What ever happened to the Jiffy?

Back in the 70's when I first started to use computers we were told that computer time was measured in Jiffys (a 60th of a second back then). It was still a commonly used term when I started at university in the 80's (I even ran into it in physics). But since then it seems to have vanished from everyday use, at least in my field.

Science fiction to reality

Well over 30 years ago I read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? I loved the story and it's one I've returned to many times over the years. So when they announced a movie version of it I knew I had to go. I was a mere 16 when I went to see Bladerunner for the first time, on the back of such films as Star Wars, Close Encounters and Star Trek. I liked the film and have liked/owned every version since (yes, even the "original" with Harrison Ford/Deckard talking over in order to explain the plot). Of course they missed out bits from the book, but it was still a masterpiece.

One of the things I really liked in the movie is when Deckard uses a computer image scanner to look through photographs for signs of the Replicants. But this is no ordinary scanner: it uses data in the image to extrapolate further, uses reflections to look round corners and has incredibly good resolution. I found that idea fascinating and it was a high point for me when I played the Blade Runner game on my PC 10 years later. Over the years photographic resolutions and contrast capabilities have improved and we've all probably heard the debates of whether or not we can read newspapers from orbiting satellites. Not quite what Deckard was able to do, but interesting nonetheless.

However, today en route to Boston for a meeting, I found time to read my monthly dose of Scientific American. In this month's issue (May 2009) they have an interesting article on computer security and specifically how people can steal information from a computer without having direct access to it or the machine being networked at all. Of course they cover the areas known for a while, such as catching RF from screens, but it's the work on viewing screens through reflections off teapots, spoons and even the human eye that made me sit up and think! OK at the moment it requires a lot of time and money to do, but I'm sure it would be worth it for certain secrets. Plus it'll only be a matter of time before the equipment becomes smaller and less expensive.

What can you do about this information leakage? Well as the article says, "privacy filters" can increase the chances of being read in this way and flat-panel displays still emit some information. So curtains or blinds are the best defence at the moment. But I'm not going to worry too much. It was a nice article that brought back memories of a great movie and book.

One thing that goes missing from backups

My mobile phone decided to die yesterday. Bad enough in and of itself, but it's gone in such a way that I can't get access to those little things I take for granted, such as address book! Yes, I have a version on the SIM, but it's way out of date. I only copy from the phone to the SIM when I move phones and that relies on them both being available! I back up my machines regularly. I do the same for my PDA. But it never occurs to me to look at the phone too. I think that'll change now.

DoD and SOA

I was at the DoD sponsored SOA Symposium a couple of weeks back. I was speaking on Open Source and SOA, which is a little different to the abstract shown (more on that in a minute). Overall I was very pleased and impressed with the conference: it was by invitation only and limited to about 400 attendees (including the presenters). Every session was packed and there was a good mix of vendors and use-cases. I can hear what vendors think any time of the day, so it was the user-driven sessions and interactions that I was particularly interested in.

If this event was anything to go by then the DoD (and the US Government in general) really seems to have embraced SOA and open source. That's really good to see on a number of levels (I'm trying to remain objective here!) What blew me away though was the sheer scale of the projects that they run: lots of people involved and lots of money being spent. It should go without saying that reliability, fault tolerance and security (the Common Criteria is king here) are critical to everything that goes on, which can make it hard for the majority of vendors to get accepted.

Overall it was probably one of the most eye-opening events I've been to in recent years. The sessions were uniformly good, but it was the interactions between the presentations that really made this event shine. It's good to see (open source) SOA being used successfully in large-scale, mission critical applications.

Now back to my presentation. Because this was a DoD sponsored event you have to try to make your sessions vendor-neutral. Well I obviously missed that memo so had a rush on at the last minute to update the slides and remove all of the SOA Platform references. The presentation I ended up with was much better as a result: given my academic background I don't like white papers or sales-driven presentations anyway.

On the road again ...

I'm just about to get into a taxi to head off to the SOA Symposium in Washington on Government and Industry Best Practices in SOA. I'm presenting on Thursday morning on SOA and Open Source so if you're around come over. Since this is a DoD sponsored event I hear that the security will be pretty high, so it's going to be interesting for a number of reasons!

New job

I mentioned that Sacha was leaving. Well I can now mention who is taking over.

Analyze your blog

According to this blog analyzer I'm a doer.

"The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time."

Sacha is leaving

If you don't know by now, Sacha is leaving JBoss. There's not a lot more I can add to what Bob has said, except that I'll miss out almost daily interactions. Sacha started as a colleague (when he, Bob and Marc persuaded me to move from Arjuna) but grew to be a good friend and I wish him and his family all the best in the future. Today begins a new chapter in his life as well as that of JBoss. Good luck Sacha!

First dive of the season

It may only have been Ellerton again, but we managed to get the first dive of the season in today. It was a bit like swimming in tea (less than 2 metres visibility) and cold (8 degrees Centigrade), but it was worth it. Everyone else there was in dry suits but we managed to struggle through in our wet suits. I just wish someone would invent a spray-on suit, because I'm sure I get more of a workout putting the darn thing on that actually swimming afterwards.

RPC is dead?

From what Steve says it certainly sounds like this year's QCon London was fun. This year Steve was talking on the history of RPC, which has some overlaps with what I was saying at QCon London last year. But Steve goes in to a lot more detail and I recommend people checking it out.

One slight caveat though: as I've said many times in the past (so many that I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the entries in my blog) RPC isn't dead and isn't something you should ignore. (I don't think Steve thinks that either.) Look around you and you'll see examples of old and new systems based on it. Are they all wrong to do so? No, of course not. Are some of them wrong to do so? Most probably yes. I know of several small and large-scale systems that are being developed in academia (no vendor pressure there) and industry (maybe some pressure) that are being based on RPC. In all cases those guys did their homework and understand the trade-offs that they're making in using RPC.

BTW I'm not a RPC fanboy by any means. Yes, I've used them and helped develop them, but I've also used and developed other approaches too.

What I'm trying to say is that RPC has its place. But a bit like ACID transactions, it can be (and has been) easily misused. There are better approaches these days for many of the things we'd once have considered the domain of RPC. But that doesn't mean RPC can't and shouldn't be used. As with everything, such as which language to use, which database, which communication protocol etc., you need to be aware of the pros and cons. This is an education problem more than a technical problem.

I also agree with Steve around Erlang (in fact it was Steve who put me on to it a while back). A very nice language. Now if only I could find the time to get back to it.

Congratulations Barbara!

Barbara Liskov won the Turing Award! This is really good news. I met Barbara a few times, starting during my PhD days. At that point she was leading the Argus project in transactions and replication, which was relevant to my own research. Thoroughly deserved. Well done Barbara.

DOA 2009

I'm co-chairing DOA again. Check out the CfP for 2009.

HPTS 2009

HPTS is probably my favourite workshop/conference. I've been lucky enough to be able to attend every one since the 1990's and hopefully this year will be no different. The CfP is now up, so take a look.

The ultimate Christmas dinner

OK it's a little late but then I didn't realise this video was online! I watched it for the first time over Christmas 2007 and then again last year. Heston Blumenthal has quickly become a favourite to watch and someday I hope to be able to get to his restaurant. Until then I'll sit and watch in awe!

Zakim paper

I've been using Zakim for a few years through various W3C standards committees. Nice paper.

Arjuna and the OTS

A couple of comments on my last reminiscence post got me thinking again. One of the things we use to go on about a lot in the early days of the company was the influence we'd had on standards and particularly the Object Transaction Service from the OMG. If you ever compare the two you'll see that by the time the OTS started Graeme, who co-created the Arjuna project (upon which he also got his PhD), was working for Transarc and involved in the standards definition. I remember visiting him in Pittsburgh a few times during that period and hearing a few horror stories about this brain-dead approach being pushed by vendor X and that dumb idea from vendor Y. But I'm sure it was all fun; it was definitely influential on the industry and me personally. When I came to start pushing the OTS in the OMG I did understand what Graeme had been on about with standards processes!

OMG where did the time go?

While writing the previous entry concerning building transactional applications I came across that HP paper by Nigel Edwards. That sent shivers down my spine because I can recall Nigel sharing the office with Stuart and I for months while he got to grips with Arjuna. We were both still doing our PhDs and also in the throws of making the first code release of Arjuna to the world. Here's the announcement for Release 2 (it would appear that our first release predates the web!):

Arjuna (Distr Prog System)

What: Release 2 of Arjuna Distributed Programming System
From: arjuna@newcastle.ac.uk (Arjuna Project)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 12:37:34 GMT

        We are pleased to announce the  availability  of a new  version 
of Arjuna:  a programming system for  reliable  distributed  computing, 
and the Arjuna mailing list.

        The software  and the manual  for  the  Arjuna  system  can  be 
obtained by anonymous ftp: arjuna.ncl.ac.uk (128.240.150.1)

Arjuna System

        This beta release of  ArjunaPR2.0  fixes all known bugs present 
in ArjunaPR1.2B that have  been  reported to us or  that we have found, 
and contains only minimal information about how to use the new features 
provided.   This  release  should  be  compilable  with  the  following 
compilers:

        AT&T Cfront Release 2.1, on SunOS 4.1.x,
            (using Sun supplied lex and yacc).
        AT&T Cfront Release 3.0.1, on SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.1,
            (using Sun supplied lex and yacc).
        GCC versions 2.1, 2.2.2, on SunOS 4.1.x,
            (using flex(v2.3.x) and bison).
        Patched GCC version 2.3.3 on SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.1,
            (using flex(v2.3.x) and bison).
        Sun C++ 2.1, on SunOs 4.1.x,
            (using Sun's lex++ and yacc++).
        HP  C++ (B2402 A.02.34), HP-UX 8.07,
            (using HP supplied lex and yacc or lex++ and yacc++).

The major new features are:

        - Faster object store.
        - Support for replicated objects.
        - Memory resident object store.
        - Support for ANSAware (not available via ftp)

        Arjuna supports nested atomic actions (atomic transactions) for 
controlling operations on objects (instances of C++ classes), which can 
potentially be persistent. Arjuna has been implemented in C++ to run on 
stock  platforms  (Unix  on  SUNs,  HPs  etc).  The  software available 
includes  a C++  stub generator  which hides  much  of the  details  of 
client-server  based  programming,  plus  a system  programmer's manual 
containing  details of  how  to  install  Arjuna and  use it  to  build 
fault-tolerant  distributed  applications.  The software and the manual 
can be obtained by anonymous ftp: arjuna.ncl.ac.uk (128.240.150.1)

        Several  enhancements   and   ports  on   various   distributed 
computing platforms are in progress.  We would be pleased  to hear from 
researchers and teachers  interested in using Arjuna.  The programmer's 
manual  contains the  e-mail  addresses for sending  your  comments and 
problem reports.

ANSAware version of Arjuna

The ANSAware version of Arjuna is available from:

Architecture Projects Management Limited
Poseidon House
Castle Park                                  Phone    +44 223 323010
Cambridge                                    Fax      +44 223 359779
CB3 0RD                                      Internet apm@ansa.co.uk
United Kingdom                               UUCP     ...uknet!ansa!apm

Arjuna Mailing List

To enable us to  help people using Arjuna,  an electronic mail list has 
been setup. You can join  the Arjuna mailing list  by sending an e-mail 
message to "mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk" containing:

join arjuna 

For example : join arjuna John Smith

Mail  messages  can  then   be  sent  to  "arjuna@mailbase.ac.uk",  for 
distribution.


Arjuna Project Team
The Department of Computing Science,
The University,
Newcastle upon Tyne.
NE1 7RU, UK.

The work we did with Nigel still seems so fresh in my mind and yet it is so long ago.

Then I also remembered the work on Stabilis that some of our Brazilian PhD students did a few years later. We'd always talked about how the programming model we had in Arjuna was good for building complex applications (and Nigel's work agreed with that), but it took us all by surprise when they presented Stabilis: here was the largest and most complex system (a full relational database) built entirely on Arjuna! This was an impressive demonstration of what was possible with what we'd spent the last 6 years working on.

Definitely a time to reminisce!

Transactions and AIT/TOJ

Jonathan pointed me to a recent discussion on TSS concerning writing transactional resources for non-transactional objects. It expanded into the more general topic of how to write XAResources, which it topical at the moment within Red Hat. Anyway it got me thinking that many of these requests aren't necessarily for "How do I write an XAResource?" but more for "How do I make my data transactional?" These are two different questions: the former infers the latter, but the latter doesn't infer the former. Yes believe it or not but transactions existed before XA came on the scene.

So it got me thinking and I realised that what many of them they really want is something akin to what we did in the original Arjuna system. It didn't have a name back then, since it was the whole reason for doing the Arjuna research, but eventually it became known as Arjuna Integrated Transactions (AIT), or Transactional Objects for Java (TOJ). The use of "it" has not been pushed much (at all) over the past few years, which is a shame because I still think it's a great model. So it may be time to dust it off and bring it back into the light.

Sock and Anti-Sock Pairs

Back when I was hard at work doing my Physics undergraduate degree (a quarter of a century ago!) I remember a few of us finding creative ways to spend the time during the 4 hour practical sessions we had twice a week. Well there are only so many times you can do Millikan's experiment or kill a cat in an enclosed box with a stray beta particle. (OK that last one is something we planned but never quite did for obvious reasons and it still scores high on the "what if?" discussions at reunions.) So what we often did was end up spending hours reading New Scientist.

The one article that has stuck in my mind for that length of time was a brief description of why you end up with odd socks in the wash and usually a piece of fluff. From what I can recall, it talked about spontaneous creation of anti-socks and sock/anti-sock annihilation. To us physics students it appealed on at least two levels: the obvious physics analogies concerning matter and anti-matter, but also the fact that for most of us this was the first time we'd been away from home and having to worry about doing our own washing, much of which was full of fluff and stray socks that we were sure weren't our own! Many times over the years I wish I'd kept that article. I had hoped that the wonder of the digital age would help, but this is the closest I've found.

DOA Program Committee and Topics

I'm chairing DOA 2009 and my co-chairs (Jean-Jacques Dubray and Fabio Panzieri) and I have been finalizing the program committee. Fortunately most of last year's PC have agreed to stay on so we've only had to add a couple of new people. Next step is to figure out the Call for Papers. If you've any thoughts on things you'd like to see at DOA 2009 that maybe weren't covered in the DOA 2008 CfP, let me know. After that we'll have to determine the invited speakers and keynotes. Fun fun fun!