Eric Newcomer's Weblog

The software engineers in IONA product development have been working nights and weekends lately. The usual build up to a product release. If it isn't one of Murphy's Laws it should be - projects closer to deadline take more of your time than projects farther from deadline.

Artix 4.0 shipped today. It's a major upgrade in features, functionality, and stability. This will go a long way toward establishing Artix's leadership position in distributed service oriented infrastructure technology.

Artix 4 includes:

• Orchestration - deployable at the endpoint or intermediary - includes Artix multi protocol support
• WS-RM - reliable messaging for HTTP
• Data services - creating services from data sources
• WS-Addressing support along with WS-Coordination and WS-AtomicTransactions

Because Artix already supports WS-Security, Artix has just become the first commercial product to support secure, reliable, transacted Web services.

Integration at the endpoints means placing a bit of software at the physical point at which applications share data with each other. This can exist completely in addition to existing hub and spoke architectures. Why not use this flexibility where possible and save money and time?

Artix 4 also is priced differently than previous versions of Artix. There's one price for the core, and ala carte prices for plug-ins and protocols, so you can avoid a big up front investment in software.

I'm really happy to see the Celtix project at ObjectWeb has reached another important milestone - milestone 5 aka V1 Beta. You can download it here.

A stable V1 is scheduled for the end of April. Check out the milestones and post V1 work item lists here.

A demo page shows how to integrate Celtix with a couple of BPEL engines and with RSS for creating a simple services directory.

Anyone looking into Axis 2 (which is still not at V1) also should have a look at Celtix. It's a ground up and solid implementation of JAX-WS using Java 5 (including annotations) and JAXB XML mapping.

Celtix easily can be extended to plug in additional data models and communications transports beyond the out of the box HTTP, configurable JMS and WS-RM support.

V1 Beta has been integrated with the Apache Geronimo and ObjectWeb JOnAS application servers and works standalone as an ESB or as a SOAP stack within another project. The V1 Beta also includes initial support for SCA and JBI along with WS-RM, WS-Addressing, Maven, and JMX.

Besides the release of Artix 4 and Celtix V1 Beta, the best thing that's happened at IONA recently is the partnership with AmberPoint.

A couple of Webcasts are coming up where you can hear more details. Mike Gilpin of Forrester is also joining in on the first one, Wednesday April 12.

I am also looking forward to reestablishing contact with Paul Butterworth. I met him when I was working for Digital/Compaq and he was working for Forte. The Forte product was very advanced, really ahead of its time, implementing a really elegant distributed object oriented computing solution.

Whenever I talk with customers or give presentations about IONA's distributed approach to service orientation and SOA the management question almost always comes up. How do you track and update the distributed endpoint runtimes? I am really happy the answer now includes AmberPoint.

I started blogging about two years ago with this entry, which was typed during the initial WS-CAF face to face meeting. This might give you some idea of what attending these type of committee meetings is like. Everyone around the room with laptops out, surfing the Web, checking email, or sometimes even paying attention to the discussion at hand, especially when it turns to something of interest.

I brought my mother along on that trip, and we went from there to Dublin. She had a great time and has been asking me ever since when I'm going again. Unfortunately most of the time the trips are not conducive to taking someone along or spending time sightseeing. I wish they were. But the trouble with traveling a lot is that you want to spend some time at home, too, and sightseeing just exacerbates the problem.

Since Steve and I started, blogs have become nearly ubiquitous. It seems like everyone has one, or at least knows about them. And blog spam -- both comments and pings -- has become a major nusiance. Proving once again that there is no public activity on the Internet that someone won't try to take advantage of.

I spent more than an hour last Sunday cleaning up the stuff. We need to upgrade our installation of MovableType - the new version has much better spam control. I already have more than 3,500 URLs on my blacklist, and I'm sure many sites have multiples of that figure. It is just amazing. But of course it's so cheap to do that it must only take a handful of folks clicking on these URLs to porn sites or gambling or music or drugs or you name it...

In the meantime I've taken the simple fix - turning off all comments and pings. That is the big hammer fix, and an unfortunate one, since one of the reasons for blogging is the ability to engage in dialogue with others via trackback pings and comments.

Until then, if anyone wants to leave a comment, email me and I'll unblock them.

A sincere thanks to everyone who reads the blog, and who has commented or tracked back in the past, or who has let me know via email or in person that you have read something interesting. I will do my best to keep it up.

Last week Jane and I got to go see a Red Sox game. Unfortunately, after they had won about six in a row they got pounded, 8-5. David Wells got booed right onto the disabled list when Terry finally pulled him.

David Wells Getting Ready to Serve Up Another Meatball

But it was a great night - the weather was warm, enough, and it didn't rain or snow. One year I took my son on his birthday - April 11 - and the game was delayed while they shoveled snow out of the outfield and the bleachers.

And it was clear enough so that we could see the almost full moon hovering over right field, just to the right of the [unmentionable brand of beer] sign.

Waiting for the TV Commercials to Finish

On the plus side, we did get to see David Ortiz hit a home run. And from where we were sitting on the third base line, just into the outfield, we got a great view of the hot corner, shortstop, and second base action. The way major league infielders handle the ball is very impressive.

And of course, whatever else you might say, it is still Fenway Park. One of the last of the originals everyone else is now busy copying.

This is one I'm really looking forward to - a collaboration between Paul Simon and Brian Eno!

Here's another one high on the anticipation list, the Blind Faith DVD coming out ( was supposed to be April 10 but now there's no date on Amazon, although you can preorder it). In the brief interview with Ginger Baker about it that was posted a while ago (and since taken down, I'm afraid), he acknowledges how painful it is for him to play because of his arthritis, putting something of a damper on hopes for more Cream reunion shows. The interview with him on the DVD site is well worth a read too, and the "Sea of Joy" clip well worth watching...should be a great DVD.

Recently I also bought the new album by Delbert McClinton, Cost of Living. I really liked the one I bought a few years ago, Nothing Personal so I bought the new one. I'd say it's not quite as good as Nothing Personal but definitely has some great songs. I am a bit disappointed that he chose to record a song called "Right to Be Wrong" which he must have known was already done by Joss Stone.

I also got the new John Mayer Trio CD, which is a set of live recordings from the tour. Most of the tunes are really great, including a credible cover of Hendrix' Wait for Tomorrow.

I don't care, I also really like Heavier Things - this was something that I played over and over on my recent West Coast trip. I had it on my iPod and some songs from it kept coming up on shuffle mode and surprising me. Really holds up well.

A couple of months ago a got the new Beatles' biography. The first part of it is great, where it goes into a lot of detail about their youth, what it was like to play in Hamburg, and how they made it to the top. The rest of it lacks something, perhaps because I have my own memories of them once they got famous.

While in Dublin a couple of weeks ago I picked up a Pogues anthology (Ultimate Collection) for about 10 Euros (which is apparently a good price), on the strength of the recent publicity about their reunion. It's a two CD set, one studio and one live. You can really hear Shane McGowan slurring his words on the live side, but it still sounds pretty good.