SCA Update

This week the new SCA website went live and in addition to an update on the work we’ve completed since we kicked it off in January, we announced new partners, including Cape Clear, Interface21, Primeton Technologies, Progress Software (formerly Sonic Software), Red Hat, Rogue Wave Software, Software AG, Sun Microsystems and Tibco Software.
Greg Pavlik posted a good summary of the announcment and its importance. Guys like Greg are one of the big reasons it’s so interesting to participate in these kinds of activities – I always learn so much and meet great people.
Something I found very interesting during the press and analyst calls we held was Mark Hapner‘s positioning of JBI and SCA as complementary — that you could use the SCA assembly metadata to compose services for deployment in a JBI container. He also hinted at a possible update to the JBI specification around this.
He’s right to focus on the assembly metadata in SCA – this is the most significant aspect of it, and it is definitely something you could use in conjunction with JBI. This would be a great resolution to the “JBI vs SCA” discussion, and it is really great to have Sun on board.
But I wonder how many people will really be interested in this since we have already defined SCA support for JAX-WS, EJB3, and Spring…?

Book Signing in Beijing

By sheer chance my visit to China last week coincided with the release of Chinese edition of our SOA book.
The publisher was kind enough to invite me to a book signing ceremony, which involved a 30-minute lecture, an hour or so interview, and a Q&A session with the audience before any actual signing occurred.
I also had a chance to meet the translator, Colin Hsu, with whom I’d exchanged more than 100 emails (he kept track). Colin gave me a Beijing Olympics baseball hat and T-shirt, so I decided to wear the hat throughout the ceremony.

Me and Colin after the signing
It is an honor that ours is the first SOA book to be translated into Chinese, and it was amazing to see so many people at the signing. They asked a lot of good questions, too, which shows that SOA seems to be starting to take off in China. Should be very interesting to see what happens…

New Book Review

Gunnar Peterson posted a review of the SOA book I wrote with Greg Lomow, and also put it on the book’s Amazon page. Thanks, Gunnar!
I hear from many people privately about the book, and that’s always great, of course, but I really appreciate it when someone takes the trouble to post a public comment or review.
I’ve started posting some entries on my Amazon blog. These entries allow for comments, as does this blog – so feel free to jump in!
Gunnar is correct in pointing out that while Greg and I identified gaps in most Web services technologies in relationship to overal SOA infrastructure requirements, we did not really manage to get that far with the security specs. The chapter on security specifications was definitely one of the hardest ones to write, and I think we just kind of ran out of time on the gap analysis part.
Information about the gaps in the security specs would be a great comment to post, or a link to another page that contains this information – maybe Gunnar will post something about this in the future…
ps the Chinese language version of our book is coming out at the end of this month, and I will be in Beijing next Sunday for a book signing at the Beijing Zhongguancun book Plaza from 3-5 pm July 23. Please stop by if you are around – i will also be doing a presentation on SOA and hosting a Q&A before the signing.

Chicago Piano

A couple of weeks ago I was in Chicago for the Eclipse Board meeting. Afterward i went with one of my friends to see Barrelhouse Chuck “and friends” at Rosa’s Lounge. It was great. Rosa herself was behind the bar, and Barrelhouse’s friends included Pete Crawford, Katherine Davis, and Eiko, who took over on piano while Chuck sang a couple of songs.

Barrellhouse Chuck with Pete Crawford at Rosa’s Lounge June 28
Barrellhouse is a student of Chicago piano. He spent 9 years studying with Sunnyland Slim before he passed away, and he can play just like him. He can actually sing a little better than Sunnyland, although maybe that’s not saying much. Chuck is playing Wednesday’s through July at Rosa’s. If you’re out that way you should definitely check it out.
Here’s a picture of Chuck with my friend Tom. Tom says that the caption is wrong, though, and it was actually Christmas 1991 at Chuck’s place. Tom studied with Chuck a while back and used to fill in for Chuck sometimes when Chuck’s band took breaks. Today Tom spends more time playing the ukelele, but his real job (when he decides he wants one) is as a graphic artist. He used to paint pinball machine and other arcade game panels. Tom designed the logo for Barrelhouse, which appears on his website and lapel button.

Barrelhouse Chuck’s Logo
Rosa’s has a great atmosphere. My wife and I moved to Chicago right out of college and our first apartment was over the North Branch Saloon, which turned out to be one of about 6 blues bars within walking distance where you could see world-class blues artists almost any night of the week for cheap.
Single File, which was about four blocks away, was where we saw Sunnyland for the first time. Big Time Sarah was with him and I bought an LP from her on Sunnyland’s Airways label (since reissued) that the two of them were on. That started me on buying the music of the musicians I went to see, and keeping up the tradition I bought two CDs from Barrelhouse that night.
Chuck came over and talked with us during the break between sets. He knew Tom, of course, but he also went around and talked with everyone else.
One thing that was different though was the appearance of a tourist with a camera. You would never have seen that 25 years ago. I had decided not to get my camera out because I didn’t want to break the mood, but after the Dutch guy went right up to the stage with his Nikon with the big flash, I figured what the heck and took a few shots from my seat at the bar.

Eiko Gallwas and Katherine Davis

The Dutch Tourist with the Camera
The day before I’d gone over to the Jazz Record Mart and bought a bunch of CDs, including, by sheer coincidence, Sunnyland’s “Patriarch of the Blues” that I found in the used bin. The guy at the counter told me all the old North Side clubs had either closed down or become tourist joints where they “played the same 12 songs over and over…”
At the end of the last set Chuck asked if anyone had any requests. I mentioned “Johnson Machine Gun,” one of Sunnyland’s better known tunes, and before I could even say “if you know it” Chuck had launched into a thunderous version. The Blues is alive and well in Chicago, you just have to go a little farther West than you used to.