Nandan Nilekani, visionary CEO of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress.

Introducing the TestDrive- Launchpad software products. This is the new feature in itspice which is going to showcase the new software products, tools, API and frameworks. Let me know your feedback !

Amazing applet work from wordle.net ! See the sample one below.

ATG platform has lot of good concepts for Java applications. ATG is also well-known platform for the development of Java-based frameworks and technologies for Web development.
The History
Let’s have a look in the mid -1990’s, ATG Dynamo was among the first “applications” to use Java on the server-side. ATG demonstrated that the Java language can be solid enterprise software language. Way before anyone had thought of having a J2EE specification, ATG Dynamo proved how Java could be used to develop multi-layered, component-based java applications and solutions. It contributed many leads to J2EE specifications and Dynamic page compilation in JSP is a worth to mention. Let us see some facts here.
The Dynamic page compilation was invented by ATG and it is patented in US. Initially the dynamic web page rendering is implemented in JHTML and Dynamo Server Pages(DSP) in the ATG platform. DSP is the page renedering mechanism in ATG Platform which is very similar like a JSP with tag libs.
The java based http session tracking in wep applications was implemented by ATG and that was really a significant piece of innovation in Java web application development.
Later, the above technics were licenesed to Sun Microsystems.
Eventhough ATG, pioneered the java server side implementations, ATG as a platform or software bundle is not a mass market technology and still is a mystery for many developers. This is because ATG is hardcore properitery stuff and you don’t even find a single piece of information openly in the web. Documents are available only to the customers and Training is available only from ATG itself. Sounds weird, isn’t? but There is a purpose behind it, ATG wants to keep this as closed source product because their star product ATG Commerce suite is using this. At one stage, J2EE specs grown as champion of server side technologies, ATG adopted this change and convert their technology and their product lines into J2EE compatible or built on top of J2EE specifications. So now, ATG platform is J2EE complience and you can deploy servlets, JSP’s and EJB’s too. Well this has been done long back(late 90’s, I guess).
Till today, there are issues which are having unique and easy solution in ATG platform is complicated and cumbersome in J2EE applications. To explain this, we need to understand the ATG platform specifications. The most debatable topic in J2EE applications are lightweight persistence frameworks and EJB’s. And We have loads of web frameworks and technics to built a web applications using java. But there is no single framework which solves all our problems. In the other way, we have a freedom to custom built our applications how we need it. Sound confusing? May be, the point here is, it is up to us which technology we choose to work with. But I must say ATG has a good light weight frame work based on java beans built for implementing the conepts of dependency injections and inversion of control. This is way before, Spring and pico container created.
ATG Dynamo server is J2EE compatible, But ATG is not developing that anymore. And it is not one of best server. ATG gave up the application server race to concentrate on its core ecommerce product line. I have seen in some places J2EE applications are running in ATG Dynamo app servers and I would say they are not good in any sense.
Before finishing, I will give a brief of what I am going write in coming posts.

1. 1. DAF – Dyanmo Application Framework
2. 2. Page development.
3. 3. ATG Nucleus – Droplets, Form handlers, Core Dynamo Services
4. 4. ATG Repositories – Data Anywhere Architecture

The above are the core stuff which are unique from the J2EE in ATG platform.

Three years ago When I started working on an Jini Based SOA project, I realised the potential of Event Driven programming.
As a java developers we might have used event drivent approch for programming in several occassions. But this took a new dimension in last couple of years.

The Event driven architecture is fairly an old concept. But I am not sure whether the industry recognized its full potential until 2004/05.
The proliferation of SOA in 2008 took a new dimension with EDA(Event Driven Architecture) and CEP (Complex Event Processing).
The top SOA vendors like IBM, TIBCO, Oracle are investing into this development. But, did it really took of in 2008 as expected? The results are gloomyas per the CEP product vendor’s balance sheets.

The recession is one of the main reason for th. You may wonder how? Initially, the CEP proved its success and in Algorithmic trading
platforms which is a must have product for Capital markets players like stock exchanges, investment banks and independent share trading
institutions. So, for this obvious reason the growth in the financial sector is limited in 2008(may be over 2009 until the market recovers)
I think many of us think that EDA and CEP are another buzzword. Ofcourse it looks like that, Because of this product vendors approch to it.
They have started preaching in every tech meets and product videos.(I think I have seen many of them) Instead they should create a product
which delivers the business value.

Finally if you wonder how this EDA and CEP is related to SOA,EDA is an architectural approach to model IT systems from a business event perspective. EDA differs from SOA by its focus.
SOA puts services at the center of the model and EDA does so with business events. The SOA-approach results in synchronous communication style
and the EDA-approach in an asynchronous communication style. So, SOA and EDA are different, But in Complex system they can be complementary.
CEP is a technique to process the message streams. CEP can be used to implement EDA. There are many CEP product vendors with no. of products in the market already. E.g TIBCO, StreamBase, Aleri, Progress Apama etc.

Many said, SOA in 2008 is SOA+CEP. Well, it is yet to prove its business worthiness. But designers and developers should start look into it.

Java Message Board is launched. Ask a question or submit a tip/news…interact with java experts. See you there…

Tips For Managing Vendor Relationships In Tough Times Read more….

“Capgemini has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bring Cloud Computing to the Enterprise. The company also launched a new group, the Cloud Computing Center of Excellence, that will help businesses evaluate and implement cloud services and offer cloud consulting, application development, migration, and backup services and readiness assessments, beginning with services for Amazon’s cloud platform.”

This is defenetly a significant move to a technology consulting company ! I wondered times when why this so called technology services companies just overlooking the Cloud computing space. Well, now it is the compulsion for companies to work on Cloud computing evolution. And there is a niche servicing opportunity is hidden and I am sure the outsourcing companies will grab them too over the time. Read…..

In cost-cutting move, the computer company said it would reduce its payroll by up to 18% and restructure its software business operations.

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The 50 most significant moments of Internet history – An interesting feature from cnet.com