Shahid’s Perspectives

eWeek did a decent review of open source (including Java) versus .NET “stacks” a few weeks ago. While the review wasn’t as thorough as I would have liked, the conclusions will let each side to walk away. And, it demonstrates one of the points I’ve been making for years: that open source stacks on a Windows platform are a winning combination. I’m a huge fan of Linux but we shouldn’t drop Windows everytime we think of open source — there’s just as much use and benefits of an open source stack on WinTel as any other platform.

I’ve noticed that most of my clients have finally been convinced that unit testing and regular automated acceptance testing is a “good thing.” However, I’ve noticed that load/stress testing, while moving up in importance, still has a long way to go. Even those doing load testing, though, forget to do proper network simulation to make sure that their tests will valid with “real world” network traffic.

So, the simple advice is to be sure to use network traffic generators and network load simulators when testing your software. A good option is something like Simena. It’s not expensive and works well.

In case you haven’t seen it already, the OMB’s new Federal Transition Framework (FTF) is an excellent approach to creating architecture governance documentation. I’ve been working with federal agencies on various enterprrise architecture (EA) initiatives for several years now and one of the problems we’ve always had has been communicating what the initiatives are, why they are important, how strategic or tactical they are, how they should be scheduled, etc.

I’ve also been working with commercial firms trying to do similar architecture governance and they’ve faced the same kinds of problems of documenting the strategy.

The OMB’s new FTF is a good source for reviewing how to take enterprise-wide initiatives, document them, share the knowledge, and establish a process by which progress can be tracked.

Definitely worth taking a look.