DataPower as a Web Service Debugger

I am really starting to appreciate the WebSphere DataPower appliance. In addition to its stellar performance as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and strong security features, it can also be a useful tool in debugging SOA applications and web services. You can set up "probes" which allow you to monitor web service requests and replies that pass thru the device.  There is a user interface that allows you to visually inspect the message contents.  its like having a web service debugger.

Copyright © 2011 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

Does anybody know what data SAP Enterprise Services actually expose?

Anybody know where I could get the mapping of SAP database table & field names to data elements in the WSDL of a standard SAP Enterprise Service? It seems our SAP technical consultant is unable to determine this without manually opening up the ABAP code that comes with SAP. The element names in the Enterprise Service are long English names which are quite different from the German acronym-like names of the standard SAP databases that all the SAP functional consultants are familiar with. It seems very painful to figure out what data is actually being exposed by the Enterprise Service.

Copyright © 2011 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

An Unexpected Turn at Management

I have not been nearly as successful at integrating blogging and podcasting back into my life as I wanted after my unreal, fantasy assignment in China ended at the end of October 2007. After the holidays and after some procrastination on my part, I was hit with a reorganization at work. Suddenly I was asked to be a first line manager.

For some people this would have been an exciting event and cause for celebration. But for me it was cause for pause. In some ways I had made a career out of not becoming a manager, a pure sales person, or a project manager. I had managed to advance to a pretty high level on mostly my technical merits, successful projects, and some happy clients who kept signing up for more services based on that success. I was comfortable in a career path that would hopefully get me at least one more promotion some day (soon I hope) to what IBM calls a "Distinguished Engineer." I was to be a mentor but not a real manager.

Now I was asked to officially take over the care and feeding of 14 specialists and architects. Something inside told me that I should say "yes" and give it my best shot. I still want to be a Distinguished Engineer but I think now is the time to grow some other skills which may prove valuable later. In the past, when something unexpected happened in my career it usually turned out to be for the best after all. Visit my other blog if you're curious about my outlook on such things.

Copyright © 2008 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

A new breakout of the acronym “SAP” heard today:

SAP = Slow and Painful

International Conference on Global Software Engineering

If you have been a regular reader of my blog, you know that globalization is one of my favorite topics of discussion. Therefore, I would like to draw your attention to the International Conference on Global Software Engineering which will be held August 17-20, 2008 in Bangalore, India. (Recently renamed Bangaluru.) The event is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society.

Please note that if you have some thoughts to share, there is still time to submit a paper. The deadline for abstracts is Feb 21, 2008 and the deadline for papers is Feb 28, 2008.

Yours truly is a member of the Program Committee for the event. However, that doesn’t mean I automatically get to attend. I still have pay the registration fee and pay to get myself there… or convince my employer of the wisdom of spending their money to send me. I had the good fortune to visit my team in Bangalore and interview a few programmers for positions back in the fall of 2004 and I would certainly enjoy a return trip for the conference. I would be curious have any of you (my readers) had success at securing funding for travel to this kind of thing? If so, I’d love to hear how you justified the expense to your employer.

Copyright © 2008 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

Do You Use a Dash?

This may be a silly thing, but when you write your job title, do you write it as "I/T Architect" or "IT Architect" ?

I got used to using the slash several years ago. I think that is what I saw most often inside IBM where I work.

However, now it seems that I am seeing the title written without the slash. I noticed that the Open Group certification program uses no slash. (See the Master Certified IT Architect logo on the right side of my blog.)

I'm tempted to abandon the slash. What do you think? Which do you use? Which do you like better?

Copyright © 2008 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

Tennessee Rational User Group

I received an email a while back from Tin Dizdarevic of the Rational User Group looking for a volunteer to lead the Tennessee Rational User Group. After much soul searching and a little procrastination, I decided to raise my hand and take this on.

If any of my readers from Tennessee would like to joint the Tennessee Rational User Group, please go to the Global Rational User Group web site, use the "Find a User Group" feature to search for the chapter in Tennessee, and register for the group.

I am also soliciting suggestions on the best (or least bad) times for the User Group to meet, how often it should meet, where it should meet, and what topics you would like to see addressed.

I'm Back (At Least I Hope So)

I am a little embarrassed at how long it has been since my last post. My project in China was very demanding and when I rolled off that project the end of October I went immediately into the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. It was January before I started feeling normal again and by then I was out of the habit. I will try to do better now.

Now Podcasting, Too !

One of the things which I learned in China is that many of the young, educated, professional Chinese view having good English language skills as a prerequisite to many of the top jobs in China. Apparently, the best jobs in China all require regular interaction with foreigners like me. I found they were a lot more interested in me helping them with their English than in helping me learn Chinese.

For some reason, I found that many found my voice, cadence, and diction easier to understand than most. (Maybe they were just trying to be nice to me?) Being from Tennessee in the American South, I mentioned this to an American from South Carolina that I met in Beijing. He laughed and told me that "the Chinese love Southerners because we talk slow." Whatever the reason, I took an interest in teaching English and came up with the idea of using a podcast with corresponding transcript to assist my new friends with pronunciation even when I am not around.

Off topic for this blog... but for anyone who might be interested I even got to teach English in a Chinese government-registered church. See My Chinese Church Away from Home.

I decided to start a podcast equivalent to this blog at http://artsciita.podbean.com/. If English is not your native language, I hope you will check it out. This is something of an experiment so if you try it and like it, you had better let me know. It is a little extra work on me and I might lose interest if nobody seems to be paying attention. Here's an online MP3 player with links to share our subscribe to the RSS feed. I went back and added voice for the most popular posts and a few of my personal favorites.

Powered by Podbean.com

Copyright © 2007 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.

Back to the Real World After China

About 6 weeks ago, I completed one of the most challenging 10 months of my entire 26+ year career. I helped create the Enterprise Service Bus for a major Chinese company and during that time I made six trips to China and spent a total of 4.5 months there. I joked with friends that I did not live in the "real world" anymore because I would have never believed that anyone would actually pay me to work in China for so long. I did, however, learn a lot about globally distributed teams, ESB's, SOA, and the culture clash of trying to make people from China, the US, Canada, and India all work together.

In particular, my job was to help integrate their website with 3rd party service providers and their SAP back end. My resume is now full of references to XML, web services, canonical data modeling (XML schemas), WebSphere Message Broker, and WebSphere Process Server.

It was a heady time but I must confess I'm glad its over. It has taken me several weeks to get back into the groove and sit down and take some time to blog again.

Copyright © 2007 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.