Roy's Technology Diary

A lot has been said and done about services on the cloud lately and "Platform as a Service" (PaaS) is probably one of the most popular buzz-word that's been around for quite sometime now. However, I sincerely feel that the common man (read as "developer") is yet to get a taste of what it really means. Now, this very paradigm seems to be soon changing, with VMWare Cloud Foundry. Cloud Foundry is the world’s very first open Platform as a Service (PaaS). It is designed to help developers easily create web applications, using multiple programming frameworks including Spring for Java, Ruby on Rails and Sinatra for Ruby; that can run upon public and private cloud environments, with just about no additional learning curve. So, by now if you are dreaming of a possibility to port your existing web-applications to the cloud with minimal efforts, then let me give you the good news - "it's all possible here..." Well, looks like i've done a lot of sales t...

In the previous article, we glanced through Enterprise Architecture as a whole and also discussed the need for an Enterprise Architecture Framework, like TOGAF. With this article we shall continue exploring TOGAF further, and discusses TOGAF's Architecture Development Methodology (ADM). The Architecture Development Methodology (ADM) The Architecture Development Methodology (ADM) provides a proven and repeatable process for developing architectures. The Scope The scope of ADM includes or encompasses the below listed activities, which are generally carried out in iterative cycles of continuous architecture definition and realization; thus aiding a controlled transformation of an enterprises in response to business goals and opportunities - Establishing an architecture framework Developing architecture content Transitioning Governing the realization of architectures Implementation Phases The implementation of ADM could be envisioned across the following phases - Preliminary Initiation...

Lately I've been studying/reading The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), and I simply could not resist from appreciating the structural approach that it introduces towards envisioning and capturing Enterprise Architecture. I therefore thought of initiating a series of articles herein, with the sole purpose of sharing, simplifying and promoting the framework especially amongst the architecture aspirants out there who follow and read my blog. This write-up, which is the first one in the series, intends to provide a brief overview on Enterprise Architecture and then further goes on to illustrate the need for an Enterprise Architecture Framework. Preface ISO/IEC 42010: 2007 defines "architecture" as: "The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution." TOGAF embraces but does not strictly adhere to ISO/IEC 42010: 2007 terminology. ...

Lately a lot has been happening in 3D around the world. From movies to electronic gadgets like televisions, projectors and gaming consoles, everything seems to be heading toward rendering that additional 3rd dimension. A 3D experience in itself so very enticing that one would just falling it love with it; and thus the creative ones amongst us are constantly thinking about various areas wherein it could be applied. Some of the obvious areas of application would be bio-technology, clinical research, engineering drawings and entertainment media; but meanwhile some creative minds amongst us have gone ahead thinking differently and even made simple software applications that we use in our everyday lives, to render a user interface with 3D. For instance, a few months ago I came across a program called 3DNA Desktop which improves the way we work with Windows and the Web. With 3DNA Desktop one can choose from different 3D worlds to explore and customize the same, to create an immersive and ...

With the advent of the analytics age, one would find applications spring-up every month that lets you track, monitor, and analyze just about anything, from human habits to system behaviors. Such applications generally have a standard implementation pattern wherein they primarily collect, upload, process, and display data. Now, somebody trying to develop one such application would obviously face challenges, of different kinds, at each of these points depending upon the domain of applicability. However, the challenges in displaying the data, in a way that it is understandable to non-professionals, are the same for all of them. Oftentimes, we rely upon statistical charts and graphs to render such data. These days one would find a plenty of charting libraries that make this possible easily (and some of them without any cost), for example Visualize, MooCharts, ProtoChart etc. One such player in the world of data visualization is Google itself. Google Visualization is a set of JavaScript lib...

I recently discovered some little-known ways to use a GMail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time. Actually, when you choose a Gmail address, you actually get more than just "yourusername@gmail.com"; here are two different ways you can modify your Gmail address and still continue getting your mails: Append a plus ("+") sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was yourusername @gmail.com, you could send mail to yourusername +friends@gmail.com or yourusername +mailinglists@gmail.com. Insert one or several dots (".") anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn't recognize periods as characters in addresses -- Google mail just ignores them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com. For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy...

The Simple XML serialization framework has released version 1.2. Simple is a serialization framework for Java that intends to provide an XML serialization framework that requires no configuration or mappings to serialize objects bi-directionally; i.e. to and from standard XML. Below is a list of some of the capabilities of the framework. Simple framework with powerful capabilities The framework used to provide XML serialization is simple to use and revolves around several annotations an a single persister object used to read and write objects to and from XML. Both serialization and deserialization are fully supported. It requires absolutely no configuration Unlike many of the XML frameworks for Java there are no mappings or configuration required to serialize objects regardless of its complexity, not even code to establish mappings. Everything is done at runtime, only annotations are required to perform the object to XML structure. The XML schema is represented using field and method a...