Assignment No 2 JB Google Visualization API

Boston consulting firm BostonConsulting.com has forecasted U.S. job growth by industry and by geographic region. The graphic shows actual job growth through second-quarter 2009 and BostonConsulting.com forecasted job growth for third-quarter 2009 through second-quarter 2010. It covers every state in USA, the District of Columbia and 384 metro areas, broken down by fourteen industry sectors. The map can be used by graduating student and people who wish to seek employment in the United States. As US has been hit by recession, it has become very important for people to target specific states and industries offering job opportunities. The map is visually appealing and can be very informative for people to know the percentage increase in the number of jobs that would be available in the different states in USA.






The map is displayed using Google Visualization Geomap API. A geomap is a map of a country, continent, or region map, with colors and values assigned to specific regions. Values are displayed as a color scale, and you can specify optional hovertext for regions. The data in the map is also provided in tabular form for better understanding using the Google table API. A table that can be sorted and paged. Table cells can be formatted using format strings, or by directly inserting HTML as cell values. Numeric values are right-aligned; boolean values are displayed as check marks. Users can select single rows either with the keyboard or the mouse. Users can sort rows by clicking on column headers. The header row remains fixed as the user scrolls. The table fires a number of events corresponding to user interaction.

References:
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-02-06-new-jobs-growth-graphic_N.htm

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 WS - Google Static Maps

A local real estate firm wants to reward its sales agents for the outstanding commercial estate sales effort for the latest 2009 quarterly sales. These agents are the backbone of the company; if they do poorly then the entire company will suffer. Each quarter, there is a different reward for these professionals. This time the CEO has decided that this coming Friday, October 30th, will be a day at Chateau Élan. The announcement will be posted on the company web pages since the agents do most of their work remotely.


Google Static Maps API is a good candidate solution for this situation. It easily generates maps which can be enhanced with colored markers while at the proper level of zoom to show all items of interests along with local road names. Street addresses and/or latitude & longitude will be part of the input. If required, maps can be made that are usable by mobile devices. Maps can be other than roadmaps; types include satellite and terrain maps. Marker W is for the Chateau Élan winery, I is for the inn, and G is for the golf course.

The primary providers of Internet maps are Google and Yahoo. To not use Google or Yahoo Maps would be inefficient and not the best use of resources. Maps provided by these Internet enterprises are easily created, modified and shared. Once again, our created object lives in the Clouds.

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 GV Google Maps

A person has come to Atlanta for the first time. He is trying to figure out the nearest UPS office. He tries to look up on the UPS website for the nearest store, however he runs into unresponsive maps and static addresses. This does not help him much as he is not familiar with the street names.

Below is a possible solution for the UPS website which they can implement for every city. I have implemented a solution for the city of Atlanta. All the UPS stores including drop boxes near downtown Atlanta have been plotted in the below map. The user can easily navigate around the map and zoom in to the required store to get the exact location.

I chose this web API for implementation because of the ease with which one can integrate the gadget. The visual interface that Google Maps provides is one characteristic that was required in this case. The simple yet detailed User Interface of Google Maps is essential so that this can be used by everyone. The user can easily navigate from one location to another. Thus enabling people who are new to any town/city to easily find UPS Stores.

This same map can also be implemented with many features such as flight tracking, weather monitoring etc. This is a basic demonstration of how the google maps api can be used to locate UPS stores within a city or worldwide. The applications of google maps are endless.

The source data for this prototype can be found on this link:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tJRTqZtwSJ1ZpShzoVj4gxA&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Are Portals and Mashups the same?

Portals and Mashups provide the same functionality of integrating content from different sources into one place.However I found this interesting article on Portal versus Mashup.

Mashups and portals are both content aggregation technologies. Portals are an older technology designed as an extension to traditional dynamic Web applications, in which the process of converting data content into marked-up Web pages is split into two phases: generation of markup "fragments" and aggregation of the fragments into pages. Each markup fragment is generated by a "portlet", and the portal combines them into a single Web page. Portlets may be hosted locally on the portal server or remotely on another server.

Portal technology defines a complete event model covering reads and updates. A request for an aggregate page on a portal is translated into individual read operations on all the portlets that form the page ("render" operations on local, JSR 168 portlets or "getMarkup" operations on remote, WSRP portlets). If a submit button is pressed on any portlet on a portal page, it is translated into an update operation on that portlet alone ("processAction" on a local portlet or "performBlockingInteraction" on a remote, WSRP portlet). The update is then immediately followed by a read on all portlets on the page.

Portal technology is about server-side, presentation-tier aggregation. It cannot be used to drive more robust forms of application integration such as two-phase commit.
Mashups differ from portals in the following respects:

















The portal model has been around longer and has had greater investment and product research. Portal technology is therefore more standardised and mature. Over time, increasing maturity and standardization of mashup technology may make it more popular than portal technology. New versions of portal products are expected to eventually add mashup support while still supporting legacy portlet applications. Mashup technologies, in contrast, are not expected to provide support for portal standards.

The questions to be answered are

Will Portals remain or will be replaced by Mashups?
Portals only serve the lowest denominator of end users and hence confined to limited information broadcasting. The major problem with portal is that the user cannot decide which content can be personalized or how it can be manipulated. With the rise of social networking sites and availability of free open APIs users quickly learned to build their own personal portals. With the current trend users won’t be content to operate within the confines of a single, stoic portal that restricts how they consume and manipulate information.

Implementing Mashup’s for SOA
Most vendors are now using the terms “SOA” and “Web services” interchangeably, it has become obvious that for most corporations, implementing a successful SOA will require the service-enablement of their existing applications. Mashups are a completely valid method of accomplishing this.

Mashup’s for Cloud computing.
Mashups are a natural complement to SaaS. With SaaS and mashups, you may be able to maintain the bulk of your confidential data internally and send the hosted application only small subsets of data for processing. If the network link to the SaaS vendor fails, at least you still have local access to your data.

Also good read discussing Mashups to be the future of Portals is available on http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20080114/technology01.shtml

References:
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29
http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1861

Oracle in the news

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has offered to pay $10 million to IBM if IBM can proved that its systems run database software is even as half as fast as those from Oracle (Wall Street Journal October 15, 2009 “Oracle Targets a New Rival: Former Ally IBM”). This posturing on the part of Ellison and Oracle can be attributed to the April acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

For those not familiar with databases, Oracle has been a leader in the field of databases for years.
I would attribute their growth to two reasons: 1) having the best product / database and 2) growth through acquisitions. Its acquisitions beginning in December of 2004 include:
PeopleSoft ($10.3 billion)
Global Logistics Technologies
Siebel Systems ($5.8 billion)
Portal Software ($220 million)
Stellent, Inc ($440 million)
MetaSolv Software
Hyperion Solutions Corporation ($3.3 billion)
BEA Systems ($7.2 billion)
Sun Microsystems ($7.4 billion)

The acquisition of Sun (which is still under review by the EU) has given Oracle an in-house provider of servers. IBM which has worked with Oracle is no longer as important to Oracle. In the past, Oracle and IBM have worked together. The WSJ article made the point that a group of IBM engineers are on-site at the Oracle campus to illustrate this cooperation.

Looking at the table of RDBMS market share below, Oracle is seen to have twice the market share that IBM has. Oracle is without question the market leader. This table for 2006 was the most recent table that I could find.

As some friend of mine who are in the business of selling network hardware would say, it appears that Oracle has the “secret sauce” (much like the secret sauce that McDonalds has). I expect that Oracle will be in a better position for its sales with a capability to now include servers as a part of its offerings. Also, Oracle should continue to grow its percentage of market share. This pattern of acquisitions probably will contribute to the slow decline of IBM as the premier leader of software and hardware.

I am less sure that Oracle truly has the speed advantage over IBM OR that this speed advantage is that relevant to most of the Oracle and IBM clients. For those who think that numbers alone are the final argument, I would offer up this saying popularized by Mark Twain - "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Why Email No Longer Rules…

Wall Street Journal for this Monday (Oct 12th) in its Technology section hit on several topics our class has discussed and some related topics. Cloud computing had it own article; another article about a large firm with 135 data centers had its CIO saying cloud computing was not a current direction for his firm. The lead article about email somewhat missed with too much focus on Twitter and Facebook as alternatives to email. Comments from the readers were more on target with thoughts such as the use of IM (instant messenger) and why corporate needs versus social needs were pertinent considerations for a discussion about email.

Other articles included a collection of blog reviews, fake corporate profiles, and the use of online reviews from customers of company products. The lead article on the decline of email is posted on WSJ for public consumption and will be found at the end of this posting.

Class had prepared me for some of the ten questions that were a part of the "How Well Do You Know... the Cloud?" quiz. Here are four of the questions from the Wall Street Journal; I will withhold the easier questions. Answers will be provided "soon".

3) Which of these techniques is vital for creating cloud-computing centers?
A. Virtualization
B. Transubstantiation
C. Cannibalization
D. Insubordination

5) Match the provider with the cloud-based service.
A. Amazon
B. IBM
C. EMC
D. Microsoft

1. Azure
2. Elastic Compute Cloud
3. Decho
4. Cloudburst

7) IBM, EMC and Boeing Co. were among the companies signing what document whose title is reminiscent of a famous political statement?
A. Declaration of Cloud Computing
B. The Rights of Cloud
C. Mein Cloud
D. Open Cloud Manifesto

10) What August event was widely seen as an example of the risky nature of cloud computing?
A. Spread of Conficker virus
B. Gmail outage for more than an hour
C. Theft of identities over the Internet
D. Power outages in the Midwest

WSJ article "Why Email No Longer Rules..." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Regards,

Bill Stephens

Isn’t it all about an interface?

In layman’s terms I would describe an Interface as a final product or service available to the end user. The user is not concerned with what goes in the background but definitely looks for an easy to use friendly frontend which allows him to get a task done. Imagine about your favorite Facebook site - You want to add a friend to your friend list and to do so Facebook gives you a link to a huge database and you need to search and sort to just add a single friend to your friend list. Would you still be willing to use Facebook where each function requires you to perform several steps before you achieve a goal. For example: upload a photo, join a community or add a friend.

To gain a competitive edge companies need to provide interfaces to the outside world, create awareness so that customers know what the company is about and what it deals in and what is the best that customers can achieve in terms of cost and quality by using the company’s interface. What have various companies like Apple and Blackberry provided you so that you can receive Facebook, Twitter or email alerts on your phone - they have just provided you an interface. With an Iphone in your pocket you need not roam around with a laptop because you can check email, pay your bills, and make a reservation while you are on the run.

The following link is of a video where Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry of MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group talk about sixthsense technology…it is an amazing product

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Jd5uwBvQU

I have also embedded the same video on our blog.
The web is opening doors to more and more interfaces. With web 3.0 on the horizon businesses have already started taking advantage of the available interfaces. For example – Linden labs creation “Second Life” where people can almost live their life’s. People can shop, travel, buy, sell, do business and basically experiment stuff that they would want to do in real life.

Web 3.0 is moving the web world towards open data, structured data, smarter ways of filtering content, real time and highly personalized data where a single interface would give you all you need to know.