XML 2007

I'm on the road again in a couple of weeks - this time at the XML 2007 conference in Boston on December 3rd through 5th at the Marriott Copley Place:

I'll be showing Rational Application Developer's XML tools - for those who are not aware of this, we have some powerful XML tools in our Architecture Management tools, including:

• DTD editor
• XML editor
• XML Schema editor
• XSL editor
• XPath Expression wizard
• XML to XML Mapping editor
• XSL debugging and transformation
• Generating Java beans from an XML schema
• Generating HTML documentation from an XML schema file
• Generating XML schema file from XML, DTD, and relational tables

and, in Rational Software Architect:

• UML to XSD transformations

While I'm on the subject of RAD, the Rational Application Developer Programming Guide has been updated for version 7. It's available as a free PDF download from here.

In it, there's a whole chapter (Chapter 12) on the XML development environment. Check it out, and don't forget to visit me at the XML 2007 conference exhibition.

More IBM Tunes.....

You know, we really should produce an album.


Turns out there's an entire IBM songbook. OK, so it's a little dated (1931), but it has many songs that resonate today, especially the one to our noble engineers:

TO OUR I. B. M. ENGINEERS
Tune: "Mademoiselle from Armentieres"

We're proud of all our Engineers in I. B. M.
No problem is insolvable to these great men.
Their mastery of the technical -- mechanical -- electrical --
Behold in their accomplishments.

Each year they perfect new machines for I. B. M.
Superior products all the time for business men.
We thank and praise our Engineers,
The whole wide world unites in cheers,
To the Engineers of I. B. M.

Odd. I couldn't find any songs for marketers. Must have been an oversight.

From the foreword:

For thirty-one years, the gatherings and conventions of our IBM workers have expressed in happy songs the fine spirit of loyal cooperation and good fellowship which has promoted the signal success of our great IBM Corporation in its truly International Service for the betterment of business and benefit to mankind.

Wow! Looks like we were singing company songs long before the Japanese! I can't imagine sitting around today before a meeting and bursting into song - although apparently we'll all be singing the Rational Anthem now. Coming soon - IBM: The Musical!

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! (there's got to be an IBM song for that somewhere.......)

IBM Rational even has an Anthem!

2006 Rational Developer Conference in Bangalore debuted the Rational National Anthem
http://www-8.ibm.com/software/in/rational/events/rsdc2006/downloads/rational_song_mastered.mp3


As the Anthem points out, "IBM's Rational software development environment ain't the tool for any old fool. It's the weapon of choice for the ultra-cool "

Good News and Bad News

The Bad News first. Barry Bonds is in the news again. This time he has been indicted for lying under oath. Bonds on steroids has not been good for him nor baseball.

The only Good News I can draw up from this, is an analogy I hear at software developer conferences. Customers constantly use an analogy of RAD is like Eclipse on steroids, and RSA is like RAD on steroids. Click on the product links above and check out what you may have been missing.

Additional Good News - it is legal to click on the product links above. :-)

Submit your papers for RSDC now!

Call for papers for RSDC 2008 in Orlando is now open!

We're looking for good, technical presentations on architecture and construction. Topics such as SOA, modeling or case studies using RAD or RSA are welcome. So be an R-Hero and join us in sunny Florida next summer!

Grady will answer you rquestions...

Following up from an earlier post, there's now a page up that you can go to where you'll be able to sign up for Grady's Q&A session. Details are below:

Nov 29 at 1:00pm eastern
Grady Booch on Architecture: Join Grady in an interactive discussion around architecture and reuse. Get your questions answered.
Registration opening soon!

Here's the link: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/rational/talks/

Happy Friday! - Food for thought

Its Friday!

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great weekend, I know I am. Anyone feel the weekends are too short?

Dr. Dobbs Journal released an interesting article on Defining Project Success.

http://www.drdobbsjournal.com/architect/202800777;jsessionid=SKDXCBP3KCIKGQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?_requestid=45342

I thought it brought up some interesting points. How do you define a successful project? Delivering ontime or overtime but with high quality? Delivering under budget or happy employees?

For me, this article gave me somethings to think about, why do we have to choose? Why is a project defined successful if it meets stakeholder needs but comes overbudget and late, should we not strive to have those same goals but also make the stakeholders happy because they paid for the project as much as they thought instead of double? I don't think those same rules would apply to getting a car or other physical projects built. If I order a porche, I order it with a defined cost written into the contract. Ofcourse, I expect high quality and what I ordered - but would I be okay if at the end I got what I ordered, with the high quailty of the Porche, but was asked to pay more than we agreed on? I probably would not, but than again... I guess I won't be buying a Porche soon anyway!!!

Anyway that is just food for thought from me. Would projects be more successful, with all criteria, if they used tools along with their processes? We can see, Agile projects seem to be more successful with the criteria the author outlines, but would they be even more successful with tools in place, that can help them govern their projects and attack problems early when they are identified? Also, its staggering how poorly - even with the modified criteria - the off shore projects are doing. Clearly, these types of projects really need tools and processes in place to help make them more successful. Perhaps Rational Software can help?

Modeling and Delivering SOA and Web Services

Want to learn to model and build services for SOA, or accelerate the way you do it today? See a series of articles that can help you get started, or become advanced, with modeling and delivering services and delivering a flexible Service Oriented Architecture that meets your customers' changing needs.

Modeling SOA: Part 1. Service identification http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/07/1002_amsden/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX15&S_CMP=LP

Modeling SOA: Part 2. Service Specification
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/07/1009_amsden/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX54&ca=dnw-839

Modeling SOA, Part 3: Service realization
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/07/1016_amsden/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX54&S_CMP=A1018&ca=dnw-840

Modeling SOA, Part 4: Service composition
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/07/1023_amsden/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX15&S_CMP=LP

Modeling SOA, Part 5: Service implementation
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/07/1030_amsden/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX54&S_CMP=NLRA&S_CMP=A1101&ca=dnw-842

More on Asset Management

For those interested in getting the most out of their software asset reuse and those interested in reuse through SOA or other frameworks, you can check out the part II article released by Grant Larsent in this month's Rational Edge issue: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/rationaledge/

This month article focuses on Establishing Governance and can be found at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/rationaledge/contents.html. Clearly, governance is crucial to a successful Asset Management Strategy to be able to measure and monitor the reuse implementation. Of course, for that to be done properly, it needs to be considered early in the implementation cycle - to set up the solution with governance in mind and in place.

For more on Rational Asset Manager, you can reference: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/ram/

Want more Grady???

Check out:

http://www.news.com/Debating-the-morality-behind-software-development/2008-1012_3-6213376.html