Articles by Frank Cohen

SOA Comparison Kit For Oracle, IBM, BEA, and TIBCO Platforms

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:30:00 EST

I am glad to introduce you to a new set of resources to help surface scalability and performance issues in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA.) The SOA Knowledge and Performance Kit is a free open-source resource to show you what it really takes to build services using today's leading SOA development platforms. The Kit delivers an SOA use case design, source code to the implementations of the use case on Oracle, IBM, BEA, and TIBCO platforms, developer journals describing our experiences step-by-step, a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator, and performance and scalability tests that leverage the PushToTest test automation platform.

Oracle Buys BEA, Sun Buys MySQL: What's the Future for Developers?

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:15:00 EST

For BEA, I was hoping they would succeed at combining the power of JRockit with AquaLogic to build scalable workflow (a la BPM) services. Instead, we users and developers will be waiting for years to see WebLogic and AquaLogic integrated into the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack. For MySQL, I was hoping for an IPO.

Ubuntu 1, Windows 0

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:00:00 EST

I installed Ubuntu on the Toshiba laptop. Ubuntu installed in 15 minutes - 49 for Windows XP and 125 for Windows Vista. Ubuntu's desktop came right up. I opened the pre-installed Firefox browser and found I could browse the Web immediately. Ubuntu installed a network adaptor for the Toshiba laptop. I shake my head at this Windows foolishness!

I Wish Sun Would Do More to Get Java on iPhone and Java 6 on Leopard

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:45:00 EST

That leaves Java developers in a bad position. Java developers love the clean Unix-based Mac OS X environment for development. But we have been suffering with an unstable developer-only dont-run-this-in-production release of Java 6 for the past year. Mac OS X is now the getto for Java 6. I love Apple and Java. I wish Sun would do more to get Java on iPhone and Java 6 on Mac OS X.

Dynamic Scripting on Java Moves Forward

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:45:00 EST

Some of the supported languages are on-the-fly byte-code compilers. For instance, Jython is the Python scripting language that runs in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM.) At runtime Jython converts a Python script into Java Byte Code and runs the script in the JVM. For the on-the-fly byte-code compiler script engines, the current JVM lacks an efficient way to dynamically dispatch calls to methods. Enhancing the JVM with an 'invokedynamic' instruction will make it much easier to write this kind of script engine.

SOA Is Not "Web Services" Unless Developers Are Voting With Their Feet

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:45:00 EST

This morning I received a message from TechTarget telling me that SearchWebServices.com is renaming itself to SearchSOA.com. According to TechTarget the move is in line with a shift of attitudes and efforts within the application development community. As I've written many times, SOA is not Web Services. This move is a signal that application developers are voting with their feet.

Sun Blew its "iPhone" Java Opportunity to AJAX

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:00:00 EDT

Being a Java and Mac guy I looked for Java on iPhone. Java is no where to be found. For years I've listened to Jonathan Schwartz, CEO at Sun Microsystems, talk about monetizing its Java investment because of the wide-spread availability of the Java runtime - today on 700 Million mobile phones. Rumors have it that Apple sold 500,000 iPhones in the past week.

Envision a World Where SOA, AJAX, Web Services and Web 2.0 are Completely Blurred

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:30:00 EDT

By the time the book is released I envision a world where SOA, Ajax, Web Services and Web 2.0 are completely blurred. So I would recommend that your book cover methodologies for each. The biggest problem I see for testers in SOA is the test tools are trying to the fill the gap between testers not wanting to learn how to code and there being no way to do record/playback in an SOA environment. Somehow your book need to address this issue in a way that testers will accept.

AJAX, Web 2.0, and TestMaker

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:30:00 EDT

We recommend using TestMaker's scripting support to test AJAX applications. In TestMaker transform the TestGen4Web recorded file into a Jython script (use the Tools menu -> Import TestGen4Web) and change it to emit the HTTP calls to the target host that the JavaScript in your app is doing. Although you may need to learn Jython or one of the other support languages, you will not have to get a PHD degree. We are investigating a way to use Selenium and HTMLUnit and Rhino to record a test, transform it into a TestMaker test agent script, and then run it in the TestMaker environment.

Back by Popular Demand, AJAX Bootcamp in Santa Clara, California!

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:00:00 EDT

I will be teaching a one day Bootcamp course on Ajax at the AJAXWorld Conference in Santa Clara, California on September 23, 2007. Details are at http://ajaxbootcamp.sys-con.com I will be expanding the Ajax construction tools section from the Ajax Bootcamp I taught in New York at the SOA World conference. I am very impressed with TIBCO GI and Sun jMaki

I Wonder What W3C's Response Will Be To AJAX?

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:45:00 EDT

I wonder what W3C's response will be to AJAX? In my experience there is a whole lot more request/response pattern usage in AJAX apps that are now in production than SOAP. A W3C standard interface definition language for AJAX apps is very much needed!

First Major Overhaul of Jython in Four Years Announced

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:45:00 EDT

Jython 2.2 is the first major overhaul of the Jython dynamic scripting language in 4 years. Jython 2.2 implements the internal architecture of Python 2.2 and includes numerous features from Python 2.3. Jython is a Java implementation of the Python language. It allows users to compile Python source code to Java byte codes, and run the resulting bytecodes on any Java Virtual Machine.

SOA Divorced Web Services - Who Doesn't Get It?

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:15:00 EDT

Perhaps I'm taking this the wrong way but I read that as... We will give you a partial solution for free and wait for you to fail because the real solution - the SOA one - costs $$$. There is a skepticism there that is wholly inappropriate for where we are in the growth of the IT industry. Imagine the developers, QA technicians, and IT managers in a business or organization that adopts both SOA and Web Services. How does offering a free Web Service testing utility solve their needs?

SOA Divorced From Web Services?

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:45:00 EDT

A blog by Jason English at iTKO has me bothered. Jason praises an analyst report from ZapThink's Jason Bloomberg titled Divorcing SOA from Web Services. Neither iTKO nor ZapThink seem to get the vision behind SOA and Web services. The IT industry has a long way to go to serve enterprises and organizations needing to well manage their efforts through information systems. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services (WS) are entirely appropriate to build information systems. The vision behind SOA and WS help us a lot and in different ways. Here is a slide I have been presenting at various conferences for the past two years to explain the differences between the SOA vision and the WS vision.

AJAXWorld University AJAX Developer Bootcamp at SOA World

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:30:00 EDT

I will be teaching a one day course on AJAX at the SOA World Conference in New York on June 27, 2007. Details are at http://ajaxbootcamp.sys-con.com/. I will also be leading a session on XML and SOA performance optimization using test automation. The session will include a demonstration of the new PushToTest TestMaker Version 5

SOA World - TestMaker 5 Screencast

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:00:00 EDT

PushToTest TestMaker is a platform for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web service, and Web application governance and test automation. PushToTest TestMaker 5 delivers ease-of-use improvements and powerful root cause analysis and remediation solutions. This screencast is for existing TestMaker users to explain the new features and changes. First of all, you should know that TM 5 is backwardly compatible to TM4 scripts (show running the soap example script.) We also fixed several-long standing issues from TM 4, including the jCookie problem with international non-top-level domains. By the way, we have a new bug tracking service at bugs.pushtotest.com. (show it)

Solve Performance Problems with FastSOA Patterns

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:15:00 EDT

Here we're going to show a FastSOA mid-tier service and data caching architecture applied in three real-world scenarios. The scenarios show how to accelerate SOA performance and mitigate performance problems through mid-tier service caching, native XML persistence, and mid-tier data transformation, aggregation, and federation.

Making the Right Choices for SOAP Scalability

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:00:00 EST

Software developers live in a time that offers the greatest choice of software development tools, application servers, and connectivity ever. Each choice you make affects the scalability and reliability of your finished application, especially if you're building Web services. For example, as you will learn in this article, my study of SOAP encoding styles found a 30-fold performance improvement by choosing one SOAP encoding style over the others.