Blockchain Implementation With Java Code

David Pitt Articles, Blockchain, Java 4 Comments

Bitcoin is hot — and what an understatement that is. While the future of cryptocurrency is somewhat uncertain, blockchain, the technology used to drive Bitcoin, is also very popular.

Blockchain has an almost endless application scope. It also, arguably, has the potential to disrupt enterprise automation. There is a lot of information available covering what and how blockchain works. We have a free whitepaper that goes into blockchain technology (no registration required).

This blog will focus on the blockchain architecture, particularly demonstrating how the “immutable, append-only” distributed ledger works with simplistic code examples.

As developers, seeing things in code can be much more useful in understanding how it works, than simply reading technical articles. At least that’s the case for me. Let’s get started.

user story mapping

Every Agile Software Project Needs a User Story Map

Rusty Divine Agile, Articles, Microservices Leave a Comment

In this blog, I share an example of a real-world, agile enterprise modernization project that benefited from a User Story Map.

I’m the team lead for a project to convert a business solution from COBOL to a .NET microservices architecture. Other than some interesting challenges with designing a robust microservices solution, the business logic is very straightforward – input files are processed, databases queried, output files are produced and dropped in a folder, and our goal is to match the output produced by the COBOL solution perfectly.

Yet, we lost our way fairly early on in the project because we had a typical prioritized backlog. Unfortunately, even on a straightforward, well-defined project with an engaged team, we still managed to veer off course.

Our project manager started asking questions about where we were in the project and where we were going. I struggled to answer those questions because I couldn’t make sense of all that was in our backlog. It was around this time that I took a spreadsheet and created our first User Story Map….

White Paper Published: Blockchain for the Enterprise

Keyhole Software .NET, Articles, Blockchain, Company News, Java Leave a Comment

The Keyhole team is proud to announce the publishing of a new white paper: Blockchain For The Enterprise. 

While Bitcoin is on the minds of the general public worldwide, blockchain is on the minds of information technology professionals. It is the underpinning technology of the powerful and popular cryptocurrency. What exactly is blockchain and how will it help my business? That is what this white paper seeks to answer.

In the most simple terms, a blockchain is a distributed data system for keeping a ledger of immutable data transactions. We will explore additional complexities through this document, but the simplest way to think of it is a highly distributed transaction log. If you happen to be a developer and you are using Git for source code control, you are already using some of the distributed blockchain elements.

In this white paper, we discuss a number of topics related to blockchain with a particular emphasis on the enterprise. This document will be in three major parts. Part one will include a brief overview and history of blockchain, part two will include a deep technical dive, and the third part is written with the intent to aid managers and executives in their decision making in regards to blockchain…

How an SMS Application Took a Job (i.e. Task)

David Pitt Articles, Automation, Conversational Apps, JavaScript, Keyhole Creations Leave a Comment

This blog is about a human’s job being replaced by automation. But, before you start composing emails and social media responses, know that it’s a job that I think most folks would gladly allow an automated mechanism to take over.

The “job” discussed in this blog is the need to contact individual users (in this case, employees) when those users forgot to accomplish a required task.

In this blog, we discuss a conversational application solution used internally at Keyhole Software for automated SMS text messaging features surrounding time tracking. The solution, implemented with conversational application platform KHS {Convo}, allowed for time entries to be submitted via text and automated, schedule-based notifications….

OpenShift Quick Start: Build, Deployment and Pipeline

David Pitt Articles, Microservices, OpenShift, openshiftseries, Tutorial Leave a Comment

This post is a continuation of our hands-on OpenShift Quick Start blog series.

In the first post we introduced OpenShift & its features. In part two, you worked to get OpenShift running locally & adding a Container with an API service to a Pod. In part three, you worked on scaling pods and managing Cluster with the CLI.

This blog continues that series, introducing the automated Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CICD) features of the OpenShift platform using both the Web Console and the Command Line. A hands-on exercise will then show how a Jenkins build Pipeline can be customized…