Danushka's Blog

2011 Hugo Awards

2011-08-23T14:44:00.002+09:00

The Hugo Awards are for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements. You can read more about Hugo Awards from [1]. The 2011 winners of this award were revealed a couple of days back and the list of names and more could be found at [2]. Interestingly The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang has been awarded the Best Novella. You can find a review of this book at [3]. It sounds interesting!.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award
[2] - http://www.renovationsf.org/index.php
[3] - http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/12/book-review-the-lifecycle-of-software-objects/

WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP - 2.1.0 Released!

2010-07-07T18:02:00.001+09:00

Major Changes Since Last Release
* API Improvements for WS-Addressing, WS-Security
* Compatibility changes for PHP 5.3
* Enabled built-in Guththila XML parser
* Performance enhancements

Download from:
http://wso2.org/downloads/wsf/php

Project homepage:
http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/php

Germany; the winners this time?

2010-07-07T17:49:00.001+09:00

I got an interesting mail from a friend of mine today. According to this mail, there is a pattern in how different countries have won the FIFA World Cup so far. When that pattern is matched with the years it defines a phenomenon. The source of this mail is unknown. Interestingly, according to this phenomenon, Germany should win the World Cup this time. Lets keep our fingers crossed!.

1. Brazil won the World Cup in 1994;   before that they also won in 1970. Adding 1970 + 1994= 3964
2. Argentina won its last World Cup in 1986; before that they also won in 1978. Adding 1978 + 1986= 3964
3. Germany won its last World Cup in 1990; before that they also won in 1974. Adding 1974 + 1990= 3964
4. Brazil also won the World Cup in 2002; before that they also won in 1962. Adding 1962+ 2002= 3964
5. Therefore if you want to know what nation is going to win the
World Cup in 2010, you only have to subtract 2010 from the magic number 3964. The result is 1954. In 1954 the World Cup was won by Germany !!!

Load Testing …

2010-07-07T17:24:00.001+09:00

The History of FIFA World Cup Match Ball

2010-06-17T09:02:00.001+09:00

In the early 1920s Adi Dassler was innovating and producing the best football products of his time. Today, the company he founded still is.

Adidas has proudly been introducing football with a new design for each FIFA World Cup since its very first encounter in 1970. This is the history of balls they have come up with so far.

adidas Telstar - 1970 FIFA World Cup Mexico

adidas Telstar and adidas Chile - 1974 FIFA World Cup Germany

adidas Tango - 1978 FIFA World Cup Argentina

adidas Tango España - 1982 FIFA World Cup Spain

adidas Azteca - 1986 FIFA World Cup Mexico

adidas Etrusco Unico - 1990 FIFA World Cup Italy

adidas Questra - 1994 FIFA World Cup US

adidas Tricolore - 1998 FIFA World Cup France

adidas Fevernova - 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan

adidas Teamgeist™ - 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™

adidas Jabulani – 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa

Selling free software is hard?

2010-06-12T12:26:00.001+09:00

I happened to read an interesting article based on an interview with Jim Whitehurst, RetHat’s CEO, on ComputerWorld. It basically discusses why RetHat is still a $750 million company, it should have been a $5 billion company by now according to their projections, though.

At one points he states, ““selling free software is hard”. A knock-on consequence is that it harder – roughly *ten* times harder - for an open source company to grow to a given revenue level than it is for the corresponding proprietary company.”

More importantly he also states that, “the job is harder not because they are incompetent, or because open source will “fail” in any sense. But because the economics of open source software – and therefore the business dynamics – are so different from those of traditional software that it simply won't be possible in most markets.”

Read that full article here.

Get the Best of Both Worlds with WSO2 Stratos!

2010-06-08T18:35:00.001+09:00

This diagram resembles a typical multiple inheritance scenario in C++ programming language. In a nutshell this conveys the message that WSO2 Stratos inherits from both Cloud Computing and WSO2 Carbon, the popular middleware platform. In other words, WSO2 Stratos is cloud middleware.

Being an offspring of cloud computing WSO2 Stratos possesses the following attributes.

1. Elasticity: Stratos manages your underlying cloud infrastructure to seamlessly handle the scalability demands of your application.

2. Multi-tenancy: Departments, developer groups, or projects run fully independently, but share the same middleware platform for maximum resource utilization.

3. Billing and Metering: Each tenant can meter their actual resource use for internal billing purposes.

4. Self Provisioning: Authorized users can provision new tenants from a web portal in moments.

5. Dynamic Discovery: Linking up services that reside in a dynamic and elastic environment can be tricky – but Stratos simplifies and automates this process with standards-based service discovery and automatic configuration capabilities.

6. Incremental Testing: Cloud fundamentally changes the way you test and deploy applications, but doesn’t reduce your quality requirements! Stratos allows you to deploy service versions side by side and carefully dial up the traffic sent to each version.

WSO2 Carbon is the OSGi-based core platform for WSO2’s enterprise-grade middleware stack. This base platform hosts a set of key middleware components that are essential for a enterprise-grade middleware framework.

Basically you have the luxury of using the Carbon-based middleware components over Stratos services. The initial list includes,

WSO2 Stratos Governance powered by WSO2 Governance Registry for design-time and runtime governance of your SOA framework.

WSO2 Stratos Identity powered by WSO2 Identity Server for identity and entitlement management.

WSO2 Stratos Application Server powered by WSO2 Web Services Application Server for service hosting and management.

WSO2 Stratos Gedgets powered by WSO2 Gadget Server for writing and managing portlets.

WSO2 Stratos Mashup Server powered by WSO2 Mashup Server for deploying Web service Mashups.

WSO2 Stratos Business Activity Monitor powered by WSO2 Business Activity Monitor for monitoring business activities within your SOA deployment.

You can expect many more useful Stratos services in the future.

Therefore I would say WSO2 Stratos is a one-stop-shop for a complete SOA middleware framework in the cloud.

WSO2 Debuts Cloud Platform for Apps

2010-06-02T16:10:00.001+09:00

WSO2 debuts an enterprise open source cloud platform, WSO2 Stratos, for application deployments.

Billed as a hosted platform-as-a-service offering, Stratos enables IT professionals to deploy applications and services on private or public clouds. Capabilities are featured for portal, enterprise service bus, and application server capabilities, WSO2 says. Identity management and governance are provided also. Read more on the networkworld.

Computing as a Commodity

2010-06-02T15:55:00.001+09:00

In good old days companies used to have their own steam engines and dynamos for power generation. Some who could afford to also had their own private power plants. It is needless to say that they had to bear the initial investments and also maintenance thereafter. When the electric grid was established people stopped generating their own power and plugged into the electric grid.

Similarly cloud computing has gradually been taking over from private servers, racks and datacenters. People have been fighting over electric grid - cloud computing analogy. It may not make sense to put data and electricity in the same bucket but if you look at a higher level, I believe it is a perfect analogy. Once you are provisioned, your computing usage will be monitored and billed similar to the case when you are plugged into the national electric grid and start consuming electricity your usage is metered and billed. Its again a reasonable analogy from an infrastructure perspective too.

In 1961, the distinguished computer scientist, the father of the LISP programming language, John McCarthy was the first to suggest publicly – in a speech given to celebrate MIT’s centennial - that computing power (IaaS) and even specific applications (SaaS) could be sold through the “utility” business model in the future. This idea was embraced by computer enthusiasts at that time but did not continue to grab due attention simply because the technology was not ready. But now we can see his idea coming up in the form of cloud computing.

The principle of cloud computing is trivial. Its just a paid service for computing. The service may include, hardware rental – in the case of public cloud –, use of specific computer applications (SaaS) and license charges or just access to computer processing power (IaaS). The shape of the deal solely depends on what the client wants and what the utility computing company can offer.

The key benefit from a customers’ perspective is that they can just get going without worrying about all the hardware, software, licenses and above all the maintenance headaches. Probably the customer can switch to a smaller IT department if not shut it down completely, provided that the utility computing service provider is highly dependable ;-).

Utility computing comes in handy when it comes to compatibility too. You have the convenience of subscribing to a single software suite and use it throughout your organization without getting each department in your large organization to use its own software suite making interoperability a nightmare.

The main risk in utility computing is reliability. You need to make sure you can have a long-term partnership with your service provider. If the service provider goes out of business for some reason or you find the software they offer is buggy and broken most of the times, then you are going to pay the price at the end of the day. But if your service provider is a market leader like WSO2, then it is guaranteed that you get an uninterrupted service all the time. Specially when it comes to middleware, something like WSO2 Stratos, the cloud version of award winning WSO2 Carbon platform, will make sure you will get reliable, rubout and uninterrupted service. You get everything you need to build an enterprise-grade middleware framework on the cloud including Cloud Application Server, Cloud Governance Registry, Cloud Gedget Server, Cloud Mashup Server, Cloud Business Activity Monitor and not forgetting Cloud Identity Server that are powered by WSO2 Carbon. WSO2 Stratos is still in its early days but worth giving a try!.

WSO2 Web Services Framework (WSF) Admin M1 Released

2010-03-11T19:00:00.001+09:00

WSO2 WSF/C team is pleased to announce the M1 release of WSO2 WSF Admin for Apache Axis2/C, WSO2 WSF/C and WSO2 WSF/C++.

WSO2 WSF Admin is a runtime management GUI for Apache Axis2/C, WSO2 Web Service Framework for C and WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++ that is powered by the WSO2 Carbon frontend, a Java based web UI. The management console backend is a collection of Axis2/C services and modules that are deployed within the framework itself. The communication between the frontend and backend is based on SOAP and REST.

Key Features
1. Configure Apache Axis2/C, WSO2 WSF/C and WSO2 WSF/C++ through a Web UI.
2. Ability to view service group, service, operation and module meta data.
3. Configure and apply/remove security on a service dynamically.
4. Policy Editor.
5. Monitor service usage statistics.

You can download this release from http://wso2.org/projects/wsf/c

Tour de France Champion Accused of Data Hacking

2010-02-18T03:27:00.001+09:00

A French judge has issued a national arrest warrant for US cyclist Floyd Landis in connection with a case of data hacking at a doping laboratory. After discovering the hacking, the lab has upgraded security to protect its computer systems from intruders. Read the full story here.

Apache Continues to be the Leading Web Server

2010-01-13T14:39:00.001+09:00

A survey conducted by netcraft shows that Apache Web server continues to be the leading Web server by a huge margin leaving others in the dust. Apache httpd claims to have the largest market share.

Active Servers

Market Share

Apache may Stop 1.3, 2.0 Series Releases

2010-01-13T13:33:00.001+09:00

There are clear indications that ASF may stop new releases of the 1.3 and 2.0 series of its Web server product. Apparently their main focus now is on 2.2 series. Nevertheless there is a larger number of 1.3 and 2.0 series servers in production systems as of now.

Google Docs to Replace USB Drives?

2010-01-13T12:49:00.001+09:00

Google unveiled yesterday on their official blog that Google Docs would offer to host “all” file types with a limit of 250MB. With this, you can now host all your valuable docs in a central location and share/access them from different computers. You can read the full story here.

JeOS

2010-01-12T20:58:00.001+09:00

JeOS (pronounced “juice”) stands for Just enough Operating System. In essence JeOS is not a generic, all-inclusive, bulky operating system but a customized, light-weight version for a particular application. The implication is that JeOS is for Software Appliances.

The idea is to have the minimum set of OS components that are required to run a particular software appliance so that its makes the appliance light-weight and robust.

Typically, a JeOS consist of the following:

JeOS media ( OS core {Kernel,Virtual Drives,Login}
OS Minimum maintenance tools
Minimum user space tools
Packages repository (DVD or Network based)

Major OS vendors now offer their “juice” variants optimized for virtual appliances and that have been tuned to take advantage of key performance technologies of the latest virtualization products including VMware and KVM. The list includes, Ubuntu JeOS, OEL JeOS, SUSE JeOS, LimeJeOS (openSUSE version), Orange JeOS (CentOS version), etc.

Why SaaS?

2010-01-08T19:46:00.001+09:00

SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It means you pay for the Software like service rather than buying and installing it locally. Why would you want to keep paying for a service when you could just buy a piece of software and pay once?. Well there are a couple of good reasons that you have never thought of.

1. Low cost of entity - Typically the periodic fee that you pay is structured so that it is much less than the cost of licensing a product on a one time basis. Specially SaaS applications are specifically built with a multi-tenant backend, thus enabling multiple customers or users to access a shared data model. This architecture naturally lowers the unit cost as in a multi-tenant implementation, you have just a single instance of the application running. In other words, its a one-to-many relationship as oppose to a one-to-one mapping. Therefore, specially small businesses will definitely fine SaaS affordable as they do not have to pay a big lump sum upfront. On the other hand, since the consumers of the service do not have to worry about hardware costs, the actual cost goes down considerably. Specially small business owners may not be comfortable at all with certain high-end hardware requirements. In good old days, most of the hardware vendors used to provide bespoke software offerings so that they could come up with hardware deals coupled with software solutions.

2. Built in updates - With SaaS all the product updates are included in your subscription. Contrast this with a typical software product which you might have to pay for upgrades each year to keep current. Possibly you need to have your own system support department to keep an eye on your systems.

3. Better reliability - The story goes that the SaaS provider has invested heavily in infrastructure, and the system is running on top of the line hardware and networks. In other words you don't have to invest in your own infrastructure before you can even install another product.

There are some decent real-world SaaS implementations. WSO2 is in the process of offering some of its great products as services and GaaS was the first to come out. GaaS stands for Governance as a Service and its powered by the WSO2 Governance Registry.

Customers are allowed to use the service free for a limited level of usage and will need to pay for usage beyond that. The free limits are:

Up to 5 users
No more than 100 resources stored per tenant
No more than 100 resource accesses per day per tenant
Each resource at most 1MB in size

You can try out GaaS for yourself at WSO2 GaaS homepage!.

Poderosa - Tabbed SSH Client for Windows

2010-01-06T19:58:00.001+09:00

If you are fed up of using PuTTY for remote login, switch to Poderosa. It provides a tabbed shell interface so that you do not have to have a pile of shell windows open as when you are using PuTTY. Poderosa is licensed under Apache 2.0.

WSO2 Offers lean . enterprise . middleware

2010-01-05T04:12:00.001+09:00

To learn why we say WSO2 products are lean, enterprise, middleware, please read this post on Samisa’s blog.

The 1%

2009-12-22T16:27:00.001+09:00

I have been a very big fan of Samis’s blog for some time now. Samisa always makes sure he keeps his blog informative and interesting all the time. It is truly a very nice blend of technology, humour, latest news, etc.

Once I happened to read this interesting post on his blog. I of course have found the book, What Matters Now really interesting. Its actually a collection of excerpts from some interesting writings by some great authors. Believe me, its a MUST read. It is a fact sheet I would say. Following is a very interesting excerpt from the book.

“Two tech executives with no food experience and no
marketing budget launch a product called Bacon Salt.

Next, they search for people on social networking sites
who profess a love for bacon, then friend them. Among a
small percentage of those people, enthusiasm begins to
spread about Bacon Salt. What began as a tribe quickly
multiplies into 37,000 fans on Facebook and MySpace.

Months later, the buzz spills over into newspaper articles,
TV interviews and the holy grail of PR, an appearance on
Oprah. Two guys who knew nothing about the food
business and had no marketing budget now had a
certifiable cult hit. Inspired, they create several other
bacon-flavored products. It’s the birth of a brand.

Their success began with a small – very small – group of
self-identified fans of a category. Even if social networks
have millions of members, it will never translate into
millions of buzz-spreaders. The Bacon Salt story illustrates
that it’s usually a small percentage of the tribe within the
larger tribe who spread the word—usually about 1 percent.
They are the One Percenters.

The One Percenters are not the usual suspects of name-brand
tech bloggers, mommy bloggers and or business
bloggers. The One Percenters are ofen hidden in the
crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth.

This year, your job is to find them and attract them.”

WSO2 SOA Workshop in Santa Clara - 3rd Nov. 2009

2009-10-13T04:04:00.001+09:00

SOA Workshop - 3rd November, Santa Clara

2009-10-13T04:01:00.001+09:00

What is an IDL?

2009-10-09T18:53:00.001+09:00

IDL stands for Interface Definition Language or Interface Description Language. IDL is a specification language used to describe interfaces of software components in a language-neutral way enabling communication between software components that do not share a language. Two heterogeneous components can talk to each other with the aid of an IDL.

The best known IDL is WSDL (stands for Web Services Description Language) that is used in Web services. A WSDL enables a Web client written using WSO2 WSF/C++ talk to a Web service written using WSO2 WSAS. In the Web services world, interoperability is a major concern and WSDL is one of the key things that enable Web services interoperability.

MIDL is another well known text-based interface description language developed by Microsoft, based on DCE/RPC IDL. Its compiler is also called MIDL, that generates source files looking at a .idl file. The MIDL compiler and the components of the RPC development environment are installed when you install the Windows SDK.

Another IDL framework is Facebook's Thrift, an RPC framework developed at Facebook (now an open source project in the ASF Incubator) for efficient and reliable communication across programming languages. The implementation of Thrift is described in this paper.

Writing "bug-free" code is impossible?

2009-08-13T13:15:00.001+09:00

I fixed a bug in some piece of code a couple of days back. Well ... fixing bugs is a part of our job so what's the big deal? Its nothing to boast about. Correct ... from that perspective, its nothing special. Anyway the interesting point is, this was found in a code base known to be matured, which is more than 7 years old and has been running on hundreds of systems for a long time now. On the other hand, this system claims to have a comprehensive test suite that assures bug-free code.

This was a kind of bug we may hardly find interesting. A conditional thread wait that occurs sporadically on the server when a couple of clients run for a long time (whew!).

This reminds me something I heard at school ... "its impossible to write bug-free code!". I did not realize what this really means until I fixed this show-stopper in a "very stable" system that serves highly critical business requirements.

Effective SOA Governance with the WSO2 Governance Registry

2009-07-29T20:33:00.001+09:00

Governance has become the hot topic in SOA over the past year. As companies SOA usage becomes real, widespread and line-of-business, the requirement to ensure that the systems are properly governed has emerged as the number one concern for SOA adopters.
In this webinar, Paul Fremantle, CTO and Co-founder of WSO2, will explain the challenges of SOA governance and show a clear and simple approach that demystifies this complex topic.
Paul will demonstrate how simple effective strategies can make a measurable difference to the effectiveness of a SOA-based Enterprise Architecture.
In addition, Paul will introduce the WSO2 Governance Registry 3.0 and describe how this software can help implement SOA Governance in your organization.

Title:
Effective SOA Governance with the WSO2 Governance Registry

Date:
Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Time:
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT

Meet Dr.Sanjiva Weerawarana and Paul Fremantle on Web panel

2009-04-29T17:50:00.001+09:00

Dr.Sanjiva Weerawarana and Paul Fremantle, the Web service pioneers, will be hosting a Web panel this Thursday at 9am PDT. They will be discussing how and why componentization could help nurture your enterprise SOA middleware architecture.

Please feel free to join in an get your questions, concerns answered by the two Web service pioneers.

Find more on this event here.

Want to know how to Deploy a Web service on WSO2 WSAS and Secure it with Username Token policy?

2009-04-24T19:02:00.001+09:00

In this screencast, Charitha explains how you could deploy a Web service on WSO2 WSAS and secure it with a username token policy.

Lessons Learned Converting Apache Qpid to Build DLLs on Windows

2009-03-31T01:29:00.001+09:00

It was of course not an easy task. As Steve has just explained on his blog, we had quite a bit of work in getting the Apache Qpid DLL build right. But all in all, it was a fruitful effort at the end of the day :).

WSO2 developer portal gets a major revamp

2009-02-09T14:31:00.001+09:00

WSO2 Developer Portal got a revamp with the release of Carbon, its new breed of technologies for SOA development.

The WSO2 OxygenTank is a complete reflection of the company as it elaborates what we do, our products, the people behind the scene, available training facilities and not forgetting the library of comprehensive collection of materials on our products, Web services and SOA.

This new version of WSO2 OxygenTank has been carefully designed and developed to provide a truly new user experience.

WSO2 Elevator Pitch

2009-02-09T11:30:00.001+09:00

Its what we have been going in a nutshell.

How much time we spend recording stuff rather than living in the moment as it happens?

2009-01-26T14:45:00.001+09:00

This is a classic example of people missing the moment because of the technology. Almost everyone is so focused on the perfect shot that he misses the moment.

We immediately assume that the most important, the biggest, the most incredible moments are those that should be recorded. But it's these very moments that are best to experience live, with our full focus.

Just think about it!

The Beast! - Obama's Limo

2009-01-22T03:34:00.001+09:00

This Caddy One claims to be the most technologically advanced protection vehicle in the world.

When Web sites become Web services

2009-01-06T22:49:00.001+09:00

Today's Web is a huge repository of information and everyday an enormous amount of new information gets accumulated into this information base. If we think of a Web site in terms of the popular Model-View-Controller architecture, the information could be found in the Model or in the View. If we consider the View, for the most part the information is stuck inside HTML pages themselves, formatted in some esoteric ways. The Model is a data source that contains the information that is skinned with the View. So, if we can transform a Web site into Web service the internal data can be exposed to the external parties.

If we are to expose the data encapsulated in HTML pages, the best option is to use a technique called Web scraping. Dapper, Teqlo and Yahoo! Pipes are a couple of commonly used scraping technologies.

The data in the Model is exposed mainly via a SOAP/REST API. There are a number of well known REST services like Amazon, Flickr, Twitter, etc that can be consumed using some REST client.

This interesting article by Dimuthu Gamage explains how the WSO2 Web services framework for PHP - WSF/PHP - could be used to consume the Amazon E-Commerce service. The FlickrPal is a Windows shell extension application that is capable of uploading photos to your Flickr account using the Flickr REST API. FlickrPal runs on top of WSO2 WSF/C. And there are a number of decent tools that can post updates to your Twitter account using the Twitter REST API.

Man vs. Wild

2008-12-31T02:14:00.001+09:00

I have been a big fan of the adventure series Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel for a long time now. Anybody who loves the Discovery Channel should definitely be aware of this great program. During the Christmas vacation, I make sure I never miss a single episode of this my favorite TV series.

The main reason behind the success of this adventure series is its presenter, Bear Grylls. This British adventurer, ex Special Forces soldier, can do things an ordinary person would never think of even.

He can squeeze fresh elephant droppings into his mouth for water, rip raw chunks of meat off a dead, half rotten zebra with his teeth, drink his own urine and lot more.

I found this video, an assortment of exciting moments of Man vs. Wild on YouTube.

Software-Generated Paper Accepted at IEEE Conference (Yeah once again!)

2008-12-28T15:27:00.001+09:00

The paper Towards the Simulation of E-commerce by Herbert Schlangemann has been accepted with review by the 2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE). CSSE is one of the important conferences sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, which serves as a forum for scientists and engineers in the latest development of artificial intelligence, grid computing, computer graphics, database technology, and software engineering.

Now, it has been reveled that this paper was generated using SCIgen, an application that is capable of generating random Computer Science research papers. SCIgen was developed by a set of graduate students in the PDOS research group at MIT CSAIL. These students themselves were the first to submit a paper generated using their own program.

If you are yet to publish a paper and just want to see how you feel like when you see your name appearing on a research paper with a mind boggling title, just try it out here.

I did and to be frank, its priceless!.

WSO2 Carbon - Componentization at its Best

2008-12-24T19:33:00.001+09:00

It is a nightmare to glue together the components of your existing SOA framework to meet your business requirements, and think it is time to switch to something lets you integrate seamlessly?. Then WSO2 Carbon is what you are looking for. Please visit WSO2 Carbon home page to find out more about WSO2 Carbon - The Middleware à la carte.

WSO2 Carbon - The Middleware à la carte

2008-12-23T21:21:00.001+09:00

Middleware is the enabling technology of enterprise application integration. Therefore the level of competitive advantage expected from an enterprise middleware solution is reasonably high. Because, in order to keep up with ever changing business requirements, the applications expect the middleware to be customizable. Most of the vendor SOA products that are there have good technology but they hit the ceiling when it comes to customizing to suit changing customer needs.

The main issue with the existing componentized middleware is that when pieces are put together, what you get is not what you wanted.

For an example, this may be what you wanted your final product to be.

but...

this is what you get when the pieces are put together.

Unfortunately you have ended up adapting your enterprise architecture to the middleware rather than adapting the middleware to your architecture, even though your middleware solution clamis to be highly componentized and customizable.

So if you were dying for a componentized, customizable SOA platform, here it is; WSO2 Carbon!.

Built on OSGi, Carbon encapsulates major SOA functionality such as data services, business process management, ESB routing/transformation, rules, security, throttling, caching, logging and monitoring.

Please visit WSO2 Carbon home page to find out more about WSO2 Carbon - The Middleware à la carte.

Blood from Mosquito Traps Car Thief

2008-12-23T15:16:00.001+09:00

Police in Finland have arrested a car thief based on a DNA sample taken from the blood found inside a mosquito. The police had found this mosquito inside the car. DNA reports have shown the blood belongs to a man who is in police registers. According to the suspect, he had hitchhiked and was given a free ride by the person driving the car. Read the full story here.

danushka@apache.org - Glad to be there

2008-12-17T15:33:00.001+09:00

Apache Qpid Graduates as TLP

2008-12-04T14:14:00.001+09:00

Apache Qpid has graduated as TLP and is now in the process of transitioning to its new home out of the incubator.

Book on RESTful PHP Web Services

2008-10-23T03:09:00.001+09:00

Samisa's book on RESTful PHP Web Services is now available. This is the fourth book published by a WSO2er. Deepal authored a book on Axis2 and that was published a couple of months back.

I got to know about the other two publishes from this blog post on Dr.Sanjiva's blog.

What if Pareidolia Applies to Software?

2008-10-15T01:43:00.001+09:00

I found this really interesting article which says that a new study has revealed that people tend to see faces or human characteristics in objects. This is a phenomenon called pareidolia. According to this new study, people prefer their cars to appear dominant, masculine and angry!.

After reading this, the first thing that came to my mind was, what if we can apply this phenomenon to software?. Yes of course software is not something tangible. But can we observe human characteristics in a piece of software?.

If we take Apache Axis2, Apache Axis2/C, Apache Synapse, WSO2 ESB, WSO2 WSF/C, WSO2 WSF/PHP, WSO2 WSF/Ruby, WSO2 WSF/Perl, WSO2 WSF/Python, etc it is quite obvious that they dominate. But how many of them appear masculine, aggressive or angry? .

When I shared this thought with a friend of mine, he did not hesitate to say that to him, Windows was feminine whereas Linux was pretty masculine. But all that depends on each individual.

If We had Nensha!

2008-09-26T20:51:00.001+09:00

Roots of sense copying goes to beginning of this century. This is better known as thoughtography. In simple terms, thoughtography, aka nengraphy is the ability to physically "burn" images from one's mind into surfaces or even into the minds of others.[Source - Wikipedia]

Actually I felt the need for this supernatural ability in human beings after attending a session on Axis2 transports done by Asankha C. Perera of WSO2 today. It was quite informative and very well presented. But if we had thoughtographic capabilities in us, we all would be better off as it was a torrent of information I would say! :).

Has Google Redefined Beta?

2008-09-26T15:53:00.001+09:00

It is ironic that four-year-old Gmail is still in beta?.Actually not only Gmail, but also couple of other Google products like Google Docs, Orkut, Google Finance, which are really good enough to come out of beta are yet to get rid of the BETA label next to their names.

But Google believes that beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web as oppose to conventional off-the-shelf software products.

Read the full story here.

Asynchronous Web Service Invocations with Axis2

2008-09-25T22:17:00.001+09:00

If we use an Axis2 client for Web service invocations, we have the luxury of having asynchrony at two different levels. One option is to have asynchrony at the client level and the other is to have it at the transport level. Using combinations of these two options, we can go for different levels of asynchrony.

On the client side, we achieve asynchrony using callbacks. Here what happens is that the service invocation thread does not get blocked and upon reception of the response, the callback function gets notified by the framework. So, the client's invocation thread is free to keep sending requests.

This is how we use callbacks on the client side to achieve synchrony.

1. Create callback object
2. Send request
3. Wait on the callback

Look at the following Axis2/C sample for exact syntax of these steps.

At the transport level we achieve asynchrony using a separate listener for the response. So, as soon as the request message is sent, the transport sender returns without waiting for the response on the same thread. But the request message carries the EPR of the listener service that is waiting for the response so that the target Web service can use that EPR to send the response back. This EPR address is sent in the ReplyTo SOAP header of the request message. It is needless to say that we make use of the Addressing module (WS-Addressing) of Axis2.

And this is how we tell Axis2 that we need asynchrony at the transport level.

1. Tell the framework that we need a separate listener
2. Set EPR of this listener in ReplyTo header of request
3. Send request and receive response

Look at the following Axis2/C sample for exact syntax of these steps.

Windows BSoD in Action

2008-09-25T16:11:00.001+09:00

According to an article I read recently on the Web, Windows Blue Screen of Death - aka BSoD - is considered to be the "greatest" error message of all time. Anybody having very little experience with Windows might already know what a nuisance this error is. This video shows how BSoD once put Bill Gates in jeopardy.

You can read the full article here.

This is how a gasoline pump at a filling station knows when the tank is full

2008-09-22T02:18:00.001+09:00

Since the very first day I asked for a tankful of petrol for my car, I had been curious about this. To be honest I had no luck so that my enthusiasm abated with time. But this weekend I got to know how this really happens from a friend of mine. So this is how it works.

Near the tip of the pump nozzle is a small hole and there is a small valve connecting this hole and a suction unit in the handle. When the tank is not full, the air is drawn from the hole smoothly. But when the fuel level in the tank rises high enough to block the hole, the suction unit senses that it has to apply some extra force to maintain the air flow and that in turn flips the nozzle off.

wso2.com - now with a new look

2008-09-21T20:15:00.001+09:00

The WSO2 website has got a totally new look. It truly represents what we do and definitely is attractive compared to most of the monotonous homepages we see day-to-day. Great Job!.

Shankar Talks about WSO2 WSF/PHP 2.0

2008-09-19T04:24:00.001+09:00

In this video you can see, Shankar, the Product Manager of WSO2 WSF/PHP being interviewed by Katie Poplin, the Director, Marketing of WSO2 about WSO2 WSF/PHP.

Radith Rice with Lunu Dehi for Obama

2008-09-16T15:40:00.001+09:00

US Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle were on holiday a few months back in the romantic Seychelles resort of Fregate Island, and during his stay the US Presidential-hopeful was so pleased with a culinary creation by the Sri Lankan head chef that he made special mention of it in the hotel visitors’ book, calling it “a Sri Lankan supper”. The local chef who impressed was Radith Munasinghe. The culinary treat was a rice-and-curry meal done Radith-style – “Radith Rice with Lime Pickle (Lunu Dehi)”.

Read the full article here.

High Five for the WSO2 WSF/PHP Team

2008-09-16T14:33:00.001+09:00

I happened to read this interesting blog post on Samisa's blog today. I know that the WSO2 WSF/PHP team has been working diligently since day one to make WSO2 WSF/PHP the best PHP framework for SOA development. It is really interesting to see that all their hard work has paid off finally. Specially the fact that WSO2 WSF/PHP is the only PHP library to support most of the WS-* specifications is proven again.

Excellent work guys !.

WSO2 WSF/PHP 2.0 Released

2008-09-12T21:19:00.001+09:00

WSO2 WSF/PHP 2.0 is now available for download. This latest release is fortified with a number of new features awaited by enterprise application developers.

New in this release :

- PKCS12 Key Store
- Secure Conversation
- Replay Detection
- Contract First Web Services Support for MTOM
- SwA (Soap with Attachments)
- MTOM Attachment Caching
- HTTP Chunking
- REST API Improved to Support HTTP GET,DELETE,PUT and POST
- New PHP Data Services Solution
- WS-RM 1.1

The Lead Developer of the WSO2 Web Services Frameworks Talks about WSF/PHP 2.0

2008-09-12T16:28:00.001+09:00

Selvaratnam Uthaiyashankar the lead developer of the WSO2 Web services framework stack - WSF/C, WSF/PHP, WSF/Ruby, WSF/Perl - will be talking about WSF/PHP 2.0 on 23rd of September in his latest Webinar. This will be a very good opportunity to find out more about the internals of WSF/PHP and what is new in WSF/PHP version 2.0.

The Webinar Details :

Title: Introducing Enterprise Web services with WSO2 WSF/PHP 2.0
Date: September 23, 2008
Start Time: 9.00 am PST
Duration: 60 mins
Presenter: Selvaratnam Uthaiyashankar

REGISTRATION: https://wso2.on.intercall.com/confmgr/index.jsp

Webinar on Web services with PHP

2008-09-12T15:45:00.001+09:00

WSO2 WSF/PHP is an enterprise grade extension and is a complete solution for building and deploying Web services in PHP. It is also the only PHP extension with the widest range of WS-* specification implementations. Ranging from advanced security support to seamless interoperability with .net and Java, WSF/PHP 2.0 introduces many new features needed by enterprise application developers.

The Webinar "Introducing enterprise Web services with WSO2 WSF/PHP" will be covering WSO2 WSF/PHP in detail and all its new features needed by enterprise application developers.

More about this Webinar could be found at http://wso2.com/about/news/wsf-php-sep-08-webinar/

Is AMQP on the way to providing real business interoperability?

2008-09-06T07:11:00.001+09:00

I found this interesting article on InfoQ, posted by Steven Robbins a couple of weeks back. It gathers several key points that are being discussed with respect to using AMQP as an MOM in real-world mission-critical business applications. It is an ongoing debate that AMQP supports only a subset of features addressed by XMPP. Also the fact that AMQP does not address guaranteed delivery is also being questioned.

It is really nice to see WSO2 being mentioned among some software giants in this article.

Git - Give it a Try

2008-09-05T18:17:00.001+09:00

Git is an open-source distributed version control system which was designed and implemented targeting speed and efficiency.

Most of the times, your first Git experience may not be something you really like as you wont get the checkout->change->commit->update->change->commit->...routine that you used to have in a conventional version control system. Its different ... but in a way its really cool.

Every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server.

Git was originally written by Linus Torvalds the guy who initiated the development of the Linux kernel and later became the chief Architect of the Linux operating system.

Adding Persistence to Synapse - The Queuing Model

2008-09-03T20:37:00.001+09:00

In one of my previous posts I explained how we can add persistence to Apache Synapse. Please go through the following article for an elaboration of how you go about doing this.

Article on WSO2 OxygenTank - Adding Persistence to Apache Synapse - The Queuing Model

How to Add Persistence to Synapse

2008-08-07T21:24:00.004+09:00

It is possible to add persistence to Synapse using a combinations of two proxies, its normal JMS transport and a JMS provider. I will explain (a) how it works, (b) the problems associated with it and (c) how to run the sample implementation.

(a) How it works

The first proxy (proxy1) dumps incoming messages in a JMS queue and the second proxy (proxy2) picks messages from that JMS queue and pumps through its in-sequence. We can configure proxy2 to have the desired mediation behavior. Here the JMS broker is embedded within the same JVM so that if Synapse goes down for some reason and comes up back, proxy2 can pick up the persisted messages in the JMS queue.

(b) Problems associated with this implementation

The main drawback in this is that we need to use proxy1 as the endpoint for requests. Ideally it should be possible to enable persistence using a simple entry in synapse.xml (e.g. ) and the functionality of proxy1 and proxy2 should be handled by Synapse dynamically.

(c) How to run the sample

The Usecase
===========

For this, we are going to use the stockquote client that comes with the standard Synapse distribution. So, you need to go through [1] to see how you get the stockquote client to work with Synapse.

We send a number of requests for a quote over HTTP through our Synapse instance to the SimpleStockQuoteService hosted on Simple Axis2 server. Then we stop the Synapse server and run it again. As soon as it comes up, we should be able to see the persisted messages being received by the actual service endpoint.

How to run sample
=================

(1) Place jndi.properties file with the following entries in it on your classpath

java.naming.factory.initial = org.apache.activemq.jndi.ActiveMQInitialContextFactory

# create an embedded broker
java.naming.provider.url = vm://amqbroker?create=true

connectionFactoryNames = QueueConnectionFactory

# register persistence destination
queue.SynapsePersistenceStore = SynapsePersistenceStore

(2) Configure the JMS transport listener of your Synapse server as follows

<transportreceiver name="jms" class="org.apache.synapse.transport.jms.JMSListener">
  <parameter name="default">
    <parameter name="transport.jms.ConnectionFactoryJNDIName">QueueConnectionFactory</parameter>
    <parameter name="transport.jms.ConnectionFactoryType" locked="false">queue</parameter>
  </parameter>
</transportreceiver>

NOTE : You need to have ActiveMQ installed on your machine. You can get it from [2]

(3) The message flow from client to the actual service endpoint happens in a jiffy so that you can not shutdown your Synapse server before all the messages pass through it. So to simulate this scenario, we do the following trick.

(4) Replace your synapse.xml with a new synapse.xml file with the following content, change the name of its second proxy to something else (say TempProxy) and start your Synapse server.



<definitions xmlns="http://ws.apache.org/ns/synapse">

<proxy name="Proxy1" transports="http https">
<target>
<inSequence>
<send>
<endpoint>
<address uri="jms:/SynapsePersistenceStore?transport.jms.ConnectionFactoryJNDIName=QueueConnectionFactory&java.naming.factory.initial=org.apache.activemq.jndi.ActiveMQInitialContextFactory&java.naming.provider.url=vm://amqbroker"/>
</endpoint>
</send>
</inSequence>
</target>
</proxy>

<proxy name="SynapsePersistenceStore" transports="jms">
<target>
<inSequence>
<send>
<endpoint>
<address uri="http://localhost:9000/soap/SimpleStockQuoteService"/>
</endpoint>
</send>
</inSequence>
</target>
</proxy>

</definitions>

(5) Now start your Simple Axis2 server

(6) Send a couple of requests as follows

ant stockquote -Dtrpurl=http://localhost:8280/soap/Proxy1 -Dmode=placeorder

(7) At this point you can not see any message being received by the actual endpoint

(8) Now stop your Synapse server, change the name of the second proxy back to its original name(i.e.SynapsePersistenceStore) and start the server again

(9) You should be able to see the messages you sent earlier being received by the actual endpoint

[1] - http://synapse.apache.org/Synapse_QuickStart.html
[2] - http://activemq.apache.org/activemq-510-release.html

Configuring Axis2 JMS Transport for ActiveMQ - axis2.xml or jndi.properties?

2008-08-01T17:02:00.004+09:00

You can configure Axis2 JMS transport to work with any JMS provider avilable out there and by default it carries configuration to work with ActiveMQ in its main configuration file, axis2.xml.

In JMS, its a connection factory that enables you to connect to your preferred JMS provider and use its, queues, topics, etc. So, if you look carefully at axis2.xml, under JMS transport receiver, you can see a set of connection factories (by default commented out) used by the JMSListener to connect to your JMS provider.

With ActiveMQ, you can use jndi.properties file to configure administered objects (connection factories and queues) for the ActiveMQ JMS client. You should place this file in the applications's CLASSPATH so that the JVM can loat this into its InitialContext.

Under each connection factory configuration segment, you can see the following set of parameters.

(1) java.naming.factory.initial

This is the custom JNDI context factoy that you want to use to build the JNDI context. You can have this configuration either in axis2.xml or in jndi.properties file. If this is present then your JVM uses this instead of its default context factory to build the InitialContext.

(2) java.naming.provider.url

In a normal JNDI environment, this will point your JVM to a remote JNDI provider. But in ActiveMQ, this points to the ActiveMQ broker. You can avoid having this in axis2.xml configuration, if you have jndi.propertes file to configure connection factories.

(3) transport.jms.ConnectionFactoryJNDIName

This is the JNDI name of your connection factory. If you want to use custom connection factories, you can configure them in your jndi.properties and make each such connection factory have its own broker. If you do not use the jndi.properties file, you can use a set of predefined connection factories namely, ConnectionFactory, QueueConnectionFactory and TopicConnectionFactory.

(4) transport.jms.ConnectionFactoryType

This can be either queue or topic.

Stroustrup Talks About C++

2008-06-26T11:44:00.004+09:00

I found this very interesting artcile on Compurter World. It is really nice to know what Stroustrup has to say about C++.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;408408016;pp;1;fp;16;fpid;1

Five Easy Steps to Send/Receive Attachments with WSF/PHP

2008-06-23T00:08:00.002+09:00

The following article will take you through the five simplest steps to send/receive attachments in PHP. This is yet another powerful feature avilable in WSF/PHP.

http://wso2.org/library/3351

Axis2/C Documentation with a New Look

2008-06-12T19:40:00.002+09:00

I had to put some extra effor to get Axis2/C documentation organized when I was adding AMQP stuff in. The docs were not really organized I would say. I sweated more than 2 days to make them look nice. And the worst thing was the online docs were not compatible with the static docs.

Axis2/C AMQP Transport for Windows

2008-06-09T21:49:00.002+09:00

Apache Qpid for Windows is being done at the moment. It is almost ported, not tested properly though. Windows version of Axis2/C AMQP Transport can only be done once the Qpid for Windows is ready.

Axis2/C AMQP Transport Works Fine

2008-06-09T21:16:00.003+09:00

Today only the submitted patch was applied to Axis2/C trunk. Checked and it worked out of the box. Some work left in the documentation space. At the moment I am working on it and need to test the AMQP transport implementation end-to-end.

I am Privileged to have Implemented Axis2/C AMQP Transport

2008-06-09T14:52:00.000+09:00

It is a dream come true for me to be a part of Axis2/C dev community. Above all the fact that I have implemented one of the most powerful transport layer protocols for Axis2/C is a tremendous achievement. I was able to submit a patch on the 6th of June and I will add the missing bits and pieces once it is applied.
I spent a couple of weeks on learning Apache Qpid before I got along with the AMQP implementation. That was also a invaluable experience as I was able to contribute to the Qpid project by submitting a couple of patches. Still there is a quite a bit of work to be done in that space too.
So I will be really busy with Axis2/C AMQP transport stuff and Apache Qpid development efforts in the days to come ...

Hello World !!!

2008-06-09T14:40:00.000+09:00

I am really new to this blogging business and obviously this is my very first blog post. But I have seen people do blogging on a daily basis and they are addicted I would say. Our first experience in learning any programming language would be writing a "Hello World" program :). So similarly I should start by saying ... Hello World !!!.