canadian system is far superior for the average consumer.

The truly sad part of the U.S. health care debate is that everyone seems ready to make changes so there is a unique opportunity to craft a great system and that opportunity is going to be wasted.

written by Rob Caljouw

the dueling duo at 9:00. Someone on the cable news networks has a great sense of humor it would seem.

I confess, I actually watch Sean Hannity, usually his repeat show at midnight EST. I find that a really good laugh helps me sleep better but now I’m in a terrible quandary, do I watch Hannity or Behar? What is a poor TV watcher to do?

I have watched Joy Behar on the View a little but never cared for much for morning shows. They generally waste an hour of my life I can never get back so I pay little attention. Now that she has been given an hour on CNN I thought there might be something actually worth listening to so last night it was Hannity versus Behar at my place.

Sean Hannity was, as always, predictable but entertaining. He does his usual spin on facts and statistics, lines up guests that support his view and manages to fire up the extreme Right and annoy the Left. Having seen that Hannity was on his usual track I excitedly switched to CNN to gain enlightenment from Joy Behar and her guests. My disappointment was overwhelming, I was really hoping for the same kind of fact twisting fanaticism that I got from Hannity but it was not to be. Joy Behar did exactly what I have come to expect from the Left, throw around childish insults about people, big deal, back to Hannity.

I really enjoy a good discussion no matter what the subject and it’s always fun to play devil’s advocate should the opportunity arise. I suppose this is why I listen to people like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others on the extreme Right. I just wish there were folks like that on the Left which is why I had high hopes for Joy Behar on CNN. When I switched to Behar’s show the topic under discussion was Sarah Palin, which was no big surprise, she seems to be a favorite for discussions on the Left. I was so disappointed when the conversation was exactly what I have come to expect from the Left, just a bunch of insults. I really wish they would twist facts and statistics like their counterparts on the Right to make things more interesting. I heard comments like, “Sarah Palin is just promoting her book which is strange since she has never read a book”, and, “… George Bush who never read a book…”, which is just what I have come to expect from the Left. I was never a fan of George Bush and I’m always happy to debate his presidency and policies. From what I understand of the past President he was actually very well read, perhaps not the greatest speaker, but well read nonetheless which makes these kind of comments just insults and lies. Come on Joy, you can do better, I’m sure of it. Joy Behar really should try and learn more them Hannity and Limbaugh, if she did, people like me might actually watch her show once in a while.

Listening to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other Right wing characters is annoyingly frustrating and you want to jump in and straighten out the facts. Listening to Joy Behar, Janeane Garofalo and other Left wingers just makes you want to change the channel. Twisting facts and statistics to make your point is one thing, just calling everyone stupid and racist is childish. I guess I’ll be watching Sean Hannity again tonight.

written by Rob Caljouw

There are 3 or 4 bills, it’s hard to keep track without a program, floating around the house and the senate at any given time lately. The health care debate in the U.S. is still going full force and is as entertaining as ever, so what happened to the economy? It seems that for the past few months health care has been front and center in the U.S. federal government discussions. The economic problems seem to have been relegated to the back burner with the Left saying the Stimulus bill was a success and Right saying it was a failure.

To most average folks debating the Stimulus bill is a waste of time. 250,000 people hit the unemployment lines last week and I’m pretty confident that they care little about the debate. I would also suggest that problems with the health care system are also low on their list of priorities at the moment. Now, I’m aware that there has been lots of discussion about the economy but it would seem that it the federal government were really serious about helping it would focus more on the problem. The health care debate has consumed an inordinate amount of time in Washington and one has to wonder where the economy might be if a similar effort were put into it.

written by Rob Caljouw

in the U.S. has been most entertaining for the past few months. Watching the process unfold has truly been a delight and great fun.

My favorite part has been watching the right beat up on the Canadian and British health care systems. Being a Canadian I have found this aspect of the debate particularly enlightening. I’ve learned that the constant bashing of something you know nothing about to further your own political view is a great way to get your point across. I really enjoy the ads the Right produces showing Canadians complaining bitterly about their health care. What the folks on the Right don’t understand is that the two top pastimes in Canada are sports, particularly hockey, and complaining about the health care system. Finding a Canadian who is willing to complain about the system in Canada is a matter of simply finding a Canadian. I think if more Canadians realized that they could get paid to complain about the health care system they would line up for the chance.

Those folks from Canada who are getting their 15 minutes of fame on U.S. television are fun to listen to but I’d really like to hear their response to some other questions. For example, they seem to think the U.S. system is wonderful so let’s give it to them. I got a quote from Kaiser Permanente and Blue Cross for health care. I only had to pay $650.00 per month with a $10,000.00 per year deductible for their service. Not bad by U.S. standards but I can already hear the Canadian response, including those in U.S. TV ads, and most of it are words that are not fit to print.

The bottom line of the dialog, however, has nothing to do with health care, insurance companies, premiums, quality of care or anything else being thrown around. The real conversation here in the U.S. is all about two things; getting your way and laying blame. If you watch the discussions taking place be they on the news or in town hall meetings they are always the same, Right versus Left, period. Everyone wants to get their way and blame someone else for all the country’s woes. It’s fascinating to watch, when anyone puts forth an idea support and criticism is immediately split down party lines. I find this interesting in that it proves to me that no one really wants to solve the problem,they simply want to get their way. If someone puts forth a proposal and the congress or the senate were split, say 50/50, for and against based on the merits of the plan that might be something. The reality is that any idea proposed will immediately be supported or opposed straight down party lines which simply negates the concept of trying to find a solution.

One part of the discussion that I found particularly intriguing was that of Tort law reform. Everyone, both Left and Right, seemed to agree that this was something that significantly added to the cost of health care in the U.S.. I was immensely impressed with everyone in Washington because they all agreed that this was a big problem and so I was anxiously awaiting to see how the bipartisan fix to this problem would be approached. Alas I was once again disappointed by the government of, for and by the people. They all agreed that although this was a big problem there was nothing to be done because the trial lawyer lobby is one of the largest in Washington. Huh? In most of the civilized world this would be a non issue, in fact, in many advanced societies lobbying the government is considered graft, corruption and criminal activity, but not in the U.S. Here it’s all about the money, which again, negates any incentive to find a good solution to the problem at hand. Any solution arrived at will be one where all the big lobby groups are made happy, basically a compromise between special interest groups.

I was more than a little dumbfounded when I heard that the law makers in Washington don’t read the bills they pass, I honestly thought, this can’t be. Then I saw a number of the fine members of Congress actually laugh at the idea. After thinking about how incongruous this seemed I realized that they were right in laughing at the concept. If every bill passed by the U.S. federal government is a compromise between all the big lobbies and special interest groups why bother reading them. Agree or disagree, there is nothing you can do to change it so what the heck, vote! If it’s a bill by my party I vote for it, if not I vote against it, life is really simple in Washington and they get paid for this, what a great job!

The health care debate has been great fun to watch and it will hopefully continue for while yet. It’s always nice to a little comic relief in such dark economic times.

written by Rob Caljouw

maybe. I read an article a while ago that I thought I agreed with but upon reflection, perhaps not so much. The article was a fairly accurate description of companies who continuously expound on how employees are the most important company asset. Then, when the economy or bad business practices put the company in financial difficulties, the first thing to go is the employees. How can an organization actually believe that its employees are it’s best asset and then when things get tough start handing out pink slips?

Well, perhaps it all depends on how you define valuable. When a company says its employees are it’s most valuable asset the assumption, made by the employees, is that the current individuals who make up the body of employees are of value. Another assumption the employees make is that the company would never get rid of it’s most valuable asset. Sadly I believe the employees are wrong in both of these assumptions in too many cases.

Many organizations believe that a valuable resource is an expendable and disposable yet renewable resource. In this case when the company starts talking about its valuable resources and tough economic times you might want to dust off your resume. In tough economic times like today we really need to be careful about our assumptions and definitions.

written by Rob Caljouw

is a great concept and I’m most curious to see how it evolves. I believe it’s a given that this is where we are headed because the huge potential value in ideas like SaaS and PaaS.

There are, of course, many issues to overcome but that is simply a matter of time, effort and understanding. There is much discussion and debate about the notion of Cloud Computing and lots of vendors are positioning themselves within this market but what it all comes down to is a question of value. My first question when looking at any IT investment, large or small is, what is the value it adds? The initial value here is immediately obvious and easy to calculate but over the long term this value will increase.

Cloud Computing is simply the next logical step in the commoditization of computing infrastructure. It’s really no different than any other infrastructure service we enjoy today. Whether you compare it with the telephone system, the electrical grid or water and waste systems it really doesn’t matter, computing is going to become just another infrastructure service. It will be commoditized, standardized, ubiquitous and inexpensive.

This is one of those game changing ideas that will improve with adoption, it will indeed take time for us to move in this direction but I believe it is inevitable. Cloud Computing, as all things should, comes back to the question of value to an organization. The value added to most companies from IT comes through software, not from the fact that they happen to own rooms and racks full of servers. Where the software and/or data resides is not important to most users in the business community. The majority of business users want quick easy and safe access to the tools and information they need to do their job and they care little about some computer they have never heard of. It reminds me of a quote I heard many years ago as a definition of Client Server software when it was the latest thing in IT. “Before Client Server systems I couldn’t get my work done because the computer I was using was down. With Client Server computing I can’t get my work done because some computer I’ve never heard of is down”. So to the average business user Cloud Computing is no different than any other advancement in IT, they don’t care about it, they just want to get their work done.

The most interesting aspects of Cloud Computing are the economic and social change that it will bring. When you follow the notion of Cloud Computing to it’s logical conclusion you see the end of corporate IT as it is today. Cloud Computing simply eliminates the need for IT departments as they currently exist. The corporate computing environment and all of its associated overhead disappears and is replaced with commodity services from infrastructure service providers and value adding aggregators. Cloud Computing is an IT concept that will truly bring significant business transformation, the question is, are we in IT ready to deal with it?

written by Rob Caljouw

In my quest to deliver an application to my fictional customer I’m having to learn a number of things before I can get started. The idea was predicated on the notion that an enterprise quality application could be delivered very quickly and economically given the right combination of tools and technologies.

I chose Groovy and Grails as the web application framework so I had to get busy and learn enough to accomplish my task. It has taken me longer than most to get up to speed on these tools but given my background that seems reasonable. Having spent the last eight years in senior management and the four years before that in project management my coding skills are a little rusty to say the least.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to pick up both Groovy and Grails. If you know Java then Groovy is pretty simple, the hardest part is simply getting used to the language. I spent a lot of time actually writing Java code then refactoring it into Groovy. It reminded me of the first time I wrote something in C++, the first few iterations were C code that I eventually refactored into true C++. If you believe that when it comes to software that “less is more” the Groovy is for you.

Being comfortable with Groovy I then tackled Grails. If you are comfortable with frameworks like Rails and others then there will be few surprises with Grails. It only took me a day or so to get up to speed enough with Grails to be able to accomplish something with it. Grails emphasizes convention over configuration and that, at least for me, took some getting used to. I’m one of those folks who likes to control every aspect of the environment so it was a change for me to let convention rule. Once you get used to it, however, it works well. I try hard to stay out of the way and let Grails do what it does and when I’m successful things seem to work out reasonably well.

I decided to use a Javascript library for the user interface mostly because this too was new to me. I think the last time I used Javascript was about 1996 and I actually remember using Livescript so I figured I was in for a long learning curve here. I was pleasantly surprised again though, it turned out to be quite straightforward. I confess, I find Javascript a bit strange but I attribute that to my having focused on the server side of things for so long and not fussing about the client. I suppose Javascript folks would find J2EE artifacts like EJB, JSP, JSF and Servlets a bit different at first glance as well.

The good news is that after having given myself a week to learn the basics of all the technologies I’m quite comfortable tackling my Yard Management exercise so stay tuned.

written by Rob Caljouw

In a previous post I talked about solving a business problem with some open source technologies and this is the first installment of that series.

Since the decision was made on what the environment was going to be comprised of I thought it might be prudent to see if I could actually put the pieces in place to accomplish my project.

The end goal is to deliver an application using Grails and Glassfish so I downloaded Glassfish V2 UR1 an installed it on my Mac server. Just download the binary for your platform and install it according to the instructions on the download page and you’re set, the Quick Start Guide will have you up and running in minutes.

This turned out to be a very simple step in the process and I am very impressed with Glassfish at this point but more on that later. I had it installed and running in minutes and successfully deployed a small application to test it. All I had to add was the MySQL JDBC jar file to the domain lib folder and I soon had a couple of jdbc connection pools working.

I then downloaded Subversion 1.4.6 and installed it, again with no difficulties, so I now have the application server, VCS and database ready to go. I’m using the MySQL that shipped with Leopard as well as the default JDK (1.5) to keep things as simple as possible.

My next install was Netbeans and the hardest part of this was, which one to choose? You have 5.5.1, 6.0.1 and 6.1 Beta all available in various configurations so I chose 6.1 Beta with everything. This install went as smoothly as the rest and everything appears to be working fine. I chose the NetBeans, Glassfish and openesb packages from the downloaded image and decided to ignore the tomcat package since it’s not part of the project.

The last part of the environment to be installed was Groovy and Grails and the instructions here had me going in minutes with Netbeans. The last part of today’s exercise was to wire the pieces together so I followed one of the Grails tutorials using Netbeans and assembled a tiny program. I imported that application into Subversion through Netbeans to test that connectivity and I was pleasantly surprised at how well that went. The last step for the day was to generate a war file of the Grails app and deploy it under Glassfish. I created the war file from within Netbeans and deployed it using the Glassfish Administration console and, of course, it worked just fine.

At this point in my exercise I have my development and production environment in place and I’ve invested about 2 hours in the project. Please keep in mind that this is just an exercise for me and when I talk about my “production” environment it’s just a basic install of the application server and database. In my next article I’ll get started describing the application.

written by Rob Caljouw

The past few weeks have been pretty busy, hence the lack of postings here, but they’ve been rather interesting all in all. I’ve had the opportunity to investigate some tools and technologies that are new to me so I thought I’d start sharing some of the fun.

J2EE environments are nothing new and I’ve worked a lot with IBM’s WebSphere, Oracle’s AS10g, JBoss and others but I never got the chance to use Glassfish until recently. I have been very impressed with it and will write more about my experiences with in upcoming articles. I’ve also had opportunity to try out some of the Glassfish related technologies like OpenESB, OpenDS and OpenSSO and again, have been very impressed. This makes for a powerful infrastructure but what about application delivery? This is where I started to delve into Groovy and Grails to see what they are all about.

To put this all in a little context, I have been asked a lot of questions lately about the economy and its impact on IT initiatives in businesses of varying sizes and in different markets. They all come down to the same thing, we still have a need for certain IT initiatives but our budgets have been slashed and all too often, head count has been, or is being, reduced so what do we do? I thought I’d try and answer the question with an exercise in application delivery for a fictional scenario to see what happens.

My fictional customer has the following business problem. They are a manufacturer with a number of plants around the country. At one plant they receive all inbound parts in trailers and containers that sit in the yard until the parts are required on the assembly line. There are many problems associated with this process but two main ones stand out. The first is the lack of inventory control, it often takes a lot of time to find the right parts in the yard so the line stops frequently. The other problem is trailer detention and container demurrage charges, the trailers and containers often sit too long in the yard so the manufacturer gets billed for this time.

The long term plan is to build a new warehouse with all the latest technology but that is one of the many initiatives that has been put on hold. The plant manager, however, is still held accountable by corporate to reduce costs and increase efficiency. The plant manager calls IT to see if they have any ideas but he is told that their budgets are restricted and they can not start any new projects because of the high cost of working with their ERP system. What is a poor plant manager to do?

The environment for my little exercise is as follows; the application will be developed on an Intel based Mac laptop and deployed on a little PPC based Mac server both running Leopard 10.5.2. I will use Glassfish as the application server, MySQL as the database and Netbeans as the development environment. Subversion is my VCS of choice and, of course, everything will be built in Groovy and Grails.

This will not be a tutorial for any of the above technologies but more of a diary of my experience in trying to solve a problem with them and learning something along the way.

written by Rob Caljouw

The folks at Packt Publishing sent me a copy of the following book and asked me to review it for them. I hope you find it useful and informative.

Title:
SOA Approach to Integration

Language: English
Paperback: 300 pages
Release Date: November 2007
ISBN: 1904811175

Authors:
Matjaz B. Juric, Ramesh Loganathan, Poornachandra Sarang, and Frank Jennings

Intended Audience:
“The target audience for this book are architects and developers, who are responsible for setting up SOA for integration for applications within the enterprise (intra-enterprise integration) and applications across enterprises (inter-enterprise integration or B2B).”

Overview:
The book does a good job of covering and tying together a broad range of material with respect to the title topic. It provides a varying degree of detail in different areas, for example a light treatment of SOA in chapter 2 yet a more in-depth look at XML in chapter 3. The intended audience is noted as architects and developers so this variance may make sense but it seems inconsistent at times. Overall I thought this was a good book for anyone interested in the topic and a good reference for those who have been tasked with an integration project.

Chapters:
1.) Integration Architecture, Principals, and Patterns – covers a wide variety of concepts including types of integration including data, application, process and presentation. It also speaks to layers of integration such as communications, brokering, routing, transformation and others. The authors touch on various technologies in the integration arena, for example, database access, message oriented middleware, remote procedure calls, transaction monitors and more. The chapter finishes up with a quick overview of the integration process, various practices activities and patterns.

2.) Service and Process-Oriented Architectures for Integration – talks a great deal about the concepts and standards that make up Service and Process Oriented Architecture. It is not an in-depth tutorial on either subject but is a good reference for the standards associated with them and why they are well suited for integration.

3.) Best Practices for Using XML for Integration – is closer to a tutorial on XML than a description of the architectural rationale and implications of it with respect to SOA. Since part of the target audience is developers the level of detail in this chapter is not un-warranted. This chapter includes a comparison of JAXP API’s and shows a number of XML schema and XSL stylesheet examples. It also speaks in reasonable detail to validation, security, encryption and performance considerations with respect to XML.

4.) SOA and Web Services Approach for Integration – steps more deeply into the area of web services and again much of it is directed to developers as opposed to architects. It contains a good overview of various patterns and contains some guidelines on their usage. The chapter contains a light review of web services for B2B and EAI and then a more detailed description and examples of interoperable web services, WSDL and WS-I.

5.) BPEL and the Process-Oriented Approach for Integration – speaks in more detail about BPEL and what the authors refer to as “the process-oriented approach to SOA-based integration.”. This chapter addresses the usual suspects of choreography, orchestration and complexity in a clear fashion. It then goes into more depth on writing BPEL processes and works through a fairly complete example.

6.) Service and Process-Oriented Approach to Integration Using Web Services – gets to the heart of the notion of using SOA for integration by delving into the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). This chapter covers the ESB at the appropriate level of abstraction for an architect and touches on key areas such as mediation, transformations, communications, transactions and security.

Conclusion:
I enjoyed the book and felt it delivered on the topic of SOA Approach to Integration. Trying to target both architects and developers is a difficult task but readers from either area will find something useful in this book. It is not the definitive work on SOA and Integration but it does a good job of tying together a broad range of material and will be a welcome addition to anyone’s technical library.

written by Rob Caljouw