Watery end

March 11th, 2007

Having not got much exercise last week I attempted to sneak out for a run this morning. I set off south from Kidlington down the canal towards Oxford. At Dukes Lock I noted the branch off to the right for the Thames and concluded that I might be able to make a loop. I therefore continued along the canal to Port Meadow and then turned right through Wolvercote. I then turned north again up the Isis (Thames). Unfortunately, unlike canals, rivers have a nasty habit of branching and it wasn’t long before I found myself paddling across some flooded field not entirely sure where I was going. Eventually I ended up at the ring road but mistakenly turned right again, ending up back at Wolvercote. Looking at the map this evening I realise that the footpath that I had seen turn off never crosses the river and therefore my cunning route was always doomed to failure. Still, my 45 minute run ended up being twice that!

Blenheim Palace

March 11th, 2007

282We were up near Oxford this weekend visiting friends. On Saturday afternoon we headed over to Blenheim Palace. On previous occasions we’re sure there was a price per car but we baulked at paying £7.30 for each of the four adults just to get in to the Park and Gardens. Instead, we parked in the free car park in Woodstock and wandered down to one of the gates where the public rights of way enter the grounds. Having enjoyed a pleasant stroll we went up to the palace in search of a drink. Whilst browsing the gift shop we accidentally left via the exit from the palace and hence found ourselves in one of the courtyards. We could therefore take a peek at the water terraces before finally parting company with some money for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Service Registry Eclipse Plugin

March 9th, 2007

There are a couple of options for accessing artifacts in WebSphere Service Registry and Repository at development time. (NB I used to call them artefacts but this seemed to confuse the Americans!) If you are using WebSphere Integration Developer (Version 6.0.2) then you can use the Enterprise Service Discovery wizard to query a registry and retrieve artifacts. This support is the subject of a new developerWorks article.

Read the rest of this entry »

64-bit Service Registry

March 9th, 2007

As I don’t believe this is currently documented, I thought I should mention that although WebSphere Service Registry and Repository will run on 64-bit AIX, it cannot be used with 64-bit DB2. If you’re running on a 64-bit platform then make sure that you create a 32-bit DB2 instance otherwise you will get failures during the installation process (he says having learnt this the hard way!).

Rain stops tourism

March 9th, 2007

I’ve spent the past four days in Turku, Finland, on work. Unfortunately there are no direct flights which meant changing in Helsinki and 7 hours travel time door-to-door on the way out and nearly 10 on the way back. I arrived mid-afternoon on Monday to blue skies and a snow covered landscape. Sadly, by the time I came to think about exploring the city the following evening, the skies had turned grey and the snow was rapidly disappearing from the streets under continual rain. The combination of cold and rain was enough to confine me to my hotel room.

Things didn’t improve a great deal on Wednesday either. Only when it was time to leave on Thursday did the sun deign to show its face again. It was by then too late to visit the cathedral and renowned castle. Nor, despite being closer than our last Finnish trip to Salo, did I make it to Moominworld!

WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Handbook

March 9th, 2007

The WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Handbook has now made it out of draft. Having submitted a whole raft of feedback on an early draft I did appear in the acknowledgements but mysteriously my name hasn’t made the final cut! Notwithstanding this, the book provides excellent coverage from the basic concepts, through installation, to advanced customization, governance and integration with WebSphere ESB, ITCAM for SOA, WebSphere Message Broker and CICS. (Note that, as of the recent 3.6.0.8 firmware version, DataPower can also be used to perform lookups in the registry.)

One topic that the WebSphere ESB chapter covers is how to connect the endpoint lookup mediation primitive to WebSphere Service Registry and Repository via SSL. This doesn’t currently work out of the box. You will need to apply APAR IC51354 to WebSphere ESB and then follow the instructions in the book or corresponding technote.

Long and wet

March 4th, 2007

We were helping at the SOC event at New Copse Inclosure today and it was raining when we arrived, rained nearly the whole time we were there and was still raining when we left. Indeed, it was raining so much that whilst we were there the road out from Brockenhurst was closed due to flooding.

Read the rest of this entry »

Drowning in SOA

March 2nd, 2007

Andre Tost has written an article which explains one of the reasons why I never have enough hours in the day. His closing remarks do offer me some hope though!