Peer-to-Peer Sockets

From Brad Neuberg, OnJava, an insightful abstraction of sockets on p2p on sockets...

P2P Sockets effectively hides JXTA by creating a thin illusion that the peer-to-peer network is actually a standard TCP/IP network. If peers wish to become servers, they simply create a P2P server socket with the domain name they want, and the port other peers should use to contact them. P2P clients open socket connections to hosts that are running services on given ports. Hosts can be resolved either by domain name, such as www.nike.laborpolicy, or by IP address, such as 44.22.33.22. Behind the scenes, these resolve to JXTA primitives, rather than being resolved through DNS or TCP/IP....

The P2P Sockets project already includes a large amount of software ported to use the peer-to-peer network, including a web server (Jetty) that can receive requests and serve content over the peer-to-peer network; a servlet and JSP engine (Jetty and Jasper) that allows existing servlets and JSPs to serve P2P clients; an XML-RPC client and server (Apache XML-RPC) for accessing and exposing P2P XML-RPC endpoints; an HTTP/1.1 client (Apache Commons HTTP-Client) that can access P2P web servers; a gateway (Smart Cache) to make it possible for existing browsers to access P2P web sites; and a WikiWiki (JSPWiki) that can be used to host WikiWikis on your local machine that other peers can access and edit through the P2P network. Even better, all of this software works and looks exactly as it did before being ported. The P2P Sockets abstraction is so strong that porting each of these pieces of software took as little as 30 minutes...

The SOA Antidote

Russell Levine writes in the Business Integration Journal about the Myth of the Disappearing Interfaces. If you work in IT, have been involved in some EAI projects, and are a relatively critical thinker, then there probably is not a lot of new information for you. However the piece serves nicely as an antidote to the run-of-the-mill "Service Oriented Architecture", well, pablum.

More good information can be found at Doug Barry's site. Almost too much at once without a trail guide. Better than run-of-the-mill, without a doubt.

From Russell:

• n^2 vs. n comparisons should be considered harmful.
• A clue that there might be a problem with this argument is that these pictures often have applications with names such as A, B, and C.
• Applications along a value chain often have many different connections.
• Ultimately you need to understand data flows to assess the complexity of the integration challenge.
• Data mapping requires intimate knowledge of the data and how it's used.
• You must understand every data relationship. That hard work is unavoidable.
• Any benefit must be balanced against the effort of creating an intermediate, or "canonical", model.
• Portfolios with the critical mass to justify such efforts don't emerge overnight.
• Focus on business benefits.
• Estimate costs with and without the integration technology.
• Be conservative!

There you go.

So what's all this got to do with XML?

Jon Udell...

So what's all this got to do with XML? If you buy the notion that we are projecting ourselves into networked information systems, then we can't only focus on how processes and data interact in these increasingly XML-based systems. The quality and transparency of our direct interaction with XML processes and data -- and with one another as mediated by those processes and data -- has to be a central concern too.

When I think of XML, two things come to mind. First, I think of the movie Brazil, because XML is still this grab bag of stuff that happens to share one thing in common, angle brackets.

Second, I think of David Letterman's bit he calls "Is this anything?"* --- We expect XML to be something, anything, more than a grab bag of stuff that shares something in common beyond angle brackets.

A third thing comes to mind: the black knight in the Holy Grail, after all his limbs have been cut off. XML is utterly helpless in and of itself. It's everything *around* XML that has value, most of which are hindered by XML per se, not aided.

---

*(David Letterman's latest zany recurring bit is something he calls "Is this anything?" It consists of a setup of the bit followed by the pulling open of a curtain where a performer or, sometimes, a nonperformer, is doing something that may or may not be worth seeing or even worth "anything." David and his band-leader cohort, Paul Schaeffer, then discuss what they've just seen and decide whether it amounts to "anything," They don't always agree, but if the action behind the curtain exhibits creativity and talent it's usually declared "something" and if it's showy but pointless it will garner a "not anything." When Letterman and Schaeffer disagree, it's because they have different perceptions of what constitutes "anything.")

OpenAugment

One of the more interesting projects I have come across in a while, OpenAugment...

The OpenAugment Consortium is a not-for-profit open source corporation dedicated to the preservation of the Augment legacy. Founded in 2002, the consortium is comprised of a small dedicated staff and a number of research partners and associates.

Created in the 1960's by Dr. Douglas Engelbart and his imaginative team at Stanford Research Labs (SRI), Augment is one of the most groundbreaking and important historical artifacts of the software industry. Many of today's desktop and network computing innovations can be traced back to the original Augment system.

Today, the OpenAugment Consortium is taking steps to ensure that future generations will have access to the Augment legacy through this open source initiative. Please explore the rest of this site to find out more about Augment, the OpenAugment Consortium and how you can play a part in preserving this vital piece of computing history.

Answer me this

Today I am listening to one of the local "classic rock" stations. The DJ announces it's "Two for Tuesday". He also announces "We're in the middle of a 25 song classic song salute."

So does that mean for the 13th artist "two-fer" they're gonna play a classic and then a flop?

I'm just thinkin'.