Chris Tomkins’ Blog

Those of you who read this blog will probably know I used to post about work related topics at the SOA Tips ‘n’ Tricks blog along with a number of my IBM colleagues. Rather than continue to post there (think it might be a bit awkward - people from 2 major competitors posting on the same blog) I have just started my own BEA dev2dev blog which can be found here.

My aim is to post about how to do real things with the product and offer my own tips and tricks as to how to get the most out of the products - focusing mainly on AquaLogic Service Bus and AquaLogic Registry and Repository. My first post, entitled “How to add a service to AquaLogic Service Bus” is available now. I have got lots of other posts in the pipeline but would really like to hear from you about what you’d like me to write about. Before you ask though, I am not allowed to do any comparisons between IBM and BEA’s products - although I would really like to

Hope you enjoy reading it - if you do (or even if you don’t) - go ahead and leave a comment its always good to get feedback.

Well its finally coming to the end of my week in Silicon Valley on my New Hire Field Training at BEA’s headquarters. All in all its been a good week - I’ve learnt lots of stuff and most importantly met lots of really great people. I’ve got to take a peek at all the main products - a really impressive line-up - and got to meet many of the key folks in the various teams, plus I’ve got to see the existing BEA headquarters before they move to their new home in downtown San Jose.

My time at the DoubleTree hotel has also been fine in terms of the room and staff, however last night was my 3rd false alarm fire bell in under a week - slightly excessive. The problem is they don’t announce on the tannoy it is a false alarm and so you end up going down stairs and back round to reception before you find out - definitely a bit annoying at 11pm like it was last night.

San Jose and the surrounding area is OK too - nothing special - but nice nevertheless. If you are looking for some restaurant recommendations - check out Sino (an Asian restaurant on Santana Row) which serves a great mix of Asian food and McCormick and Schmick’s which serves excellent fish downtown.

Lets hope air traffic control at San Francisco airport are a bit better than when I arrived so I make it home before work again on Monday!

Yesterday I arrived in San Jose in preparation for my New Hire Field Training course at BEA headquarters. I have visited California before on my round the world trip, just over 5 years ago, when I visited San Francisco and LA but this is my first time in Silicon Valley - the home of many of the worlds top internet, software and telecommunications companies (check out the Silicon Valley link for the full list).

I was told travelling to San Jose via London was a bit of a pain and everyone flew to San Francisco and then made their own way down to San Jose (about 40 mins away). The trip started well: I’d checked in online and printed my boarding pass the night before for my BA flight; my taxi arrived a few minutes early to collect me and we made great time down a pretty empty M3 (if only it was like this when I commute to High Wycombe). Things then started to get worse - first I realised I had forgotten my mobile (no problem really as I can only use it in the UK) and then I was told I was too early to drop my bags off (oh well, better than being later). After grabbing a tea to kill the time things started to improve: I dropped off my bags; made my way through security; had a good look round the shops and got on my flight on time.

We left a few minutes late and the journey was good (BA’s touch screen entertainment system keeping me amused for the 11hr flight) until we got to San Francisco. We started to descend and couldn’t have been long from the captain lowering the wheels when we pulled up (not too sharply but enough to know something was wrong). The captain came on the tannoy to tell us San Francisco air traffic control had brought us in too close to the plane in front - the heavy rain and tail wind meant hadn’t helped the situation and the plane on the runway was pretty slow - so we had to circle.

A few minutes later we were told we didn’t have enough fuel to circle and we would be landing at Oakland airport (the other side of the bay from San Francisco) where we would refuel and then fly back to San Francisco as BA didn’t have any ground crew at Oakland. On landing we were told to stay in our seat in case immigration wanted to come and check the plane (you can just imagine the commotion - a large plane landing unexpectedly at an airport in the US post 9/11) - luckily there were no spare walkways so immigration wouldn’t have been able to get on anyway

After just over an hour we took off bound for San Francisco and came in to land again, only for the same thing to happen - we were brought in too close to the plane in front. The co-pilot announced over the tannoy this was only the 4th time this had happened to him in 10 years of flying including the twice on this flight! This was followed by the cabin crew director announcing it had only happened to him 3 times before this flight in 33 years and the captain saying this was one of the worst pieces of air traffic control in his 38 years of flying and he would be making an official complaint as soon as we made it into the terminal building!

On our next attempt we landed, made it quickly through customs (even with having to have my photo and fingerprints taken as is now customary for people visiting the US), and then to baggage reclaim. After 10 minutes waiting at carousel 7 (where the screens said our luggage would be) we were told to go to carousel 8 instead where after another 10 minutes or so my bag finally arrived (luckily I wasn’t one of the few people who’s names were called out whose bags had been lost/left in London - how hard can it be!). I then made my way to the shuttles and managed to get one to my hotel - the DoubleTree, San Jose, although had to wait for about 25 mins before we left the airport in order to get enough passengers. Then after a tour round much of the valley (taking 4 other guests to their hotel) we finally made it to my hotel - just over a full 24hrs since I’d got up!

After finding my room, sorting out the free internet connection, chatting to Shelley and the customary flick through the TV channels I headed to bed - a really long day but I’d eventually made it to the valley!

When I was at IBM Hursley park it was good to get away from the desk and out of the office at lunchtime to take a walk around the site (for those of you who don’t know, the main building, Hursley house, is like a stately home with some fantastic grounds) and this is something I thought I would miss when I changed jobs to go and work for BEA, especially as the High Wycombe site is on a small business park. However, since starting the new job I have split my time fairly evenly between High Wycombe, the London office and working from home which has given me a whole range of different lunchtime walks. At High Wycombe, the business park is right next to a large park with a river running alongside; in London (as I have discovered today) I am about 5-10 minutes walk from the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and the River Thames (still got lots of exploring to do round here); and at home there is always a dog needing a walk!

Last Wednesday saw me start my new job as a Senior Systems Engineer at BEA in High Wycombe and so far things are going really well. Day 1 involved getting a brief introduction to BEA (where I finally learnt what the acronymn stands for - Bill, Ed and Alfred - the first names of the company founders), an explanation of the various HR processes (benefits, vacation, conduct guidelines, etc.) and most importantly getting some new toys - a new laptop and a BlackBerry. Everything was very organised and by lunchtime I was able to check mail on both my laptop and BlackBerry - very impressive.

After this I found a free desk (since my new team spend quite a bit of time working in different locations no one has their own permanent desk) and then met a number of people in the team - all of whom welcomed me and made me feel at home really quickly.

On Thursday I went up to the London office to sit in on a number of presentations on various topics including what’s coming in future versions of the products. The office is located in the city, near Monument tube station - a short tube ride from Waterloo to Bank along the Waterloo and City Line and then a 5 minute walk.  Again the people here were really welcoming and I quickly felt like part of the team and had a really enjoyable day.

Since then I have been getting my hands on the products I am going to be working with. AquaLogic Service Bus (based on WebLogic Server) seemed like a good place to start with my experience of WebSphere ESB and so far I have installed the product and run through a number of examples and tutorials - both Service Bus level and WebLogic Server level - which has given me a great introduction to the products and helped me understand how to do a number of the things I could do with the IBM equivalent products.

Over the next week or so I am going to continue to run through the rest of these and start to build some of my own solutions based on common customer scenarios I have seen in the past. During this week I am also going to listen in to a number of the sessions from the BEA World conference (happening this week in Barcelona) which many of my new team and a large number of customers are attending. This should give me a good insight into my new role and hopefully next year I will be an attendee myself!

So far so good!

For your information, from now on I will no longer be posting, or commenting, on IBM products on either this blog or the SOA Tips ‘n’ Tricks blog for obvious reasons. However, expect to see posts in the future on either this blog or a work related blog on BEA products, when I understand them well enough