APIs, and Clouds: Please Explain the Joke!

Some people have asked what the sentence on my laptop sticker means. I was gifting some of these stickers at the OTN Tour Latam 2016. Maybe it is a bit of a academic / nerdy joke. So let me explain.

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The Posh (and boring)

Once upon a time there were people rich in money but poor in humor driving around in their second cars (typically a small Mercedes, a small BMW or a small Audi) with a sticker on it saying that their first car is a huge Mercedes, Porsche or Bentley. Let’s not waste too much time talking about these people here.

Australia

The cooll stuff as often started in Down Under. Some people with a lifestyle instead of a job came up with a cool car sticker, that basically said it is much nicer to have a small boat and go to the sea for diving than wasting money on a second car. E.g. see here for a rather fun version.

Google

Then (to the best of my knowledge) Google made fun out of it, riding the cloud computing wave with a sticker that said “My other Computer is a Data Center“. Meaning that if you use the cloud you can have a whole data center.

Cloud Computing and APIs

Let’s get a bit more specific: What I pointed out half decade ago (yes, that time when everybody was just laughing about that topic) in my Cloud Computing book is the following: The true beauty of cloud computing is not that you access a compute instance in somebody else’s data center – this is what you could simply get by outsourcing. Guys, it’s more that your whole data center is software. Your whole data center is an API!

With cloud computing the difference of placing a cloud instance in Sydney or Frankfurt is just one single parameter in an API call – that comes at no extra cost. Same for placing it in datacenter 1 in Frankfurt or datacenter 2. So you get geo-redundancy for free! Now go and try this at home.

Also there is no difference in using 100 instances for 1h or using 1 instance for 100h. So you have a massively parallel, distributed supercomputer at your fingertips for a few pennies. Try this in your DC.

I guess now you get an idea what sticker means and why it says API. At the end it is all about APIs. And we haven’t even started to talk about the possibilities of PaaS, SaaS, HaaS, or API Management 🙂 Btw, sometimes I think most marketing people do a really bad job causing FUD instead of promoting tech.

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computer api cloud

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Let me know if you spot more of these stickers out there and send me pics :-)!

Oracle Service Bus 12c (12.2.1) Native REST: Bug in HTTP GET in Pipeline?

While I was working on an Oracle tech presentation, I discovered the following issue with native REST and Oracle Service Bus 12c.

Version

SOA Quickstart / 12.2.1 OSB, running on RedHat derivative with Oracle JDK 8.

Description

OSB 12.2.1 Native REST pipelines don’t work with GET parameters.

Creating a native REST business services works fine, also adding a REST proxy service.
Once you insert a pipeline HTTP stops working correctly (since the URL parameters aren’t forwarded, a list will be returned by the backend service according to REST semantics), since URL parameters are not forwarded.

Steps to reproduce:

  • Use REST tech adapter to create a REST business service for an existing REST backend.
  • Define GET and POST methods. WADL will be created.
  • Test business service from WADL: both GET and POST will work.
  • Create proxy service from REST business service
  • Test proxy service, again GET and POST methods will work from OSB test client.
  • In JDev, drop a pipeline on the line connecting proxy and business service.
  • In JDev verify the pipeline configuration. it will display correct values.
  • Test the proxy service again, only POST will work. GET does not work anymore (now returns a whole list), since the URL parameters are not forwarded. Even an empty OSB pipeline will swallow the GET URL parameters.

Severity

IMHO this is a bug. I am currently in discussion with Oracle PM about it. Since I am working on another cloud gig, I cannot file a SR myself.

What is next?

I will let you know about updates / fixes or workarounds. Note, you could set the URL parameters as routing options to circumnavigate the issue for a particular use case.

Update 1 (Oct 2016)

I received no feedback from Oracle unfortunately. Anyway, if you experience the same issue let me know. It is important to share the knowledge here – I receive a lot of positive feedback from people with the same issues. Anyhow, also file a SR with MOS if you can. This is the official way to get it possibly fixed.

Update 2 (Jan-12, 2017)

There is a Patch 25184543 now with a backport to 12.2.1.2, see comments below. Gracias a Juan! Kudos for getting this through MOS and for sharing the knowledge.

IaaS Competition: It’s not only about the pricing.

IaaS has become much much more than just compute on demand with an API and pay per use. Interesting to note that Oracle cloud announced to match AWS IaaS prices for their customers which is a cool and bold move. Obviously this will help to keep Oracle customers on the Oracle cloud.

AWS IaaS actually is more. You can have cheap reserved instances and even cheaper spot instances. Today AWS announced spot instances with a block duration for jobs that need to be finished but run economically. Good to see that competition keeps bringing new features. Remember when many years ago I wrote about the benefits for customers that will be caused by cloud computing? Nowadays this has become a fact.

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There are more public cloud advantages and features you should know.

Another View: Your Data Center’s Degree of Cloud

Here is another view that I just developed to describe a customer’s level of cloud. I used this view because quite often a public cloud is just regarded as an “outsourced datacenter”, however there are many steps in between the two extremes. Sometimes it’s easier to approach the cloud computing topic from the classical perspective of virtualization.

Anything you would like to add?

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I recommend to compare what Amazon, Google or Oracle public cloud offers based on the table above compared to your on premise DC.

DOAG Schulungstag 2014: Cloud Computing

DOAG Schulungstag 2014

 

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Cloud Computing und Public Clouds: Was Sie wissen müssen – gezeigt anhand von live und hands-on Beispielen

Den Teilnehmern werden herstellerunabhängige Grundlagen zum interessantesten Thema der letzten Jahre – Cloud Computing – vermittelt. Die Schulung beinhaltet die wichtigsten Public Cloud Provider wie Amazon, Google  und Oracle, sowie Netflix OSS, Openshift und Docker. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Technologie. Bereiche wie IaaS (Server mit SSDs und ¼ TB Hauptspeicher für 2€), hochverfügbarer Plattenspeicher, Datenbanken, Load Balancer usw. Ausserdem betrachten wir die Auswirkungen, die Cloud Computing mittlerweile auf den Softwareentwicklungsprozess und den Betrieb hat.

Zielgruppe:

Einsteiger und Teilnehmer mit mittlerem Wissen im Bereich Cloud Computing die sich mit dem Thema vertraut machen wollen, an der Technologie interessiert sind und einen Blick über den Oracle-Tellerand hinaus wagen!

Cloud-Computing und Public Clouds:
Was Sie wissen müssen – gezeigt anhand von Hands-on Beispielen.


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✔ DOAG 2014 Schulungstag.

http://www.doag.org/events/konferenzen/doag-2014/der-schulungstag.html#c6898