Book review: Getting Started with Hazelcast

A few weeks ago Packt Publishing sent me a free copy of their new publication - Getting Started with Hazelcast by Mat Johns to read and write about. I have used distributed caches and compute grids quite a bit at work. So, I was happy to do a quick review of this book. I've used Oracle Coherence quite a lot and Hazelcast for some experiments.

The book is a gentle guide to building distributed compute and data grids. It assumes nothing about the reader and hence does a good job of doing what it says in the book's title - "getting started". I'd advice this book for anyone who is completely new to this area which is not to be confused with Hadoop, Storm, Cassandra or the other more "popular/hyped" cousins. I would say that for medium sized data, logic heavy, transactional/near real time applications, compute grids are the way to scale out.

Obviously this book is about using Hazelcast, which is a nice Apache software licensed, Java, distributed grid/cache. It is surprisingly feature rich and in terms of usability, features and elegance it comes very close to its more expensive, older, rock solid cousin which is Oracle Coherence.

The book explores the essential aspects of using such frameworks effectively. Such as - distributed maps, replication, network partitions, fault tolerance, data affinity, moving code closer to where data is etc. It does this without being too overwhelming for first timers.

For a full and more thorough treatment I would obviously recommend the Hazelcast documentation. And if you are curious to know about other frameworks check out my old write up - Scalable compute & storage frameworks - A Refcard.

Ashwin.

Reading list (and RIP Mr. Iain Banks)

Here's my list of books I read these past few months:

• RIP - Mr. Iain Banks
• Seeker by Jack McDevitt -Watered down scifi. Like a direct-to-DVD sci-fi movie. If you can stay awake through the chapter after chapter of filler - like one long, boring episode of Star Trek
• Mirror Dance Miles Vorkosigan Adventures - Smart, clever, crisp. Surprisingly interesting story and great character development
• Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold - A beautifully written fantasy novel. Engrossing and scary. At the same level as China and Dan Simmons
• Night Watch by Terry Pratchett - my first Pratchett novel. Not bad at all, light and funny
• Planesrunner by Ian McDonald - Interesting but definitely young adult sci-fi. Story and the worlds had a lot of promise but lacks the sophistication of hard core sci-fi. Kiddie stuff
• Terry Pratchett - Small gods. Typical irreverential Pratchett style. Funny and not too bad
• The Emperor's Soul: Brandon Sanderson. Novella. Makes for a nice, light, quick reading
• The Martian by Andy Weir - Amazing piece of near sci-fi, survival. You'll love the detail especially if you are an engineer. Kindle only
• Crystal sphere - Short story. Short but nice
• Gabble - Some stories are great fun. Where it comes to Polity, it's uncomfortably close to the great Iain Banks' Culture. Neal Asher should've tried something original and not rip off Banks. Still, worth reading
• Six directions of space - Alistair Reynolds. Multiple time lines. Abrupt ending. Short story. Should've gone with a longer, novel format

Until next time!

Some books I read, mostly sci-fi and mostly average

Wireless by Charles Stross
Short stories. Some were good. Some too dry, felt like filler - meandering time travel stories with no plot.

Line War (Agent Cormac 5) by Neal L. Asher
Interesting. Some intrigue. Read like the Silver Surfer meets powerful AIs. Last book in the Ian Cormac saga.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three Novellas by Gene Wolfe
Surreal, feverish, strange, slightly disjoint, even satisfying at first a but mildly disappointing ending.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) by Robert B. Cialdini
A brief distraction from Sci-Fi. I bought the book after watching his interview on Youtube. Not a bad read.

Marooned in Realtime (Peace War) by Vernor Vinge
Takes post apocalyptic novel to a new level. Pretty impressive time scales, although a bit sad and disappointing in the end.

Duplicate Effort: A Retrieval Artist Novel (Retrieval Artist Novels) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Average. Beginner writer. Starts off in a mildly interesting, vintage Asimov type of setting but the writer's inexperience shows.

Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury
Couldn't finish it. Waste of time.



Ashwin.

Review of EJB 3.1 Cookbook

I just finished reading the EJB 3.1 Cookbook by Richard M. Reese. I haven't used EJBs in almost 5 years and since the JEE spec hadn't undergone any major (interesting) changes I had ignored it....until I heard about the newer and more simplified JEE 6/EJB 3 spec - the one that uses Java annotations. To me this attempt to simplify the standard seems like a very good thing in that the standards body finally started paying attention to the many accusations hurled (rightfully so) upon it my Spring, Ruby/Rails, Scala and other camps.

So, I was curious to see what the new spec looked like and coincidentally I was given a chance to review this EJB 3.1 Cookbook by Packt Publishing. The book being a cookbook/recipe book, it does not go into the details of why you should use JEE/EJB or how a beginner should get started and other such basics. It assumes that you are already familiar with programming, Java, JEE and specifically EJBs.

I must say that the new spec looks lighter and so much simpler than it did a few years ago.

The book is packed (no pun on the publisher's name) with small and useful recipes focusing on each new aspect of EJB 3.1:

• Dependency Injection (CDI)
• Stateful, stateless and singleton EJB annotations
• Persistent EJB annotations
• MDB annotations
• Timers and schedulers
• Concurrency
• Startup sequence, named and dependent EJBs
• Soap and restful web services
• Security
• Interceptors (AOP)

It is a good book to help you get up to speed on the latest spec. You might still, occasionally need to look up the detailed spec or Google or some other forum for specifics. Overall it is a good, almost vendor agnostic (Oracle Glassfish) and easily digestable read. It does lack some depth in a few places but then if you need more details, then you should read the actual spec.

As an aside, I feel all publishers should reduce the prices of their ebook/PDF versions.

Until next time,
Ashwin.

Dabawalas and other books I read recently

Some interesting books I read in the past few months. Needless to say they were mostly, all Sci-Fi:

• The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt. Not good at all
• Iron Sunrise (Singularity) by Charles Stross. Average read
• The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge by Vernor Vinge. Not too bad. I was expecting something better
• A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven. Starts off quite well for somthing that was written 35 years ago. Predictable ending
• Dabawalas: Lessons for Building lasting success based on values by Shrinivas Pandit. A very interesting distraction from my regular reading. An inspiring story about Mumbai, India's lunch carriers. An astonishing Six Sigma error rate from a loosely organized band of mostly rural workers!

Until next time!

Books I read in the last few months

Blindsight by Peter Watts: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Although the ending was a bit of a let down, the amount of research that has gone into writing this book is impressive. It has a very refreshing combination of bio-chemistry, human vision, psychology and AI.

Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds: A collection of short stories. Generally, I try to stay away from short stories because I feel the characters do not have time to develop and neither does the story. This one however has a continuous feel across stories and is worth reading if you liked Revelation Space.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn: Another Hugo nominee (I think). Not too bad it you'd rather have the story wander off into a medieval village setting during the time of the Black Death. Certainly not in the same league as the Sci-Fi masters.

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis: This is not sci-fi at all. It's a 20 year old book about an Investment bank - the infamous Salomon brothers. They say history repeats itself. Just replace Salomon Brothers with Lehman Brothers and add a generous measure of greed and short sightedness. This is a very funny book considering what the book is all about. Well worth the read.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson: Here's one I tried reading but just couldn't get myself to finish it. For a Hugo award nominee this was a disastrous read.

Years before Inception (movie)

Here's a short list of TV episodes where similar concepts of dream manipulation and recursive realities were explored decades ago:

The Avengers 1967:
Deaths Door (A series of Diplomats are drugged and forced to participate in their own nightmares. On waking up, events unfold just like the nightmare - all the way up to the Diplomatic event)

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 6:
Ship in a Bottle (A sentient hologram of Dr. Moriarty tricks the crew into thinking they are back on the ship after visiting the Holodeck. In actuality they are in a hologram ship inside another hologram.)

Frame of Mind (An officer is trapped and taken prisoner while on a mission. He is then drugged and his dreams are tampered with. He starts thinking that his actual life on the Enterprise was a delusion and is convinced to find closure with his delusional characters by killing them in his mind among other things)

Star Trek: Voyager: Season 2
Projections (The ships holographic doctor is convinced into believing that he is not a hologram but the actual hologram designer who has got lost in his own mental simulations on a Star base near Jupiter. He is asked to give up control of the ship to end the simulation)

Similar types of episodes in Mission Impossible Season 1 (1966) and 2.

[Update 1: Also see DreamWithinADream]

This quarter in Sci-fi

1) Protector by Larry Niven has a very relaxing and smooth flow. Simple, unadulterated and enjoyable 80's Sci-fi.

2) The Scar by China Mieville. Another Mieville classic. This story is set on a pirate ship, complete with science-fantasy, steampunk and magic. Loads of sugary goodness, like his other novels.

3) The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. What happens when 2 masters work together? You get a Hard Sci-Fi masterpiece. If every action you make were to be visible later in the future with the help of wormhole cameras, would we still lie, commit crimes and injustices? A thought provoking novel. We talk about Facebook, Google and privacy. Hah! You should read this book. The issues in the novel are way more complex. Society and species level.

4) Ilium by Dan Simmons. A fat book, you have been warned. A strange mix of sci-fi, Greek gods, Trojan war, Shakespeare and post humanism. Too bad this is just part 1. I would say, it's almost as good as Hyperion.

This month in Sci-Fi (and more)

The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Classic Sci-fi. An engaging story, a moral conundrum, no buzzwords. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Ringworld - is Larry Niven's most famous. A short novel but you'll be engrossed in that strange, empty world.

My Outdoors: Humor from the Field and Stream by Steve Galea - If you are averse to laughing out loud and feeling good about it, this book should certainly be avoided. I had to put a pillow to my mouth while reading at night, to avoid laughing and waking my neighbors.

Enjoy!

This month in Sci-Fi

Accelerando (Singularity) by Charles Stross:
Charles Stross has made a complete hash of what would've been a fantastic novel on the Singularity. You are subjected to such copious amounts of techno-babble that would put even a Gartner or Forrester analyst on a Redbull+coffee over dose to shame. IP network protocol stack, Java Ring etc etc and so much of such page after page of noise that I didn't bother to read all pages. If only he had stuck to the stars powering giant AIs and brown dwarves..it would've been a nice novel.

It left such a bad after taste that I had to run to the second hand bookstore to buy some "old fashioned" Greg Bear, Gregory Benford novels.

Ironically his first novel - Singularity Sky was far better.

Other novels that I read in the recent past:
Vernor Vinge - A deepness in the sky. Not very original. But an OK read.

Peter F Hamilton - The reality dysfunction. Another first part of very likely a long and laborious Hamilton series. Hasn't anyone told him that it's ok to write shorter, slick novels?

Clarke and Baxter - Time's eye. Two great minds worked together to bring us this very interesting alternative history, sci-fi book. Seemed interesting enough. I might eventually read the rest of the series.

Until next time...cheers!

This month in Sci-Fi

Good Sci-Fi I just finished reading:

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds - I'm glad I came across this book. I simply loved the story telling. Smooth and refreshingly original. Deep space epic with a liberal dose of Hard Sci-Fi. Mmmm...

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. A sequel to Hyperion, which I happened to like a lot too. A part of the Hyperion Cantos, with its strange blend of hellish Time Tombs, The Shrike and the City of Sad King Billy in the background. What I liked in particular about this was the exploration of the Omega Theory - will God evolve from us as a being of supreme power and intellect or is he already there?

Spoiler alert:

It's also strange to see the similarities between The Matrix movie and the AI/Core in the novel. Especially so, when you consider that this novel came out before the movie. Hmm..who borrowed from who?

The Money Masters

Wow! A friend told me about this documentary called "The Money Masters" about how money is "created" in the US, about how the Federal Reserve is really a quasi-public bank and other such mind boggling facts...It's a fairly long documentary. I've found the time to watch only the first part so far. But it's incredible, absolutely incredible.

Videos:

• Part 1


• Part 2

Some fascinating videos I found on the Internet about Lost Civilizations, Archeology, strange artifacts...

• The Great Year
• Sumerian Origin of Humans
• Mysterious Origins of Man - Forbidden Archeology

Might be improbable, but not impossible. Enjoy!

There's a Website called LibraryThing where you can create your own Reading list and look at what others are reading, search for books based on what you've read and a lot of other nice things. You can even share your list for others to see.

I thought I should share my Sci-Fi reading list. I'll start with the Stephen Baxter books I've enjoyed reading. Now, Baxter is considered to be a Hard Sci-Fi writer, like Clarke. But Baxter's writings are even more futuristic, and absolutely mind bending. Naturally, because Baxter is more like Clarke's successor, carrying the baton into the 21st Century. Certainly not for the faint hearted and semi-luddites. His works are based on extrapolations of our current understanding of Quantum Mechanics. His novels stretch across timescales one would never have imagined. From 500,000 years away, all the way up to several billion years into the future. How mankind will've evolved, what kind of entities we might encounter - not the usual sort of man-eating super roaches you see in B-grade movies, but civilizations that have evolved from Dark matter..and ideas like that, which really stretch your imagination and force you to re-think your philosophy, if you have any that is.

But I found his prose to be a little juddering with haiku-like short sentences and abrupt context switches from chapter to chapter, especially when I read Manifold: Origin, which was the first Baxter novel I read. Subsequent novels were better, probably because I must've got used to his style by then. Baxter's stories are very unique in that he constantly keeps hitting the boundaries of our understanding of the Universe, our purpose here, if there really is any, puts his chatacters in extraordinary situations like encountering a whole galaxy that is miniaturized into a small box because their Sun was about to go Nova or meet a civilization that is millions of years ahead of us and they completely ignore us until the end of the Universe where they leave a small condescending token behind for the poor Humans, like how we throw crumbs at pigeons or a human being grafted onto an AI and then suspended inside the Sun to study why the Sun is dying so fast instead of hanging around for another 5 billion years. But his characters seem to lack depth because there are usually dwarfed by the engineering and astronomical marvels in the story working on colossal scales like the aliens who are re-engineering the Milky Way in the Ring. Some books like the Ring, especially leave you reeling under the concepts.

The Light of Other Days, was a lot more enjoyable. A lot of his novels are interlinked. You have to read all the novels in the right order, when you finally get this "a-ha!" moment when all the pieces fall together - all episodes fall in line sometime along the "Time-like infinity". Start with "The Light of Other Days", which was a collaborative work with Clarke. Then move to Manifold: Origin and then Ring. If it still leaves you thirsting for more Hard Sci-Fi, read Coalescent - an entirely different thread. If the Ring and Manifold leaves you numb and staring into deep space, wondering what your descendants 80,000 years from now will be doing, then you should read Coalescent to bring you back to present day. And if you are curious about Hiveminds you will like this book. Exultant, I felt was too much like Orson Scott Card's - Ender's Game.

You'll also notice Baxter recycling some of his stuff in other novels. But don't miss The Time Ships, a sequel to Wells' Time Machine. I loved this book, probably because he had to continue with Wells' style of writing instead of using his natural style. If you are interested in Evolutionary Biology, Genetic engineering, liked Huxley's Brave New World and are willing to make that leap of faith where a lot of things that we've come to accept as Society, Religion, Culture are all challenged; you should read this book. Well, Faith is the wrong word in this context, I suppose.