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Archive for the 'Development' Category

Integrating GigaSpaces persistency service into an existing tier based system

April 23rd, 2008

A common issue I’m facing recently is how to integrate existing tier based applications with GigaSpaces persistency service, AKA persistency as a service (Paas) or mirror . The motivation is often a result of the acknowledgment that a standard tier based application fails to scale when facing the database throughput limitation.
Software Caching technologies (overlooking their [...]

Sharing Results of Expensive Computations

March 25th, 2008

A customer recently contacted us to discuss how to use GigaSpaces XAP to minimize the number of times an expensive computation must run. The particular domain is option price stress testing, but the problem is more general and the solution demonstrates a couple of interesting GigaSpaces XAP features.
Consider a service that executes an expensive [...]

New GigaSpaces/OpenSpaces.org Forums

December 17th, 2007

As part of our ongoing effort to build and serve the fast-growing community around GigaSpaces and OpenSpaces.Org , we've re-launched our discussion forums , using Jive Forums. We have migrated all of the posts from the old forums and simplified the forum structure. So please, check them out .
The new forums are the [...]

Opinionated architecture - blue prints without the middleman

December 16th, 2007

While at the Spring Experience this past week, I was delighted to learn a few things.

I got a good look at an OSGI environment, discovered what it felt like to turn rapidly in a circle on a cigarette boat doing well over 40 knots, and was introduced to the term “Opinionated Architecture”.

To my new understanding, an opinionated architecture, or framework, or solution, is one that proclaims a mandatory set of conventions in various things such as directory structure, configuration and code artifacts, naming conventions, and patterns of use. Due to the specification of these and possibly other things, the adopter of the solution will benefit from the use of the naturally occurring wizards and reusable templates that exemplify the mandatory bits and pieces. More than the traditional “blue-prints” offered by some, the essence of the available and proper use of the

opinionated solution depends on the erasure of alternative paths lest disaster strike.

This is not a trivial course to take. The author of the solution must have effective and real knowledge of the problem domain addressed by the solution - hopefully informed by enough failures that the successful path as declared is completely valid to the limits of the conceit of the solution.

For instance, web frameworks such as Grails provide rapid application development to those who agree to adopt the programming paradigm made possible and pushed by the elected framework. The result is a religious fervor adopted as those who share the faith and bend to the will of the higher, more-knowing, technological power are validated by their successes and spurred to greater adoption and recognition of the awesome power of the solutions’ prescription.

Caution: some wordiness follows:

The topic of the effect of poor planning and proceeding with lack of effective guidance down the enterprise architectural path was touched on in a BOF on high-performance Spring apps that took place late Friday night. (After the keynote filled with Monty Python references) During this talk, it was made clear that only experience can fulfill the needs of the architect challenged by a huge problem. What was also revealed is that humans frequently fail to avoid making the same mistakes numerous times even when presented with compelling alternatives. Old habits die hard it seems.

I am (tonight) of the opinion that unless your solution infrastructure mandates a path of best results and guides you to a proven successful state, you are more than likely to wander into the woods of competing best practices overgrown with budget constraints, lack of innovative and experienced resources, and just plain lack of understanding. It is therefore better to adopt a winning solution set whole-heartedly and when all the Kool-Aid is gone, agree to be dictated to by a benevolent dictator who has the right stuff.

The experience of a journeyman or artist is really very similar. In classical Ballet, for instance, the student rarely questions the validity of the techniques demonstrated by the Maestro leading the class/company. There is an element of necessary blind faith in the chosen path and the guides you choose to follow down it. Once one determines that the task at hand is indeed Ballet, one really has no choice but to turn out hips, point feet, and develop habits of posture that will sustain them through the most grueling choreography - for it will surely come and in spades. The student/apprentice is not well served to strike out on their own until a mastery is attained of the subject matter *through experience* that validates new choices and proves that through their adoption, greater success is to be found. The opinion therefore exhibited must be one based on hard-earned experience and still based predominately on a foundation made real and sustainable by the experiences of many others.

As it happens, I have watched the growth of OpenSpaces over the last many months with the skeptical eye of a - er skeptic - not realizing that the purpose of the framework is not only buzzword compliance and the implementation of popular development practices, but in the context of GigaSpaces and what is offered to our prospects and customers, a truly opinionated framework that takes the vastly flexible GigaSpaces infrastructure and service implementations and distills *the* successful use of it all into enforceable use of the Spring programmatic approach and technologies, thus empowering the neophyte and thought-leader alike with the unmistakably opinionated path to success.

The beauty of the switch to the prescriptive and formulaic from the free and often flailing style, is the stunningly rapid improvement in adoption rate, early prototyping successes, and sustained production-systems that continue to reinforce my growing certainty that we got our bit of it right this time.

Yes, OpenSpaces and by our support of it, GigaSpaces, has become an opinionated architecture/solution. As more and more tools and samples become available, and more wizards like my somewhat primitive, yet highly effective Project-creator, are built and offered, that fact will be obvious to all and joyfully so to the initiates and practitioners of the Linearly Scaling Aplication Arts. (The LSAA)

Write Once, [our way]

Scale Anywhere

Cheers,

Owen.

Agile Development at GigaSpaces

December 6th, 2007

Guy Nirpaz, GigaSpaces ' Executive VP of R&D, writes in his blog about GigaSpaces agile development methodologies using Scrum.
Guy writes about best practices, what works and doesn't work and more. Read the full post .

Alternate Script to create projects using ProjectCreator and update to jar

September 5th, 2007

Hi,

I have made a small adjustment to one of the template files in the project-creator.jar. This means that *all* eclipse projects will be generated with a classpath that includes the variable GS_HOME . This variable will point to whatever you (the owner of the running eclipse instance) determines it should point to.

BTW: It needs to point to the home directory for your installation of GigaSpacesXAP6.0

To accomplish this:

1) create the project using projectcreator

2) import the project into eclipse version 3.3 (europa)

3) right-click on the project and select

Build Path | Configure Build Path…

4) select

Add Variable | Configure Variables…

5) select

New…

6) enter the following in the two fields

Name: GS_HOME

Path: [browse_to_the_home_directory_of_your_installation_of_GigaSpacesXAP6.0]

(

On my system, in eclipse I have configured GS_HOME to point to

c:\GigaSpacesXAP6.0

)

7) click OK
do a rebuild

9) ignore the warning that the path is not a jar file (we know that already)

10) Find your way back to the project and look: the red x is gone!

The Variable GS_HOME should now be resolved and reusable for future projects in eclipse.

In addition, I noticed mucho redundancy in the scripts I offered in my previous posts.

The eclipse and intellij versions are now identical except for the value provided for the IDE variable.

The following scripts are hopefully clearer alternates you can use to create the various projects:

____________________________

file: createPublisher.cmd

____________________________

rem #### if you are using intellij: before calling this script, configure the following:

rem #### set IDE=-intellij

rem ####

rem This script starts the projectCreator so as to create a PU containing a TimerTask – a SpringBean that gets invoked over and over again by a Timer. Configure how often to do this in the PU.xml Note this is good for a feed or driver and usually means you will elect to have a remote space.

rem In addition: if the IDE is set to -eclipse:

rem ProjectCreator determines that the classpath in the eclipse project uses an eclipse-specific GS_HOME variable in the same way the examples that come with the product do – this makes for a more portable project. Note that the build.xml file created as part of the project will still use an explicit path and will need to be edited if the project is used in a new environment and the ant tasks are invoked.

rem Personal Settings (these change according to each machine environment)

set JAR_FILE_LOCATION=./project-creator.jar

set OUTPUT_DIRECTORY=C:\tmp\projectcreator

set JAVA_HOME=c:\java\jdk1.5.0_07

if “%JSHOMEDIR%.” == “.” set JSHOMEDIR=c:\GigaSpacesXAP6.0

rem Script-specific Configuration Settings:

set PROJECT_NAME=Publisher

if “%IDE%.” == “.” set IDE=-eclipse

set SERVICE_TEMPLATE_NAME=service.javasrc_timerTask

set PU_TEMPLATE_NAME=pu.xmlsrc_timerTask

rem General Options

rem elect to overwrite existing projects with same name:

set OVERWRITE_OPTION=-overwrite

call %JAVA_HOME%\bin\java -jar %JAR_FILE_LOCATION% %IDE% %OVERWRITE_OPTION% -project %PROJECT_NAME% -out %OUTPUT_DIRECTORY% -setServiceTemplateName %SERVICE_TEMPLATE_NAME% -setPUTemplateName %PU_TEMPLATE_NAME% -gigaHome %JSHOMEDIR%

____________________________

____________________________

file: createNotifyListener.cmd

____________________________

rem #### if you are using intellij: before calling this script, configure the following:

rem #### set IDE=-intellij

rem ####

rem This script starts the projectCreator so as to create a PU containing a NotifyContainer – a SpringBean with a default method that gets invoked when a matching object appears or is modified in the space. Note this is good for a listener (a take is not performed as part of the NotifyContainer operation) and could be implemented with either a remote or embedded space.

rem In addition: if the IDE is set to -eclipse:

rem ProjectCreator determines that the classpath in the eclipse project uses an eclipse-specific GS_HOME variable in the same way the examples that come with the product do – this makes for a more portable project. Note that the build.xml file created as part of the project will still use an explicit path and will need to be edited if the project is used in a new environment and the ant tasks are invoked.

rem Personal Settings (these change according to each machine environment)

set JAR_FILE_LOCATION=./project-creator.jar

set OUTPUT_DIRECTORY=C:\tmp\projectcreator

set JAVA_HOME=c:\java\jdk1.5.0_07

if “%JSHOMEDIR%.” == “.” set JSHOMEDIR=c:\GigaSpacesXAP6.0

rem Script-specific Configuration Settings:

set PROJECT_NAME=NotifyListener

if “%IDE%.” == “.” set IDE=-eclipse

set SERVICE_TEMPLATE_NAME=service.javasrc

set PU_TEMPLATE_NAME=pu.xmlsrc_notifyContainer

rem General Options

rem elect to overwrite existing projects with same name:

set OVERWRITE_OPTION=-overwrite

call %JAVA_HOME%\bin\java -jar %JAR_FILE_LOCATION% %IDE% %OVERWRITE_OPTION% -project %PROJECT_NAME% -out %OUTPUT_DIRECTORY% -setServiceTemplateName %SERVICE_TEMPLATE_NAME% -setPUTemplateName %PU_TEMPLATE_NAME% -gigaHome %JSHOMEDIR%

_______________________________

file: createPollingWorker.cmd

____________________________

rem #### if you are using intellij: before calling this script, configure the following:

rem #### set IDE=-intellij

rem ####

rem This script starts the projectCreator so as to create a PU containing a PollingContainer – a SpringBean with a default method that gets invoked when a matching object appears or is modified in the space. NB: The PollingContainer removes (takes) the interesting information from the Space!

rem Note this is good for a worker and usually means you will elect to have an embedded space.

rem In addition: if the IDE is set to -eclipse:

rem ProjectCreator determines that the classpath in the eclipse project uses an eclipse-specific GS_HOME variable in the same way the examples that come with the product do – this makes for a more portable project. Note that the build.xml file created as part of the project will still use an explicit path and will need to be edited if the project is used in a new environment and the ant tasks are invoked.

rem Personal Settings (these change according to each machine environment)

set JAR_FILE_LOCATION=./project-creator.jar

set OUTPUT_DIRECTORY=C:\tmp\projectcreator

set JAVA_HOME=c:\java\jdk1.5.0_07

if “%JSHOMEDIR%.” == “.” set JSHOMEDIR=c:\GigaSpacesXAP6.0

rem Script-specific Configuration Settings:

set PROJECT_NAME=PollingWorker

if “%IDE%.” == “.” set IDE=-eclipse

set SERVICE_TEMPLATE_NAME=service.javasrc

set PU_TEMPLATE_NAME=pu.xmlsrc

rem General Options

rem elect to overwrite existing projects with same name:

set OVERWRITE_OPTION=-overwrite

call %JAVA_HOME%\bin\java -jar %JAR_FILE_LOCATION% %IDE% %OVERWRITE_OPTION% -project %PROJECT_NAME% -out %OUTPUT_DIRECTORY% -setServiceTemplateName %SERVICE_TEMPLATE_NAME% -setPUTemplateName %PU_TEMPLATE_NAME% -gigaHome %JSHOMEDIR%

________________________________

Cheers,

Owen.

ProjectCreator version .0000001 :0) [A hackers utility that creates openspaces projects in eclipse]

August 18th, 2007

Early release of java command-line wizard generates OpenSpaces projects in seconds for rapid development of highly scalable Spring Applications using the GigaSpaces SBA platform. –It works for me

OK. Be gentle.

I am biting the bullet and publishing my current release of the wizard I have been working on that generates eclipse projects for OpenSpaces developers. Those who have seen me at various shows and JUGS will know what it does. It certainly saves me time as I get started on new projects, but then I know the code..

In an attempt to broaden the use of it, I have begun to document my work on it and some of the feedback and future plans I have for it.

Note: this utility will change and hopefully improve in the coming days/weeks etc. There are areas I already plan to improve -not least of all the code implementing it-.

Your feedback is welcome.

It is my sincere wish that somebody will benefit as they begin to explore the OpenSpaces concepts through rapidly generating their first few projects using this tool. Perhaps, more add-ons will be created by those interested in OpenSpaces — I particularly would love someone to create a front-end wizard for quick web pages backed by the Spring-based OpenSpaces. I think if we put our heads together we can give folks over at ruby on rails a run for their money.

(how’s that for inflammatory!)

Here is the first binary release of it - let me know if you want/need the code.

The current state of this unofficial utility is somewhat summed up below:

projectcreator_thoughts

Cheers,

Owen.

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