TOGAF, Version 9, Chapter 2

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Architecture Development Method (ADM)

1. It is a method to arrive at an enterprise architecture specific to the organization. 
2. It is specifically designed to address business requirements. 
3. Architecture are created at different levels i.e. Business, Data, Application, and Technology to ensure that complex set of requirements are met. 

ADM consists of the following phases.

1. Preliminary 
2. Architecture Vision
3. Business Architecture
4. Information Systems Architecture (Data and Application)
5. Technology Architecture
6. Opportunities and Solutions
7. Migration Planning 
8. Implementation Governance
9. Architecture Change Management 
10. Requirements Management

TOGAF, Version 9, Chapter 1

What does TOGAF stand for? 

The Open Group Architecture Framework.

What is it?
It is an architecture framework. It is designed to assist in acceptance - and I personally think this is the biggest part of the framework - production, use and maintenance of architecture.

It is based on a iterative process model. It is supported by best practices. And it also provides reusable set of existing architectural assets.

The key piece of this framework is the method to create an enterprise architecture that addresses business needs. The method is called Architecture Development Method (ADM).

Who have come up with TOGAF? 
It is created by The Open Group of Architecture Forum. The first version was created in 1995. The version 9 was first rolled out on January 2009.

What does TOGAF contain?

TOGAF contains - embrace yourself for a hailstorm of buzzwords here. Don't feel intimidated though they are just consultant friendly fancy names for things that you might have been handling for ages. 

1. An "Architecture Development Method (ADM)". 
2. An "architecture capability" to operate ADM. Now do you start getting the feeling that it might be something created by consultants, for consultants. No offense to anyone though. Just my personal feeling. 
3. A number of "guidelines and techniques" to support ADM. 
4. A "repository" to store the output of ADM.
5. An "Enterprise Continuum" to classify the content of repository. At this point the for consultant, by consultant aspect of this framework becomes a tad too boring. 
6. The "repository" is initially populated by "TOGAF reference models".

What is TOGAF's definition of architecture?
Architecture, in TOGAF world, is one of the following, depending upon context.

1. A formal description of system, or a detailed plan of a system at component level, to guide its implementation. 
2. The structure of components, their inter relationships, the guidelines and principles governing their design and evolution over time. 

What kind of architecture does TOGAF deal with?
TOGAF deals with the following kinds of architectures

1. Business
2. Data 
3. Application 
4. Technology

Next Chapter >

A quick introduction to Hibernate with Annotations.

This is a quick hands on introduction to Hibernate with Annotations. I have used Eclipse, Maven, MySQL with Hibernate in this example.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddmdw5z2_194fwq788ft

A quick hands on introduction to Hibernate

This is a quick hands on introduction to Hibernate. I have used Eclipse, Maven, MySQL with Hibernate in the example.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddmdw5z2_193hpkqswfz

A "Hello World" from Maven, from scratch

Of course you have heard of Maven, the big daddy of all build and release tools, plus much more. If you have not, be glad that you are reading this document. Better late than never. :) Well the truth is that Maven has become the De facto tool of build and release in the Java world for some time now and hence it can't be ignored. But also, it is true that it's known to work in a slightly different manner than the others of the same league e.g. Ant, and hence it is a bit difficult to get started with and to feel comfortable about (at least I felt so). So, as I try to explore Maven as a tool, and take a peek under the hood, I thought I will share my notes as well alongside on this exploration of mine. It might help someone. If not, well, no problem, there is no dearth of space on the net, eh?! :)

Read the rest of the note at http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddmdw5z2_181nmw5tzfq

How to get Chrome and "Symantec Endpoint Protection" (SEP) work together?

I absolutely love the browser, Google Chrome. If you have not tried it yet, I highly recommend it. You can download Chrome from http://www.google.com/chrome. It is small, fast, efficient, unobtrusive. Just the way a browser should be. However, this post is not about Google chrome. There are plenty about it, on internet. This post is about how to get the anti virus system "Symantec Endpoint Protection" (SEP) and Chrome coexist in your computer.

The problem:

SEP (http://www.symantec.com/business/endpoint-protection) is a pretty good product. I have been using it for some years now and I do not have any complains. Version 11 is latest. I am sure it is as good as its predecessors, if not more. However, it does not go along with Chrome. If you have the version 11 of Symantec installed in your machine, it will not allow Chrome to work. If you try to open Chrome, either by clicking on Chrome shortcut or by clicking on any hyperlink, the Chrome window will come up with an apology. It will not work.

Solution 1: Modify your antivirus

This was reported in the SEP support forum https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board/message?board.id=endpoint_protection11&thread.id=15816.

If you go through the long post you will find the following suggestion as a workaround

1) Back up the registry on an affected system.

2) Open the registry on the Agent system by entering regedit from a run prompt.

3) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SysPlant.

4) Open the Start DWORD.

5) Change the value to 4 to disable the drivers.

6) Reboot the system to commit the changes.

It is a workaround and not a solution. I did not try this workaround since it involves disabling something in my anti virus system that I did not understand the implications of.

In the SEP, 11.0.3001.2224, Google Chrome is working by default, as claimed in https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board/message?message.uid=360914#U360914. I do not have that version of SEP and hence can not comment on it. There are suggestions in some post that the version 11.0.3001.2224, fixes the problem by forcing Chrome to work without its sandbox. I am not comfortable disabling that either.

Sandbox is a default security mechanism in Chrome. You can find a non techie explanation at http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/26. It is one of the unique features of Chrome and I am not comfortable switching it off. Chrome will not be the same without it. However, if you must switch off one thing or the other, I would rather switch off the sandbox system in Chrome. Since I do not have SEP, 11.0.3001.2224, I will have to switch off sandbox of Chrome, manually.

There are multiple points where the Chrome can be started from. Unfortunately, we will have to go to each of those points and switch off the sandbox security. So, here is how to do that.

Solution 2, Step 1: Modify the Chrome shortcuts

You could start Chrome from Start menu, Quick launch bar or desktop shortcut. In each of these cases a right click + click on "Properties", will reveal the "Target". Generally that is set to the full path name of Chrome, something like "...\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe". All you will have to do is append " --no-sandbox" to it and save the setting. Please note the empty space before "--no". Next time you start Chrome any one of these icons, your SEP will not be offended. You can find this suggestion also provided by the google support folks at http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=38.

Solution 2, Step 2: Modify the way Windows launches Chrome

You could also start Chrome by clicking at any hyperlink, in your Word, email etc. Admittedly, this will not be the case unless you had set Chrome as your default browser. I like using Chrome as the default browser and hence the following bit was also required.

1) Back up the registry on an affected system.

2) Open the registry by entering regedit from a run prompt.

3) Search for ChromeHTML in keys. There might be multiple. However we are looking for one key named ChromeHTML which has "shell\open\command" as it's subkeys.

4) Navigate to ...\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command. Append " --no-sandbox" to the default key. Please note the empty space before "--no". Save it.

5) On the same hierarchy level as ChromeHTML, you should also have the keys "http" and "https", which also have "shell\open\command" as their subkeys. Do the same change, i.e appending " --no-sandbox" to the default key in "\shell\open\command" for keys "http" and "https" as well.

6) Save the values. Close registry. Reboot windows.

Now you should be able to click on any hyperlink and have it opened in Chrome.

I have not found any official source i.e. google, symantec, suggest a solution to bring up Chrome on click on any hyperlink. Hence I have tinkered around and found the workaround that I have just mentioned. As you can see, this involves a fair bit of working on registry of your windows, which should be avoided generally. However, since I just had to have Chrome working as the default browser, I risked it. If you are techie person, you should be fine following that procedure, but ultimately, use your own discretion.

So, there it is. Enjoy.