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Open Source / Closed Source for WMB Msg Flows

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bruce2359

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 8:25 am Post subject:

Poobah

Joined: 05 Jan 2008
Posts: 9472
Location: US: west coast, almost. Otherwise, enroute.

This appears to be a discussion on Need to know vs. want to know.

One of the benefits (and annoyances) of the object world (java classes) is the abstraction of data from the application developer. You inherit what you can see and touch, unlike COBOL copybooks and Assembler DSECTS where you get to see/touch all data fields.

Process abstraction has similar benefits/annoyances - it is the difference between How something is done vs. Exactly how something is done.

For me, it's curiosity most of the time.

Moved to WMB forum.
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lancelotlinc

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 8:34 am Post subject:

Jedi Knight

Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA

Vitor wrote:

Please see my comments above regarding multiple PMs. I've known development teams who, if I'd had my way, would have been run out of the building at gunpoint.

I do have a gun owner's ID card issued in Illinois and have considered a conceal-carry permit. However, most of the places I work explicitly prohibit firearms on premise, even if you do have a conceal-carry permit. Therefore, I am unable to defend myself in the situation you described.

That rabbits foot didnt save no bunny. Guns save life dot com.
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 9:06 am Post subject:

Grand High Poobah

Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA

lancelotlinc wrote:

In many of the situations I'm thinking of, I was in the UK and permits to carry guns (concealed or not) were not as common as here. However, I'd have been prepared to make an exception & plead justification when it came to court.

My point was that not all development teams are as trustworthy as they should be, and I don't mean that they have any malicious intent. Just that they're badly run, badly organised or just cutting corners to gain points by hitting production early.

All of which should get them thrown out of the office (or at least off the system) but often doesn't.
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 9:09 am Post subject:

Grand High Poobah

Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA

bruce2359 wrote:

This appears to be a discussion on Need to know vs. want to know.

There is an element of this. I can see the point of having code available as a read only reference to others, but am disagreeing that it's a benefit in all cases.

bruce2359 wrote:

Process abstraction has similar benefits/annoyances - it is the difference between How something is done vs. Exactly how something is done.

The whole web services thing runs on the concept that you call this black box service and, so long as you meet the contract in the WSDL, you get a result. There's no mechanism for discovering how the service works and the point there is the caller doesn't need & shouldn't want to know.
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john01

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 10:19 am Post subject:

Novice

Joined: 16 Jun 2010
Posts: 21
Location: PT

Hi everyone!

In my problem (that's generated this discussion) the other team is a client's team. So I'm doing something like a framework for them.
In this kind of situation I'd prefer to close my code and distribute it using the plug-in approach.

The UDN (generated from a subflow in v7 is so simple!) fits perfectly in this situation.
At first I thought about using user defined patterns, but this approach doesn't close the code.

My 2 cents.

lancelotlinc

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:05 am Post subject:

Jedi Knight

Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA

@john

Closed product offerings come with some issues.

If I were your client, I would insist that you deliver source code. Else, how could my team support this in production?

If you refused to deliver source code, then will you offer production support? How much would that cost? How many people would be on your production support staff? Are they available 24x7 to respond to production support issues? What sort of Service Level Agreement would you be willing to agree to? (ie. how long is it going to take to solve production outages?)

Also, your design doesn't seem sound, since it bottlenecks on the database. Will it use SolidDB? That may be one way to motor around the database bottlenecking issue.

Compare these issues to open source: source code is available so I can outsource SLA to any one of my top production support vendors with whom I currently do business, under existing rates and responsiveness criteria. If I like the function, I can use it to build on. If I don't care for how it works, I can modify it.
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:16 am Post subject:

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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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Location: Texas, USA

lancelotlinc wrote:

If I were your client, I would insist that you deliver source code. Else, how could my team support this in production?

Did you get source for WMQ & WMB?

lancelotlinc wrote:

If you refused to deliver source code, then will you offer production support? How much would that cost? How many people would be on your production support staff? Are they available 24x7 to respond to production support issues? What sort of Service Level Agreement would you be willing to agree to? (ie. how long is it going to take to solve production outages?)

Presumably you worked this out with IBM.

lancelotlinc wrote:

Also, your design doesn't seem sound, since it bottlenecks on the database. Will it use SolidDB? That may be one way to motor around the database bottlenecking issue.

Off topic to this thread I think. This thread is open v closed source; the other thread is for beating this poor guy's solution over the head.

lancelotlinc wrote:

Compare these issues to open source: source code is available so I can outsource SLA to any one of my top production support vendors with whom I currently do business, under existing rates and responsiveness criteria. If I like the function, I can use it to build on. If I don't care for how it works, I can modify it.

And how does john01 protect IP and/or his investment? If you're going to build on this work, why would you go back to him for any further development?
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:20 am Post subject:

Grand High Poobah

Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA

@lancelotlinc

Here's a thought that's just popped into my rather caffinated brain:

There are a couple of open source messaging products. Given this:

lancelotlinc wrote:

Why are you using WMQ & WMB?

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bruce2359

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:22 am Post subject:

Poobah

Joined: 05 Jan 2008
Posts: 9472
Location: US: west coast, almost. Otherwise, enroute.

Quote:

Closed product offerings come with some issues.

More accurately, OCO (object code only) is a licensing issue. For a customer, it's a choice.

Understandably, many vendors don't want to distribute source code.

If I'm a vendor, first(ly): I don't want to see my intellectual property made public. There is no sufficient safeguard to ensure that my hard work isn't disclosed deliberately or accidently.

Secondly, I don't want licensees modifying my code; then complaining that it doesn't work according to specifications of the contract.

If I'm the licensee, I don't want (my IT staff) to be responsible for maintaining open-source or code belonging to others. This is a business decision.

For example, I buy/lease/license o/s's, to achieve the business goal of billing my customers. I rely on vendors (like Windows, or IBM AIX or z/OS) to maintain their code. We are not in the business of writing or modifying o/s code.

Again, it's a choice - to be made by management.
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lancelotlinc

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:26 am Post subject:

Jedi Knight

Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA

@Vitor

No, Vitor. I did not get the source code for WMB. Did you? If so, please email it to me.

AFAIK, we're not talking about COTS in this post (Commercial Off The Shelf). We are talking about john's custom developed for one client message flows.

Yes, in my experience, I have observed that WMB is among the best supported products in the world.

I am posing these questions because, from a business model standpoint and from a design standpoint, john's proposed solution is not viable IMHO. That doesn't mean his idea is not a good one. Maybe we can help him boil off the dross to get to the meat of what he wants to do.

I have provided this information in a kind way, not beating his head. I asked leading questions to help john draw his own conclusions. Its unfortunate that john was sleeping while we were taking about his posts. Would have been nice to have more realtime interaction to help him achieve his goals.
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:32 am Post subject:

Grand High Poobah

Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA

lancelotlinc wrote:

No, Vitor. I did not get the source code for WMB. Did you? If so, please email it to me.

Then my question stands. Why (given your completely valid views) did you select the IBM product over an open source solution with the advantages you list above?

lancelotlinc wrote:

AFAIK, we're not talking about COTS in this post (Commercial Off The Shelf). We are talking about john's custom developed for one client message flows.

We don't know that it's only for one client. Even if it is, john could decide it's a really good idea and use it with his next client.

lancelotlinc wrote:

I am posing these questions because, from a business model standpoint and from a design standpoint, john's proposed solution is not viable IMHO.

I don't see where you get "not viable as a business model" from.
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lancelotlinc

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 11:50 am Post subject:

Jedi Knight

Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA

I didn't really choose WMB, WMB sort of chose me. When I joined State Farm as a contractor in 2003, they interviewed me based on my MQ skills (which I started with at BMC Software in 1994). Shortly after I joined State Farm, they embarked on a mainframe renewal initiative to find better ways to renew the value the mainframe applications were delivering to the business.

This initiative splintered into several children, but the chief was using WMB to implement SOA/ESB and be able to tie the Internet WAS servers in real-time directly into existing mainframe applications. At that time in 2003, we were on version 5 of WMB and MQ.

I have evaluated other ESB offerings over the years both open and closed source from Oracle, JBoss, and Apache Mule as well as some others. My personal opinion is IBM WMB is the best supported and most refined of all these offerings. With Mule, its practically a blank slate. Anything you want to do, seems you have to create from scratch. With IBM WMB, alot of refined functionality is included in the product. Lots of built-in interoperability to many other products.

With regards to your inquiry about john's business model, I don't believe it can be viable from a business perspective. If you calculate true cost, including support effort, I would suspect his ROI to be hugely negative. No profit. Thats just my opinion, john may have figured out a way to extract millions already from his client.
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 12:10 pm Post subject:

Grand High Poobah

Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA

lancelotlinc wrote:

I have evaluated other ESB offerings over the years both open and closed source from Oracle, JBoss, and Apache Mule as well as some others. My personal opinion is IBM WMB is the best supported and most refined of all these offerings. With Mule, its practically a blank slate. Anything you want to do, seems you have to create from scratch. With IBM WMB, alot of refined functionality is included in the product. Lots of built-in interoperability to many other products.

But given the advantages you eloquently argue for open source, especially that you can build anything you want on top of it or modify it, why select a closed source solution like WMB? Even if it has "refined functionality" (which I agree it has), why does that over-ride the open source benefits you list? Given the dollar price that comes with that functionality?
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Vitor

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 12:14 pm Post subject:

Grand High Poobah

Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA

lancelotlinc wrote:

With regards to your inquiry about john's business model, I don't believe it can be viable from a business perspective. If you calculate true cost, including support effort, I would suspect his ROI to be hugely negative. No profit. Thats just my opinion, john may have figured out a way to extract millions already from his client.

We stray towards dangerous and personal territory here, and feel we should make a graceful turn back towards the theoretical.

I'll speak personally and say that while you don't make millions (or I didn't) you do turn a profit on such things. Speculation on my lack of millions & it's association to my sales skills or choice of client kept to the reader if you please.

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lancelotlinc

Posted: Wed Dec 29, 2010 12:21 pm Post subject:

Jedi Knight

Joined: 22 Mar 2010
Posts: 4941
Location: Bloomington, IL USA

Vitor wrote:

lancelotlinc wrote:

Now, this is my personal opinion, and if someone is writing a check to pay for something else, I usually keep my opinion to myself.

Thus, as a general rule, I prefer COTS wherever possible, unless there is a compelling business reason or highly competitive open source tool available. In the environments which I find employment, the clients usually have sufficiently deep pockets to acquire whatever they want as long as the business justification is present.

Now, there are some exceptions. I have not found a more suitable source control system than SVN. I like SVN's simplicity and it is well supported by open source developers. I also have not found a more suitable dependency checker than Maven. Nor a more suitable build tool than Ant. I'm also high on Amazon Web Services as a cloud computing platform.

This doesnt mean I would reject other things, especially if they were already embedded in the corporate culture, like perforce or Visual Source Safe.

Dollars are relative. (My aunt has many of them.) Seriously, the lowest pruchase price does not equate to the lowest total cost of ownership. If your business, say a company like Gateway 2000, is taking online orders at the rate of $4 million per hour, and your open source tool brings the entire order entry system down for 10 hours, that $40 million could buy a nice tool suite.
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