EA and Integration Summit

I got back from the first day of the Enterprise Architecture and Integration Summit in Calgary May 12-14th. There were lots of interesting topics, considering of course if Enterprise Architecture, Service Oriented Architecture, ITIL, TOGAF and other methodologies interest you!

I recently finished my Master's Thesis which involved SOA, Zachman and TOGAF and how they can work together. The conference was much more entertaining. The first keynote was John Zachman and he revealed the new Zachman Framework 2 and handed out the new 6 x 6 matrix diagram. Check out http://zachmaninternational.com/2/standards.asp for info on the new framework. It is very similar but they went to work with some linguists to make sure there are "no adjectives" in the matrix. They wanted it to be more rigorous and easier to understand(clearer and "brushed up").

After John Zachman spoke, I had a chat with him and thanked him for his work on the framework. I was able to pose in a picture with him. He seems to be very friendly and no nonsense. Most of his talk was the view of "Architecture is Architecture is Architecture", the instance of the system is not architecture itself.

The funniest moment was when he displayed the IT problems they faced in 1965 and compared them to 2008. They were identical! Also, he showed a slide that showed all of the technologies that did not solve the problems: COBOL, Fortran, mainframe, client server,......, agile programming, web services, .NET, SOA. Technology does not solve these issues. Architecture is important.

Other talks I found interesting were Stan Locke talking about the new Zachman Framework, Bill Dupley spoke of HP's harnessing of ITIL for better management. It was pretty interesting and looking forward to tomorrow's session as well.

Enterprise Architecture Framework Applications towards SOA

I am in the final stages of completing my Thesis requirement for my MSc. in Information Systems at Athabasca University.

I am working through the final signoff but the latest version may be downloaded Enterprise Architecture Framework Applications Towards Service Oriented Architecture

ABSTRACT
A large challenge facing today’s enterprises is the integration of their own disparate systems to be more competitive and react more strategically to market opportunities. Service Oriented Architecture(SOA) is a style of architecture where the use of reusable and discoverable services are used as components to meet business requirements. The promise of SOA is that the use of these services will allow the organization to increase business agility and reuse of software components. There are some challenges to implementing a SOA. One of the challenges is to present view from the enterprise perspective. Typically, projects take only a view of individual business unit without concerns for the entire organization. Enterprise Architecture(EA) describes the current business and IT processes and how they map together. The two most popular EA Frameworks, Zachman Framework and The Open Group Architecture Framework(TOGAF), are designed to help the organization clarify the current IT Architecture and help provide a roadmap to the goal or future IT architecture. It is with the enterprise view that these frameworks provide that SOA can be supported towards a more successful implementation. There is work underway to determine the relationship between SOA and EA. Whether by clarification from industry experts or direct modifications of the EA Frameworks, EA Frameworks are being used to help implement SOA. It is through the enterprise view and architectural tools provided by the EA Frameworks that SOA can be supported.

Getting 2 .NET applications to use different Oracle Clients

It is not necessarily evident how to get 2 .NET applications to use 2 different Oracle clients on the same server. The following are some rough notes, but you should get the idea and hopefully save you some time as well.

Information can be found at
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/windows/odpnet/faq.html

But I will document what I found.

1. Getting the .NET applications to use the appropriate clients on my development machine

I had to follow some steps to get the different .NET applications to use the appropriate Oracle client.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/windows/odpnet/faq.html

Building a website with Oracle 92:
1. Close Visual Studio
2. Uninstall all Oracle Dlls to remove any 102 references
3. Install only the 9.2 Oracle dlls to the GAC:
4. Set Path with "C:\oracle\ora92\bin;" at the start of the Path environment variable
5. Start Visual Studio and Add Reference the first OracleDataAccess dll (despite what the version # says) to the project
6. Set the dll Copy Local to true for some reason then it compiles
7. Run the app and verify that the right dll is being used
Building a website with Oracle 102:
1. Close Visual Studio
2. Ensure that the 102 Oracle Dlls are in the GAC:
3. Set Path with "C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\BIN\;" at the start of the Path environment variable
4. Start Visual Studio and Add Reference the first OracleDataAccess dll (despite what the version # says) to the project
5. Run the app and verify that the right dll is being used



uninstall All Oracle GAC dlls
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /u Oracle.DataAccess
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /u Policy.9.2.Oracle.DataAccess
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /u Policy.10.1.Oracle.DataAccess



10.2.0.1 GAC install
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /i C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\BIN\Oracle.DataAccess.dll
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /i C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\ODP.NET\PublisherPolicy\Policy.10.1.Oracle.DataAccess.dll


9.2 GAC install only
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\gacutil.exe /i C:\oracle\ora92\bin\Oracle.DataAccess.dll

Your application can do a simple ""select count(*) on table" to verify functionality. To find out which dll you are exactly using, you can use
Type ttt = typeof(OracleConnection);
mes += "\n ttt.Assembly.FullName";



2. Note that setting the path variables for Windows Server does not help out the same as on XP

The path can be set in the application via setting the DLL path in the application itself as follows:

Inside Global.asax.cs:

[DllImport("kernel32.dll",SetLastError=true)]
static extern bool SetDllDirectory(string lpPathName);
protected void Application_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string dllPath = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["DllPath"];
bool result = SetDllDirectory(dllPath);
}


Inside Web.config

<appsettings>
<add key="DllPath" value="D:\oracle\Client_10g_1010\BIN">
</add>
</appsettings>

Scheduling a Task to run on a remote server

If you want to set up a scheduled task to execute remote code on another box you can do the following.

Assuming the you have a job server and code server where the executable lives.



Step 1: Create job.bat and job.vbs on the job server
Step 2: Create Scheduled Task to execute job.bat on a regular basis

For more on Scheduling Tasks you can try
http://www.iopus.com/guides/winscheduler.htm or http://www.google.com for more details

The files job.bat and job.vbs will reside on the job server and execute code living on the code server.


On the job server:

You will have a job.bat file to reference the job.vbs file:
"C:\Jobs\job.vbs"


Which will call a job.vbs file:

On Error Resume Next

Dim strComputer
Dim strCommand
Dim strUsername
Dim strPassword

'Configuration of Remote Server Location and credentials
strComputer = "computername"
strUsername = "username"
strPassword = "password"

'Task to execute on remote server
strCommand = """C:\Code\program.exe"""

'Script to execute remote command
ExecuteCommand strComputer,strCommand, strUsername, strPassword

Sub ExecuteCommand(strComputer,strCommand, strUsername, strPassword)

'wscript.echo("Executing " & strCommand & " on " & strComputer)

Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
Set objSwbemServices = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer,"root\cimv2", strUsername , strPassword)
Set objSWbemObject = objSWbemServices.Get("win32_Process")

errReturn = objSWbemObject.Create(strCommand,null,null,intProcessID)

'if errReturn = 0 then
' Wscript.Echo strCommand & " was started with a process ID of " & intProcessID & "."
'else
' Wscript.Echo strCommand & " could not be started due to error " & errReturn & "."
'end if

End Sub

SOA Approach to Integration

I was recently sent a copy of "SOA Approach to Integration" by Matjaz B. Juric, Ramesh Loganathan, Poornachandra Sarang, and Frank Jennings to review from the good people at http://packtpub.com.

It is a good overview of SOA concepts combined with Integration viewpoint. Integration is handled within SOA. SOA is about integration. Process Oriented Architecture was a term that was introduced. POA is about using BPEL to manage business processes with existing services.

All in all, a good review of SOA issues including ESB, WS specifications, XML considerations.


There are 6 chapters:


1.Integration Architecture, Principles and Patterns

Review of different integration technlologies and types of integration
overview of integration challenges, process is important
SOA and its associated technolgies is a valid approach to integration


2.Service and Process Oriented Architectures

POA is centered on the processes that "use" the services while SOA is about"providing" the services.
POA is the approach from the business side of things. It is about business process and main standards include BPEL, WSCI, etc.


3.Best Practices for Using XML for Integration

Review of XML with tops and issues to watch out for.

4.SOA and Web Services Approach for Integration

SOA is not web services but web services are the specification/technology of choice in the arena.
WS applies to both EAI and B2B as well as SOA.
Included some on the specification process.

5.BPEL and Process-Oriented Approach

Familiarization with BPEL and POA together.
With a sample application of BPEL towards a Billing Process

6.Service and Process Oriented Approach to Integration using Web Services

Putting it all together with the Enterprise Service Bus(ESB).
Discussion of the ESB and what it offers for Integration and SOA.

Intro to SOA - InfoClipz

A great video on SOA, no fluff or buzzwords!

Ram Charan's "What The Customer Wants You To Know"

Ram Charan's publisher sent me a copy of his latest book "What The Customer Wants You To Know" which breaks down how to look at Sales and business development. The process illustrated is Value Creation Selling(VCS).

This process where the salespeople lead a multidisciplined team to gather a deeper look at where value can be added for the customer. Whereas the older views of sales competions are trying to beat one another on price alone. This attempts to provide a better picture of customer's needs and how to generate business.

There are 8 Chapters:

1. The Problem of Sales
Today is more competitive and a new way of finding opportunities is required.

2. Fixing the Broken Sales Process
Sales alone cannot do VCS it will require changes with Sales leading the efforts to collaborate with the customer on many levels within the client side and the vendor side.

3. How to Become Your Customer's Trusted Partner
Information is the heart of VCS. Study the customer and the customer's competitors. Know how decisions are made in the customer's organization.

4. The Value Account Plan
The VAP is a template completed by the salesperson to define the value propostion and business benefits the customer can expect to get from it. "A company that is selling value-creating solutions uses value pricing, which is different". Salespeople may have a psychological blockage about premium pricing. They are used to customers driving hard on price--and losing deals because of it" With value pricing, the price can be determined at some point where both the client and vendor benefit.


5. Developing the Value Creation Sales Force
This will require great changes to the Sales force. The salesperson will require affability, conceptualizing problems and solutions, leadership, tenacity and business acumen. Training, communicating successes and measuring progress will be required to ensure that VCS takes successfully.

6. Making the Sale
Once the VAP is made it must be presented carefully to the client. Again, both technical and operational members will be required to provide the appropriate vision to the client.

7. Sustaining the Process
Drive the process with reviews and link compensation to success with VCS.

8. Taking Value Creation Selling to the Next Level
Keep on working with VCS, it is a difficult journey but those who make it will be amply rewarded.


Charan has provided a new look at sales than the old sales funnel approach which is multifaceted which seems to make sense to ferret out newer opportunities in today's highly competitive and complex market. A disciplined and detailed approach should provide the vendor with better ways to serve the client's needs.