"Enterprise Architecture Made Simple" by Håkan Edvinsson; Lottie Aderinne

 "Enterprise Architecture Made Simple" 

by Håkan Edvinsson; Lottie Aderinne

 Pranaam! to everyone. The authors provide a nice perspective of placing information models, process models and deriving architecture models from these. The fundamental theme shared throughout
by the authors is considering 'Information' aspect of business that doesn't change as frequently as processes or systems. IT is too narrowly focused on systems and believing that is the only way to improve an enterprise. But the enterprise wide picture is clearer if once takes a step back and considers what the most value adds for business and where should the next significant transformation happen in this enterprise. A management and leadership who understands this will initiate EA in enterprise, so that larger picture is evangelised at various levels in organization and such that EA is thought leadership that consistently convinces everyone on next steps.

Authors have used Zachman 3.0 Framework. They have succeeding in providing a very clear and to the point steps in preparing today's EA, making them ready to deal with different scenarios.
The EA methodology has been broken into 3 parts viz: Ready - Prepare EA, Set - operationalize EA and Run - action as EA. The discussion is basically an expansion of top phases
in TOGAF9 which deals with Requirements phase, Initiating Architecture work(gathering sponsorship) and Business Architecture. The finer details of rest of architecture phases
are left out in favor of Information architecture and business process modeling, since these have most profound impact to business and consulting to top management and business leaders.

The language n book is to the point, straight on topic rather than exaggeration usually found on EA topics. I liked this 'Enterprise Architecture Made Simple' very much and would recommend this to anyone interested in EA.  Regards. SGN

"Data Design Introduction" by Tim Miles [2013]

A good jumpstart into database design practices, explained to the point and very lucidly. 1hr and 39min long.

http://bit.ly/162cvNY

Questions answered:
What is a Database?
What are types of databases?
What are relationships?
What is process of database design :
    determine purpose of database
    collect forms, reports, etc
    meet current and future users
    normalize the data, remove redundancy
    create the database
    review
what is Normalization?

"Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices" [2004]

Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices [2004] ,  by  Dirk Krafzig; Karl Banke; Dirk Slama

This book gives a  good introduction to SOA Concepts and associates with real case studies. The examples are useful in Enterprise Architecture strategies. The initial chapters provided a good historic perspective of technologies and approaches like CORBA, that influenced SOA strategy. I found this book to be very useful.

 

Architectural Blueprints - 'The "4+1" View Model of Software Architecture by Philippe Krutchen'

A seminal work in presenting a model for describing essential views or perspectives while architecting a software based system.
Below are the 5 broad views that are essential for covering concerns of various stakeholders dependent on the system

• Logical view : for line-of-business users
• Development view : for Project managers, solution integrators
• Process view : for Solution designers and integrators
• Physcial view : for system engineers
• Scenarios view : to iterate and develop views

By mapping from one view to another, a system can be architected to a great precision in first attempt, this becomes a stepping stone for future iterations. After 2-3 iterations the system is solid.


There are many references over internet, I used below.
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~gregor/teaching/papers/4+1view-architecture.pdf

"Java 7 Concurrency Cookbook" by Javier Fernández

Pranaam. I'm currently working out "Java 7 Concurrency Cookbook" by Javier Fernández. It's a Oct 2012 edition. Finding these examples are lucid, that I can be very easily develop without being an expert Java programmer myself. Concurrency subject is dealt in other programming languages as well, but since Java has a large base in commercial software applications and there is ready material in-hand, it was an easy decision to work through Java 7.



Parallel processing and optimized high performance computing are interesting subjects that can solve large compute problems .It's essential to solve a problem quickly  and make result available for the next set of actions.  Sometimes its necessary to know which areas in a compute solutions are to be parallelized and which shouldn't be. It's an intriguing subject. The next area for me would be researching Design Patterns in concurrency. But before I get to that, creating a running log of areas covered from this book.

• Thread Management

• Creating & Running threads
• Get thread information
• Interrupt threads
• Control Interruption of threads
• Sleeping and Resuming threads
• Waiting for Finalization of threads
• Creating and running Daemon threads
• Processing uncontrolled Exceptions in threads 
• Using ThreadLocal variables
• Grouping threads into a group 
• Processing unchecked exceptions in ThreadGroup
• Using factory pattern to create Thread

• Basic Thread Synchronization
• Synchronizing a method
• Arranging independent attributes in synchronized blocks using Object references   
• Using conditions in synchronized code block
• Using Lock to synchronize a code block       
• Synchronizing data read/write operations using Lock
• Lock fairness
• Using multiple conditions in Lock

• Thread Synchronization utilities
•  

"The Performance-Engagement Model: Managing the Five Personality Profiles in the Workplace" by Laura Stack

"The Performance-Engagement Model: Managing the Five Personality Profiles in the Workplace" by Laura Stack:

An interesting short article, but very crude view of people personalities. Resources are workplace are assets, are humans with very interesting facets. It's up-to a leader to bring out the best from each resources and to make them strong individual as well as team contributors. It's hard to believe the author had a successful role in keeping a team engaged to goals, let alone leading high performance team. If we conceive an ideal team to be composed of humans who work like machines decrepit of emotions, of sharp personality traits we would be living in la-la land.
Labeling this for 'Enterprise Architecture', as workplace resources belong to various enterprise teams, they are essentially one of the stakeholders.

Enterprise Content Integration strategy: Wachovia's case study

http://gilbane.com/case_studies_pdf/CTW_Wachovia_Final.pdf
This explains the challenges faced by Wachovia during enterprise content integration and the benefits thereof to the business units.
Aptly said by the analyst, today's large enterprises host multiple disparate content sources. If these are integrated to provide a seamless access to users, it enables them to service customers faster, focus more on business decisions and improves collective competitiveness of business user community.
This example also shows how IS acts a service provider to business units in creating "acquisition ready" systems and how these units can achieve ROI by investing in IS initiatives.

Content Technology Works (CTW) does a great job of sharing enterprise best practices in the area of enterprise content management. Though this whitepaper is backdated, it concisely describes the enterprise content integration strategy. The situation, factors and road map to solution is put together very well. It includes couple of layer diagrams to drive the point.

Wachovia’s CAS: Harnessing the Value of Multiple Content Repositories Across a Large Enterprise
http://gilbane.com/case_studies_pdf/CTW_Wachovia_Final.pdf

TOGAF 9 Certified for Enterprise Architecture!!

I'm TOGAF 9 Certified now. Waiting for this day for past 4 years, finally the dogged efforts of past 6 months have come very handy in succeeding. As a TOGAF practitioner, it's my firm belief that
Enterprises always evolve and migrate through series of milestones during its maturity cycle. Very excited about the upcoming Enterprise Architecture oppurtunities to demonstrate the maturity curve and be part of successful Enterprises..
http://www.opengroup.org/togaf9/cert/