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T-SWAT Related Links
http://www.benchKeeper.com |
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Jeff Grant is the CTO and co-founder of benchKeeper Software, a Vancouver, BC based software development and marketing company specializing in ELN (Electronic Laboratory Notebook) software.
benchKeeper has implemented a very robust, secure, and distributed infrastructure within which any number of application modules can be deployed, for an individual, a lab with multiple scientists, or multiple laboratories in an institution.
While beta testing is currently under way, the first Production release of benchKeeper is scheduled for the end of September, 2003.
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http://www.intellinger.com |
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Intellinger Software was a Vancouver based company that developed and (tried to) market a performance monitoring tool called UPM (Unified Performance Monitoring, which, for the record, was a stupid name!). Jeff Grant was the CTO and one-third co-founder of Intellinger, and as the primary architect of the software was responsible for all things technical with respect to the product and the company.
UPM started as a tool (called Brazil) that Jeff created to help uncover performance bottlenecks, and get "under the hood" of large, complex, distributed systems. It has been used very successfully on a number of service engagements, providing valuable insight in many puzzling situations.
Intellinger took Brazil to the next level, and made it a fully distributed, user-friendly monitoring and alarming tool.
While the business side of Intellinger failed miserably, the technology is still alive and well and in use by T-SWAT, providing distributed remote monitoring. It has also reverted back to its original name of Brazil, and is very happy to have put all thing "Intellinger" behind it.
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Technology
T-SWAT utilizes a variety of different hardware and software technologies. Our "normal" Enterprise Architecture Design employs some form of Unix/Linux on Intel or Sun Sparc hardware.
However, you won't find us using Microsoft technologies in any of our architectures or designs, except in the occasional, small supporting role. This is a conscious decision on our part, based on our past experiences with the stability and performance of their software.
This section of links highlights a number of hardware and software technologies that we use in our projects.
http://www.oracle.com
http://www.oracle.ca |
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When it comes to databases in an Enterprise environment, Oracle's is the best. While not necessarily the cheapest solution, it is by far the most robust and reliable. When our Enterprise level projects require a database, this is what we recommend.
And it doesn't stop there. Whether it's Oracle Forms and Reports, Single Sign-On, Portal, Cache, or Oracle Applications, Oracle provides an extensive, integrated suite of tools that help to get the job done.
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http://otn.oracle.com |
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Oracle's Technology Network is an excellent place to learn about Oracle technology.
You can download fully functional versions of most of their software, documentation, code samples, and even participate in community forums with other Oracle users from around the world.
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http://www.sun.com |
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While not really cost-effective for smaller projects, Sun Microsystems is an excellent provider of "Big Iron". When you need that 16, 32, or 64 processor machine to run your data centre, there is no substitute.
Their Blade servers also provide an excellent option for those customers looking for high availability, horizontally scalable processing power, and a lower total cost of ownership.
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http://www.java.com |
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Java is easily our development language of choice. It's cross-platform compatibility, coupled with it's extensive capabilities, make it an ideal client and server side solution.
Java allows our clients to spend their money on development, not software, so they get the most bang for their buck. The same code that starts off being deployed on a single CPU Linux machine, using an Open Source application server, can be run WITHOUT CHANGE on a large cluster of multiple CPU Sun or IBM machines, in an industrial strength application server from your choice of vendors.
At the end of the day, it's all about choice, and Java delivers.
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Open Source Links
T-SWAT believes in, and participates in the Open Source movement. As a matter of fact, our mascot was inspired by the Linux Open Source movement.
While some projects require robust commercial tools, such as Oracle's database or application server products, some do not. The use of Open Source tools and products, where appropriate, brings a number of benefits to the client, not the least of which is a reduced infrastructure cost. We have also created a very sophisticated distributed development and project management environment, most of which would not be possible without the use of Open Source software.
This section of links highlights a number of the Open Source tools and applications that we use on a daily basis.
http://ant.apache.org |
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Ant is a Java-based build tool that we could not live without.
We use it to standardize all of our installations and builds.
It doesn't matter whether it is an Oracle install, the generation or creation of stored PL/SQL procedures, loading data into a database, running shell scripts, compiling applications, packaging those applications, or running unit tests, it can do it all.
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http://maven.apache.org |
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Maven is a Java-based project management and comprehension tool.
Using Ant as its foundation, Maven provides a means for integrating many separate Ant builds, as well as generating a ton of useful project information.
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http://httpd.apache.org |
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Apache is the "de facto" web server on the Internet today. It is incredibly powerful and robust, so much so that Oracle has adopted it as the base for their Application Server products.
And it's free.
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http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat |
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Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies.
While it may not be the fastest or best implementation, it's free, and it works.
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http://www.cvshome.org |
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CVS, the Concurrent Versions System, is our versioning system of choice for the vast majority of projects that we do.
Available (securely) from wherever there is an Internet connection, and available on just about every platform, there's little need for anything else.
By combining CVS and Ant, we have developed systems that can turn a new machine into a Production server in minutes, exactly the same way, every time.
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http://scarab.tigris.org |
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SCARAB is the Issue Tracking system that we use to track all development and customer sign-off issues for our projects. While it can be a little intimidating to set up, it is a very robust application that is invaluable once it is up and running.
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http://sourceforge.net |
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Sourceforge claims that they are the world's largest Open Source software development website, and they are probably right.
If you have a software requirement, odds are that there is a project at Sourceforge that is attempting to address your issue.
Whether you are looking for a complete solution, or a small component to fit into your own application, this is a good place to start looking.
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http://www.php.net |
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PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development.
This site is written in PHP.
If you need something dynamic, quickly, PHP is the ideal tool.
Arguably, PHP is better suited for smaller, simpler development, while Java is ideal for larger, Enterprise level deployments.
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http://www.mysql.com |
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MySQL is an open-sourced database.
Now, not all databases are created equal, and MySQL is nowhere near as capable as Oracle, but not all situations require the breadth of capabilities that Oracle can provide.
If you need a relatively quick database, without all the fancy Oracle features (fault tolerance, distributed transactions, stored procedures, cost), MySQL is a great option.
Remember, it's all about using the right tool for the job.
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