Tools

I’m a tools kind of a guy. I like things that make my life easier or allow me to accomplish some task that would be otherwise prohibitive. I also like Tool the band , but that’s another blog.

And so it is with software. Languages, libraries, frameworks are just tools that make it easier for us to accomplish some task.

Modular Inputs

With the release of Splunk 5 came a great new feature called Modular Inputs.

Modular Inputs extend the Splunk framework to define a custom input capability.In many respects you can think of them as your old friend the “scripted input” , but elevated to first class citizen status in the Splunk Manager. Splunk treats your…

What is Websphere MQ

IBM Websphere MQ , formerly known as MQSeries , is IBM’s Message Oriented Middleware offering and has been the most widely implemented system for messaging across multiple platforms over the last couple of decades.

What is Message Oriented Middleware

From Wikipedia :

“Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. MOM allows application modules to be distributed over heterogeneous platforms and reduces the complexity of developing applications that span multiple operating systems and network protocols. The middleware creates a distributed communications layer that insulates the application developer from the details of the various operating system and network interfaces. APIs that extend across diverse platforms and networks are typically

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Recently David Turanski from SpringSource and myself held a joint webinar on Extending Spring Integration for Splunk.

The developer feedback was great , and no feedback is better than when an audience member gets inspired to go and create and new set of Splunk components for another enterprise Java framework , in this case Apache Camel.

Similarly to Spring Integration , Apache Camel is an open-source integration framework based on Enterprise Integration Patterns. The programming semantic  to which the developer builds their integration solution with the respective frameworks will differ, and for this reason the developer may prefer one framework over the over , but the high level approach is the same, that being a development framework…

With the introduction of our various programming language SDK’s (Java, JS, Python,PHP,Ruby) for the Splunk REST API , we have significantly  lowered the barrier of entry for developers wanting to build big data apps and integrations on top of the Splunk platform.Developers can now choose their preferred development language and right out the blocks focus on coding their core business logic without having to worry about the lower level semantics of REST , the SDK’s make this easy.

And that is after all why we build tools and  frameworks in the first place , to make it simpler for you to perform some task and get to that point of productivity faster.

Building upon this ideal, if an…

Overview

Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) infrastructures facilitate the sending and receiving of messages between distributed systems. Messages typically get routed to Queues(point to point) or Topics(publish/subscribe) for clients to subscribe to, receive the messages and process them.

In many respects you can think of MOM as the glue that stitches heterogeneous enterprise computing environments together.

Now why am I so interested in this ? Well, MOM and the messages transported represent a massive source of machine data that Splunk can index and resolve into operational visibility on many different levels..core operations , business analytics, transaction tracing etc..

So for some time now I have been pondering creating a solution for Splunk to tap into this source.

Most folks I have…

Spending some time in Asia this week has only further reminded me of how many machine data generating devices permeate our modern lives.Mobile devices, CCTV cameras, Car computers, Hotel smart TVs, Traffic controllers, Payment terminals, Public transport tap n go passes,Wifi access points, Automated laser and light shows etc….All connected systems that generate massive amounts of data. And this is just what you can see on the surface.There are a myriad of embedded systems and controllers running quietly under the covers,  churning away, powering the very lifeblood  of the city.

A recent article on theserverside.com had some interesting quotes that got my data wrangling adrenaline flowing :

“….there are over three billion embedded devices out there powered by Java, and

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In mid October I will be attending the SpringOne Event in Washington DC to talk about Splunk , building Big Data applications on top of the Splunk platform and showcasing our developer platform offerings , with a particular emphasis on the Java SDK.

This is a Java technology oriented event with a focus on leading Java/JVM technologys, frameworks, languages and applications such as SpringSource, Groovy and Tomcat. And to be frank , it is THE event to be at if you have an interest in these areas.On one hand I’ll be there representing Splunk , but I’ll also be there as a fan of many of the speakers.

Splunk are a Gold sponsor of this event , and…

The “Land of the Long White Cloud” aka “Aotearoa” aka “Middle Earth” aka New Zealand is going to get Splunked at the end of September !

New Zealand’s first ever Splunk live! events are going to be held in Wellington on Sept 25 and Auckland on Sept 27..and yes, yours truly will be there talking and showing how to develop on the Splunk platform to create killer Big Data applications.
Furthermore we have some of our superstar Splunk team from Australia coming along as well as some presentations from customers that are doing some really amazing things with Splunk.

Looking forward to seeing you there !

Splunk > My Precious

Your phone rings at 3am. A frantic Level 1 support staffer is panicking. The web storefront has gone down. You dig around and quickly find out that the ESB has crashed and the warm standby instance failed to kick in. The logs reveal that the JVM terminated because it ran out of heap memory. How could this have happened? We tested it, right?

The dreaded java.lang.OutOfMemoryError is by far the most commonly recurrent problem I’ve seen in JVM based applications throughout my career.

So let’s just go over a few things you failed to do.

• You failed to use “Splunk for JMX” to monitor your JVM heap and proactively alert you when a heap usage threshold was breached.
• You

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Speaking of Java as a language as opposed to the JVM platform, James Gosling, the Father of Java, said “Most people talk about Java the language, and this may sound odd coming from me, but I could hardly care less.”
He went on to explain, “What I really care about is the Java Virtual Machine as a concept, because that is the thing that ties it all together.”
- Quoted from theserverside.com

Alternate JVM languages are gaining momentum all over the place. These are languages that are focused on a particular paradigm, semantic ,programming style  or perhaps fill a niche roll that is better suited to coding in Java.

• Scala
• Groovy
• Clojure
• Jython

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