Book Review: Masterminds of Programming

Book Review: Masterminds of Programming Edited by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden: Publisher- O’Reilly: ISBN- 13: 978-0-596-51517-1

As the name of the book suggest, this book contains interviews with software legendary personalities who has put good part of their career in development of computer languages.

As expected book does not contain any technical details but gives insight of design philosophies of the different languages. It also exposes some of the legendary personalities as normal humans – full of faults.

I specially like interview with Don Chamberlin who talks in details of SQL design philosophy. Talk with Thomas Kurtz depicts determinism of him to maintain BASIC.

Do not expect too much from this book but it is good aeroplane read.


Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

One can get more information about book and related topics from:

1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Masterminds-Programming-Conversations-Creators-Languages/dp/0596515170
2. Publisher – O’Reilly http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596515171
3. Flipkart: http://www.flipkart.com/masterminds-programming-federico-biancuzzi-shane/8184047029-aw23fqz0oc
4. One More Review: http://www.flipkart.com/masterminds-programming-federico-biancuzzi-shane/8184047029-aw23fqz0oc

Pattern Service Discovery - Registration and Invoke

Pattern Service Discovery - Registration and Invoke v 1.0

Pattern Service Discovery - ESB and Registry

Pattern Service Discovery - ESB and Registry v 1.0 dated Oct 07 2009

Book Review: Successful Service Design for Telecommunications - A comprehensive guide to design and implementation

Book Review: Successful Service Design for Telecommunications - A comprehensive guide to design and implementation: Publisher- Wiley: ISBN- 13: 978-0-470-75393-4

During course of designing a Telecom/ISP product architecture and design product, I encountered Successful Service Design for Telecommunications – A comprehensive guide to design and implementation by Sauming Pang. Before starting the book my impression was that this book will talk about details of Telecom specific service design and implementation. But After reading the book I realized that this book is not confined to Telecom vertical. The principles outlined in this book are universally applicable across industry vertical.

Though book does not mention any of the frameworks but it seems that book is highly influenced by USBOK .

The book is divided into twelve chapters which very clearly depict considerations of design and implementation. The book not only covers technical considerations but also business which are generally overlooked by technical folks.


Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

Further reading: A complementary book is Telecom Management Crash Course : A Telecom Company Survival Guide (Crash Course) by P.J Louis http://www.amazon.com/Telecom-Management-Crash-Course-Survival/dp/0071386203

One can get more information about book and related topics from:

1. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Successful-Service-Design-Telecommunications-implementation/dp/0470753935
2. Publisher -- Wiley http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470753935.html
3. Purchase at Flipkart: http://www.flipkart.com/successful-service-design-telecommunications-sauming/0470753935-0xw3f9w0fq
4. Purchase at A1Books: http://www.a1books.co.in/searchdetail.do?a1Code=booksgoogle&itemCode=0470753935

Pattern Service Discovery - ESB

Pattern Service Discovery - ESB v 1.0 dated Oct 06 2009

EAI & SOA Development & Maintenance: Centralized or Distributed

Centralized Development & Maintenance

1. Knowledge is at one place, difficult to assemble but once accumulated easy to manage
2. EAI and SOA workforce needs exposure to respective systems under lens and specialized knowledge about EAI &/or SOA. In case of centralized development effort manpower can be channelized in effective way and team members develop cross application skills.
3. Better architectural control
4. Better design time security due to centralized policy enforcement.
5. It need more coordination on part of EAI/SOA team but reusability of services will offset that.


Distributed Development & Maintenance

1. Knowledge is distributed across islands of applications, so difficult to manage
2. Cross application skills are not developed but application specific specialists get developed with little exposure to EAI or/& SOA.
3. EAI Workforce may not be utilized if EAI/SOA work is not in sufficient quantity.
4. In distributed development environment, EAI/SOA may loose focus and deviate from Enterprise architecture which may:
a. Jeopardize BPM initiative at later stage;
b. Duplication of services/functionality
5. Increased cost of maintaining and establishing development environment
6. Governance issues may crop up, like ownership of services
7. Difficult to enforce security policies

Pattern Service Discovery - Registry

Pattern Service Discovery - Registry v 1.0 dated Sep 30 2009

Pattern: Service Discovery - Direct

Pattern Service Discovery-Direct v 1.0 Dated Sep 22 2009

IT and Business: A reality check

The conflict in business and IT is a well known fact but least talked subject. Folks at IT side – IT Service providers, product vendors and IT departments always have view that business folks do not understand technology and put unreasonable demands. Some what similar complaints Business folks have with IT folks. IT folks do not understand Business and only think in terms of technology. SOA tries to bridge this gap but again it assumes that both warring sides understand each other.

To depict the picture, I have developed three scenarios. These scenarios are based on famous Theory X, Theory Y by McGregor and Theory Z.

Theory B depicts the world seen by Business folks.



Theory I depicts the world seen by IT folks.



Both Theory B and I depicts the worlds in very biased fashion. The reality resides some where in between which is depicted using Theory R.