A computer scientist learns Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Hardware, Software, Middleware! Photo: Very fashionable middle-wear. MIddleware? What's that? The stuff in the middle? The Plumbing, the "Glue" between systems. Typically related to integration and interoperability for distributed many-to-many systems and systems of systems, and may include: message queues, message oriented middleware (MOM), integration, ESBs, marshalling, protocol conversion, routing, content based routing, XML validation, security, data transformation, service publication and discovery, SOA, ORBs, Corba, .NET, J2EE, etc. Middleware has been around for ages, here's a brief "cover letter" of my experiences with "proto-middleware" and beyond. Proto-middleware When I was a kid I worked for the local TV repair shop. One of my jobs was putting up TV aerials, what fun (particularly on slippery "A" frame roofs in a high wind). When the 2nd TV station (TV2) in NZ starting being broadcast it was difficult to recei...

Cloud and Internet Scale Computing Picture: Guess!? Is it small, big or "virtual" (actually an internet visualisation) "Cloud" computing isn't really new, it's been around in one form another since the internet and distributed computing (i.e. decades). Amazon Web Services (AWS) Attended AWS Summit 2017 in Sydney (sessions of particular interest were on Kinesis, micro service architectures and workflows and monitoring, security architecture, scientific workloads, data analytics and machine learning, the new AWS X-Ray monitoring service, and enterprise migration). I am currently studying the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Official Study Guide (Sybex, 2017) and hope to be certified by June 2017.   I am writing a blog from the perspective of a “computer scientist” learning AWS which I hope will include insightful architectural observations and trade-offs ( https://acomputerscientistlearnsaws.blogspot.com.au ) . As a practical exercise I am...

Big Data/Data Analytics Performance and Scalability: Opportunities for Performance Modelling Data Analytics Platforms and Applications Paul Brebner, Draft V1 February 2016, Draft V2 April 2017 Data Analytics and Performance Modelling My last 10 years R&D with NICTA and then start-up CTO experience resulted in a Software Performance Modelling technology, which is itself an example of data analytics.   The most recent innovation is the ability to automatically build performance models from software monitoring data (lots of it).    Our processing pipeline (and experience with client technologies) includes commercial and open source data analytics tools (e.g. SPLUNK, Hive, R, Cassandra, Amazon cloud, etc). ·        I have recently applied automatic performance modelling to a client problem (Department of Immigration, Visa Risk System) involving predicting real time analytics performance and scalability issues due t...

Here's the 2nd of my "cover letters" on what I've done during a typical (?) Computer Science career focussing on: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Analytics 10 years study in Computer Science, Philosophy, AI and Machine Learning (Waikato University 1980-1985, UNSW 1986-1990).  MSc (1 st class honours, Waikato). Thesis on Autonomous Paradigm-directed learning in the domain of a “child” learner in the robot block stacking world (with simulated naïve physics, a robot arm, and blocks of different sizes and shapes which could be stacked up but which would eventually fall down).  Software architecture involved learning algorithm from past experience which would attempt to develop a theory which was consistent with a current “paradigm” (belief about what was important in the world), which would be tested by a sub-program designed to find the next best experiment to conduct (based on current state of the world, past experiments, current theory etc), an...

I've recently been preparing some "cover letters" for a potential career change and it turns out I've had a reasonably varied career so far as a "Computer Scientist". Here's an example I did recently covering scientific computation and software engineering. Scientific computation and software engineering Developed a computer program for pasture growth modelling for DSIR (1985, New Zealand). 15 years experience with UNIX systems & kernel programming, distributed systems and Open systems (UNSW, start-up in Sydney, ABC TR&D, CSIRO Software Engineering experience). This was considered directly relevant to scientific software development due attention to detail and quality requirements, similar technology stacks and methodologies etc. Senior Software Process Research Engineer (CSIRO Cross-divisional Software Engineering Initiative, I worked primarily with Plants, Tropical Agriculture, Soils, Land and Water) working with teams of manag...