InfoQ Homepage Architecture Content on InfoQ
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Apache FOP 1.0 released
On Wednesday, the Apache Foundation announced the release of Apache FOP 1.0, a project that has been a decade in the making. Apache FOP, or Formatting Objects Processor, provides a means to turn XML documents into a variety of print-ready formats, such as PDF, PostScript, or even PNG
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Using the Cloud: Two Examples
Most of the discussion about cloud computing has focused on tools, providers, and security. While this focus is appropriate for an emerging technology, it becomes easier to recognize the value of cloud computing when you have actual application examples, or case studies. This month IBM announced two such applications: a development-and-test cloud, and an animation rendering cloud.
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.NET and Azure Samples Showcase .NET Technologies Used in a Layered Architecture
Serena Yeoh, a Microsoft consultant and a contributor to Microsoft pattern&practices Application Architecture Guide, has created a Layered Architecture Sample for .NET 4.0 which was later ported to Azure, showcasing various .NET technologies (WPF, WCF, WF, ASP.NET, ADO.NET EF) used in an architecture based on the Layered Architecture design pattern.
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Rearchitecting Applications for the Cloud
While there is an overall consensus on the business benefits of migrating to the cloud, the question on rearchitecting applications for the cloud is still heavily debated on the Internet.
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Does the Cloud Need Server Virtualization?
Simeon Simeonov wrote an essay on the latest strategy of VMWare in the wake of the SpringSource Acquisition 12 months ago. He contends that if Server Virtualization was a key enabler of Cloud Computing, it's days might be counted as VMware CTO Steve Herrod explains “We are committed to making Spring the best language for cloud applications, even if that cloud is not based on VMware vSphere.”
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Cius, Exadata, Itasca: more than a platform
The Cius tablet PC from Cisco and the Exadata machine from Oracle-Sun involve more than the simple introduction of a new enterprise technology - they also indicate a possible new (or accelerating) trend away from selling general purpose platforms and towards tightly integrated application systems.
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Polymath: a new IT job description
Is "polymath" a required job skill for IT professionals? The rise of cloud computing, "green" computing, ultra-large scale systems, and even SOA and SaaS suggest the answer is yes. A book by Vinnie Mirchandani has prompted a flurry of commentary on what it would mean to be an IT Polymath and why such a skill is desirable.
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The Top-Down vs Bottom-Up SOA Debate Revisited
A long standing debate in the SOA community about top down vs. bottom up approaches to SOA resurfaced recently, after open source ESB maker MuleSoft announced the release of a management console said to support their bottom-up approach to SOA management philosophy.
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Rackspace Has Open Sourced Its Cloud Platform
Rackspace has opened its cloud computing platform source code under Apache 2.0 license as part of OpenStack initiative. NASA is contributing with technology powering NASA Nebula Cloud Platform.
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BigPipe at Facebook: Optimizing Page Load Time
Changhao Jiang, Research Scientist at Facebook, describes a technique, called BigPipe, that contributed to making the Facebook site, "twice as fast." BigPipe is one of several innovations, a "secret weapon," used to achieve the reported performance gains. Another innovation mentioned is architectural in nature, the structuring of Web pages as "pagelets."
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Facebook on Hadoop, Hive, HBase, and A/B Testing
The Hadoop Summit of 2010 included presentations from a number of large scale users of Hadoop and related technologies. Notably, Facebook presented a keynote and details information about their use of Hive for analytics. Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's VP of Engineering delivered a keynote describing the scale of their data processing with Hadoop.
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Developer Perception on Mobile Platforms Survey Results
Vision Mobile has published the Mobile Developer Economics 2010 and Beyond report, containing the results of a survey across +400 developers working on the most important eight mobile platforms. The survey shows what platform the developers prefer, what is the installed base and number of apps per platform, time needed to learn and debug on a platform, and others.
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Amazon Elastic MapReduce Updates from Hadoop Summit 2010
The Hadoop Summit of 2010 included a keynote from Peter Sirota, General Manager of Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), which is a hosted Hadoop offering from Amazon that includes web-based management tools.
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App Inventor for Android
App Inventor is a beta release from Google labs allows drag and drop development of applications for Android phones. Instead of code, App Inventor allows you to visually design applications and use blocks to specify application logic.
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How RESTful Are Web Frameworks That Claim REST Support?
There are plenty of web services platforms/application frameworks available today that support RESTful services to varying degrees. In a recent post Stefan Tilkov puts out a list of criteria that can serve as a starting point in evaluating these frameworks and platforms.