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This post is a basic aide-memoire for me to remember the characteristics of the Archimate Application Layer model elements. For a detailed description refer to the main Archimate 3.0 documentation.

The model elements are divided into 3 categories:

• Active Structure
• Passive Structure
• Behaviour

Active Structure

Element	Description	Notes	Notation
Component	Encapsulation of application functionality aligned to implementation structure Modular and replaceable Encapsulates behaviour and data Exposes services and makes them available through interfaces	A self-contained unit Independently deployable, re-usable, and replaceable Performs one or more application functions Functionality is only accessible through application interfaces
Collaboration	An aggregate of two or more application components that work together to perform collective application behaviour	Specifies which components cooperate to perform some task A logical or temporary collaboration of application components Does not exist as a separate entity
Interface	A point of access where application services are made available	How the functionality of a component can be accessed Exposes application services The same interface may expose multiple services

Behaviour

Element	Description	Notes	Notation
Function	Automated behaviour performed by a component	Describes internal behaviour of a component Functions are exposed externally through one or more services May access data objects
Interaction	A unit of collective application behaviour performed by two or more application components	Collective behaviour performed by components that participate in a collaboration
Process	A sequence of application behaviours that achieves a specific outcome	The internal behaviour performed by a component to realize a set of services May realize application services May access data objects A component may perform the process
Event	Denotes a state change	Does not have a duration May be internal or external May have a time attribute
Service	An explicitly defined exposed application behaviour	Functionality is exposed through interfaces Realised by one or more functions Provides a useful unit of behaviour

Passive Structure

Element	Description	Notes	Notation
Data	Data structured for automated processing	A self-contained piece of information Clear business meaning

This post refers to DaVinci Resolve 12.5.

Real-time rendering in DaVinci Resolve can be slow. One of the first things to try is optimising your media. As I understand it, Resolve will use optimised media – which is more efficient - as a proxy for the original format media in the timeline.

To optimise a media item you can right-click on it in the media gallery and select Generate Optimised Media.

The output will end up in the same place as other cached items (see my previous post for details).

Not surprisingly, generating optimised media can take quite a while and it appears that using this method you can only do one clip at a time.

This post refers to DaVinci Resolve 12.5.

Problem

OK, I don’t have a system that’s setup for video editing. As a result, playback in DaVinci Resolve is slow once I’ve added more than a few clips to the timeline, especially if I’m layering clips.

How can we speed up DaVinci Resolve so we get smooth real-time playback in the editor?

Solution

A solution might be to use the render cache in DaVinci Resolve. You can activate the render cache via the Playback > Render Cache menu item.

Note that the render cache has 2 modes: Smart and User. In short, using the Smart option allows Resolve to automatically cache items as it sees fit. In User mode clips are only cached when you indicate you want them cached. To do so, right-click on the clip and choose Render Cache Clip Source > On from the pop-up menu.

When you first add an item to be cached a red line will appear at the top of the timeline above the clip. Once a clip is cached you’ll see the line turn blue.

Tip: If you use the Smart mode and you already have a number of clips added to the timeline it might take a while to add to the cache. Your system might be slow for a while as the cache is built.

Changing the render cache location

Firstly, add the path you want to use to the Media Storage section of DaVinci Resolve > Preferences… screen. I had to restart Resolve after adding a new location or the next step failed.

Secondly, open File > Project settings… and go to General Options. The cache file location is at the bottom of the screen.

I needed a quick RabbitMq installation so I could play with MassTransit, the free open-source .Net message bus framework. Docker to the rescue. I was using the Docker Toolbox on Windows 10 Home.

First things first - RabbitMq is available on the Docker Store as a Docker image called rabbitmq. The documentation is reasonable and I decided I wanted RabbitMq installed with the management plugin. For this test I decided to leave the default RabbitMq username (guest) and password in place. I also elected to expose the default ports for the management plugin (15672) and the standard RabbitMq port (5672) to the host.

Having scanned the documentation the following Docker run command would seem to be in order:

docker run -d --hostname my-rabbit --name some-rabbit -p 15672:15672 -p 5672:5672 rabbitmq:3-management

Note the two –p command line arguments exposing the ports to the host from the Docker container. So, time to crack open the Docker Quickstart Terminal and run the command.

With the Docker container up-and-running I can now go to my local machine and access the RabbitMq management UI running on port 15672.

Cool! Looks like we’ve got RabbitMq running in a container.

A quick test application

I decided to run a quick test using a console application to check everything was working. Firstly, I set up a virtual host for the test in the management UI remembering to add the guest user to the virtual host.

Then, using the RabbitMq .Net client I created the ‘Hello World’ application.

using System;
using System.Text;
using RabbitMQ.Client;

namespace RabbitMqTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                ConnectionFactory factory = new ConnectionFactory();
                factory.Uri = new Uri("amqp://guest:guest@192.168.99.100:5672/console-test");

                Console.WriteLine("Connecting...");
                IConnection conn = factory.CreateConnection();
                Console.WriteLine("Connected.");

                IModel model = conn.CreateModel();

                var exchangeName = "console-test-exchange";
                var queueName = "console-test-queue";
                var consoleTestRoutingKey = "console-test-routing-key";

                model.ExchangeDeclare(exchangeName, ExchangeType.Direct);
                model.QueueDeclare(queueName, false, false, false, null);
                model.QueueBind(queueName, exchangeName, consoleTestRoutingKey, null);

                byte[] messageBodyBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello, world!");
                model.BasicPublish(exchangeName, consoleTestRoutingKey, null, messageBodyBytes);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(e);
            }
        }
    }
}

I ran the application and headed back into the RabbitMq management UI to check the results. Firstly, was the exchange created?

It was. And the queue?

Success again. You can see there’s one message ready too. By drilling in to the queue you can get messages in the management UI. Let’s see what we got.

Bingo! So, all is well with RabbitMq.

The Sample-ShoppingWeb application

MassTransit has a sample application called Sample-ShoppingWeb which you can get from GitHub.

Firstly, I created a new virtual host in RabbitMq and added the guest user to it. I then made simple changes to the configuration to change the RabbitMqHost setting in the App.config and Web.config files of the TrackingService and Shopping.Web projects respectively.

I ran the example and added a few items to the cart using the Shopping.Web MVC application. Watched as the TrackingService picked up the items via RabbitMq. An examination of the RabbitMq management UI showed a bunch of new exchanges and two new queues.

Done. 

This post is a quick aide-mémoire for basic command-line Docker operations. It’s well worth reading the Docker documentation for the real deal. I’ve been running Docker on Windows 10 Home – yes, Home – so I’ve had to use Docker Toolbox. I’ve run the commands listed here using the Docker Quickstart Terminal that comes with the Toolbox.

List containers

To list the all containers run the following command:

docker container ls

See the docker container ls documentation.

Run a Bash shell on a container

To get access to a container using a Bash shell run the following command:

docker exec –it <container-name-here> bash

Back to basics for me today. I’m rebuilding a machine and want to setup SSH to access my BitBucket account (I use BitBucket for my Git repositories). The new machine already has Git installed. I simply used Chocolatey to install Git.

You can skip to full instructions in the BitBucket help if you like.

Step 1 – Check the .ssh directory

The first step is to check that you’ve got an folder called .ssh in your home directory. If it’s missing you need to create it.

Step 2 – Create the default identity

Run ssh-keygen to create the key. If this is a fresh install there won’t be a default key so you can just hit enter to accept the default name or ender a new one if you want. Enter the passphrase when prompted.

Step 3 – Create an SSH config file

Create a config file for SSH.

Open the file and edit it. Add the following:

Host bitbucket.org
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Step 4 – Update the .bashrc file

Check you’ve got a .bashrc file in your home directory. Create one if you don’t. Open the .bashrc file and edit it. Add the following:

#! /bin/bash 
eval `ssh-agent -s` 
ssh-add ~/.ssh/*_rsa

See also Enter RSA passphrase once when using Git bash.

Close and reopen GitBash. You’ll be prompted for the passphrase.

Step 5 - Configure BitBucket to use the new key

Go to your BitBucket account and navigate to your settings. Adding the key is easy. Follow the steps here.

Check you can access BitBucket using the new key.

Done.

I've had a variety of .Net Core installations on my laptop. The end result was .Net Core not working in Visual Studio 2015 anymore despite uninstalling and reinstalling .Net Core and associated Visual Studio tools. The problem was probably exacerbated by uninstallers not completing correctly and other sundary issues.

In a perfect world I would have paved the machine and started again but at this point that’s not practical. Working in VMs might also be an option but for now I just want a laptop with .Net Core up-and-runing.

Investigation

Firstly I decided to find out what was hanging around on the machine. I opened a command prompt and ran dotnet –version to find out.

So this is saying I’ve got version 1.0.0-beta-001598. That seems very old to me and something that should have gone ages ago.

Looking in Add/Remove Programs I see something different.

This suggests 2 other versions have been installed: 1.0.0 Preview2-003131 and 1.0.0 Preview2-003133. Hmm…

So, I had a look at the PATH environment variable on the machine and saw some interesting things. The following directories – that all seem related to .Net Core – were listed in this order:

• c:\Program Files\dotnet\bin
• c:\Program Files\dotnet
• c:\Program Files\Microsoft DNX\Dnvm
• c:\Users\username\.dnx\runtimes\dnx-coreclr-win-x86.1.0.0-rc1-update2\bin
• c:\Users\username\.dnx\bin

Looking in the c:\Program Files\dotnet folder confirmed the installed SDKs but there was something odd. The dotnet.exe appeared in c:\Program Files\dotnet and in c:\Program Files\dotnet\bin. Running them from each location separately revealled different .Net Core versions.

Yep. Things are in a mess.

The c:\Users\username\.dnx\ diectory is also interesting. That isn’t used anymore. What’s in there I wonder?

Turns out it’s got the old – now redundant - dnvm application that gives a different version again. There’s a stack of other stuff in theer too. Sheesh, what a mess I’ve made.

Solution

My solution was to do the following:

• Uninstall the .Net Core and VS Tooling using Add/Remove Programs.
• Run dnvm uninstall from the old .dnx folder (probably not necessary but what the heck).
• Manually delete the following directories (and contents):
• c:\Program Files\dotnet
• c:\Program Files\Microsoft DNX
• c:\Users\username\.dnx
• Remove the same directories as above (and/or sub directories) from both the user and environment $PATH.
• Restart the machine (probably not necessary - belt and braces).
• Installed the latest .Net Core SDK and Visual Studio 2015 Tools from here.

The result? Working .Net Core in Visual Studio!

There was a nice tidy c:\Program Files\dotnet folder with the dotnet.exe and a subfolder containing the SDKs. That’s it, no other folders required or present.

What is Architecture?

The TOGAF documentation initially refers to the original version of ISO/IEC 42010:2007 (Systems and software engineering) which defines architecture in the following terms:

“The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution.” [1] [2]

However, TOGAF defines an architecture as follows:

“1. A formal description of a system, or a detailed plan of the system at component level to guide its implementation
2. The structure of components, their inter-relationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time” [2] [3]

What is an Enterprise?

An enterprise is defined as follows:

“The highest level (typically) of description of an organization and typically covers all missions and functions. An enterprise will often span multiple organizations.” [4]

What kinds of architecture are dealt with by TOGAF?

TOGAF deals with 4 kinds of architecture:

• Business Architecture
• defines the business strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes [2]
• a description of the structure and interaction between the business strategy, organization, functions, business processes, and information needs [5]
• Data Architecture
• describes the structure of an organization's logical and physical data assets and data management resources [2]
• a description of the structure and interaction of the enterprise's major types and sources of data, logical data assets, physical data assets, and data management resources [6]
• Application Architecture
• provides a blueprint for the individual applications to be deployed, their interactions, and their relationships to the core business processes of the organization [2]
• a description of the structure and interaction of the applications as groups of capabilities that provide key business functions and manage the data assets [7]
• Technology Architecture
• describes the logical software and hardware capabilities that are required to support the deployment of business, data, and application services [2]
• includes IT infrastructure, middleware, networks, communications, processing, standards, etc. [2]
• a description of the structure and interaction of the platform services, and logical and physical technology components [8]

References

• [1] http://www.iso-architecture.org/ieee-1471/defining-architecture.html
• [2] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/
• [3] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap03.html#tag_03_08
• [4] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap03.html#tag_03_34
• [5] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap03.html#tag_03_22
• [6] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap03.html#tag_03_32
• [7] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap03.html#tag_03_04
• [8] http://pubs.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf9-doc/arch/chap03.html#tag_03_73