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Posted
on May 30, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
It’s not just web 2.0 developers making the push away from IE6 anymore. Microsoft is publishing the stats, and even they want people off of Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).
Join the cause by pasting your own “STOP using this out-of-date browser” banner (provided by Microsoft):
<!--[if lt IE 7]> <div style=' clear: both; height: 59px; padding:0 0 0 15px; position: relative;'> <a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie/home?ocid=ie6_countdown_bannercode"><img src="http://www.theie6countdown.com/images/banners/warning_bar_0000_us.jpg" border="0" height="42" width="820" alt="You are using an outdated browser. For a faster, safer browsing experience, upgrade for free today." /></a></div> <![endif]-->
IE6 usage is trending down, at 11.4% today compared to 18.7% one year ago:
China, South Korea, and India are the top 3 countries using IE6:
Posted
on Apr 8, 2011 in Industry Trends, Technical Tips | 0 comments
I had been using VMWare Server 2 for a few years now. It was free and provided extra features that were not present in VMWare Player. Unfortunately I found out that VMWare Server is no longer going to be supported as of June 2011. I needed to make a decision quickly so I could stand up a Linux CentOS VM to run a memory intensive software stack.
For me VMWare Server probably would not have worked anyway because of memory and processor restrictions. I decided to look to 3 different solutions to get me up and running quickly, VMWare Player, VMWare Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox).
VMWare Player
VMWare Player was included early on because it now allows you to create VMs instead of only running them. It also has increased memory and processors/cores available to a VM. I did however quickly eliminate Player because it lacks essential features including multiple snapshots, cloning and replay.
Snapshots are a must have as I am always installing different operating systems, software and making configuration changes. Some of the changes involve technology I have not worked with before so being able to rollback to a snapshot if something goes wrong has been an invaluable tool. This also allows me to experiment more knowing I can recover to a previous state.
VMWare ESXi
VMWare suggests moving to one of their other products, mainly ESXi or Workstation. ESXi is free and looks to be an exciting product. It basically is your base operating system. It requires a dedicated server with no base OS installed. It also limits the types of hardware it works with, so no you can’t break out your old PC and have it automagicly work with ESXi. I did not have a dedicated box so I chose to look at VMWare Workstation.
VMWare Workstation
VMWare Workstation had all of the functionality I was looking for including snapshots, cloning and replay. It also had good memory (32g), processor (8) and core (8 per processor) support. I downloaded and installed Version 7. I created a Linux CentOS VM. The install was overly easy with “Easy Install” and the OS booted up in no time. The user interface for workstation is intuitive and provides easy configuration. I installed VMWare tools and changed my display resolution. Next up, I started my software stack taking snapshots along the way. The branching snapshot functionality was easy and worked well. All in all Workstation was quick and easy.
VirtualBox
Next I looked at VirtualBox 4. VirtualBox was started under Sun as an open source product. It is obviously now an Oracle product and still open source. VirtualBox has come a long way and provides many features that are present in VMWare Workstation. Installation of CentOS was only a bit more of a task then VMWare Easy Install. VirtualBox’s UI was fairly simple and I liked the layout with the popout VM windows. The initial install did not have have a CD/DVD ROM drive installed so installing VirtualBox Guest Additions (like VMWare Tools) did not work. Not a big deal, just add a CD drive.
The VirtualBox VM OS window played funny tricks with my mouse as I tried to move it in and out of the window. I am also not quite clear on how you increase the size of the virtual hard drive after creation. Say you need more hard drive space on a certain drive or partition how do you do that in VirtualBox? I see you can add another virtual hard drive but no way to increase the existing drives size. I have increased the drive size for a VMWare Workstation Linux VM drive and then used a repartition tool to allocate the extra space.
My final decision was to go with VMWare Workstation. This was a result of Workstation’s features, support and maturity of the product. I also chose it because it has a broad base of use, it’s ease of sharing VMs. It has ACE, better snapshot functionality, replay, integration with Eclipse, encryption and 3D video. Workstation 7.1 does retail for $189 right now, although I did receive a discount on it. I have started to Google “coupon” for everything I buy now to see if there are any discounts out there on the web. I did this for Workstation and received 30% off. I did really like Virtual Box’s speed and ease of use. I will be spending more time with this free product soon.
I have gone back and forth with free and commercial software, they both have their place in my opinion. I have used Eclipse for years and love it. However, I believe that nothing is really ever free. You have to sacrifice some functionality, support and reliability for products that are free. Even with Eclipse, I ended up moving to the new-at-the-time MyEclipse commercial product because I liked some of the extra functionality and tooling it provided. This was a commercial product with a free product as its base! Everything has its place and obviously if you don’t have the cash then free is the way to go. It gives an entire population of our community access to tools. I don’t know where I would be with out these free products.
This is just a quick look at a few of the Virtual Machine technologies out there today. In the future I am interested in looking at Oracle VM and Linux Xen. What are your opinions of Virtual Machines?
Posted
on Feb 1, 2011 in Industry Trends, News and Updates | 0 comments
IBM has published a page on their commercial website that questions why a customer would pay more for less, taking direct aim at Oracle and specifically Oracle Middleware offerings surrounding SOA and WebLogic.
Like other competitive material published by software vendors, highlighted areas will tend to focus on one-sided statistics. Consumers today expect valid information that is easily accessible/verifiable, so — not surprisingly — this page has a references section at the bottom as well. The thing that does surprise me with these claims is the important information that is left out.
When we pick solutions for a customer, we are generally considering variables that are *far* more important than software costs. For example, the existing technology infrastructure and internal resource skills-sets generally weigh heavily into software decisions. Cost is usually the last component of the selection that is considered. I can appreciate the competition, and I believe it will be healthy for consumers in the end, but want people to take a step back when they see generic claims like “why pay more for less?” as a suggestive summary for some very specific statistics collected by any vendor, weather it be IBM, Oracle, or anyone else.
More subjectively, I found the page to be unique in its directness as well as the fact that it was published on the internet, giving me the sense that IBM is concerned about Oracle prominence and growth in Middleware market share.
Posted
on Jan 25, 2011 in News and Updates, Technical Tips | 1 comment
Unlike WebCenter, SOA/BPM, WebLogic Server, and other products in the recent Middleware 11g PS3 release from Oracle, Identity Management 11g PS3 (11.1.1.4) is not yet available as a full download on oracle.com yet. What you need to do until they get the uploads posted is download 11.1.1.2 from the Identity Management 11g download page and then download 11.1.1.4 from My Oracle Support (aka Metalink) by finding patch set 11060980. I know it took me a little to find this, so hopefully this helps someone until the release is available on the public-facing website.
Posted
on Jan 25, 2011 in Industry Trends, News and Updates, Technical Tips | 0 comments
Oracle has now officially released WebCenter 11g PS3 (11.1.1.4). You can download it online as of today (Jan 25, 2011). This marks a major leap in WebCenter’s capabilities and maturity as an Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration Portal. Look for more information on the M&S blog to come.
Posted
on Jan 17, 2011 in News and Updates, Technical Tips | 0 comments
Oracle has made some major improvements in 11g PS3 for multiple products in the Middleware offering. If they don’t consider this a major release (aka 12g), I can’t want to see what will actually be part of 12g. Exciting stuff.
We have been working with pre-release versions of WebCenter 11g PS3 for a while, so a bit disappointed that didn’t make it into the release date, but we’re hoping that will be soon to follow.
New versions of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.x) include…
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Posted
on Jan 17, 2011 in News and Updates, Technical Tips | 0 comments
Oracle has released JDeveloper 11g Patch Set 3 (11.1.1.4.0) for all platforms as part of the wider 11g PS3 Middleware update. They have also published a page on new features for JDeveloper as well as a nice new look and feel to their download pages.
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Posted
on Jan 17, 2011 in News and Updates, Technical Tips | 0 comments
Along with other Middleware technologies, the latest SOA 11g version (11.1.1.4) — something we have simply been calling PatchSet 3 or PS3 — has been released and is now available for download from the Oracle website.
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