Agile Architect

Does it exist at all?

When we are talking about agile we can say: agile methodology, agile team, agile programmer. But who is the architect?
Architect used to be the mediator between the business and the IT. He has been used to feel safe that programmers did not fool poor users. Another part of his job was to preserve code quality and system integrity against stupid programmers.

Isn't it enough to think of programmers as lazy, dumb, bad ass guys?

With agile methodologies an era has ended: the era of quantity. Now we esteem quality. What matters more: the quality is measured by the customer, not by an abstract QA team. Agile team members (not just the programmers only) are devoted to deploy value. From this point of view who needs yet another guy to point out the relevance of quality?

We are not yet there!

The problem is that most of companies do want to change (speed up, make cheaper, stabilize) their development methodology to gain business advantage (or just catch up with the others) but their agile is just something that can be used to push their requirements (without much resistance from programmers). The problem is that most programmers do want to move from making piece of crap to make pieces of craft but their agile is just something where one can have enough time to make something real cool.
Both intents are understandable and acceptable. But agile is more! Agile is about the customer. Agile is an open, honest relationship between the participants of the project. And most people do not know that. And that is where the agile architect comes in!

Design Agile

Agile architect is the mapping tool and navigation assistant to teams in moving from traditional projects to agile projects. The destination must be estimated according to the life situation of the team, company and customer. The road must be planned to make thing more and more agile. The progress must be reflected during the ride. Off-tracking must be watched and corrected (even by recalculation of the path). That is what architects are for.

Installing WebSphere 6.1 on Ubuntu

Recently I have upgraded my Ubuntu to Precise (12.04). I always prefer a clean install which implies to reinstall some proprietary application like WebSphere.
It is always a pleasure to do that.

From time to time I wonder: why is it so hard to provide a .deb package...

Installation steps:

1. replace /bin/sh

/bin/sh points to dash which does not fulfill the expectations of the installer.

cd /bin
sudo ln -sf /bin/bash sh

2. install sun jdk 6

Other weak point is the OpenJDK.
In order to install the other jdk one must register (uncomment) the partner repository.
Recently Canonical does not support SunOracle JDK for legal and stability reasons.

3. install ia32-libs

In the XXI. century it does seem a bit old fashioned to install a 32 bit application, but WAS6.1 installer is 32 bit, so we have to get the support for that
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

4. install WebSphere

run java -jar setup.jar

4.5 delete profiles created before installing feature pack

./manageprofiles.sh -delete -profileName profile_name

4. install feature pack

Which in turn installs some fixpacks first.
run java -jar setup.jar

5. install fixpacks

Fixpacks are handled through IBM Update Installer. After downloading, run the same old
java -jar setup.jar
The first thing to install must be the PK53084 fix, then come the two fix packs of 39.

6. create the profile

run pmt.sh from the ProfileManagement dir of the new WAS61 installation

7. start server

And now we come to a magical moment of firing up our brand new server

8. after party

In order to work correctly some settings must be applied:

• setup filter compatibility

TADAA!!!
We are done!
Have a beer!
Or maximum two!

Feeling Groovy II - https

In my former post I wrote about making direct get and post request to a webserver. Now I had to add some support for https protocol. Of course changing the URL was not enough as the SSL communication needs to know if the server certificate can be trusted or not. Well it was fun to google around for the details, but I do not really want to do it again.
So here are the steps:

1. Get the certificate!
2. Create a keystore!

keytool -import -file cert.cer -alias server -keystore server.jks

3. Modifiy the connection to use keystore and ignore some errors!

def decorateConnection(url, connection) {
    if (url.startsWith('https:')) {
        KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.defaultType)
        keyStore.load(getClass().getResourceAsStream('server.jks'), 'xxx'.toCharArray())
        TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.defaultAlgorithm)
        tmf.init(keyStore)
        SSLContext ctx = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS")
        ctx.init(null, tmf.trustManagers, null)
        connection.SSLSocketFactory = ctx.socketFactory
        connection.hostnameVerifier = new HostnameVerifier() {
            public boolean verify(String hostname, SSLSession session) {
                return true
            }
        }
    }
}

When you create the keystore a password must be specified, that is that 'xxx' in the row 4.
Special thanks to people on stackoverflow.com and coderanch.com!