Apologies if what I am going to ask is too generic and please feel free to mark it as community wiki or even close it but after getting a good answer please.. Here goes nothing.
I had a heated debate over the term application infrastructure with a consultant from a BIG company and hence I am here to see what the experts think as I myself need a good understanding as well. I am a puny software developer and was trying to have a chat about software architecture and stuff and then we kinda got stuck up at the term application infrastructure.
As per my rival's understanding, this is solely used re the back-end hardware components and whereas I thought he is mixing the contexts and from the context of software eng it should refer to stuff that supports the application such as logging, ORM, or even framework (.net) etc.
To what extent am I wrong and if I am please shed some light on the definition...it's really gonna help a lot.
Thanks
Here are a few links with a little description about the term Application Infrastructure extracted from them:
Application Infrastructure -- f5.com
Application infrastructure, comprised of application servers, web servers, and often database servers, is a core component in most network architectures. This part of the network infrastructure delivers high performance application services to the LAN as well as to employees, partners and customers on the WAN.
Some of the key functionality of application infrastructure includes transaction management, clustering, reliable application-to-application messaging, system management, advanced application development tools, proprietary access, and interoperability with legacy technologies.
Application Infrastructure -- networkmagazineindia.com
A (common/standard) platform is required to make different applications in an enterprise work across geographies or multiple locations, and to manage a large number of users and transactions taking place within an enterprise. This platform which ensures that different applications work with each other, is known as an application infrastructure.
Application Infrastructure -- bitpipe.com
A high performance, reliable, and secure integrated technology infrastructure for managing multiple hosted applications by Application Service Providers.
What he seem to be describing is the platform for software (I'll leave it open if that is the same thing as the software platform. I do include software service in the Application Infrastructure definition and also include connectivity/networking along with hardware and software as the three foundation corner stones of Infrastructure. Infrastructure is the general purpose commodity components as opposed to the domain specific components which will typically always be Software; (A possible exception would be an organisation uses custom hardware). AIH; IBM pitch WebSphere as Appliction Infrastructure and Microsoft Consider their Windows Server to the Application Infrasture both agree with you and I.
From what I can see it speaks to HW and SW (middleware and API management).
Gertner definition : Application infrastructure is software platforms for the delivery of business applications, including development and runtime enablers.
Interesting info from Gartner:
http://wso2.com/resources/analyst-reports/comparing-vendors-of-comprehensive-application-infrastructure-suites/
Related
I'm managing a rather widely distributed software application in a semi industrial environment. The software at its heart is based on SOA and employs OPC-UA to make communications between important processes (on local or LAN-based machines) possible. These processes are either a server (e.g. an outer network management server, hardware managers server etc.) or a client (customer panel) or both (servers talking to each other).
OPC-UA has the following problems:
Configuring and maintaining the configurations is a hard job (just Config file settings takes lots of time)
Security measures are too much detailed for my needs (certificate management and sudden invalidation of certifications on customer systems)
Modeling and networking overheads in the library make it hard to work with in my communications (high data rates usually ends in server and client disconnecting)
Unspecified and weird errors like UA Discovery Server stopping to work or respond, etc. which I have reported to OPC GitHub forum many times.
Troubleshooting in internal parts of OPC UA is nearly impossible.
Overall, for me its performance and stability are not reliable enough. I am willing to sacrifice features for better performance and reliability. I've even considered to write sockets from bottom-up for my inter-process (IPC) needs. This way I could at least trace errors to their core. Since I do not need its most advertised feature (aka PLC support) I'm desperate to find a good alternative for it. My main requirements are:
OPC-UA like Data Modeling support that enables me to provide a clean interface to customers and other teams (something like IDL).
Publish/Subscribe, Remote Commands, Update Notifications and Node Based Behavior.
Tough Security is not my concern as my network is closed.
High performance for data rates up to 1Gbps (this could mean UDP support).
I am entirely working in .NET framework. So C# support of OPC-UA is a great help for me.
I've looked at DDS (lacks commands and Update Notifications) and WCF (lacks cross platform support) and many more.
This link also notes about MQTT: Alternative to OPC-UA
What about Google's gRPC + protobufs?
https://grpc.io/
We currently need a portal solution. One of our service providers has already suggested that we develop the portal in Apache OFBiz.
Now I would like to know if Apache OFBiz is still state of the art or if it is already on the way down.
Or is there another technology we should consider.
Best Regards,
Foerstar
Apache OFBiz is a solid Open Source framework that is actively maintained and updated by its community that is part of the Apache Software Foundation.
While the OFBiz architecture has been outlined years ago, it is still a modern framework that incorporates several pragmatic patterns and is designed to be flexible and extendable. Moreover various components and technologies have been kept up to date or replaced with newer ones over the years.
It is impossible to tell you if OFBiz is a good fit for your portal solution because I don't know your specific needs but my recommendation is to at least consider it especially if in your portal you will publish content related to products or other business entities: if this is the case then the OFBiz universal data model will be a valuable resource that will help you to achieve your goals efficiently and with high quality.
We're planning to develop a web based Healthcare Practice Management System. Due to HIPAA we're requested to deploy the app in our own premises. Our company is relatively small currently we have only software engineers and no devops engineers but still we want to develop the application to support horizontal scaling(adding more servers).
Planned to use:
Python3 (Django)
PostgreSQL
I'm looking for something like AppScale but with the freedom of choosing our own runtime, database and frameworks.
In other words from the software engineer's perspective:
Should provide an easy way to deploy django application
Should have web based dashboard to monitor and control(like AppScale)
Should make load balancing simple (app and database)
AppScale implements the Google App Engine APIs which, IMHO, make it super easy to develop web apps quickly and efficiently.
On top of that, you get auto-scaling, load balancing, and the ability to deploy on-premises and plug in any third-party library you need.
AppScale already comes with a dashboard and will soon be launching a new management service for your AppScale deployment(s).
If you're not particularly hung up on Python3 and PostgreSQL, all of the above seem to cover your requirements.
It's worth noting that opting for the GAE model means you opt for NoSQL and, so, postgres is probably not the best option.
Disclaimer: I'm part of the AppScale team and we're already helping companies develop and deliver their apps in the HIPAA compliance realm.
I chose Kubernetes which is a container orchestration technology specifically designed for Docker and also found that scaling is not just the responsibility of platform that the app is deployed on but also its depends on how the app is designed and coded. For that The Twelve-Factor App methodology is really helpful.
But I can't deploy database on Kubernetes because its not recommended by Kelsey Hightower(author of Kubernetes Up and Running) in his talk. So, for now I chose to deploy my database on a VM.
I am starting to plan a new platform which needs to integrate various services from various externals platforms. Essentially I'm tying together a bunch of internal, homegrown services and several outside services we license from 3rd parties.
Generally speaking the external services are all web services but they are a mishmash of REST, SOAP and XML-RPC.
Some of our internal services have REST API's but there are many things that aren't so easy: XMPP, Hessian, custom socket protocols, Java RPC, uWSGI, and the list goes on.
From my research it seems like an ESB like Apache ServiceMix might be a good fit for my needs. However it looks REALLY complex. I'm not launching rockets but I do need transactional messaging (mostly for eCommerce and entitlement stuff). I feel like the message queue ServiceMix uses under the hood (ActiveMQ) might be enough on its own.
Can anyone explain what ServiceMix provides above and beyond ActiveMQ? I know there is a lot but it is hard for an ESB n00b like me to really grasp the tangible difference when I'm waste-deep in buzzwords.
Thanks!
ServiceMix is an OSGi based container that allows you to deploy and run applications in a controlled runtime environment (like a J2EE container but less heavy weight and without programming to e.g. J2EE contracts).
Thanks to OSGi you can partition your applications into parts and update/evolve these parts independently from each other. You can upgrade parts of your application without having to take down the entire application. There is far better life cycle management in OSGi then you get with standalone Java processes.
If you think of creating an application that will evolve over time, then OSGi is something you should consider. And ServiceMix provides you a runtime OSGi container to deploy your applications to. I highly recommend the book "OSGi in Action" from Manning.
For tying together different external services that might even use different transport protocols I recommend Apache Camel, which btw also deploys nicely into ServiceMix.
Btw, existing applications can be deployed into an OSGi container with fairly little effort (without requiring code changes).
Torsten Mielke
FuseSource
Web: www.fusesource.com
Blog: http://tmielke.blogspot.com
We've discussed SSO before. I would like to re-enhance the conversation with defined requirements, taking into consideration recent new developments.
In the past week I've been doing market research looking for answers to the following key issues:
The project should should be:
Requirements
SSO solution for web applications.
Integrates into existing developed products.
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
Highly available (99.9%)
Scalable.
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
Nice to have
Contains user Groups & Roles.
Written in Java.
Free Software (open source) solution.
None of the solutions came up so far are "killer choice" which leads me to think I will be tooling several projects (OWASP, AcegiSecurity + X??) hence this discussion.
We are ISV delivering front-end & backend application suite. The frontend is broken into several modules which should act as autonomous unit, from client point of view he uses the "application" - which leads to this discussion regrading SSO.
I would appreciate people sharing their experience & ideas regarding the appropriete solutions.
Some solutions are interesting
CAS
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise
JBoss Identity IDM
JOSSO
Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On
Or more generally speaking this list
Thank you,
Maxim.
What about FreeIPA?
"FreeIPA is an integrated security information management solution combining Linux (Fedora), 389 (formerly known as Fedora Directory Server), MIT Kerberos, NTP, DNS. It consists of a web interface and command-line administration tools."
If you focus on web applications, check out http://oauth.net/.
CAS has strong adoption, user-base, and a strong lead (who recently switched jobs, but is still comitted to the project). It is straightforward to integrate (if you're comfortable writing Java code/configuring Spring beans), and can do all your requirements, noteably:
SSO solution for web applications.
YES
Integrates into existing developed products.
YES (though some cleaner than others - but many modules are available for major products, and it supports common standards (SAML, OpenID).
has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co)
*YES - can easily be implemented, and some extensions to integrate with LDAP (probably the most common user store) are supported
Security Policy can be managed using a web interface.
NO - though one could be build fairly simply - if you're comfortable with development, and given that this is likely to be a non-trivial project, I'd recommend considering this a non-blocker given that the product is open-source
Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens).
YES - easily customized through some basic HTML/CSS editing
Highly available (99.9%)
YES - both reliable, and can support multiple node/failover scenarios easily
Scalable.
YES - used in many high-traffic environments both intranet and internet
Runs on Red Hat Linux.
YES
Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On is not what you're after - it requires a Windows executable to be deployed. Oracle Access Manager is closer to what you're after (though it's not free or Java-based).
The major commercial players in the Identity and Access Management (IAM) market space are CA, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Novell. None of these are free solutions but they have many of the features that you are looking for.
For free software, I recommend DACS: The Distributed Access Control System. I know that one department where I work has implemented this with great success. It doesn't have as many features the commercial IAM products but otherwise is a good solution.
I have used Tivoli Access Manager backing onto Websphere and IIS boxes - the way it writes access information into the page headers is very useful. On the downside, I didnt find the DB2 Ldap backend very scalable or reliable, and you know with IBM this isn't going to come cheap.
Also the asynchronous paths (junctions) used to identify different servers is a bit of a hack really eg http://mysite/myserver/myapp - a very bad idea and not thought through very well.