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Gentalk is 1 year old today !

On May 4th 2007, I started a wordpress.com blog entitled gentalk.wordpress.com. This evolved in September 2007 to become gentalk.biz…

Much has happened in this year, so here is a list of posts – one from each month of Gentalk.biz’s life, so illustrate the varied and interesting life and times that is CA Gen:

May 2007 :The first post: 20 Years of Gen!

June 2007: Model-Based-Development and Top-fuel Dragsters

July 2007: Exposing Gen

August 2007: John Swainson podcast supports Gen !!!!

September 2007: Announcement : gentalk.biz

October 2007: EDGE EMEA Breaking News!

Novemeber 2007: Gentalk Interview #1 with ARIKAN Productivity Group

December 2007: Festive thanks

January 2008: The Gathering DID happen!

February 2008: Tool Integration and Gen

March 2008: Model Based Development vs. Performant Code

April 2008: New Whitepaper! The Benefits of Model Driven Development

May 2008: PL/1 to Gen modernisation

The blog started humbly, but built upon its roots and the community is now holding Gatherings in Second Life, with presentations and audio tracks, as well as linking Gen professionals across the globe.

Many thanks to all those readers and supporters of Gentalk.biz in its’ first year of life – it would not exist without you ! Let’s see what 2008 and 2009 will bring in the world of Gen!

Gathering 5 Resources

Many thanks to Sol Zimmer for the preparation and presenting of the Slideshow in the 5th Gen Gathering ! The first of the resources are now available from the 5th Gen gathering – more will be uploaded over the next few days, so keep checking back here

• Audio (downloaded times), or play it here:

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• Powerpoint Presentation Slides (downloaded times).
• eBook (downloaded times).

You can find out more about Jumar Solutions’ approach to Legacy Modernisation by going into Second Life, and clicking on their “Project Phoenix” banner at their stand at the Gen HQ, or by visiting their website. As you can see from the pictures, it was a record attendance!

Apologies for the downtime – Gentalk.biz is back online.

10-JAN-2008: 16:33 GMT

I have restored the functionality of the site i.e. forums and comments, chat etc. etc. However, some of the incoming newsfeeds are still unavailable, only because I want to have few hours of stable operation with the majority of the site before adding those functions back in again.

The issue was a PHP 5 and mySQL5 upgrade by the hosting company. PHP 5 is more memory hungry that PHP4, which consequently led to the amount of usable memory for the gentalk.biz site being less, resulting in the errors that were being displayed.

I have had the hosting company raise the memory limit to take account of this. Hopefully, there should be no more problems.

Once again, many thanks to all of you readers for having patience during the downtime. Hopefully, things should stabilise now.

PS – don’t forget to check out http://gathering.gentalk.biz !!!!!

10-JAN-2008: 14:16 GMT

I have taken parts of the gentalk.biz offline today (10th January 2008) in an attempt to resolve the PHP errors that are occurring. Please bear with me while I attempt to get the site up and running again. If you need any contact, or want to report any problems, please use the contact form (if available) or send an email to info@gentalk.biz Meanwhile, thanks again for your patience.

EDGE EMEA 2007 more reports – SOA thoughts

I started in my previous post talking about the sessions that I attended at EDGE EMEA 2007.

The sessions by Everware-CBDI were thought provoking – in that when defining an SOA architecture, it’s usually the “A” bit that gets left out – so that you normally get an “accidental architecture” evolving from nowhere. The point is to realise that SOA doesnt mandate a language or technology. SOAs allow existing technologies (including Gen) to be shared.

Its important to consider when opening the first chapter of your SOA journey – WHY do you need an SOA – there may be a number of reasons -

• Distributed processing requirement
• Optimise or consolidate business services
• Structural improvement and service portfolio rationalisation
• Shared Data

Whatever the reasons for “doing” SOA, and each organisation may have all or some of them, its also important to define outcomes, or end-states that are measurable, such as:

• Standardisation
• Shared Services
• Service-based procurement
• Process Improvement
• Joined-up delivery
• Business Transformation
• Customer-centric services
• IT transformation

Important, too is to spot where SOA can go wrong:

• Lack of/no sponsorship by CTO/CEO
• Poor planning
• Lack of architecture or framework
• Too much focus on technology
• Misunderstandings

Services should be defined independantly of platform, so that a level of abstraction can be gained to protect organisations from future technology changes.

Why is this relevant to Gen ? Well, Gen allows the generation of Web Services- standards-based communication mechanisms – but – BEWARE !

Web Services do not give you an SOA – what does, is an ESB of some description – Gen can participate in an SOA, it is NOT an SOA in itself.

Gentalk hits 50000 !

Started on 4th May 2007, after just 2 1/2 months, Gentalk has accumulated 1000 hits !

Many thanks to all of you who have expressed an interest in Gentalk and lets hope that it we continue to provide information, links and thoughts to the CA-Gen community worldwide!

EDIT #1:And to add to things, the blog topped 100 hits today (2nd August 2007) !!! Thanks to all of you !

EDIT #2:…and today (7th August 2007) we reached 1500 hits so far !!! Thanks again to all of you !

EDIT #3:…and today (13th August 2007) we reached 2000 !! More thanks again to all of you !

EDIT #4:…and today (28th September 2007) we reached 5000 !! THIS PROVES THERE IS AN INTEREST IN GEN ACROSS THE GLOBE !!!!

EDIT#5: … and at 0946 GMT on 7th January 2008, gentalk.biz reached the 10000 point!!!! What an achievement for 8 months of operation! Thanks to all the supporters!

EDIT#6: When gentalk.biz hit 1 year old on May 4th 2008, the hit counter stood at 17010 – so in the 4 months from the last EDIT (7/1/2008) the site had 7000+ hits!!!

EDIT#7: August 20th 2008, Gentalk.biz hit 25000 hits!, so in the year since the EDIT#2, the site had 23000+ hits ! – next EDIT at 50k – roll on…….

EDIT#8: November 2009-here we are as promised – at 50,000!