Full Stack with Automated DevOps

A lot has happened with The Ball since the last update in the blog. Massive steps include almost finished Xamarin based mobile client that uses the same web-UI as the web-based instance. The steps also include DevOps on TeamCity that covers the whole project, which was mainly done already on December of 2014.

The most recent concept step is related to bringing the platform to execute on Virtual Reality; prototype of Unreal Engine rendering web-UI in-game environment is available as open source repository and in brief example video.

While there are still steps to finish, Xamarin becoming part of Visual Studio (https://store.xamarin.com/) makes it about due to release the planned steps for full-stack DevOps deployment with the Xamarin-based mobile clients included.

So without further delays I’ll share the following – aimed to serve tech startups & small enough teams that can just take ready-plugged DevOps and go:

and the Unreal Engine concept demo video just for the fun of it :-):

I do my best to speed up the updates on this blog as the full stack & Xamarin solution is completed hopefully by the end of the summer.

Sunny spring wishes from Finland,

Kalle & The Ball partners

Migrate Existing ASP.NET MVC Into Massive Azure Scalable

Let me first apologize for yet another quiet season after the vacations. Again the development during July-September scale was massively busy, piloting the strong smart card / certificate authentication as well as authentication support from market leader school system Wilma.

Now back to business with more recent news – a very recent presentation of Finnish DevDays on October 2nd. While the video from Finnish presentation is on its way, as well as my own preparations on English version, let me already share the deck of something pretty exciting.

Scalable Architectures DevDays 2014 – ENG (English PowerPoint)

Skaalautuvat arkkitehtuurit DevDays 2014 – FIN (Finnish PowerPoint)

ScalabilityEstimationCalculations (Calculation spreadsheet – not documented though)

So what to expect within? Case scenarios for preparing startup-level service to tens of millions active/spiking users. Scenario including straightforward approach to identify the cost components and then provide simple solution to “blobify” the modern EF + WCF dataservice to JSON serving.

The Ball architecture is breathing the model explained herein, so the CTP from May makes much more sense in this context. While I’m still preparing for more detailed web-developer API examples, if you have active project/questions please toss me an email to kalle.launiala@protonit.net.

Cheers,

Kalle

 

The Ball Developer APIs CTP Finally Out!

Finally I got everything done and polished for the developer core tooling to go out and demonstrated! It was long due, but we realized STAGING support was so much needed, we had to implement that, and then wanted to finalize the NuGet depoloyments as well.

These APIs will now cover the basic web development and introduce also cross-platform mobile/device development security infrastructure. This publication is serving as a baseline for communicating our piloting development teams. I’ll be publishing the finegrained results of the usage once the piloting proceeds with the various teams.

In nutshell the current demos & videos consist of following:

• Creating development account and group on https://devdev.theball.me
• Demonstrating secure connections to the group with desktop filesystem, Android, Raspberry-Pi and Office Add-in
• The desktop and Raspberry-Pi demonstrate console tool usage
• Android and Office Add-in demonstrate equal functionality on developer API
• Web developer example then tries to explain the filesystem-alike development

As a side note the earlier platforms with names *.caloom.com have been effectively replaced with *.theball.me. This means test, demo, schools and business domains. Now this devdev.theball.me is added to provide public/community developers a testing area for those who can’t maintain The Ball instance of their on from Azure.

I’ll do my best to follow up with the web development “Getting Started” version, but as it’ll be few days + cleaning up due to other urgent matters, I wanted to push the core versions out asap – even when it meant to use our existing bloated templates as examples. If you’re not already in loop with us, but this raised interest, please contant me directly with email at kalle.launiala@protonit.net.

So the actual stuff is available as following:

• Videos on YouTube playlist
• Documentation about Developer Tools & APIs
• The demo repository on GitHub with all the code in the example videos

NOTE! Repository .gitignore was beforehand prepared to ignore AaltoGlobalImpact.OIP data directory, so it should stay ignored in the WebStorm and Git commits as well.

Cheers,

Kalle

Datajalostamo, informaatioekosysteemi, Pallo-ekosysteemi

Poiketen blogin kansainvälisestä kohdeyleisöstä ja englanninkielisestä materiaalista tämä posti on suomeksi. Selvyyden vuoksi aloitan määrittelemällä hieman otsikon terminologiaa.

• Datajalostamo = avoin juuri käyntiin lähtenyt yhteisö, joka pyrkii synnyttämään aidon ja puhtaan liiketoimintaympäristön rahan arvoisen datan jalostusketjussa
• Informaatioekosysteemi = looginen käyttäjäkohtaisen ja yksityisen informaation jalostuarvon pohjalta kuvattu malli-visio asiasta
• Pallo-ekosysteemi = realisoitunut ja konkreettinen kiinnitys informaatioekosysteemiin, jatkuvasti kehittyvä ja nyt lähestymässä jalostusketjuille relevanttia konkretiaa

Datajalostamon toiminnassa on minun avoimesti keräämästäni “Pallo-verkostosta” tuttuja tahoja ja jollain tavalla useat juuret juontavat Mikkelissä toukokuussa 2013 pidettyyn työpajaan. Pallo-verkosto ei ole (vielä) onnistunut konkretisoitumaan itseään omalla painollaa kasvattavaksi verkostoksi, vaikka eri suuntien pilotit etenevät rohkaisevasti.

Moneltakin kantilta katson Datajalostamon tavoittelevan juuri samoja asioita ja – mikä tärkeintä – tekevän sitä avoimen yhteisöllisesti, joten nimestä viis – avoin Pallo-verkosto on minun kauttani tässä täysillä mukana :-).

Datajalostamo-yhteisö on avoin, siihen pääsee mukaan tulemalla mukaan. Ryhmä on käynnistynyt vasta hiljattain, joten “virallista infokanavaa” ollaan vasta muodostamassa. Mikäli konsepti sattuu tällä alustuksella herättämään kiinnostusta, ohjaan mielelläni kiinnostuneita eteenpäin. Minut saa kiinni tällä agendalla myös tutusta postista kalle.launiala@protonit.net.

HUOM! Tämä posti on työkappale-avaus olemassaolevan Pallo-materiaalin kytkemisestä Datajalostamo-konseptin alle. Mikkeli on vahvasti edustettuna materiaalissa yksinkertaisesti siksi, koska tämä avoin yhteisö/yritysverkosto on spontaanisti syntynyt sekä yritysten että kaupungin yhteistyön tuloksena 🙂

Eli tällä alustuksella siirrytään varsinaiseen agendaan. Kokonaisen ekosysteemin kommunikoinnissa olen tunnistanut kolme päätahoa. Nämä tahot ovat:

1. Asiakas, kuluttaja, kansalainen, käyttäjä = se, jonka tarve ensi- ja viimekädessä merkitsee
2. Toimittaja, sovelluskehittäjä, datan tarjoaja = se, joka tuottaa/toimittaa tarvittavia elementtejä kokonaisuuteen
3. Päättäjä, päätöksentekijä, mahdollistaja = se, joka mahdollistaa sen, että käyttäjän tarve voidaan ratkaista toimittajan toimesta

Materiaali on pureskeltu ko. ryhmiin alla (osa videoituna). Alustuksena on kankeasta hankemallista siirtyminen käytännön ketterään kehitykseen, mikä on realiteetti siitä, miten ohjelmistoteollisuuden toimijat (startupeista mihin tahansa alustatoimijaan) oikeasti toimivat. Loppuun yhdistäväksi tekijäksi on tuotu yhteisöllinen kehitys, jossa on linkattu aiemmin blogissakin esitetty yhteisöllinen avoimen ja yksityisen datan kehittäminen, älykkään kaupungin ekosysteemi ja visio yksilötason informaation arvostuksesta arvoketjujen rahoittajana.

Alustus

Ideoiden välitön jalkautusmahdollisuus ja huomioiminen jatkuvassa kehityksessä.

• Mikkeli meininki! (videoitu esitys, PowerPoint, PDF).

Asiakas

• Sähköinen asiointialusta-asenne kuntalaiselle (videoitu esitys, PowerPoint, PDF)

Päättäjä

• Kuntatason järjestelmäalusta – Päätöksenteko (videoitu esitys, PowerPoint, PDF)

Toimittaja

• Kuntatason järjestelmäalusta – Toimittaja (PowerPoint, PDF)
• Kuntalaisen rajapinta sähköiseen asiointiin: käyttäjän identiteetti vs. rooli sähköisessä asioinnissa (PowerPoint, PDF)
• Toimittaja – Loppukäyttäjän perspektiivi (PowerPoint, PDF)
• Toimittaja – Looginen väylärakenne (PowerPoint, PDF)
• Toimittaja – Sovellusarkkitehtuuritason pilkkominen (PowerPoint, PDF)

Yhteisöllinen kehitys ja informaation arvo

• Accelerating Open and Private Data Community Driven Development (video, PowerPoint, PDF) – esitetty alunperin SYKE:n “Smart Environmental Information”-seminaarissa
• Smart City Ecosystem – Introduction (video, kalvot samat kuin Toimittaja – Loppukäyttäjän perspektiivi, paitsi englanniksi) – tällä esityksellä suomeksi pidettynä voitettiin Porin avoimessa tietohallintokilpailussa innovaatiopalkinto
• Yksilötason innovaatiot, jonka ekosysteemi-infra ja hankemallin kevennys voi mahdollistaa: towards citizens as digital innovators – visio-näkemys on reilut 2v vanha, ja sen realisointi johti Pallo-mallin innovaatioon
• Pallo-alustan esittelyvideot löytyvät laajemmin blogin demovideo alueelta, tämän postin videot löytyvät myös omalta soittolistaltaan.

Yhteenveto

Yhteenvetona yllä oleva kiinnitys on tehty sovelluskehityksen ja sen (alusta)ekosysteemeille ja toimialalle ominaisten piirteiden vahvasti ohjaamana. Sitä kautta tarkastellen yllä esitetty malli on realisoitavissa ja omaa mm. datan palveluinfran operaattorien osalta oleellista päätöksenteon/hankemallin hallintaa.

Eli tässä siis lähtötaso minun/Pallo-verkoston suunnasta yhteisölliseen tekemiseen 🙂

t: Kalle + Pallo-tiimi

Breaking the Silence – Twice :-)!

I apologize for way, way overdue of status updating the Ball progress in the blog. I’ll remedy that with two major posts – one today and one in next week.

First post will be (un)fortunately in Finnish – as it is directed to our local (Finnish) ecosystem piloting programs. It will consist mostly on Finnish material – but mostly just re-packaging the open/community driven ecosystem model.

Second post will follow up the first – to finish the technology API/SDK level of the Ball. It will demonstrate current API level, introduce the tooling and our generous partners who enable the productivity tooling for the platform. The second post will do its best to introduce and describe hands-on level of getting started with full blown client-to-cloud access, web template management and data management between developers and running platform.

This being said, I’ll prep the first post on its way hopefully by today 🙂

With warm and sunny spring feelings from Helsinki, Finland,

Kalle

Research Study About The Ball

One big thing of the year 2013 for the Ball was the master thesis work around it done by Michael Gurschler. The thesis is the first good neutral conclusion around the Ball – and was quite good perspective for things to improve. Many of the things especially related to developer clonability and production environment setup have been greatly improved since Michael set up his own instance for the study.

Michael Gurschler’s Thesis About The Ball (PDF)

I’d like to take this opportunity and personally thank Michael for his invaluable work on demystifying the Ball!

This is good conclusion for the year 2013, looking forward to reach whole new set of milestones during 2014!

Kalle

Web site on The Ball on Azure: 99% Cost Consolidation

Yes, the number is correct.

No, it’s not 99% more bang for the buck, it’s 99% less of the buck for (actually even better) bang. If you want to have the same number in traditional consolidation ratio let me include the exact decimals as well: it was 99,21%. The consolidation ratio is 125 to 1.

The Ball Consolidation Summary

The numbers are even more radical if the focus changes to consolidating CPU only, now they also include the network cost, that’s making majority of the Ball cost. This is kind of an obvious outcome, as the Ball architecture is so simple and it underlines the primitive level control. Now that same control can be used to detailed cost-payment directions to every single group within same instance.

There is no magic – the Ball platform is able to consolidate the resource usage between all the groups that operate within the same infrastructure. Thus the groups are able to take advantage of all the web/worker role capacity altogether.

This is ultimately good news for small groups or even individual developers (much like myself), who can also take advantage of the opportunity and slice the costs and unify the maintenance for all of their solution base. At least for what comes to cloud-back-end…

I made the video for the presentation and scenario that was captured from our test site. It’s available in The Ball Solutions playlist. I’ll put the standard UI on all the groups likely during the coming week. The presentation slides including the reports are available below.

Radical Consolidation on The Ball (PowerPoint) (PDF)

Cheers,

Kalle

Enabling Open And Private Data Community-Driven Development

Thanks to Finnish Environmental Institute with its partners, we had great seminar about “Smart Environmental Information” today!

In the seminar I presented under the topic “Accelerating Open And Private Data Service Development”. The presentation was spoken  and shortened explanation of more detailed Open Data Ecosystem – Infrastructure model that we introduced in June.

Unified Community

The video is posted in Demo Videos under “Smart City Ecosystem”. The slides of my presentation are available as well Accelerating Open and Private Data Development (PDF).

Looking forward to the Azure DevDays seminar day on 11th of November, where my goal is to introduce and demonstrate the consolidation factors by very detailed resource usage numbers.

Stay tuned!

Kalle

Windows Phone on The Ball on Azure

This has been busy week so far 🙂

I have considered adding support for Windows Phone straightforward, as all the web socket negotiation stacks worked even for Mono. Thus I kind of didn’t bother to do it, but kept claiming that it’s straightforward… until this morning.

For the preparations of my next week seminar presentation I wanted to demonstrate real-time private location against open-data. Anything else than demonstration with real mobile device would have been lame, so I gave the Windows Phone support a go… started around 9:00, ended with functional version around 12:00. Then wrapped and polished the whole package to GitHub and proceeded to make demonstrational video of the thing.

So here you go – runs as-is against demo.caloom.com:

https://github.com/abstractiondev/TheBallMobileClients

The video is also available in Demo Videos under The Ball – Solutions.

… now the next thing to add is the information processing from inputs/outputs/device connections… to make that location appear automatically and in real-time.

Cheers,

Kalle

The Ball Group Input-Output-Device Demo Available

Getting demo.caloom.com up and then realizing that I need my “private” test.caloom.com as well span off motivation to demonstrate the Ball network communications.

I just added two new videos to The Ball – Solutions playlist at Demo Videos.

• The Ball Input-Output Explained

This has the explanation of design choises and user/group level control of what’s inputed and outputed.

Input Output Device Sketch

The sketch is getting drawn with explanation on this video.

• The Ball Input-Output Demo

The actual demonstration, starting with demo case explanation and going through steps in demo. The steps in the demo are:

Demonstration Details – Case “Common categories” & “Common Content”
– Introduce device client details
– Perform Negotiation
=> validates client, requires validation on device connecting side
– Introduce input, validate
– Introduce output, validate
– Download from input => verify from storage
– Upload to output => verify from storage
– Make category to demo., make textcontent to test.
– Rerun download/upload => verify from storages

These demos can be run as-is with the available demo/test sites, however they need to be hooked up with processing to be visible elsewhere than in the storage containers, where there is no group-level user interface available right now.

I aim to add soon Android/real device connection that will update real-time private location to my private account area. That’s going to start real internet-of-things demonstrations finally :-)!

Cheers,

Kalle