Capabilities that an Architect picks up

One starts of as a learner of technology
One masters programming
One masters problem solving
One gets hang of technologies - to know trends
One if able to apply technologies to solve problem
One is able to conceptualize big (in scale) solutions
One then learns to develop a plan for achieve solutions - what is the order of building pieces
One learns to bring in business into picture - buy vs build
One learns to adjust plan as business situations change
One learns how to lead execution of an architecture
One learns how to sell architectural proposals
One learns how to teach
One learns to lead and facilitate - let everybody realize their potential

My belief is that there are more of such learning steps... rest of mountains in the journey would be visible once one crosses these ... i am still stuck in one of the mountains ...A lifetime is not enough to master all this ... that will keep the excitement in the journey!

Troubleshooting JBoss HA

JBoss HA relies on JGroups for communication. It is very easy to work with, but if it doesn't it gets little difficult to troubleshoot. This is what i realized last week when i tried to set it up on two machines. Here are the steps you can follow if you are stuck:

1. Check whether multicast works - http://www.jboss.org/file-access/default/members/jbossas/freezone/docs/Clustering_Guide/4/html-single/index.html#id3016498
Want to read some theory on multicast - http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Multicast-HOWTO.html

2. Check if JGroups is able to establish communication channels - http://myt.ag/URLWeb.aspx?email=steve%40fooworks.com&url=http%3a%2f%2fwiki.jboss.org%2fwiki%2fWiki.jsp%3fpage%3dTestingJBoss&sn=

3. Enable logging in JBoss to see more info - http://www.jboss.org/community/docs/DOC-9164

4. Make sure that you are not booting JBoss with -b 0.0.0.0. Give IP address of machine instead of 0.0.0.0

Three types of architects

Enterprise Architect
Infrastructure Architect
Software Architect

from : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc431351.aspx

Another one of Architecture

Architecture is user experience
Architecture is negotiating and bargaining
Architecture is technology
Architecture is form
Architecture is communication
Architecture is artful
Architecture is agile
Architecture is the creation of a better world

from : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc304371.aspx

Architecture of a process

Evolution is a process that makes lot of us wonder. In the beginning there was a condition created ,that included lightening, that resulted in amino acids. These then got together causing proteins and cells to be formed. And from then on two steps followed continuously - mutation and reproduction. Huge number of repetitions of this caused such a variety of species, human being one of them. If God designed the process, He probably did not design it with Human Being or any other specie as the culmination. He designed a process that would go on and improve. Wonder what would happen if any one of this steps was missing the process would not yield. Lot of repetitions of this step - much like fractals - causes results that make us wonder. It would simply be not possible to design human specie as an independent design.

Assume that God was in the process of designing this. In the first release of design He would make reproduction as primary requirement. Once cells were designed, He would have then thought of bringing change in the cell to make evolution possible. Mutation is also very carefully designed, because any mutation we try artificially results in certain death. As a software engineer i am inclined to think of God writing a program (in assembly language with UAGC blocks, a DNA being a module). Every time we muck with the code the program fails. In a computer program as long as i write syntactically correct program, the program will run. It may not achieve anything meaningful, it may not terminate but it will run till an 'exit' is called. God's designed the virtual machine (that runs the program) that terminates syntactically correct programs. This deviation from randomness to get optimal results is also evident in "scale free design - http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060807.networks.shtml.

Architecture is not just a structure that one sets in the beginning and then it stands touched. It is more like a process. Once the principles or say fundamental steps are followed over years product gets better and better. If Amazon asks its engineers about what happens millions of people access a program, it is an example of architecture of a process that results in scalable systems. I would say REST is also another example of same. SOA Choreography gives a base wherein one can create such an architecture.