FasterTrading 2008년과 UK와 유럽인 무역 시장의 파편

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우리의 시청에 있는 일에 바쁜 일 마지막 화요일 (제 4) 나가 인텔의 FasterTrading 전 일요일 녀석이, 장려한 양배추 장소에 IET의 HQ에 Nigel Woodward 접대할 따라 얻을 수 후에, 2008년 사건에 있을 넘어서. …..

FasterTrading 2008 e a fragmentação dos mercados de comércio do Reino Unido e do europeu

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Depois que um dia ocupado no trabalho em nosso escritório de cidade terça-feira de passado (o ô) eu podia começ longitudinalmente ao evento 2008 de FasterTrading de Intel, hospedado por um indivíduo de ex-Sun, Nigel Woodward, sobre no QG do IET no lugar magnífico do Savoy.

Eu apreciei realmente o evento, encontrando o um do melhor funcionamento do vendedor, revestimento do mercado, eventos que eu fui ainda a. Nigel e a equipe de Intel tinham fixado alguns altofalantes top-notch que souberam realmente seu material, e era um prazer escutar-lhes.

Eu dividi o que eu capturei de encontro a cada altofalante e seus passos abaixo (porque uma referência aqui é mais sobre os altofalantes e lá os passos do indivíduo demasiado) e eu usei este borne como uma oportunidade de discutir e o write-up uma vista geral do status atual do europeu e da finança BRITÂNICA e de introduzir no mercado a indústria de troca, assim como o tópico do evento próprio, que era a tecnologia atual de “raça braços” em torno das velocidades de comércio crescentes e do impato de velocidades de comércio aumentadas em se trocar.

O borne é dividido nas seguintes seções que seguem principalmente o curso do evento próprio (aparte da última seção, que são meus reflexões e pensamentos sobre o evento e seu índice).

  • Uma vista geral do mercado
  • O fabricante do novo mercado (lugar)
  • O portador dos padrões
  • O arquiteto do chefe do banco
  • O vendedor
  • O painel dos patrocinadores
  • Meus pensamentos

Uma vista geral do mercado

George Andreadis, cabeça da estratégia da liquidez de AES em Credit Suisse, apresentou “desafios da raça de braços de troca”.

Nosso primeiro altofalante cobriu a fragmentação nos mercados de troca através do Reino Unido e a Europa e porque aquela era e ele deu uma vista geral exemplar de ambos.

Devido a uma variedade de razões, ao número de sistemas de comércio do mercado e aos mercados através de Europa (não apenas no Reino Unido) foi ràpida expandir, fragmentando o mercado de troca do mercado europeu, conduzindo à maior competição. Foi sobre falar aproximadamente:

  • Mercados nos instrumentos financeiros diretivos (MiFID)
  • Liquidez escura e associações escuras
  • Baixa latência e baixa troca da latência
  • Roteamento esperto da ordem (SOR) contra a execução esperta da ordem (SOE)

Mercados nos instrumentos financeiros diretivos (MiFID)

A nível muito básico os mercados na diretriz orientadora dos instrumentos financeiros (MiFID) são um acordo legal entre as nações da área econômica européia controlar e regular a troca em uma maneira aberta, e conduziram à “abertura” dos mercados de troca europeus, e finalmente à fragmentação atual considerada naqueles mercados.

Liquidez escura e associações escuras

A liquidez escura significa geralmente a liquidez que não está revelada, e quando coletado junto lhe está em associações escuras. Estas são coleções do fora-mercado do líquido escuro onde há um desejo trocar sem a exposição em livro de encomendas. Porque a liquidez não é revelada os participantes do mercado potencial não podem determinar a profundidade do mercado. Isto é útil para os comerciantes que movem um grande número partes sem revelar-se ao mercado livre, e é usado geralmente para tentar e reduzir o impato do mercado ao trocar as grandes ordens (de que moveria de outra maneira o mercado se sabido).

Baixa latência e baixa troca da latência

A baixa latência é atualmente um tópico muito “quente” para comerciantes como “uma vantagem de 1 milissegundo em aplicações de troca pode valer a pena $100 milhões um o ano”. É focalizada para a condução abaixo da latência de comércio da transação tanto quanto possível.

A baixa troca da latência é sobre a utilização da redução de velocidade da transação para ganhar a vantagem financeira. As diferenças tremendas na latência da transação através do mundo tinham conduzido para exijir para tratar os sistemas que poderiam dar a mais baixa latência possível, de fato uma das diferenças as mais impressionantes que falou era aproximadamente a comparação na latência através do mundo, latência nos E.U. era tão bom quanto a Senhora 5, o Reino Unido era circa a Senhora 20, enquanto a média européia era tão pobre quanto a Senhora 40.

Roteamento esperto da ordem (SOR) contra a execução esperta da ordem (SOE)

Igualmente falou sobre o roteamento esperto da ordem (SOR) no respeito à execução esperta da ordem (SOE).

Na troca passada foi focalizado muito sobre a qualidade do comércio e isto é chamado geralmente execução de Esperto Ordem (SOE). Porque você tem um mercado a ir a, como a troca conservada em estoque de Londres (LSE), você precisaria de extrair tanto valor financeiro fora de começ o “direito de comércio” como possível.

Com a emergência de mercados de troca novos, o valor financeiro pode ser entregado compreendendo que mercado de troca lhe dará a melhor recompensa para seu comércio, e é muito sobre quem a trocar com, isto é chamado tipicamente roteamento de Esperto Ordem (SOR).

O sor olha para responder à pergunta: “quem eu emito meu comércio para fazer o comércio o mais rentável”.

SOE responde à pergunta: “como e quando fizer a posição de I e para transacionar meu comércio para fazer o comércio o mais rentável”.

A latência obviamente baixa que troca impatos e está atualmente em um relacionamento symbiotic com sor.

O fabricante do novo mercado (lugar)

Peter Randall, CEO do Qui-x, apresentado: Do “modelos & tecnologia de troca novo mercado”.

Nosso altofalante seguinte deu-nos uma vista geral de porque a latência era assim que retarda no Reino Unido (e através de Europa) de encontro à latência de troca encontrada nos E.U. Sua opinião era que nós no Reino Unido tínhamos computarizado o legado, processos humanos focalizada, de negócio, e movido nunca realmente longe de suportar esse modelo. Considerando que os americanos tinham entregado os sistemas de comércio computarizados, que não confiaram processamento humano/orgânico da emulação.

As trocas novas como o Qui-x tomaram a aproximação americana e começaram-na com os processos projetados para sistemas eletrônicos no início. Esta era uma razão principal pela qual a latência da troca de Qui-X era tão baixa quanto a Senhora 7, a Senhora apenas 2 fora da média (Nasdaq) americana, uma Senhora do todo 13 mais rapidamente do que a média (LSE) BRITÂNICA, e uma Senhora 33 enorme mais rapidamente do que a média européia!

Para cumprir o desejo trocar em associações escuras, Peter levantou a pergunta retórica “o que permitiu a transformação dos mercados europeus e o crescimento destes sistemas de comércio do mercado?” respondendo a lhe:

  1. Os mercados na diretriz orientadora dos instrumentos financeiros (MiFID) – um acordo através de Europa para o regulamento côordenado e harmonizado na indústria financeira
  2. Protocolo financeiro da troca de informação (REPARO) – padrão de relação comum
  3. Dados do mercado – disponíveis e livres
  4. Abatendo – os baixos custos da transação passam sobre benefícios financeiros aos compradores e aos vendedores – do “o benefício fabricante e do comprador”

Eu penso que há muito aqui para que os outros sistemas de comércio (dos dados) tomem a bordo, e os pontos a que atribuem um sistema precisa de ter que ser bem sucedido, aparte da exigência óbvia para do “uma necessidade genuína negócio”:

  1. Regulamento – concordar limites e delimitação (isto é quem é responsável para que, quando)
  2. Standard abertos – regulado bom, mantido e controlado, com uma aproximação inclusiva a definir o padrão
  3. Status compartilhado – onde o status atual é sabido e há uma marca de nível comum ao juiz de encontro
  4. Bom valor-custo – para todo o interessado

O portador dos padrões

Kevin Houstoun, CTO de BidRoute, apresentado: “Ganhando a raça à liquidez & aos serviços novos”.

Kevin é uma figura popular na indústria da finança, actuando como um evangelista para o protocolo do REPARO, que é em uma posição ideal a fazer de modo a co-conduz do comité técnico global do protocolo do REPARO, igualmente conduz o grupo de trabalho do repositório e o grupo de trabalho de serviços de correia fotorreceptora.

Deu uma vista geral da rota da oferta como um fornecedor de soluções baseadas sor, explicando mais em torno das arquiteturas do sor.

Um membro da audiência que representa o centro de análise da tecnologia de seguranças (STAC) trouxe acima alguns bons pontos sobre o movimento para arquiteturas de troca baseadas sor estandardizadas e o aumento nos dados disponíveis em torno do desempenho dos sistemas de comércio (que, naturalmente, STAC está conduzindo).

O arquiteto do chefe do banco

Bishop de Tony, arquiteto principal anterior Wachovia ELE (patrocinado comum por Verari e por Wachovia), apresentado: “Troca de alta velocidade: soluções especializadas”.

Tony deu possivelmente uma das melhores vistas gerais de combinar exigências funcionais (neste exemplo aqueles dos comércios) àquela da tecnologia. Era excelente como trabalhou em dois níveis, a vista geral entre o relacionamento entre exigências funcionais e a tecnologia eram boas, mas assim que era o fósforo da tecnologia 2 aquelas exigências do negócio. Tinha controlado este em uma corrediça, e eu fui imprimido sincera muito.

Continuou sobre a falar sobre a tecnologia executada, ele falou sobre as técnicas que executou em Wachovia para conseguir seu domínio nos termos de troca velocidades nos E.U., que incluíram:

  1. O projeto de sistema de comércio estandardizado focalizou em torno dos “vagens
  • A proximidade dos componentes que compo um componente funcional discreto importa – porque afeta a velocidade
  • A velocidade da apresentação/distribuição importa para permitir que o crescimento exponencial seja controlado
  • O projeto estandardizado do centro de dados focalizou em torno dos contentores (tais como o centro de dados de Sun, caixa negra modulares do projeto do aka a “”)
  • Um outro mecanismo para acelerar a apresentação/distribuição
  • De nível elevado da flexibilidade, não impedido tendo que construir uma C.C. nova (e para começ a permissão fazer assim)
  • Evitar pilhas cheias do ISO, usar a tecnologia que fala diretamente à ferragem se e sempre que seja possível
  • Offload o processamento padrão a um chipset da placa de filha
  • Põr algoritmos específicos, proprietários do banco sobre microplaquetas da placa de filha
  • Uso Java entregar ràpida a funcionalidade, setting-up um ambiente onde funcionasse mais rapidamente C++ do que nativa compilado
  • Põr tudo Java baseado na memória, cada dispositivo que tem 80GB da memória
  • Desligar a coleção de lixo – incapacitar a coleção de lixo Deterministic (GC), permitindo que o processo acumule memória uncollected contanto que os 80 GB “associação” forem bastante para a começ através do ciclo de comércio, quando pode ser forçado para fazer então a coleção de lixo
  • Mover o armazenamento para em linha e o sólido – indic meios
  • Tony sugeriu que aquele circa 30% de todo o espaço da C.C. estivesse pegado agora pelo armazenamento, e fosse imperativo encolher esta pegada para maximizar o poder do cálculo disponível.

Eu supor, unsurprisingly, me apreciei a apresentação de Tony mais, gastando muita de minha carreira nELE papéis da arquitetura, e um de meus interesses principais que são como a tecnologia é executada para encontrar o negócio genuíno precisa.

Na conversação com o Tony após o evento disse estes artigos:

  • A medida importou para justificar a opinião e o patrocínio. Usaram OpsTier em Wachovia para fornecer uma vista vertical com suas arquiteturas e aplicações da n-série (do múltiplo), e uma vista horizontal através das aplicações, da infra-estrutura, da rede e do armazenamento.
  • Sun é uma das grandes empresas de software no mundo, e um pouco do que dá afastado nosso software e carrega-o para a ferragem, nós devemos fazer o carregamento oposto para nosso software e a doação de nossa ferragem afastado para livre (têm que admitir que eu ouvi este antes, mas geralmente disse completamente a “lingüeta no mordente” que eu não senti com versão de Tony).

O vendedor

Pavel Yegerov, serviços financeiros do arquiteto principal em Intel, apresentado: Da “técnicas aceleração para a infra-estrutura do dianteiro-escritório”.

Basicamente esta era vista geral do mapa rodoviário de Intel, bem apresentava e põr junto. Eu encontrei que algum do trabalho comum que Intel financia a equipe estão fazendo dentro da indústria interessante (provavelmente Nigel para agradecer no mínimo a alguma daquele, patrocinou as primeiras obras em torno do REPARO em Sun circa seis ou sete anos há).

O painel dos patrocinadores

Havia uma respresentação das seguintes companhias (triste eu não travei os nomes, apenas quem representou):

  • Fujitsu-Siemens
  • BEA (agora uma subsidiária de Oracle naturalmente)
  • Merrill Lynch
  • Goldman Sachs
  • Fidelidade

Não recordar muito desta parte do evento, embora a rachadura de BEA fale sobre o processamento complexo do evento (CEP), sugerindo que as ferramentas do WYSIWYG para a engenharia Process de negócio (BPE, e é familiar próximo, Re-engineering do processo de negócio, ou BPR) poderiam facilmente ser permitidas pelo uso de seu conjunto de ferramentas das companhias (presumir que este seria o que foi chamado integração de WebLogic, ou WLI, funcionando sobre o gerente do processo de negócio de WebLogic, ou BPM, que próprio funciona sobre o servidor de aplicações de BEA J2EE).

Sugeriu que esta se transformasse uma tecnologia aceitável devido ao movimento de “tudo” à memória.

Sincera eu pensei este extremamente questionável, como que a ferramenta, tanta como de sua laia, abstrai tanto a complexidade técnica a fim de simplificar seus funcionamentos para ser usado por Negócio Analista ao ponto que as capacidades non-functional tais como a velocidade, o desempenho, e a confiabilidade, são impatadas prejudicial.

Eu vim através desta edição antes, e é especificamente fazer com a abstração excedente da solução, ao ponto que ignora, ou um pouco não toma na consideração, os confinamentes técnicos.

Pode o mais obviamente ser demonstrada comparando dois diagramas de seqüência, um que mostra como o analista/desenhador do negócio pensa que trabalha baseado nas chamadas que funcionais faz, e então como trabalha realmente baseado em adicionar as chamadas Non-Functional faz. Mesmo se você não compreende diagramas de seqüência deve pelo menos contrastar que está indo muito mais em do que a pessoa que projeta estes processos está ciente de.

Está aqui um diagrama de seqüência do exemplo, considerado a nível funcional.

Está aqui o mesmo diagrama de seqüência, considerado a nível Non-Functional.

Como você pode claramente ver está indo muito em “sob a capa”, e este não deve ser demitido puramente para ganhar aumentos no tempo da entrega/execução. Eu farei um borne apenas neste assunto em um futuro próximo.

Meus pensamentos

Está aqui uma seção das coisas que veio se ocupar durante e após o evento…

Alguns pensamentos na HPC através das indústrias de deferimento

Don Grantham, EVP para nossos vendas e serviços globais (GSS) que a organização (basicamente Don é a cabeça da engenharia inteira do “campo” ou do “cliente”) disse em seu tom básico medida à organização BRITÂNICA a “o que você se importa com, porque você virá se importar com o que você mede”, e isto é a base de meus pensamentos nos sistemas diferentes da HPC através do mundo, e através das indústrias de deferimento.

Eu encontro que “os sistemas diferentes da HPC através das indústrias de deferimento estão definidos pelas medidas atribuídas a elas”, assim que para sistemas da HPC na instrução e pesquiso este sou tipicamente teraflops e semelhante, o material do Top500. Mas para sistemas da HPC na finança são medidos tipicamente na latência de comércio, na realização transactional e na velocidade algorítmica. Enquanto para Google e o outro Internet baseou da “grades da HPC do cálculo nuvem” o foco é respostas bem sucedidas em um período de tempo dado.

Porque as exigências funcionais são diferentes, mesmo que compartilhem da mesma sorte de exigências non-functional da escala e de desempenho, a arquitetura e a topologia através dos sistemas da HPC são diferentes, conduzindo às grades e à HPC específicas da indústria.

Eu supor este é consideravelmente óbvio, mas eu encontro que é o óbvio, atributo do núcleo, material que os povos perdem o foco de e o esquecem convenientemente. A infra-estrutura entre os tipos de deferimento da HPC, como delineados pela indústria, pode ter muitas similaridades na camada da infra-estrutura (velocidade, desempenho, componentes da tecnologia, rede, topologia isto é como coube junto), porém diferem imensa quando vem à aplicação/camadas lógicas e funcionais.

Alguns pensamentos em sistemas de mensagem através das indústrias de deferimento

Expandindo minha série de vistas gerais de sistema da mensagem fora de essas em sistemas de mensagem no governo para cobrir outras indústrias, incluindo: terra de comércio (as bolsas e sua laia, os sistemas de comércio dos dados do mercado, REPARO, FIXml, rápido e SwiftNet, etc.), terra de serviço público (Moresco, o DTC, etc.), terra da energia (gás, óleo, e outras trocas de troca da energia e do recurso), de varejo (B2B, etc.), fabricação (oferta e procura), meios (notícia, e dados do mercado demasiado se você é Reuters), e Telco (cliente e transferência e transações do serviço).

O que estes sistemas de mensagem indic é que todos está compartilhando para permitir o negócio, e que matérias da inclusão e da participação.

Alguns pensamentos em acelerar sistemas de comércio em linha reta com do processamento (STP)

Assim como o movimento re-engineer os mercados de troca para evitar processos de negócio do legado, uma outra maneira de melhorar a velocidade seria aposentar-se o dicionário de dados existente durante o comércio relativo em linha reta com do processamento (STP).

Não traduzir dentro e fora dos dicionários de dados proprietários locais, em lugar de do REPARO do uso como o dicionário de dados nativo durante todo uma transação de comércio.

FasterTrading 2008 and the fragmentation of the UK and European Trade Markets

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After a busy day at work in our City Office last Tuesday (the 4th) I was able to get along to Intel’s FasterTrading 2008 event, hosted by an ex-Sun guy, Nigel Woodward, over at the HQ of the IET at the magnificent Savoy Place.

I really enjoyed the event, finding it one of the best vendor run, market facing, events I’ve yet gone to. Nigel and the Intel team had secured some top-notch speakers who really knew their stuff, and it was a pleasure to listen to them.

I’ve broken down what I captured against each speaker and their pitches below (as a reference here’s more about the speakers and there individual pitches too) and I’ve used this post as an opportunity to discuss and write-up an overview of the current status of the European and UK Finance and Market Trading industry, as well as the topic of the event itself, which was the current technology ‘Arms Race’ around increasing Trade speeds and the impact of increased Trade speeds on trading itself.

The post is divided into the following sections which mainly follow the course of the event itself (apart from the last section, which are my reflections and thoughts about the event and its content).

  • A Market Overview
  • The New Market(place) Maker
  • The Standard(s) Bearer
  • The Bank Chief Architect
  • The Vendor
  • The Sponsors Panel
  • My Thoughts

A Market Overview

George Andreadis, Head of AES Liquidity Strategy at Credit Suisse, presented “Challenges of the trading arms race”.

Our first speaker covered the fragmentation in the trading markets across the UK and Europe and why that was and he gave an exemplary overview of both.

Due to a variety of reasons, the number of Market Trading systems and Marketplaces across Europe (not just in the UK) has been rapidly expanding, fragmenting the European Market Trading market, leading to greater competition. He went on to talk about:

  • Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID)
  • Dark Liquidity and Dark Pools
  • Low Latency and Low Latency Trading
  • Smart Order Routing (SOR) versus Smart Order Execution (SOE)

Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID)

At a very basic level the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) is a legal agreement between the European Economic Area nations to manage and regulate trading in an open manner, and has led to the ‘opening up’ of the European Trading Markets, and ultimately to the current fragmentation seen in those markets.

Dark Liquidity and Dark Pools

Dark Liquidity generally means liquidity which is not revealed, and when collected together it is in Dark Pools. These are off-market collections of Dark Liquid where there is a desire to trade without display on order books. Because liquidity is not revealed potential market participants cannot determine market depth. This is useful for traders moving large numbers of shares without revealing themselves to the open market, and is generally used to try and reduce market impact when trading large orders (that would otherwise move the market if known).

Low Latency and Low Latency Trading

Low Latency is currently a very ‘hot’ topic for Traders as “a 1-millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth $100 million a year“. It is focused towards driving down Trade transaction latency as much as possible.

Low Latency Trading is about utilising the transaction speed reduction to gain financial advantage. The tremendous differences in transaction latency across the World had led to demand for dealing with systems that could give the lowest latency possible, in fact one of the most striking differences that he spoke about was the comparison in latency across the world, latency in the US was as good as 5 ms, the UK was circa 20 ms, whilst the European average was as poor as 40 ms.

Smart Order Routing (SOR) versus Smart Order Execution (SOE)

He also spoke about Smart Order Routing (SOR) in deference to Smart Order Execution (SOE).

In the past Trading was focused very much about the quality of the trade and this is commonly called Smart Order Execution (SOE). As you have one market to go to, such as the London Stock Exchange (LSE), you’d need to extract as much financial value out of getting the trade ‘right’ as possible.

With the emergence of new Trading Markets, financial value can be delivered by understanding which trading marketplace will give you the best reward for your trade, and is very much about who to trade with, this is typically called Smart Order Routing (SOR).

SOR looks to answer the question: “who do I send my trade to so as to make the most profitable trade”.

SOE answers the question: “how and when do I position and transact my trade to make the most profitable trade”.

Obviously Low Latency Trading impacts and is currently in a symbiotic relationship with SOR.

The New Market(place) Maker

Peter Randall, CEO of Chi-X, presented: “New market trading models & technology”.

Our next speaker gave us an overview of why Latency was so slow in the UK (and across Europe) against the trading latency found in the US. His opinion was that we in the UK had computerised legacy, human focused, business processes, and never really moved away from supporting that model. Whereas the Americans had delivered computerised trading systems, which did not rely upon emulating human / organic processing.

The new exchanges like Chi-X took the American approach and started with processes designed for electronic systems from the outset. This was a principal reason why Chi-X’s trading latency was as low as 7 ms, just 2 ms off of the American (NASDAQ) average, a whole 13 ms faster than the UK (LSE) average, and a whopping 33 ms faster than the European average !

To fulfil the desire to trade in Dark Pools, Peter posed the rhetorical question “What has enabled the transformation of the European markets and the growth of these Market trading systems ?” answering it:

  1. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) – an agreement across Europe for co-ordinated and harmonised regulation in the financial industry
  2. Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol – common interface standard
  3. Market Data – available and free
  4. Rebating – low transaction costs pass on financial gains to both the buyers and sellers – the “maker and taker” benefit

I think that there is a lot here for the other (data) trading systems to take on board, and points to which attributes any such system needs to have to be successful, apart from the obvious requirement for a genuine “Business Need”:

  1. Regulation – agree boundaries and demarcation (i.e. who is responsible for what, when)
  2. Open Standards – well regulated, maintained and managed, with an inclusive approach to defining the standard
  3. Shared Status – where the current status is known and there is a common benchmark to judge against
  4. Good Value for Money – for all concerned

The Standard(s) Bearer

Kevin Houstoun, CTO of BidRoute, presented: “Winning the race to liquidity & new services”.

Kevin is a popular figure in the Finance industry, acting as an evangelist for the FIX protocol, which he is in an ideal position to do so as the co-lead of the FIX Protocol’s Global Technical Committee, he also leads the repository working group and the web services working group.

He gave an overview of Bid Route as a supplier of SOR based solutions, explaining more around SOR architectures.

An audience member representing the Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC) brought up some good points about the move towards standardised SOR based trading architectures and the increase in data available around the performance of trading systems (which, of course, STAC is driving).

The Bank Chief Architect

Tony Bishop, former Chief Architect Wachovia IT (sponsored jointly by Verari and Wachovia), presented: “High-speed trading: specialized solutions”.

Tony gave possibly one of the best overviews of matching functional requirements (in this instance those of trades) to that of technology. It was excellent as it worked on two levels, both the overview between the relationship between functional requirements and technology was good, but so was the match of the technology to those business requirements. He’d managed this in one slide, and frankly I was very impressed.

He continued on to talk about the technology implemented, he spoke about the techniques he implemented at Wachovia to achieve their dominance in terms of trade speeds in the US, which included:

  1. Standardised trade system design focused around ‘Pods’
  • Proximity of components making up a discrete functional component matters – because it affects speed
  • Speed of Roll Out / Deployment matters to allow exponential growth to be managed
  • Standardised Data Centre design focused around Shipping Containers (such as Sun’s Modular Data Center, aka project ‘Black Box’)
    • Another mechanism to speed up roll out / deployment
    • High level of flexibility, not encumbered by having to build a new DC (and get permission to do so)
  • Avoid full ISO stacks, use technology which talks directly to the hardware if and where possible
    • Offload Standard processing to a Daughter Board chipset
    • Put specific, proprietary bank algorithms on Daughter Board chips
  • Use Java to rapidly deliver functionality, setting up an environment where it ran quicker than natively compiled C++
    • Put everything Java based in memory, each device having 80GB of memory
    • Turn off Garbage Collection – disable Deterministic Garbage Collection (GC), allowing the process to build up uncollected memory as long as the 80 GB ‘pool’ is enough to get it through the trade cycle, when it can be forced to do Garbage Collection then
  • Move storage to online and solid state mediums
    • Tony suggested that circa 30% of all DC floor space is now taken up by storage, and it is imperative to shrink this footprint so as to maximise the compute power available.

    I suppose, unsurprisingly, I enjoyed Tony’s presentation most, having spent much of my career in IT Architecture roles, and one of my main interests being how technology is implemented to meet genuine business needs.

    In conversation with Tony after the event he said these items:

    • Measurement mattered to justify belief and sponsorship. They used OpsTier at Wachovia to provide a vertical view through their (multiple) n-tier architectures and applications, and a horizontal view across the applications, infrastructure, network and storage.
    • Sun is one of the greatest Software Companies in the World, and rather than give away our software and charge for hardware, we should do the opposite charging for our software and giving our hardware away for free (have to admit I’ve heard this before, but usually it’s said quite ‘tongue in cheek’ which I didn’t feel with Tony’s version).

    The Vendor

    Pavel Yegerov, Chief Architect Financial Services at Intel, presented: “Acceleration techniques for the front-office infrastructure”.

    Basically this was overview of the Intel roadmap, well presented and put together. I found some of the joint work that the Intel Finance team are doing within the industry interesting (probably Nigel to thank for at least some of that, he championed the early work around FIX at Sun circa six or seven years ago).

    The Sponsors Panel

    There was representation from the following companies (sadly I didn’t catch the names, just who they represented):

    • Fujitsu-Siemens
    • BEA (now an Oracle subsidiary of course)
    • Merrill Lynch
    • Goldman Sachs
    • Fidelity

    Don’t recall much from this part of the event, although the chap from BEA did speak about Complex Event Processing (CEP), suggesting that the WYSIWYG tools for Business Process Engineering (BPE, and it’s close relative, Business Process Re-engineering, or BPR) could be easily enabled by the use of his companies toolset (presume this would be what was called WebLogic Integration, or WLI, running over the WebLogic Business Process Manager, or BPM, which itself runs over the BEA J2EE Application Server).

    He suggested that this would become an acceptable technology due to the move of ‘everything’ to memory.

    Frankly I thought this extremely questionable, as that tool, as many of its ilk, abstract so much technical complexity in a bid to simplify their workings so as to be used by Business Analysts to the point that non-functional capabilities such as speed, performance, and reliability, are impacted detrimentally.

    I’ve come across this issue before, and it is specifically to do with the over abstraction of solution, to the point that it ignores, or rather does not take into consideration, the technical constraints.

    It can be most obviously demonstrated by comparing two sequence diagrams, one showing how the Business Analyst / Designer thinks it works based on the Functional calls it makes, and then how it actually works based upon adding the Non-Functional calls it makes. Even if you don’t understand sequence diagrams it should at least contrast that there is a lot more going on than the person designing these processes is aware of.

    Here is an example Sequence Diagram, seen at the Functional Level.

    Here is the same Sequence Diagram, seen at the Non-Functional Level.

    As you can plainly see there is a lot going on ‘under the hood’, and this should not be dismissed purely to gain increases in delivery / implementation time. I will do a post just on this subject in the near future.

    My Thoughts

    Here’s a section of the things that came to mind during and after the event…

    Some thoughts on HPC across differing Industries

    Don Grantham, EVP for our Global Sales and Services (GSS) Organisation (basically Don is the head of the entire ‘Field’ or ‘Customer’ engineering) said in his keynote to the UK organisation “measure what you care for, because you’ll come to care for what you measure”, and this underlies my thoughts on the different HPC systems across the world, and across the differing industries.

    I find that “the different HPC systems across differing industries are defined by the measurements attributed to them”, so for HPC systems in education and research this is typically teraflops and the like, the stuff of the Top500. But for HPC systems in Finance they are typically measured in trade latency, transactional fulfillment and algorithmic speed. Whilst for Google and the other Internet based ‘cloud compute’ HPC grids the focus is successful responses in a given time period.

    As the functional requirements are different, even though they share the same sort of non-functional scale and performance requirements, the architecture and topology across HPC systems is different, leading to Industry Specific Grids and HPC.

    I suppose this is pretty obvious, but I find it’s the obvious, core attribute, stuff that people lose focus of and seemingly forget. The Infrastructure between the differing HPC types, as delineated by industry, can have a lot of similarities at the infrastructure layer (speed, performance, technology components, network, topology i.e. how it’s fitted together), however they differ immensely when it comes to the application / logical and functional layers.

    Some thoughts on messaging systems across differing Industries

    Expanding my series of messaging system overviews outside of the ones on messaging systems in Government to cover other industries, including: trade land (the stock exchanges and their ilk, the Market Data trading systems, FIX, FIXml, Swift and SwiftNet, etc.), utility land (Moresco, the DTC, etc.), energy land (gas, oil, and other energy and resource trading exchanges), retail (B2B, etc.), manufacturing (supply and demand), media (news, and market data too if you’re a Reuters), and Telco (customer and service transfer and transactions).

    What these messaging systems point out is that everyone is sharing to enable business, and that inclusion and participation matters.

    Some thoughts on speeding up trading systems Straight Through Processing (STP)

    As well as the move to re-engineer the trading market places to avoid legacy Business Processes, another way to improve speed would be to retire the existent data dictionary during trade related Straight Through Processing (STP).

    Don’t translate in to and out of local proprietary data dictionaries, instead use FIX as the native data dictionary throughout a trade transaction.

    Goodbye Gary Gygax

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    So farewell to E. Gary Gygax the father of the modern table-top role playing game and genre who passed away on Tuesday (the 4th). Probably most fondly remembered as the man behind ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘, ‘Advanced Dungeons & Dragons‘ and ‘TSR Inc.‘ (now incorporated into ‘Wizards of the Coast‘).

    This obituary for Gary from the Times Online summarises his life and work better than I could, so I’ll focus on my thoughts and memories as a Role-Playing gamer.

    Probably no surprise that I spent a significant amount of time playing (and thinking) about role-playing games, mainly during my school years and just after, and that most of my school pals were members of the school RPG club, kindly hosted by Mr. Watkins, our Geography teacher.

    I ‘got into’ RPG-ing almost as soon as I arrived at senior school (at eleven), in part because of the recently opened ‘Games Workshop‘ store. It had appeared, almost magically, like Mr. Benn‘s mysterious shop keeper, in the Pallasades part of the Bull Ring, over New Street Station. It was sort of opposite from the Hoover store, which was on the corner and the only place you could buy replacement Hoover bags, and round that corner to the Beatties model shop, which I went to semi-regularly because of my Dad’s passion for model building (unlike every other Beatties that were Departments stores, and appeared to mainly sell ‘Homewares’ it only sold models, who knows what the manager told the head of the chain).

    The Games Workshop mesmerised me and I was absolutely in awe of the the metal fantasy miniatures, made by the recently formed ‘Citadel‘, the Dragons, Chimera, and other Fantasy creatures, especially, as I had spent the last couple of years obsessing over a large variety of Legends and Ancient Mythologies (mainly Greek, Norse, Celtic and British).

    Once at school, and having found there was an RPG club (to which a number of my Chess Club pals were also in), there wasn’t much stopping me joining and learning more. I recall my first D&D; set (not AD&D;, that came at least a couple of months later) was bought for me by my Nan, Gladys, in Blackpool on a ‘Day Trip’ whilst on Holiday visiting her home in Cumbria (I went to visit her, my Grandad, Bill, and my Aunt Chris, almost all of the six weeks holidays each year, and for much of the other school breaks too). Mom was with us that day, and I’m ashamed to say I suspect I badgered my Nan into getting it for me, as I’m sure she would have preferred to get me something less ‘virtual’ than a game that you mainly played in your imagination.

    And so for the next three or four years RPG’s were my main hobby, from AD&D;, T&T;, Traveller, MERP, RoleMaster, to CoC and Paranoia, I had the rulebooks and I played them all, even joining the RPG and Wargaming club held in Kingstanding at the Community Centre that met every Wednesday evening and all of each first Sunday of the Month.

    Needless to say Gary Gygax was an absolute hero within the RPG community I found myself in, and like all fan boys we’d imagine what treasures the great man might be dreaming up next.

    I really enjoyed playing the advetures Gary created, from the original ‘Temple of Elemental Evil’ (T1), the ‘Against the Giants Trilogy’ (G1, G2 and G3), the ‘Against the Drow Triology’ (D1, D2 and D3) following it and followed by the ‘Queen of the Demonweb Pits’ (Q1), and the ‘Special’ series (S1, S3, and S4, I enjoyed S2 as well but this was written by Lawrence Schick). I even enjoyed Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure (WG5) which killed off my level 20 lizardman in the first half hour, not that I’m bitter or anything, it’s only been twenty years or so (lol).

    Many years later, having left table top RPG-ing for the time being, I was pleased to see Gary turn up again on the ‘Anthology of Interest‘ episode of Futurama, along with a +1 Mace (RPG joke). I was glad to see him on something I liked as much as Futurama, and was pleased to see that he appeared to be doing ‘OK’ despite his being ‘ousted’ from TSR in the mid-80’s.

    Gary’s work, and play, in translating Wargaming rules innovatively into what became the beginning of RPG rules in D&D; and AD&D;, followed by socialising them directly by play shouldn’t be underestimated, especially in the effect it has had on it’s major offspring: the Computer role-playing game and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

    So if you’re a fan of Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Elder Scrolls, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Runescape, or any of the ilk, then you’ve got Gary to thank for starting the whole RPG revolution which led to these games.

    The E stood for Ernest, which I discovered when I excitedly found what can only be described as a primeval ‘easter egg’, Gary’s initials included in the map for ‘Expedition to the Barrier Peaks‘ (S3), the one about the crashed space ship in the AD&D; universe (the original ‘Greyhawk’ one). Yes finding the letters E G G in a map for a RPG adventure was pretty exciting to me when I was twelve.

    I made a lot of good friends during the time of my life when I was table-top RPG-ing, and look back on it fondly, for that I’m really grateful, so thanks for all the good times gaming Gary and ‘Goodbye’.

    Ouch !

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    So I went and asked one of my friends at work what they thought of my blog, and after sending the following reply they asked me if I’d be posting it (albeit anonymously the little scamp !). ….. 1 Trackback

    Get ready for JavaOne 2008 !

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    Get ready for JavaOne 2008, the leading annual Java event, this year held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, between May the 6th and the 9th. …..

    Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture – Event Update

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    Just a short post re: the “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” event I presented at last week for the Birmingham Branch of the BCS.

    Pleased to say that the event went very well, with a very good turn out, and I was told that it was almost twice the size of the average group meeting and the largest for the preceding year.

    Sadly I only presented a few slides, although I spoke for almost two hours, and I won’t be posting them in the short term for two reasons, first, there were only a few slides with no electronically captured notes, and second, I have a couple more presentations and talks to give on the topic, and this material will be the basis for them (more details below).

    Basically the areas I covered, without giving too much away, were:

    1. What is Enterprise Architecture ?
    • Public Definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA)
    • My Definition of EA (as a practitioner)
    • An overview of the major EA frameworks
    • A comparative analysis of the major EA Framework variants, with particular attention to Zachman model (and the ZFEA) and the Open Group’s TOGAF
    • The relationship of EA to other technical architecture disciplines (Application Architecture, Systems / Infrastructure Architecture and Solution Architecture)
    • The relationship between EA and other major “Macro IT” initiatives, such as ITIL, Cobit, CMM, etc.
  • Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture
    • A large Utility company: and how an EA team led it’s business into a £70 Million black hole, and what we had to do to “rescue” the situation
    • A large Government department: and how EA can enable the definition of SOA Roadmaps and Transformation plans
    • A large Government organisation: and how getting the right EA Governance structure is key to ensuring the success of the overall IT change programme
  • Recommendations & Summary
    • A variety of recommendations when implementing and governing EA programmes
  • Q & A
    • An open session

    The responses to the event were very positive, Howard Hewitt, Senior Consultant at Syntaxnet kindly dropped me an email after the event saying:

    “Just a quick note to thank you for the talk in Birmingham on Monday night. It was very informative and useful.”

    Whilst another comment sent in by email was:

    “I enjoyed your presentation on Enterprise Architecture, thanks. I thought it provided a pragmatic view; something sorely lacking within the world of IT!”

    My friend, and the person who taught me the C programming language many years ago, Walter Milner, said:

    “Gadzooks!”, to go back a further century. On behalf of the BCS, thanks Wayne.

    And it was especially nice to see Micheal Flaherty, with whom I worked on the 1901 census website, at the event too.

    As to the upcoming events which I’ll be presenting the next iteration of this material, they should be another BCS event, an IET event, and this year’s European leg of the Open Group’s “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2008”.

    Reader’s of this blog may be aware this will be my third year presenting for the Open Group on Enterprise Architecture, having presented at the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2007” in Paris, and the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2006” in London).

    More details on these upcoming events as I get further confirmations, dates, locations and times.

    Sun and VMware announce OEM agreement

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    Just been informed by Brian Glynn (one of our Senior Consultants in the Systems Practice) who is currently at VMworld 2008, that Sun Microsystems and VMware have announced an OEM Agreement adding VMware Virtualization to our x64 Server and Storage systems . …..

    You really know you’re using software heavily…

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    …when you’re raising bugs against it.

    So my first Roller Weblogger bug, ROL-1667 or, rather, “Date URLs incorrectly use updateTime to sort entries“.

    Basically the get entries pager is selecting entries based upon ‘Updated Date’ and not ‘Published Date’, so accessing entries via entry date, which you’d assume would use ‘Published Date’ actually displays them based upon ‘Updated Date’.

    This effects all date based blog entry selections, so access via date string based URLs or via the Calendar (either large or small variant, whose selections resolve to date based URLs) are all effected too.

    Thankfully Dave raised it for me on the roller bug traq site, although I’ve since created my own account too.

    Given the Open Source paradigm, I’ve decided to try and contribute directly and fix it myself, if no one gets to it before me that is.

    Dave was kind enough to give me the following advice re: contributing to Roller:

    I usually point potential contributors to this: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/2hsB

    You can also contribute by telling us where our wiki and docs need improvement.

    – Dave

    During our email exchange about the bug I also asked Dave about overriding existing macros, especially the macro code for things like get weblog entries (the paging macro getWeblogEntriesPager) and the large calendar (or hCalendarTableBig as it’s also known).

    He gave me the following advice:

    Two places to look for additional info on macro coding:

    1) Template Author Guide (get it here: https://roller.apache.org/download.cgi)
    Lists all models, macros and shows HTML generated by each.

    2) weblog.vm (https://tinyurl.com/yuwfvu)
    Source code for all of the Roller macros.

    – Dave

    I found this bug whilst doing some template enhancements, around differing content per category, which once this bug is fixed I hope to implement. It showed up because of the tag policy I had implemented, and subsequently had a large number of blog entries which had been updated.

    Target Earth – the 2008 Turing Lecture with Dr. James Martin

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    Last night, after work, I was lucky enough to be able to go to one of the Technology highlights of the year, the annual Turing Lecture (2008) . …..

    First time at #1 most popular blogs on https://blogs.sun.com

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    “Cripes !“, as seemingly countless British comic book characters have said over the last century, I appear to have got the most popular blog on https://blogs.sun.com for the first time ever in my blogging lifetime.

    Let’s hope it’s because of interest in the talk and presentation I’m giving on “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” this coming Monday (which I reported a couple of days ago) and not because it’s a slow news day at Sun…

    I was pleasantly surprised to find I’d made #1 most popular blog on our collective blog server after finishing off some work tonight (ah, I hear you think, the shear excitement of weekend work).

    Here’s the screen grab – which as you can guess I’m kind of proud of (third column along: “Popular Blogs” – lol).

    Screen Grab taken on the 16th of February, 2008, at 19:47

    Since writing this entry marking this landmark (sic) I’m even more surprised to find that I’m the victim (or is that ‘lucky winner’ ?) of comment spam. Although I’ve also noticed that they stopped at adding comments on my blog entry about Tom Hanks being a Villa Fan and so, in the style of one of the Catherine Tate sketches doing the rounds “the dirty, Villa dodging… ” (expletive optional).

    I’ll do some analysis of the comments as I’m not sure yet whether to moderate (basically delete) them, it’ll be my first time at that too.

    And to think that I didn’t even have to hold Frank Zappa over my face to get all these page hits (although I hope to join in the ‘sleeveface’ phenomenon as soon as I can find where I’ve buried the last of my vinyl).

    Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture event this coming Monday

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    I’ll be presenting three Enterprise Architecture case studies on Monday at a joint Birmingham BCS Branch and Professional Institute Network West Midlands (PIN WM) event called “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture”.

    The event, 6:00pm for 6:30pm until 8:30pm, on Monday the 18th of February, 2008, is being held in the Trophy Suite of the Tally Ho Sports & Conference Centre (Pershore Road, Birmingham, B5 7RN, next to the Police Training College).

    Your welcome to come along and see me present and talk on the subject, and if you do come along because of reading this blog entry then make sure you say “Hello”.

    There’s more information on the Birmingham BCS Branch event page “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” (and is also listed with PIN WM too).

    There’s a free buffet available from 6pm. Please contact Walter Milner (w.w.milner-AT-bham.ac-DOT-uk) if you intend to be present, so the amount of food and drink for the buffet can be planned.

    For those not familiar with Enterprise Architecture, my current definition is:

    Enterprise Architecture is a technical discipline concerned with gaining a contextual understanding of an IT estate, so that IT estate can be described, communicated, managed, and planned for.

    N.B. Don’t be overtly concerned with the use of the word ‘contextual’ here, substitute ‘High Level’ or ‘Big Picture’ if that feels more comfortable.

    Large (and, increasingly, smaller) enterprises have embraced Enterprise Architecture as a key tool to interpret and strategically manage the complexity of their IT estates, and it’s not surprising that many of them have assembled large teams and spent many millions of pounds to achieve an ‘Enterprise Architecture’.

    These case studies explore my experiences with Enterprise Architecture in three major customer engagements, including an Enterprise Architecture team which led its company into a 70+ million pound ‘pitfall’, the use of Enterprise Architecture to define a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and an example of how much Enterprise Architecture is about achieving the proper Governance model.

    Look forward to seeing you there…

    Welcome ! Tim Holyoake joins Sun Microsystems as Chief Technologist for UK Public Sector

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    Very pleased to say that Tim Holyoake has just joined Sun Microsystems in the UK. …..

    Goodbye Bobby Fischer

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    I’m saddened to hear from this entry on Terry Gardener’s blog that Bobby Fischer passed away yesterday (Thursday the 17th of January, 2008).

    Bobby was one of the cleverest, and yet yampiest, Chess players ever, “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, and it’d be a real surprise if you hadn’t heard of him. Even if you weren’t keen on Chess, Bobby was a ‘larger than life’ figure, often getting in the Press, and had even had the Musical Chess based upon him.

    He achieved a FIDE estimated ELO rating of 2785 after winning the 1972 World Chess Championship against the outgoing Grand Master, Boris Spassky.

    Unfortunately there’s a danger that it’s likely to be some of his behavior and some of the comments he made that he will be remembered for, rather than his Chess playing, or the innovations he brought to Chess (both theory, practice and the game itself).

    In an effort to promote Talent and Creativity, rather than an encyclopedic Analysis of Chess openings, and generate more interesting and vibrant Chess games, he developed Fischer Random Chess (‘FRC’ or Chess960 as it’s now, more frequently, called).

    Other Chess innovations he provided us with included the Fischer Chess Clock.

    Personally I hope that it’s these and his Chess play that he will be remembered for as time passes, because essentially he was an outstanding player.

    It was extremely unlikely that I was ever going to join this list and now I’ll definitely never get the chance.

    Bobby’s Chess Hero was Paul Morphy (another hero of mine too), of whose unprecedented Chess playing talent he said:

    “he was the greatest of them all”

    Howard Staunton, the man credited with giving us the Staunton Chess set was so afraid of playing, and losing to, Paul Morphy, that he hid away saying he was too busy ‘annotating the works of Shakespeare’ to play the young Morphy.

    This article points out the many similarities between Bobby and Paul Morphy: they were both prodigies, they both dominated the other players of their time, they were both were American (unusually in times led by European and Russian play), they both quit in their primes, and they both suffered in Psychological terms. It’s well worth a quick read.

    Goodbye Bobby Fischer – you’ll be sorely missed.

    Tom Hanks, Oscar winning Actor, Producer, Director and… Aston Villa Fan

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    Blimey, to think I actually have something in common with Tom Hanks…

    Turns out Tom supports Aston Villa, probably the best football team in the whole wide World.

    Whilst he was over in the UK to promote the premiere, and release, of “Charlie Wilson’s War” (a comedy film where Tom plays Texan Congressman Charlie Wilson, secretly assisting rebels in Afghanistan in their war with the Soviets, which contributed to the collapse of Soviet Union, and then led to the rise of the Taliban and Islamic Radicalism), Tom recently said:

    “I’m big on Aston Villa because the name is just so sweet. It sounds like a lovely spa”

    I’ve always liked Tom, and his films, but now I really like him. :-)

    However he obviously wasn’t about during the festivities in nearby Lozells and Handsworth in the 1980’s.

    Actually that’s a little harsh as Aston Villa is located by (and named after) the beautiful Aston Hall – I’ve got some photo’s knocking about from when we did our last family visit and I’ll get them up on the site soon – a stunning Jacobean Hall, which even got caught up in the Civil War.

    I was born and brought up around Nechells, Aston, Lozells and Handsworth, spending many an hour playing at Aston Hall park, next door to the Villa Ground.

    I even ended up going to King Edward VI Aston, which ‘sandwiches’ Aston Hall Park, and Aston Hall at it’s centre, with the Villa Ground, and thus spending even more time by the Villa (Hall, club and park), the Holte Pub (56p for a half a pint of Cider) and the “Chippy” opposite the ground.

    The Birmingham evening news had this to say about Tom being a Villa fan:

    What he really knows about football may be open to debate, but Tom is in good celebrity company because also following the Villa are the likes of Prince William and Black Sabbath rocker Ozzy Osbourne.

    Others include Fast Show comedian Mark Williams, violinist Nigel Kennedy, international hockey player Jane Sixsmith, Bank of England chairman Mervyn King, pop group Ocean Colour Scene, Radio WM presenter Phil Upton and members of Duran Duran.

    What the Birmingham post doesn’t go onto say is that that list includes Wayne Horkan esq. too.

    Thanks to Tony Harris, Head of Sales for Health at Sun in the UK, and another fellow Villa fan, for alerting me to this story.

    Relevant links:

    This post is dedicated to James Carlin, the biggest Villa fan I know, Warren Walker, my longest running Villa pal, Wilfred “Wilf” Cashmore, and, of course, to Peter James Horkan, my Dad.

    “AVFC 4 ever” as they say.

    Links for DD-MM-YYYY Not Likely

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    A response to Alec Muffett‘s recent post “A disappointed (occasional) reader…” on his excellent blog.

    I’m sure Alec won’t mind me having posted the following comment in response to his article:

    Hi Alec,

    Although I sympathise, especially as a fellow ‘blog writer it appears one has to produce a very regular cadence to ensure continued, and growing, readership, I have to agree with your reader, mentioned above.

    The fashion for producing a blog post which is simply titled “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” and contains nothing but links is becoming ubiquitous – and even sadder is in full sway across blogs.sun.com.

    Like anyone I like to see interesting sites and links, however I go to blogs to read blogs, to gather opinion, see what peeps are chatting about, etc., etc., not to checkout someone else’s bookmarks.

    I believe that one has to think very hard about what blog postings are for, and if indeed “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” type postings are an adequate and appropriate mechanism for sharing bookmarks with one’s readers.

    Personally I feel that links, and bookmarks, are acceptable if introduced to the readers during a posting (or even as reference at the end of a posting), for me there has to be some posting ‘meat’ to go with my ‘link’ vegetables (terrible analogy, but it won’t be the worst thing you’ve forgiven me of).

    However I suspect that whilst the “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” helps to produce a regular cadence, and continued readership, it will sustain it’s use as a blog posting across the blogosphere.

    And for the record I really like your blog, as you can probably guess from the number of comments I keep leaving.

    All the best, Happy New Year, etc.,

    Wayne

    I’ll be trying my best to avoid using blog posts as bookmark aggregators, but this is a personal decision, and each to their own.

    To back up my assertion that the “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” type posts have become a staple at blogs.sun.com checkout this link to blogs.sun.com’s search facility, as of today it returns 1,092 results for posts which include “Links for”.

    In fact, given the number of people writing these types of posts, perhaps that’s where I’m going wrong… :-)

    Tic, Tag, Toe

    3 Replies

    Or rather “tagging, tags, and blog tag policy” or even “what’s the best / most optimal tag nomenclature / syntax”. After redesigning the blog interface I decided to start to rationalise my tags – and to institute a ‘tag policy’.

    Tag Policy

    1. Use “-” to delimit multi-word tags
    2. Use all lower case characters

    But “Why ?”

    For a long time I had been using the “+” symbol to link multi-word tags, but I found that Google Translate (which I use for the language translation capability, up on the top right of the page if you’re reading the blog at https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/) was having problems processing URL’s which contain “+” or “%2B”.

    Here’s a little table I whipped up documenting the issues I was coming up against using multi-word tags, after trying out a number of delimiters, not just “+”, against a variety of technology.

    Delimiters tested were: “+”, “%2B”, “_”, ” “, “%20” and “-“. Sites / technology tested were: Roller Blogger (4.0-dev, the version we currently run https://blogs.sun.com on), Google Translate, Google Search, Technorati, Del.icio.us and Slynker.

    “+” (plus sign) “%2B” (encoded plus sign) “_” (underscore character)
    Roller Weblogger 4.0-dev Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “+” in the editor
    Will not resolve tags URL which use “+” (actually the main site will, but individual blogs can’t)    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “%2B” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “%2B”    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “_” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “_”
    Google Search Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “+”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “+” to separate written words Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “%2B”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “%2B” to separate written words Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “_”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “_” to separate written words
    Google Translate Attempts to resolve tags URL which use “+”, encoding the URL to use “%2B” instead (which Roller can serve, see above), then promptly fails Fails to resolve the correct URL to translate using “%2B” Resolves tags URL which use “_” and continues to translate them successfully
    Technorati Resolves tag URLs which use “+” correctly
    Replaces the “+” with ” ” and produces good results based upon that    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%2B” correctly
    Replaces “%2B” with ” ” and produces good results based upon that    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “_” correctly
    Produces smaller, but not unreasonable, results, due of the infrequency of using “_” to separate written words
    Del.iciou.ois Resolves tag URLs which use “+” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “+”    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%2B” correctly
    Replaces “%2B” with “+” and produces results based upon using “+”    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “+” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “+”
    Slynker Fails to resolve “+”
    Produces no results    		 Attempts to resolve tags URL which use “%2B”, encoding the URL to use “%252B” instead
    Produces results based upon using “+”    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “_” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “_”
    ” ” (space) “%20” (encoded space) “-” (minus sign)
    Roller Weblogger 4.0-dev Will save posts which use tags with ” ” in the editor
    Will not retrieve posts which use tags with ” ” in the editor, instead it separates the words, retrieving them all in alphabetical order
    Will resolve tags URL which use ” “, encoding the URL to use “%20” instead    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “%20” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “%20”    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “-” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “-“
    Google Search Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the ” “, search produces a large number of results Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “%20”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “%20” to separate written words Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “-“, and will replace the “-” with ” ” as well, thus retrieving the most amount of related information
    Google Translate Attempts to resolve tags URL which use ” “, encoding the URL to use “%20” instead (which Roller can serve, see above), then promptly fails Fails to resolve the correct URL to translate using “%20” Resolves tags URL which use “-” and continues to translate them successfully
    Technorati Resolves tag URLs which use ” ” correctly, after re-encoding the URL with “%20”
    Produces good results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%20” correctly, replaces the “%20″ with ” ” and produces good results based upon that Resolves tag URLs which use “-” correctly
    Produces smaller, but not unreasonable, results, due of the infrequency of using “-” to separate written words
    Del.iciou.ois Resolves tag URLs which use ” ” correctly, after re-encoding the URL with “%20”
    Produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%20” correctly
    Replaces “%20″ with ” ” and produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “-” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “-“
    Slynker Attempts to resolve tags URL which use ” “, encoding the URL to use “%20” instead
    Produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%20” correctly
    Replaces “%20″ with ” ” and produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “_” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “_”

    As you’ve probably surmised by now the issue is actually about the convergence of two technologies, and the incompatibilities they currently have. Principally that of tagging blog posts (and other stuff too) and that of URL encoding. It is not due to the limitations differing web1.0 and web2.0 platforms have around tag syntax, specifically multi-word tags, but of the correct adherence of these platforms in there support of RFC 1738: Uniform Resource Locators (URL) specification.

    The problem is that tagging generally uses a relatively free form syntax (driven mainly by the communities which use and propagate said tag nomenclature, or “Folksonomy”), when and where possible, but that URL encoding has a variety of reserved characters, which conflict with the characters used in tags.

    Characters for special use in defining URL syntax include the following “Reserved Characters”, and should be encoded where possible (although as the data in the tables above prove even the encoded URLs fail to produce the expected, or required, results).

    Character Hex Dec
     “$” (the dollar sign)
    “&” (ampersand symbol)
    “+” (plus sign)
    “,” (comma symbol)
    “/” (forward slash)    		 24
    26
    2B
    2C
    2F    		 36
    38
    43
    44
    47
    Character Hex Dec
     “:” (the colon)
    “;” (the semi-colon)
    “=” (equal sign)
    “?” (the question mark)
    “@” (the ‘at’ symbol)    		 3A
    3B
    3D
    3F
    40    		 58
    59
    61
    63
    64

    Given that the above are “Reserved Characters” when it comes to URL encoding, and that they include some of the most popular delimiters used by multi-word tags (specifically “+” which is used a great deal, especially on Technorati). And, as I have found in the investigation above, have a number of issues in being used both in multi-word tags and in URL encoding, I have decided to standardise on “-” as the multi-word tag delimiter of choice.

    For me it has a number of advantages:

    1. saved and retrieved correctly in tags in the Roller edit post page
    2. the URL is encoded correctly in Roller too
    3. it resolves correctly whilst using Google Translate
    4. it returns all search results for both “-” and ” ” in Google Search – an unexpected bonus, in terms of returning search results (and thus being included in said search results)
    5. it returns reasonable results from Technorati, based upon “-“
    6. it returns reasonable results from Del.icio.us, based upon “-“
    7. it returns reasonable results from Slynker, based upon “-“

    As to the issue of upper versus lower case, I have standardised on all lower case, as this has little effect in searches (outside of Technorati, which returns slightly differing results, albeit with a low delta between the results returned).

    You may be able to see that I have started to retroactively replace the tags so far created with this new standard – however I have focused on the most popular tags for the time being, and I will continue to use this format from now on.

    I found this article on “URL Encoding (or: ‘What are those “%20″ codes in URLs?’)” provided a nice overview of the issues of URL encoding, and of RFC 1738 itself.

    Excellent article by Glenn Brunette on the Top 5 Solaris 10 Security Features

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    Excellent article by Glenn Brunette on the “Top 5 Solaris 10 Security Features You Should Be Using” . …..