Amazon SimpleDB

Amazon added the final missing key ingredient to their online computing services Simple DB. Currently simple DB is in Limited Beta.

Thoughts based on initial read:
• Provides Web Service interface to Simple DB. Not traditional SQL.
• Provides Domains (Similar to Tables), Items (Similar to Rows) and Attributes (Similar to Columns).
• Provides Ability to create Domains, Get/Put/Delete items in Domains with attribute-value pairs for each item.
• Query can only be against a single Domain. (i.e Join’s are not possible).
• Currently Domain sizes are limited to 10GB.
• Similar to Google BigTable in design.

Serving Global Markets

Why Orkut is hugely popular in India compared to MySpace and Facebook which are popular in US? money.cnn.com has an interesting comment on the same that came from Nayak an young entrepreneur:

I asked him why he thinks Orkut is so much more popular in India than in the U.S. His answer suggested it might have something to do with Google's renowned technical capabilities. He points out that many of his friends get online at access speeds as slow as 15 kilobits per second. (About what AOL members in the U.S. were at in 1990.) His own dialup line is an only slightly-less-pokey 28K.
Nayak says "Orkut is much lighter than Facebook," meaning it is better designed to be used on a slow dialup line. While getting onto Orkut takes about a minute and a half for him, Facebook takes a minute longer. And getting on MySpace takes him five minutes.
Reference: CNN Money


In short be mindful of amount of data you are sending over the wire in web applications if you need to serve global markets.

Art of designing WSDL

Most common misconception is that Architect role ends at deciding what web services needs to be used. Designing web service by itself is an Art and doing it right provides:

• Maximize reuse of services
• Enforce better version control
• Better code generation
• Greater interoperability
• Increased testability

Here are some good resources on how to design good WSDL's:

• Using XML Schemas Effectively in WSDL Desgin
• XML Schema considerations for WSDL design in conformation with WS-I Basic Profile
• Best practices for Web services versioning
• Best practices for web services development
  

Binding JBoss to specific IP

One of the common questions from JBoss newbies I had to answer in last couple of months is "How do I bind JBoss Specific to my IP on windows?".
Here is the simple one liner:
run.bat -Djboss.bind.address=IP

Start Firefox with your previous session

One of the best features of Firefox is ability to restore session when your OS or Browser crashes. This helps by not loosing the page you are currently viewing.
Reading browser startup page KB it appears we can set browser to start the with previous session by default. This can be done with about:config by changing value of browser.startup.page to 3.

HTML Expert

Check this HTML Expert:

Using Fiddler with Firefox

The only reason I ever used IE is for Fiddler tool in last 2 years. Now looking at Fiddler docs there seems to be way to use Fiddler with Firefox.

Here the steps:

1. Look for BrowserPAC.js in fiddler directory under "My Documents". (for me its C:\My Documents\Fiddler\Scripts\BrowserPAC.js)
2. Use "Automatic proxy configuration URL:" for Firefox and set the value to BrowserPAC.js full path (Tools --> Options --> Advanced --> Network --> Connection).