Archive for November, 2007
XAP 6.0.2 - lessons learned
November 18th, 2007
Last Monday we released XAP 6.0.2. This is the second service pack release on top of XAP 6.0, which we released in August. The adoption rate of XAP is exceeding all of our expectations, making us work very hard to address many requirements coming from so many users of our platform.
As always, full release notes are available here. I’d like to shed some light on some of the improvements introduced in 6.0.2.
The first one is called internally "max-instances-per-machine". This new improvement to OpenSpaces’ deployment-supported SLA is something that has been requested for a while. With this new SLA definition one can guarantee that primary and backup of the same partition will never run on the same physical machine.
These days, with the computation power available on every new box, our users deploy several instances of the Grid Service Container into the same physical machine. Until now, unless statically defined, this could have resulted in cases where both the primary copy and the backup copy of the same data may reside on the same physical machine. If that machine fails, data may be lost. Previous to 6.0.2 the solution was to statically define the phyiscal binding between the data partition and the host. Now with this new SLA definition it is much simpler. The system guarantees that this policy is met.
Another feature worth mentioning is support for batch notifications of Local Cache updates. In 6.0 we introduced a new event API, the EventSession API. This API consolidated all previous API options into a single consistent model. On top of that, we’ve introduced QoS optimizations into the messaging controlled by the application developer. One of them is to batch-up event notifications from servers to clients. Batching is controlled either by the size of the batch (number of messages per batch) or by the time between batch delivery. This option reduces load both from the server and the clients. The next logical step, which was started in 6.0.2, is to make sure the product uses this new API for all components that use events.
In the master-local pattern, the Local Cache relies heavily on events, and it was only logical to start with it. Now, Local Cache uses the batching optimization by default. This, of course, can be controlled via configuration. From our tests, we are seeing major scalability improvements when using Local Cache.
Many other enhancements have been introduced as well as many performance improvements. I’ll let my colleagues from the GigaSpaces R&D team Guy Korland, Shay Banon and others comment on those on their individual blogs.
One last comment on process. By now it is clear that the effort put into implementing Scrum and applying agile methodologies in our team is paying off. This is the third product release in the past four months, with tons of content and improved quality on every release. This remark deserves a post of it’s own, and I plan to write something soon. I am also going to share some of this information in my presentation at the coming JavaPolis event, so you’re all invited.
GigaSpaces Offers a Free Distributed Cache for Hibernate
November 14th, 2007With the latest release of GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) 6.0.2 we've refined the integration with Hibernate, the object/relational persistence and query service.
Now the Hibernate integration can be used in two ways; One is to use GigaSpaces as 2nd level distributed cache, replacing the default caching solution that comes with Hibernate. The second way [...]
GigaSpaces XAP 6.0.2 is Now Available
November 14th, 2007We are happy to announce that GigaSpaces XAP on all its editions (XAP , EDG and XAP - Community) is now available in the latest version 6.0.2.
XAP 6.0.2 includes quality enhancements in the Core, Service Grid and GigaSpaces Management Center, including new features in the .NET API and the OpenSpaces framework.
You can go to [...]
GigaSpaces Facebook Page
November 11th, 2007We just started a GigaSpaces Facebook page . Through this page we will provide product and company updates, notify of new events, news and more. It's one more way of facilitating the community around GigaSpaces.
To add GigaSpaces to your Facebook profile, simply go to this link , and on the top right corner of the [...]
GigaSpaces Free for Start-Ups
November 11th, 2007On Thursday we launched the GigaSpaces Start-Up Program. Through the program, individuals and start-up companies who qualify (less than $5 million in revenues) receive a ful, perpetual license for GigaSpaces products at no charge.
Since the program launched a few days ago, dozens of start-ups have already signed up with a variety of applications, including social [...]
GigaSpaces on Facebook
November 11th, 2007Facebook now lets you create pages for businesses and products, so I’ve created a Facebook page for GigaSpaces. If you want to join it as a “fan” (facebook terminology), just go to the page (click on link above) and on…
My JayView Article is published!
November 8th, 2007I am so excited that my article for JayView magazine. Has been published.
The title is:
Entering The Grid Painlessly - with spaces
The link for download is here:
http://www.jayway.se/jayview
You can also get “gasp” a hardcopy!
Cheers,
Owen.
Reminder of BOF session tonight
November 8th, 2007I will be leading a Birds Of a Feather session at Qcon tonight at 7:15 in the City room of the Westin hotel in San Francisco.
Attendees will build a simple fault-tolerant, linearly scalable application using OpenSpaces and the GigaSpacesXAP platform.
Attendees will use the projectcreator to assist them in rapidly doing the above work.
I expect you will use either Eclipse version 3.3 europa or intellij as the development env, but as long as you have ant you should be good to go.
You can get the projectcreator.jar here:
http://www.jroller.com/resources/o/owentaylor/project-creator.jar
If you want to see it in use, you can look at the screencast I made a while back referenced here:
http://www.artvue-bermuda.com/scratchpad/projcreat1/ProjectCreator_publicDemo1.html
The files used in the video are available here:
http://www.jroller.com/resources/o/owentaylor/demoProjectCreator.jar
See you there!
Owen.
Freedom to Work and Play
November 8th, 2007
Holy good news Batman!
GigaSpaces is now *free* to use for startups!!!!
No. Really.
This is exciting because you now can get a full XAP license with all the bells and whistles to use forever. (as long as you do not earn more than 5 million dollars)
Everybody that wanted to try this stuff out but was concerned about being chased down by salespeople - have no fear. You can now use it in production for free as long as you are what GigaSpaces considers a startup.
GigaSpaces continues to offer the community edition for free to anyone at all.
Check out the announcement: here
Cheers,
Owen.
Launching the GigaSpaces Start-Up Program
November 8th, 2007I’m very excited to announce that today we are launching our Start-Up Program. This is something I have been working on for a while, and I’m glad we finally got it out. We are essentially giving away our products for…
QCon, Drinks on Tuesday
November 5th, 2007Looking forward to a great Qcon San Francisco conference this week. Kudos to Floyd Marinescu and the rest of the team for putting together a pretty cool speaker roster and agenda. As Nati wrote, a bunch of us are getting…
Well, what do you know?
November 4th, 2007“Always make decisions based on what you know…”
A few years ago I received this excellent advice from a very successful businesswoman I worked for and I have tried to always follow it.
When I drive in a car in Manhattan I always look at the traffic on the street I am on before looking to switch to another avenue. If I “know” that 6th ave is moving at an average of 1 block a minute, unless I receive information that 8th ave or 10th ave is moving faster, or I “know” from prior experience that this is the case, I remain where I am and get to my destination in a reasonable amount of time.
The question remains: “How do we come to know things?”
It is all very well to make decisions based on what you know if what you know is up to date and based on the very best possible information. The problem is we are creatures of habit. We also like to attach meaning to memory and familiarity that has little or no basis in fact. For instance, I, despite my prior ramblings to the contrary have a belief that taking the west-side highway is faster than any of the west-side avenues because it is a highway. My experience when taking this highway shows me that in fact, the highway is often slower than say, 10th avenue, and by taking it I am impeding my progress in getting myself and any passengers to the destination intended. I am however, often found, moving at a snail’s pace on my precious highway, angry passengers beside me, cursing my bad luck.
–hint: ‘luck’ is *not* knowledge based–
I see the same kind of behavior exhibited in technologists who, once they get a certain idea about a technology, stick to that impression despite evidence to the contrary.
Sometimes, there are practical reasons for the adherence to a particular solution, such as the fact that they only last year invested 3 million dollars in the technology they cling to and to change their attitude or exposed belief would mean admission of a grave mistake and possibly the loss of their position in the company.
Sometimes, there are historical reasons for the solution-hugging, such as prior success and familiarity that means starting something new with that technology requires almost no learning aside from the business domain.
Sometimes, there are social pressures that cause an individual to pivot away from new intriguing solutions and side with what a particular leader or sensible seeming majority prefers.
In my opinion, only recent experience with a technology that shows success in achieving meaningful criteria, provides the knowledge vital to include such technnology in your basket of options.
As a proud employee of GigaSpaces, I have the pleasure to rattle the mental cages of many people throughout the world with what appear to be radical concepts and (potentially at least) highly disruptive technology - I am now referring to the Space-Based Architecture and linearly scalable infrastructure offered by the use of our middleware. When people are presented with the facts surrounding the use of the GigaSpaces solution, they see with their own eyes the improved throughput and continuous availability and resiliency, and they get excited. For many, what they “know” has just changed. To these people, I offer my best advice,
“Always make decisions based on what you know.”
To those who to date have not had the successful knowledge transfer and remain with their tried and true and socially acceptable solutions, I say, “Risk, Reward.” Get educated in as many of the available solutions as possible. Step out of your comfortable shell long enough to learn what is possible in the innovative world of the data-grid and allow the Kool-Aid to take effect.
Kick the tires of this new sports car and see if the triple wammy of:
1) reliable and super-fast state management
2) dynamic service provisioning and recoverability
3) collocation of events, processing and information into a Spring-based, Java, .NET, and C++ friendly processing unit
- doesn’t offer you a quicker way to your technical destination than that well understood and familiar yet often disappointing “other” you cling to with such remorse.
You can always be last to go with the better technology, but don’t expect much success if you make it a habit. Curiously, one of the perhaps loose yet highly relevant definitions of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results.
Cheers,
Owen.
P.S. To learn more about GigaSpaces and perhaps be taken out of your comfort zone in the process check out this page filled with links to great info on what is possible and how. You can also see me and the GigaSpaces CTO Nati Shalom, presenting at QCon next week in San Francisco.
