OSSummit Postponed until Spring 2008

I found out today that the OSSummit (a merger of ApacheCon Asia and EclipseCon) has been postponed until Spring 2008 due to a low number of registrations. I have heard that other conferences experiencing the same issues upon first being held in Eastern Asia. I have been told by many people that Asian companies are not used to attending conferences, let alone paying for developers to attend. I believe that this is simply a new event to which Asian companies are not yet accustomed. Just like the United States and Europe, it will take a while for open source to catch on there.

Now I'm just hoping that the postponement won't place the OSSumit (in Hong Kong) next to the week of ApacheCon EU (in Europe) :-0.

Apache ServiceMix 3.2 Released

The long-awaited Apache ServiceMix 3.2 has finally been released. See the release notes for a long list of the bugfixes and improvements that are included. Many thanks to the ServiceMix team for all the hard work!

Java 1.6 Missing From MacOS X Leopard - Take It Easy Folks

There's been a lot of banter lately regarding the release of MacOS X Leopard and it's lack of Java 1.6. I understand that this is a letdown since it was included in the Leopard betas that were released, but is it really that big a deal? I think everyone needs to relax a bit on this issue.

I understand the interest in using some of the new features that Java 1.6 has to offer. I have even blogged about Apple's lack of communication about its plans regarding Java and I stand by what I said. But seriously, how many companies are actually using 1.6 for development or even in production yet? IMO, the real issue is not that Java 1.6 is not available yet as much as it is about Apple's continued lack of communication regarding Java in general.

Now is a good time to take another look at Eric's OS X Java Definitive Timeline. This diagram does a very good job of helping us remember how Apple has behaved with its Java releases to date. Given this past behavior, I'm really not worried at all. I am, however, still a bit miffed that Apple's ability to communicate its intentions with Java technology has not improved at all. I think this is what we should all be lobbying for.

If we're going to try to affect change, we need to start with some realistic expectations. Trying to make Apple release a product faster is like trying to make Apple move a mountain faster because we say so. No matter how much people bitch and moan, it's just not going to happen any faster. C'mon, be realistic here. We're all developers and we know that having someone asking over and over, 'is it done yet? is it done yet? is it done yet?' won't speed the delivery of the solution. Trying to make Apple understand that we'd like more communication is far more realistic. This is like asking Apple to talk about the mountain it is going to move. Given that we're all Apple fans, we should be telling Apple that we can't wait to get our hands on Java 1.6, could you please, please, puh-lease give us a status report? Requesting more information is something to which Apple might actually respond. Getting testy and demanding that Apple release Java 1.6 NOW is not going to help the cause.

So, to repeat, I'd like to see Java 1.6 on MacOS X as much as everyone else. I just think we need to reassess the tactics being used so that we can positively affect the situation instead of painting Java developers using MacOS X to be demanding and pushy.

Oh, BTW, here you go, Geert: 13949712720901ForOSX

St. John's, NL Canada

I arrived in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada Sunday night at 2am and today to work with a team of folks in the IONA St. John's office. It's a great bunch of folks here and city itself is very inviting and pleasant. Unfortunately I'm only here for a couple days.

Last night we visited O'Reilly's Pub to hear some Newfoundland live music. This evening I got to visit Signal Hill, the reception point of the first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901. It's a great vantage point to see the entire city, even at night. Even though it was quite cold due to wind and dampness from the ocean, the clouds cleared and we could see the lights of the city really well. In the other direction we could also see Cape Spear, the most easterly point of land in all of North America. Thanks guys!

Tomorrow morning at 5am I'm off to Phoenix, AZ for a couple days and then back home to Boulder. Originally I was supposed to head back to Dublin to speak at the Irish Java Technology Conference but the last time I was in Dublin I talked James into taking my place. And it's a good thing, too, because it seems that Air Canada changed its routes for the winter just a few weeks ago so there's no overnight flight from Toronto to Dublin. Thanks, James!

Apache ServiceMix Used for a Large Student Records Management Application

Today a friend pointed me to a very interesting blog entry about the Belgian Ministry of Education and its use of Apache ServiceMix (by way of the FUSE ESB) to manage over 1.5 million student records and exposing it to nearly 3000 schools. Lilian Duchêne's blog entry does a good job at detailing this system architecture from a high level. Intalio also had a hand in the architecture with it's products as well.

Below is a diagram of the system architecture Lilian describes:



The architecture shown here is fairly common, whereby services are decoupled using JMS messaging via Apache ActiveMQ. Not only does this make the services location independent, but it also guarantees the delivery of messages. Also notice that the services have been kept smaller and reusable and separate from the real back end application. This abstraction is great for scaling the application as Lilian describes in the blog entry.

Another interesting aspect of this architecture to note is the use of VMware for the virtualization of the entire architecture. I am finding more and more customers seeking virtualization of architectures in this manner recently. IMO, the benefit of being able to move an an entire architecture to another piece of hardware in one fell swoop can't be undervalued.

Colorado Software Summit, Keystone, CO

This week Raible, Scott Davis and I are sharing a condo in Keystone, Colorado for the Colorado Software Summit. This is getting to be a yearly tradition for us partially because the conference is here in Colorado but also because we get to meet a lot of people because each speaker must deliver two presentations three times throughout the week! (Yes, that's six talks throughout the week for each speaker.) The conference attendance seems to be a bit lower this year, but that's just a guess based on past years.

The drive here was kinda challenging as it was snowing like crazy so driving down the western side of the Eisenhower Tunnel was a it tough. Doing 20mph and fish-tailing in the snow next to a guard rail while driving down a mountain is kinda nerve wracking. But I made it here safely and we're in the same exact condo as last year. The snow makes me look forward to ski season with my kids.

I even ran into Gregor here this week. We even talked about a week ago about where we'd see each other next and neither of us realized the other was also speaking here this year. Kinda funny.

Apache ServiceMix Webcast

Today Guillaume and I delivered a webcast on Apache ServiceMix. If you're interested, a recorded version of the webcast is available from the Open.IONA website and it is viewable for free.