http://frends.com/blog/ Frends en Copyright 2010 Frends Technology Oy Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:09:00 +0300 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://frends.com/blog/afterprojectlife/ Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:09:00 +0300 A day back our Customer initiated a change to their integration solution. Based on our and Customer's documentation the solution was a simple batch file transfer using SFTPS for transportation and XSLT for data transformation. Our developer was lost for a while when the solution in production turned out to be two web service calls with XSLT... http://frends.com/blog/afterprojectlife/ http://frends.com/blog/dimensions-in-integration/ Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:41:00 +0300 When talking about integration sometimes people are discussing totally contrary aspects even though they are using same words. Depending on the experience, background or context same terms might mean various things to different people. I wanted to write about how I see the dimensions in the enterprise integration space; this is just a brief... http://frends.com/blog/dimensions-in-integration/ http://frends.com/blog/three-steps-to-continuity/ Tue, 25 May 2010 08:58:06 +0300 What is the contingency plan of the integration platform formed of? The integration platform can crash due to a failure in a system component – a hardware failure in a computer, or a software failure in Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, or FRENDS Iron, for example. Based on Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology... http://frends.com/blog/three-steps-to-continuity/ http://frends.com/blog/integration-project-models/ Fri, 14 May 2010 09:31:00 +0300 Over the years spent in systems integration and business process automation we have experienced and encountered a number of varying project models. I'll give a brief overview about some of the most intriguing project models used in the integration business.   Totally wasted - model. This one's really simple. Requirements are being specified... http://frends.com/blog/integration-project-models/ http://frends.com/blog/hungerforspaghetti/ Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:52:00 +0300 “Can it be so hard?!?”, asked a Customer with frustrated tone. This question was about a problem in a simple integration interface that received product catalogs from separate suppliers, transformed them and loaded them into ERP -system.  Suddenly the receiving interface rejected incoming catalogs from certain suppliers due to a mismatch in... http://frends.com/blog/hungerforspaghetti/ http://frends.com/blog/new-helium-version-is-surveying-silence/ Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:38:00 +0300 I'll take a small sidestep from the default architectural posts and blog about our new announcement. Our team is proud to release new version of FRENDS Helium - BizTalk Server monitoring tool. Previous tutorial for Helium is still valid but we added some new features to release. Overall Helium purpose is same as earlier versions - to provide... http://frends.com/blog/new-helium-version-is-surveying-silence/ http://frends.com/blog/continuity-planning/ Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:06:03 +0200 Should you plan for future? Integration platforms and different architectural patterns - service oriented, event driven or enterprise service buses - get a lot of discussion all around the world. And of course a good architecture, its proper implementation and governance issues are the first priority. Without functioning line of business... http://frends.com/blog/continuity-planning/ http://frends.com/blog/test-driven-development-and-integration/ Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:49:00 +0200 Test-driven development (TDD) is one of the best ways to ensure quality of integration development. The idea is to first create automated test cases. The first test round should fail. This failure occurs because the developer has not yet implemented the integration solution that leads to success and ensures that test cases work correctly. ... http://frends.com/blog/test-driven-development-and-integration/ http://frends.com/blog/tokenization-and-customer-loyalty/ Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:11:49 +0200 There's a lot of discussion about tokenization. To keep the issue simple  tokenization is about encrypting sensitive data to reduce PCI compliancy requirements - also there's discussion whether it actually solves anything or not. As already mentioned the key point of tokenization is reducing PCI compliance costs but there are also other... http://frends.com/blog/tokenization-and-customer-loyalty/ http://frends.com/blog/tilting-at-windmills/ Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:32:38 +0200 Quite a long break since my last architectural blog entry. It's not that there's nothing to say - only lack of time to write it down. I started writing this post about different integration worker characteristics as a continuation to my earlier post on architects. I sketched different shades of grey on paper but somehow ended up on writing... http://frends.com/blog/tilting-at-windmills/