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November 03, 2004
Amazon Web Services Moves Beyond Books
Amazon has announced a new addition to their Web Services platform: Simple Queue Service (SQS).
The Amazon Simple Queue Service offers a reliable, highly scalable hosted queue for buffering messages between distributed application components. The Amazon Simple Queue Service reduces the costs associated with resolving the producer-consumer problem that arises in distributed application development. Such costs include increased application development time, and potentially significant investment in server and network infrastructure to support distributed application messaging. Amazon has already invested in the large-scale computing infrastructure that runs the Queue Service, and since the Serviceās interface is exposed via Web services, integration with applications is fast and easy.
Using the Amazon Simple Queue Service, you can decouple components of your application so that they run independently, with the Queue Service easing messaging management between components. Any component of a distributed application can store any type of data in a reliable queue at Amazon.com. Any other component or application can then later retrieve the data, using queue semantics. The queue acts as a buffer between the work-producer that is saving the data, and the work-consumer that is retrieving the data for processing. Thus, the queue resolves issues that would otherwise arise if the producer were producing work faster than the consumer can process the work, or if the producer or consumer were only intermittently connected to the network.
Registered developers have free access to the Simple Queue Service during the Beta, but storage is limited to 4,000 queue entries per developer.From Amazon.com : Help / AWS home page / Simple Queue Service
Referenced Wed Nov 03 2004 20:35:11 GMT-0700
What's interesting about this is that its an infrastructural service rather than an end service. AWS eCommerce services have always been about buying things from Amazon. SQS could be used as infrastructure for a Web services completely unrelated to Amazon's core business. This is an important step in the "Amazon as platform" idea and shows that Amazon is not going to concede that idea to Google without a fight. I think Grand Central Development would be an interesting acquisition for Amazon in that regard.
The service provides any number of asynchronous message queues that can be used to store and retrieve XML messages. Here's the WSDL for the Queue operations and there are also some sample applications
The RESTful sample (XSLT) shows how to use the queue to store a list of ASINs and then retrieve them to populate an iFrame with formatted product information. Change the ASINs in the queue and get different content in the iFrame. I played around with it for a bit. The queues are indeed easy to use. Pretty cool.
08:52 PM | Recommend This | Print This
National Guard Portal Workshop
I spoke to the national Guard portal workshop this morning. There were about 70 technical folks there and I enjoyed myself. I promised them some links to other resources, so here they are:
- Service Oriented Architecture Slides
- Service Oriented Architecture Paper
- Web Services and Data Paper
- Digital Identity Slides
- Digital Identity Standards Tutorial
- RSS Resources
If you were at the workshop and have questions please drop me a note.
12:13 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Identity and Credibility
Baseline has a good article on the intersection of identity, security, and corporate credibility. This should be required reading for IT and marketing executives thinking about a new eBusiness initiative. In its typical style, Baseline tells the story through a case study of a marketing executive at an insurance company, AGIA, who struggles to launch a new eBusiness program, including an email campaign, only to find that their Web site was hacked on the critical day. The crucial question:
[T]he incident underscores important lessons for companies that handle sensitive customer information, particularly smaller companies like AGIA. They must fiercely protect the integrity of their systems and networks, even when it means stretching limited resources to do so. How was AGIA supposed to build a business on protecting consumers from identity theft if it couldn't protect itself?From AGIA: Identity Crisis
Referenced Wed Nov 03 2004 07:41:22 GMT-0700
07:42 AM | Recommend This | Print This
The Election: A Break from Tech
I usually try to stick to technology here, but today I'll break with that and talk a little about the election.
First, there are some calling Ohio the new Florida. I think I've heard that on CNN ten times in the last hour. That's simply wrong for three key reasons:
- Ohio has a good process and they're following it. It turns out, I've met Ken Blackwell several times--we both served on an eGovernment committee at the Kennedy School of Government--and he's smart and very competent. I've got faith that anything he's supervising will be done right.
- There is a clear margin in the popular vote in Ohio. Admittedly, if almost all of the provisional ballots went to Kerry that might shift, but its very unlikely. We're not talking about a few hundred votes here, we're talking about a few hundred thousand.
- Finally, the margin in the popular vote is 50.1 to 49.9, its 51 to 48. What's more, its not in Kerry's favor its in Bush's. Bush has won a clear majority of the popular vote. No president has done that in 16 years (even Bill Clinton).
CNN and other's haven't called Ohio for Bush. They say they're being cautious and certainly after 2000, that's probably a reasonable position, but let's face it: the longer this drags on, the better it is for CNN. They're going to have viewers for as long as they can make it last. So, that means hold on for weeks of back and forth if CNN can pull it off.
Still, I believe its all over but the crying at this point. Kerry can insist on putting the country through another 10-20 days of agony at this point or he can do the honorable thing, like Nixon (can you even say that?) in 1960, and concede.
Speaking of crying, I know many of my friends here in the blogosphere will be deeply disappointed by a Bush victory and I feel bad for them. I know how emotionally invested they were and that's a tough thing. If Kerry had won, I don't think I'd have been nearly as upset (at least not this morning). I'm not sorry that Michael Moore was denied a victory. He doesn't need a bigger ego.
Ultimately, the Democrats have to figure out how to appeal to the vast heartland of America. They can't expect to win the Whitehouse or anything else if all they can do is take the coasts. The problem is that I'm not sure that's possible.
People have decried the divisiveness of the last while and blamed Bush. This election is evidence that Bush is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is much deeper and spells troubled times for America, I'm afraid. The division that splits America is deep and is based on feelings about moral, not political or economic issues. The exit polling showed that moral issues were the leading thing driving voters (20% over 19% and 18% for the economy and terrorism) and 78% of those who said moral issues were most important broke for Bush.
Now, if you're a Democrat and you're thinking "but Kerry is a moral man" that shows just how out of touch with this issue you are. I believe that Kerry is an upright and moral man, but that's not the point. The point is that the Democratic party platform is driven by issues that most people who are voting on moral issues simply can't support. That fact that eleven states voted to ban gay marriage yesterday is a case in point. That's a referendum that the Democrats can either recognize or ignore, but its still reality.
At any rate, I'm simply glad its over. I'll be thankful to not hear terms like "battleground state" or "margin or error" for another four years.