Attention span

I am watching the soccer game right now, Barsa is leading 1-0. However, my laptop is on my laps (I already have 2 kids). I find that I just can't focus on anything on TV without doing some work in between.

I blame it on the TV series I watch on my laptop while working. I think I saw all of Stargate 10 or so seasons without wathcing a single episode - just hearing them.

Really lame.

Message enrichment

I was asked yesterday by a new customer about the following problem.

You have 2 systems that do basically the same thing. You build a new UI that needs to activate both systems. One system exposes WSDL A, the other - WSDL B. There is an ESB in the middle.

So, my gut feeling was - build a bridge in the ESB and make one service to the outside application.

But - turns out the bridge is quite a task. WSDL A and WSDL B were designed in a totally different manner - one is coarse grained and on is fine grained. So the bridge would need to store temporary information in a database. If that's not enough - some messages contain JPG files, and processing and merging them is neccessary.

So, what do we do? we thought of another option. Building the new UI, and letting the UI activate the 2 services - or even better, do some mashups from the existing 2 applications (each accessing the different application).

Since this was just an introduction meeting, nothing was yet decided. My gut feeling is the bridge, since this is the organization first real "Service", and I want to make sure the organization get the real taste for SOA.

But, there will be some more meetings on this matter - I will write updates on this post.

More on Windows7

I can promise that this would be the last post on Windows7, but that would be a lie...

Anyway, Eclipse3.4 (Ganymede) now works on my machine. What changed? I don't know. I did nothing, that's for sure. But Windows7 is starting an irritating habit of restarting during the night. Now since I am (still!!! damn IBM) downloading the 5.5GB of WID, this freezes my download, and I need to wake up to continue the download manually. Luckily, my 4month old - Naama, is waking at 5:30, so I don't lost much download time.

In addition, I updated my network drivers, and it seems my browsing experience is much improved, thank you. I saw allot of questions in the forums on this - slow browsing/downloading - so I guess that this is quite common. I hope I am behind this topic. Only 1 hour to finish download WID. I am not sure, but I might install it on Ubuntu. I downloaded the VM yesterday.

After that - downloading an Oracle DB VM. Oh - and I'm working too. But that - on my next post.

Chrome and Windows7

So, it seems that Murphy decided to visit me after my last post on the wonders of Chrome. It seems that on Windows7 I'm facing some weird bug - download speed is slowing to a crawl. So my 5.5 GB download of WID 6.2 (IBM - get me a net installer, like VSTS10) was supposed to take like 500 days or so. on IE8 - 9 hours. Odd...

But still, I'm keeping loyal to Chrome. At least until something better arrives.

Chrome

Well, I've installed my Windows7 machine, liked it, and so on. However, with Windows7, comes IE8. Now, I still used IE on my old machine (XP) since some sites demands IE (my bank site, government - pay taxes site and my favorite - Matrix internal portal). But I've moved to FireFox3 a long time ago, and never looked back.

However, on Windows7 - no more FireFox. Only Chrome. I've used it before, but now it is my default (and practically only) browser. IE8 is there - for the IE required sites, but I never even tested it. Just installed Chrome - and off we go.

The most useful feature about Chrome is it's layout. No Windows title - so more browsing space. Address-bar is merged with search-bar, few management icons - hell I even leave the links bar activated - my first time ever.

And you have a really cool ability to take a tab and drag it to a new window, and vice-verse.

And it is quick. Really.

However, Shockwave plugin works terrible on Chrome. Some sites (www.themarker.com for instance) use Shockwave for commercials, and my page gets stuck. Luckily (and unlike FireFox) Chrome isn't hang over Shockwave - only closes the misbehaving tab. So for now - Chrome is my browser of choice. 

One more word for Google - quickly you guys, release a plugin environment. Everyone is waiting...

Windows7

It's been 36 hours since I installed Windows7. Somethings I gathered:

1. Installation is a snap
   
2. Everyone thinks I'm crazy - especially those with Vista experience. Since I never used Vista - I have no idea what they're talking about. For now - I love my Windows7.
3.  There's a key combination providedd by Windows to support projectors. Finally. I have these Lenovo combinations. The hibernate button on my Lenovo laptop was the Projector button on my HP laptop, so for the first couple of months I've closed my machine whenever I wanted to present something. Not cool!!!
4. Most of the things are installed. At least the important stuff. 
5. I gave up and instead of using my own private directories for files - I've placed everything under my documents. No more "c:\My Music" but instead using a Music library.
6. I hate Windows Media Player. Don't know why. It downloads stuff for each MP3 I play. Why do I need it? But the media library is very nice. I'll need to learn how to use it though.
7. Took me a time to get accustomed to the small icons stuff on the TaskBar. Finally I gave up and displayed the labels as well.
8. Can't get used to the new Windows Explorer. So, I've downloaded Total Commander - which rocks, even on Windows7
9. The fact that I can use Alt-Tab to "Show Desktop" isvery good.
10. I need more hours in a day. And much more sleep.

Starting 1,2,3...

So, finally, started using Blogger. My older posts are at http://cafe.themarker.com/view.php?u=96770, which I dropped since I dislike TheMarker Cafe.