Maven, to use or not to use

I have looked at Maven as a possible approach to standardise the way I work with projects in the past, and have thought it has a great deal of promise, but two things have held me back from working with it... time, and some negative reviews from people I respect in the software development circles.

Now I am working in a small company, where in between projects there is scope to work on improving project platforms, engine rooms etc, and there is definitely scope to improve reuse of code. Added to this I am sick of checking jar files to source control, it seems a bit pointless.

So I grabbed myself a PDF to read through, and intend to beef up on Mavenesque ways over the next few weeks, lets see how it goes.

I will report back in a while.

Goes quiet, pondering, where's my cup of tea?

Ayee, its time for the Cocoon Get Together 2007 and I cannot go!

Tis a terrible shame but I am missing the Cocoon Get Together this year as I have a massive project deadline. Double shame because it is in Rome. Oh woe is me!

Instead I am working with British Airways on a huge project which will initially be released to some 23,000 users. No pressure.

I am sad that I cannot make it, but I will just have to get everything booked early for next year. I really enjoyed doing the presentation last year with Jeremy, and as per usual the food and beer.

I will have to get back online and back on the radar again once the deadline is over to talk to the Cocoon guys.

What with being flooded one week after moving in to our new house also, its been a pretty duff year really.

Another month on, and I am still in Workflow Engine land

So, time goes by, and I am still working with workflow engines, my experience and opinions have changed somewhat.

First up I have dropped OSWorkflow, the graphical designer just did not do what I needed it to. I am now using JBPM from the JBoss folks. And not withstanding the site, which as per all other workflow sites does not point the way to a workflow engine newbie, I am very impressed with the documentation, the helpfulness of the people in the forum, and the capabilities of the product itself, including the graphical designer which is an Eclipse plugin.

The product is fairly stable, and any bugs I do find and report are not critical, so far so good. Most importantly, for a large project with one of my company's largest clients I am able to create business processes emcompassing all of their requirements.

Requirements I see to make this 'the' leading workflow engine would be some improvements to point the way for 'newbies', and a cookbook for common process definition howto's.

I am pleased that all aspects of the project are under ongoing development with regular released.

Now I am looking forward to the post project launch days where I might finally be able to go get some much needed holiday :-)

Workflow software/projects

The most poorly documented, tried and tested software I have yet encountered.. that sums it up.

Most of the projects I tried either did not work as advertised due to bugs, or were so poorly documented that it would have taken me weeks to get started.

Luckily in the case of some, there were some helpful people in the Open Source world to give me a hand getting started. Notably with OSWorkflow.

Come on guys, a couple of howto's, some some testing and a friendly to beginners site is not too much to ask?

To be fair it turns out there are some books and products coming soon for OSWorkflow, they will be helpful, just a little too late for my project unfortunately.

First website launched on Cocoon platform at my new company

So, the first cocoon website is launched in 'beta' mode at my new company. njwfm.com is powered by the Hippo CMS, and uses the dojotoolkit.org for javascript tricks. While the site is tagged as 'beta' right now, it is more or less functional, and my colleagues are able to power their company website.

Once again, just as when I was at VNU, Cocoon has enabled me to create a website building platform, and while the entry point is still geared to developers, I aim to simplify over time to enable designers to build sites.

Using best of breed open source projects has enabled me to tackle the problem of building powerful, customisable websites, rather than fighting with jumping through needless hoops, and being forced to contend with rewrites for improving functionality available within the platform.

Not only that, but despite its 'bloat' and age, Cocoon is still after all my dabbling in frameworks, my favourite... roll on Cocoon 2.2 I can't wait for the lean mean version.

Open source issue tracking software JTrac

Just thought I would push a message out about this decent Java open source issue management project I stumbled across while researching open source issue trackers. JTrac is great, simple to setup, extensible, clean and friendly. Very easy to integrate with your websites, and to customise. Of course it is using all the best agile technologies, Spring, Hibernate etc etc. I am tempted to use it for my own projects.

Leveraging powerful frameworks

I really feel that I need to give more back to the open source world.. after all I am benefiting so massively from a number of open source frameworks. In my new role, (6 working days in), I am required to set up a web platform which is extensible, efficient, reliable and usable, and using Apache, Cocoon, Dojo and the Hippo CMS I am able to do just that. The job is not over yet, but I am confident that my new company will be very happy with the end product. Thanks to the guys at Apache, Cocoon.Apache, Dojo and Hippo.

So how to give back, I suppose I just need to get more involved in the communities! Provide feedback, ensure any problems are reported, and help to get more exposure for the different projects.

I will be sure to post more on the results of working with these frameworks in the coming weeks.

Dedicated Server with Gentoo, Apache and Webdav

Yep, still loving having my own dedicated server... and this time, I'm going to jabber about the virtues of Gentoo, Apache and Webdav.

I wanted to provide a place where my dad can store and backup his documents, so originally I considered SFTP.. not so easy, I then needed to educate on the nuances of file transfer with some special client application... Webdav steps in here as an easier alternative, drag and drop from a native windows interface.. Windows' own File Explorer.

On Gentoo.. which has arguably the best package management system, 'Portage', setting up Apache with Webdav was easy, very easy, there are plenty of howto's all available with a quick Google search.

So thats use number one for a dedicated server... use number two would have to be my subversion setup with Apache.. no more excuses, I should not be able to lose valuable work anymore.

I also get to make my code and libraries, and for that matter reference works available to me wherever I go if the internet is available. Handy!

Sending and receiving invites by mail on the Mac

Yeah.. I do not have them yet.. I choose to use either the native 'Mail' program.. or Thunderbird plus the Lightning plugin.. and neither yet have stability in terms of giving me this functionality. No I am not prepared to use Microsoft's client on the mac to do this.

Looks like this is one of the last things lacking on the beautiful platform that is OS X.

The question is 'will Leopard address this with updates to 'Mail'..'? Or will the Lightning plugin get there first?

I want it and I want it now :-)

A new job, but there is still scope to use Cocoon

I just got myself a new job with a small company in Hungerford... so the bad news is I am leaving one of the biggest users of Cocoon (VNU). The good news is, the new company use Java and XML/XSLT, and seem to have many projects where Cocoon will excel as the platform.. so fingers crossed!

Meantime.. its seems people are still looking at Cocoon very seriously as a platform which demonstrates excellent separation of concerns, and a tidy way to build functional blocks. I still have not seen a better publishing framework.

Most recently.. I have also seen however that building truly dynamic applications with it is still a challenge.. so perhaps it is not the best choice for a tools based solution.

I may be proved wrong with all the effort going into the CForms recently, and I have not really looked into the portals block.

I will experiment!

Fixing Broken Windows

I first heard about this concept when reading some material from the superb collection posted on www.pragmaticprogrammer.com. Basically, as and when you find problems, no matter the size or apparent importance... fix them. If you don't the analogy is with a street in disrepair, first the grafitti, and if that goes unchecked, the broken windows, and then finally masses of out of control street crime, derelict buildings and anarchy!

Now all well and good 'the business' might say, but we want to launch 3 million projects on to our platform in two weeks, and to hell with the maintenance... we want money! Fine, but then suddenly everythings looking a bit flaky, and you are firefighting for days at a time instead of actually being productive.... another saying fits the bill here...

'slowly slowly catchy monkey'.

Listen to the guys at www.pragmaticprogrammer.com, they are good!

Ruby and SDL again.. now I am finally getting time to write my game

So, I have had an on going dream project.. writing a game in Ruby... I first started this years ago, and it was an ambitious project, a multiplayer online virtual world.. pretty much what everybody starts out trying to do.

Then I got a new job in London, and it all went to pieces. Now finally I am picking it up again, with a careful plan.. start with something simple, and finish it, creating a game engine and getting a feel for things in the process, then move on to something more complicated, finally finishing with my multiplayer online game.

Of course the whole operation is great fun, as I am working with ruby, and SDL seems to do a pretty decent job in terms of coping with all the different OS platforms out there. Yes, you would be right in thinking that in-game art is going to be the toughest part of this! I have no graphical talent.

Progress is good, I am calling the project Spacewars for now, and it is based on a game I played when I was about eight years old on an Amstrad CPC. For more information checkout www.rossputin.org/projects/.

I am setting up my own dedicated server, its fun for a geek!

As mentioned in my previous post, www.rossputin.org (down at the time of this writing) is moving to my new dedicated server, and this is opening up a whole new world to me, involving hosting my own DNS, when previously I could only work from the Apache stage onwards. I have always classified myself as a software developer/architect, so doing these sys admin type of tasks is new ground, but definitely informative.

Of course because this is my own server (well, shared with a colleague at work) and these websites are my own.. I am striving to crank the maximum performance possible out of them. Its good fun actually... benchmarking for speed and seeing exactly what kind of performance I can get out of them!

The server will be cranking out plain old html pages, and pages served from a Cocoon instance. I am going to list some benchmark results from both here. First up, with no caching.

Plain html

using Apache Benchmark with 100 consecutive requests, we get:

Requests per second: 1155.13
Time per request : 0.866

(fast as expected, its just html)

Home page of Cocoon App

same apache command:

Requests per second: 110.51
Time per request : 9.049

(not so fast, of course.. as expected)

So I am prepared to accept 110.51 requests per second in consecutive tests.

Now lets look at some more serious stress testing :-)

Lets look at concurrent requests...

ab2 -n 10000 -c 50 http://www.my-non-cached-website.com/

will run 10000 requests with 50 request concurrency :-)

The results on my cocoon instance behind apache are:

Requests per second: 172.98
Time per request : 289.045

Now once again, clearly this is fast enough for a hobby homesite.. by why make the server do any more than it needs to, why overwork Cocoon, content is hardly changing very often.

Lets plug the caching in and repeat the tests :-)

Same ab2 command... ab2 -n 10000 -c 50 http://www.my-cached-website.com/

Wow!!!!!!

Results on cocoon instance behind apache:

Requests per second: 1602.96
Time per request : 31.192

Sweeet!!! Apache is very cool.

So finally, after trying 'Ruby on Rails' on for size...

I have officially ditched it....

Ruby is arguably the best programming language on the planet right now, superbly crafted, but it can do a great deal better than Rails for a web platform. I gave it a decent try, but too many aspects just do not fit, particularly the templating language. All in all these nuances just seem to be geared to get you up and running as fast as possible, great for beginners, but the minute you look under the hood, you are faced with an increasingly unpleasant picture.

So I am pushing my website Rossputin.org across to Cocoon on my new dedicated server.

Talking to the guys in the Cocoon community, this seems to be the general trend. A brief 'fall in love' with Ruby on Rails, followed by finding a lack in power and in some cases sanity, followed by ultimately returning home to those 'other' frameworks out there.

One to watch out there in my opinion is certainly Wicket.

LDAP domination of the world, (with a little help from SyncML)

So it seems LDAP is everywhere helping me out at the moment.. this time with the holy grail of centralised contacts and calendaring, pushing to my phone over the internet!!!

So here is the deal.. you have a phone, and you have contacts in Outlook, and in Thunderbird, on many different machines... how to sync them..without plugging wires in every time?

The answer, Funambol Open Source... basically its LDAP, pushing to any device with no tweaking.. and through SyncML which all modern phones have... we can sync over the internet.

Some links to get you started.. Funambol Portal, and Schedule World.

The Cocoon GetTogether 2006

Wow.. on top of a project launch at work, preparing for the GetTogether was really tough.. luckily I had Jeremy as my talk partner, and to be fair he did most of the work!

The whole thing was a fantastic experience, Arje organised everything, great Ribs at the dinner, a a busy exciting schedule , it was my 3rd GetTogether, and my first time talking at a conference ever. So there were some nerves, and a couple of little glitches with the presentation, but Jeremy and I managed to talk clearly and fairly concisely on every one of our slides, and the whole thing went down quite well. A few people approached Jeremy and myself afterwards expressing interest in what we had done with LDAP.

As I promised in my previous post, here are the slides, along with those of all the other talks, GetTogether 2006. Here is the evidence.. Jeremy and I talking!

LDAP full circle, and an excellent opportunity to talk at the GetTogether

Ha, excellent, my view has flipped completely over the last 4 months or so regarding LDAP. I started off sceptical, and maybe a little bewildered as to why it is a viable alternative to relational DB's back in June. Then talked to Jeremy Quinn, and started to see the possibilities, and more recently, in the last month, I have in fact started to champion LDAP in the workplace !!!

Now finally things have gone full circle, and I have the fantastic opportunity to speak on Cocoon and LDAP integration at the Cocoon GetTogether. I am lucky enough to have the benefit of collaborating with Jeremy on this talk, and have learned a lot from him. I will not spoil the details of the talk.. a sketch is available at www.cocoongt.org. After the talk, we will ensure all slides are available.

At VNU, we are just about to launch a new website for France, part of which integrates with a massive LDAP instance, holding 23 gig of data just for the UK. This was an excellent learning process, and sparked the idea of the Cocoon talk, to try to help out by providing simple, clear documentation for others who might like to do something similar.

Anyhow, watch this space for more info!

Further Cocoon success with the company

Wow, since stepping into the role of architect and developer for the european team, my time has really been at a premium!
Its been a challenge, as we are a new team, working against an aggressive launch timetable. But just a couple of weeks ago, we launched our second country on the platform, with www.vnunet.fr. This was our first launch with me at the helm, and it was daunting to say the least!

But at the same time, what an experience!!! I have learned even more, and am satisfied that things are stable, and in our control. Once again, Cocoon to the rescue, it seems the long ours required to comprehend such a massive system are paying off.

Now on to our next launch (already)... another French site to follow.

Cocoon, my preferred platform for web development

I thought it was about time I posted something on the platform I have been producing sites and applications with for about two years now, Cocoon. We use Cocoon at my company VNU BME Europe for all our main business websites. Initially this was just within the UK where we have had some fifteen or so websites running on Cocoon 2.1.5 for about two and a half years. Our sites get vast amounts of traffic, and all 15 are running off three live machines, with the load spread by two proxies. The platform was designed and architected by a friend of mine Pier Fumagalli (of Java, Apache and Cocoon fame), and thanks to him I have had some excellent experience in working with high load sites, and cutting edge XML publishing systems.

More recently, Pier once again designed the basis for a new platform which we are rolling out across Europe (already live in Italy), see the following list of sites;

www.channelonline.it
www.computer-idea.it
www.databusiness.it
www.fotoideaonline.it
www.gdoweb.it
www.networknews.it
www.pcmagazine.it
www.pmi-business.it
www.vnunet.it.

This time my role, aside from the custom Cocoon templating language Pier built, was much more involved in architecting key parts of the system, this was great experience for me at this point in my career. The Italian websites have so far been up and running for some ten weeks, so far so good. France and Spain are soon to follow! Just a few weeks ago, I stepped up into Pier's role as Application Developer and Architect, as sadly he has decided it is time to leave the websites business after spending the best part of the last fifteen years in it. So now the challenge, and problems to solve are mine, lets hope all his help and passing on of knowledge has set me in good stead!

So why Cocoon? Well, we, as part of the publishing world, opted for XML as a format for handling articles, (common sense really), and Cocoon is just about the most complete XML manipulation toolkit you can find. Currently on 2.1.9 stable, it is a little more complex and heavyweight than many platforms, but just enables you to do things in a very tidy way when the solution is thought through carefully. Our platform is a stripped down version of 2.1.9, with a custom templating language built on, and a nice 'inherited' component system. It enables our designers to build entire sites in a matter of days once the core generic components are available, this enables us to work with a small agile team of developers.

Hope you go take a look at Cocoon, its worth a try. More details to come soon!

LDAP revisited

I had a chat to Jeremy Quinn of Cocoon and Apache fame on Wednesday regarding whether LDAP is in fact an over elaborate death trap designed by a Bond villain... and he was enclined to disagree. Jeremy has worked with both relational DB's and LDAP before, and emphasised that the biggest advantage LDAP has is that it is naturally hierarchichal in terms of organisation. With relation DB's you kind of 'fake' hierarchy, this seems to me to be a valid point. Furthermore, modifying LDAP at any time during a projects history is easy, classes do not need to be re-compiled etc etc, whereas we know how many mechanisms have invented to ease this process when using DB's. Thanks Jeremy, finally I have a glimmer of understanding as to why we should want to use this (not so) new fangled technology in place of a simple Mysql installation! More reading and playing with LDAP to come!!!!!!