Software Architect

MIP Release 4.1.3

Release 4.1.3 of the Market Intelligence Portal was published to our production environment over the weekend.  It was largely a maintenance release, improving performance in several areas and adding to our internal data management and reporting functions, but it did contain some new functionality for our clients.

Brief Reflection on the MIP Database

It represents only one part of my personality but, as testament to the kind of person I am, I like a good database.  I've worked with many of them over the years, from just about every major vendor and open source project.  I would even go so far as to say that I've worked with some databases that a large percentage of the development community has never even heard of.  I've yet to come across anyone who has experience with FirstSQL.

My liking a good database has less to do with the database software itself and more to do with the contents of that database and its structure. 

We recently hit, what I would deem to be, some important milestones with the database that supports the Market Intelligence Portal (MIP).  Reaching those milestones made me stop a moment to reflect on how the database looked in its fledgling moments many years ago. 

We started with some simply constructed tables that focused completely on surveys and key opinion leader to respondent relationships.  From those unpretentious beginnings, I've watched one data migration after another shift data from one structure to the next, all the while expanding on the pure and simple concept that we started with.  The database has evolved in a way that has preserved the simplicity of its beginnings, while exposing new complexities of the real world entities that it models.

The astounding part is that it continues to grow.  Growth in physical database size is obvious and I'm really not talking gigabytes and terabytes when I refer to growth.  I refer to growth in the structure.  We continue to identify new sources of data that further augment our client's view of their market and the influencers who can help drive it.  Despite these new additions, it continues to adapt and be flexible to our changes. 

I started this post with a sentence that explained how I like a good database, with an optionally funny poke at myself for being a guy who "likes a good database".  I don't think I need to specifically write that the MIP database is one of the "good" ones.  At this point, it would seem quite redundant.

Guice Dependency Injection

I've been reading more and more about Google's Guice in different places.  I finally decided to visit the source of all these news reports and blogs posts to understand for myself what it was all about.  Guice is Dependency Injection (DI) through attribute tags in code.  DI essentially changes the way you think about the use of factories and object building.

I've embraced DI in the past with my use of Spring Framework.  The difference seems to be that Guice eliminates the need for mapping objects to one another to handle the injection.  In that respect, it reminds me of the Microsoft Composite Application Block (CAB) way of handling service dependencies.  Under CAB, simply register your service with a WorkItem and then attribute a property on the class being built and the framework will automatically inject that service.

Guice takes a slightly similar approach that uses the concept of Modules. According to the Guice User Guide: "With Guice, you implement modules. Guice passes a binder to your module, and your module uses the binder to map interfaces to implementations."  You then attribute your code to specify where the injections of the implementations should take place.

I think I need to read some more before offering any more thoughts, but I do like the direction Guice has taken.

OLEX Rating Open Source

I don't think that this is the first service I've come across like this, but OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX) offers what many organizations need in their decision to go to an open source product: Support, Update and Indemnification Services.

What I find most interesting and unique about their service, is that it falls in line with something that I've blogged about a few times now in reference to SourceKibitzer and Ohloh.  OLEX puts all the open source software in the library that they support through a 42-point certification process.  That certification process is described here.  They essentially rank the open source projects that they support.

The certification process is not public, but it calculates a score based on three areas OLEX believes are important: Adoption, Community and Licensing.  It's unclear how easily it is to affect this score and the disclaimer at the bottom of the page makes it clear that the rating is only a guide and "not a replacement for your own due diligence".  I assume that since it bases it's scores on the same data as everyone else, that it should be quite simple to get an odd ranking here and there.  Of course, it is my impression, as I browsed the projects in their library, that OLEX is focused on larger name and longer lived projects like MySQL, Apache and JBoss so the chance of an off rating would probably be relatively slim.

Either way, I'm glad to see more resources for IT folks to make more informed decisions on open source and hopefully the support offered through OLEX and organizations like it will allow open source to become more pervasive.   

New SQL Server JDBC Driver

I think that there are a lot of people who hope that this new Microsoft JDBC Driver turns out to be a big improvement on the previous release.  I can think of many times where I was forced to use jTDS to access SQL Server.  "Forced" might not even be the correct word, as the jTDS driver stacks up quite nicely to other options that are available.

I wonder when the guys at jTDS will re-do their driver benchmarks now that this new version is available.

Measuring People in Open Source

I've made several posts now discussing how to evaluate an open source project prior to working it into your architecture.  Free is great, but the zero on the price tag could add up to a far more expensive venture if you're left with a spotty product and no support. 

The posts that have discussed this issue are those that have focused on one of two web sites, Ohloh and SourceKibitzer, which both present analysis of open source projects.  Both of these sites offer insight into an evaluation variable I haven't mentioned directly before.  I think a good measure might be the people involved in the project that you are evaluating. 

Consider some of these questions: Are they recognized by their peers as experts? How many recognized experts are on the project?  What is their most recent contribution and how big was their overall contribution?  How long have they been on the project?  SourceKibitzer even goes so far as to offer a code complexity metric.

While you have access to all this data through these web sites, there is a word of caution to consider and I've mentioned it in previous posts.  Some of the project metrics can lie or tell only part of the truth, so in the end these evaluation points should only be used as part of a larger evaluation strategy prior to making a decision.

MIP Release 4.1.2

Release 4.1.2 was deployed into production over the weekend.  This release was largely a maintenance release that resolved some minor issues with some administrative functions.  It also contained several custom reports and query models for a number of different customers.

MIP Release 4.1.1

Release 4.1.1 was deployed into production over the weekend.  The biggest addition to the Market Intelligence Portal is the inclusion of our new Query Builder functionality.  Think of it as a light version of the Report Builder, which has been available in the portal for about a year now. 

Given that this is the first iteration of this functionality, Query Builder only covers the basics: create a query, save a query, view results and export those results to Excel.  However, even with that straightforwad and simple feature set, the Query Builder opens up the portal to entirely new categories of users.  Query Builder has enough flexibility for power users, but is easy enough for even the casual or executive user to pick up on.  Look for more features in Query Builder in our future releases.