August 2007 - Posts

• Quoted by El Financiero on an article about moving to 64-bits

  Some time ago I was interviewed (via email) by El Financiero, a weekly business-oriented newspaper from Costa Rica, regarding 64–bit technologies. A small quote from the interview was published a couple of weeks ago, along with some information I gave them on the advantages of moving to 64–bits. The technical journalist from the newspaper did an article on how the Costa Rican Central Bank, BCCR, is moving their payments system (SINPE) from 32–bit to 64–bit servers, and the benefits they are getting from the move. These benefits include enhanced speed and database performance, given the large memory capacity of the new architecture. This is a fairly large system that handles over 3 million financial transactions per month. ArtinSoft had some involvement in moving this system from Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET some time ago, in the dawn of the .NET era. There is even a published case study on the system – you can find it here. Their plan currently is to slowly move all their systems to 64–bit over a period of 2 years. You can check out the article here:  BCCR ajustó tecnologías (you may need to be registered with the site). Posted Aug 30 2007, 09:45 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: News, 64-bit, Random

• The importance of the Ready analysis

  A large percentage of the work I do here at ArtinSoft is related to what we call  Ready programs. The Ready program is part of the Ready-Set-Go methodology – a migration project methodology developed here at ArtinSoft that has given us great results. The Ready assessment program, or Ready, is the first stage of this methodology. As you are probably aware, the more planning you put into a project, the higher the probability that the project will be succesful. Well, with the Ready, we do a an in-depth analysis of the project before we start, and come up with a detailed project plan that takes into account any risks and possible issues with the migration. The first step in a Ready is a thorough assessment of the size, complexity, migration goals, and testing procedures for your current application. This step involves a 5– to 10– day on-site analysis of an application. During that week(s), we perform interviews with the development, PM and testing teams, to get a feel for the project and gather enough information to proceed with the project. Once we come back to our office, we work alongside the development team to create an accurate estimate of the effort required to perform the migration.  This normally includes any customization of the migration tools necessary to minimize the manual effort in the project. The final product of the Ready program is a detailed written report that includes a fixed-cost proposal for completing the migration. This is usually delivered two or three weeks after the on-site visit. This report, on its own, has tremendous value for the organization. It summarizes the requirements for the migration, and the issues that need to be addressed even if the project is not performed by ArtinSoft. It can also help in justifying the need to modernize outdated applications. The Ready program is a low-cost, low-risk approach to getting detailed information on your migration project. For more information on the ready, and on the overall methodology, check out the Ready-Set-Go methodology page at ArtinSoft's website. Posted Aug 29 2007, 09:57 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: ArtinSoft, Tools

• I/O x86 Virtualization at last!

  Ever since we started working on the Virtual Server seminars, we’ve been hearing about I/O Virtualization, and how it will improve the virtualization landscape as the VT instructions did. Well, today Intel unveiled its vPro platform, with this new technology.  The technology is called Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O or VT-d. VT-d controls access from Virtual Machines to memory at the physical page level, preventing one VM from accessing other VM’s memory. This has the side effect of virtualizing interrupts and DMA tranfers, which in turn should increase the performance of virtual machines since the VMM would no longer need to trap and emulate the behavior from virtual machines. For more information, check out or this article at Intel’s website, which contains a detailed explanation of the platform. For a more digested approach, check out this coverage at Arstechnica. Posted Aug 28 2007, 05:54 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• MS Virtualization has a new home

  In case you missed it, Microsoft recently unveiled a new Virtualization Website. This website centralizes the information about all of Microsoft’s virtualization products. I especially like the page about the different Virtualization Solutions offered by the company. It also caught my attention that they now have Softgrid application virtualization fully integrated with the virtualization stack. Posted Aug 21 2007, 05:33 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Virtualization

• Java Books for business managers

  The other day I had a meeting with a client that is considering converting his Informix 4GL application to Java, using our tools. It was an interesting situation, since he was a in business development, and not really a programmer. He then asked me if I could recommend him some books on Java from a business perspective. I agreed – without knowing how difficult that task could be. I couldn’t find any recent books that would give an overview of the platform for non-technical personnel, especially decision-making managers. I found a couple of books from the start of the Java era, 1996/1997, that talked about what I was looking for, but they are out of print and it doesn’t look like they were ever updated. They are: Making Sense of Java: A Guide for Managers and the Rest of Us A Technical Manager's Guide to Java Computing Does anybody know a good Java book that meet the criteria that I’m looking for? Leave a comment with your recommendations! Posted Aug 14 2007, 03:17 PM by Jaguilar with no comments Filed under: Informix, Random