by estebanc Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Linux has been capable of keeping several per-task I/O counters, such as bytes read and written to disk, swaping time, delay time, among many others since kernel version 2.6.20. Some tools use this feature (i.e. iotop) to monitor per-task and per-process I/O performance, but CentOS 5.4 was built with an earlier linux kernel version (2.6.18.164); and although it includes some I/O counters (version 1 of the taskstats interface, found in the linux/taskstats.h C header file), those are very basic and per-task I/O counters are not included. However, per-process I/O counters are included without using the taskstats interface, and tools like dstat use those counters to provide a general I/O performance monitor.

dstat is a resource statistics monitoring tool for Linux that provides several system stats (such as CPU usage, network usage, disk usage), and its functionality can be extended with custom-made plugins (written in Python) to meet specific monitoring needs. Among the basic plug-ins included in dstat is topio, a tool that displays the system’s most I/O active process (total of bytes read and written to disk) at each time interval (one second by default). However, to monitor all active processes’ I/O performance, a new plugin must be developed.

Linux has a proc virtual file system that can be accessed to get per-process I/O statistics. The proc virtual file system keeps track of several per-process statistics in virtual files. They can be found at /proc/{PID}, where {PID} is the number of a currently active Process ID, so all currently active processes can be found in the proc virtual file system. CentOS 5.4 keeps track of every process I/O usage in the io virtual file found in every /proc/{PID} directory. This file contains statistics such as bytes read, written, cancelled, etc.

Here you can find a sample plug-in for dstat, allio, that displays all active processes I/O data, as well as CPU usage. Written in Python, allio exemplifies how to get the I/O statistics available on CentOS 5.4 by reading the io and stat virtual files available in every /proc/{PID} directory. With this plugin, I/O monitoring on CentOS 5.4 is achieved at process level.

by carlosm Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Inflection Point Systems is pleased to be working in support of ZoomSafer, the leading provider of innovative solutions to prevent distracted driving. To learn more about ZoomSafer take a look at this New York Times article.

by Lazaro Salinas Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

When I first heard about Agile Manifesto I was reluctant to accept the concepts outlined there. CMMi was the way to go and the concepts described by the Model made more sense to me because of my tendency to always have control. It was too early to understand the implications of the revolution proposed by the Agile guys.
It took some years to start seeing the first methodologies that comply with the concepts in the Agile Manifesto, therefore to get a better feeling of what are the challenges and the tools to face them. Even with tools, I was reluctant to adopt them because I was confused with all the information against and in favor. I was misinformed and came with the wrong idea that Agile methodologies promoted the following:
• Minimum planning was made
• No documentation was generated
• It was hard to convince customers to be at every single meeting with the team to refine the iteration’s scope
• Loose control, my biggest worry
Fortunately, I started working with some teams that helped me to better understand the “Agile way” and start finding strategies to address my concerns. Yesterday, while I was looking for some material to support this post I found a powerpoint published by the fellows at SEI. In this document they briefly compare CMMi and Agile. The information there helped me to better understand my past worries and will help me to come up with new strategies for my daily work. I would like to enumerate some interesting ideas in that document:

• Agile Myths
    – “No documentation is required – Just Code Man!”
    - “Our projects are so small we don don’t need process”
• Too many “Agile”organizations are hackers and too many “CMMI organizations”are paralyzed
• Perspective is a filter …
    - People that advocate Agile tend to disdain structure
    - People who support CMMI tend to be afraid of chaos and risk
    - So it follows that CMMI focuses on planning and that Agile focuses on iteration

We can have CMMi and Agile methodologies and work together. In fact the document proposes what they called agileCMMI.

by Lazaro Salinas Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

I googled “Agile vs Traditional Project Management” and found 669,000 results. To me it seems that there is a great interest in the software development community to understand how to deal with these two approaches and see which will rise as the champion.

I believe that both approaches will remain and maybe a third approach that mixes agile and PM will rise. There is plenty of room for both. In one hand we have those projects that require a lot of control and a lot of cost/time visibility because of customer’s internal policies and on the other hand we have those projects that require enough flexibility to grow a solution from fuzzy requirements.

I recommend to use Agile methodologies when:

• Customers don’t have time to detail a full set of requirements
• Customers want to see results in short periods of time.
• Customers already use agile methodologies

or use traditional project management

• When customers have tight budget for the project
• When customers want to have control on the money and time spent on the project rather on the scope
• When customer already have a full set of requirements and most of the uncertainty is already removed from the project

by carlosm Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Here is an article on the Washington Post that talks about one of our clients, Wellnet Healthcare, and the social network platform they provide for  the healthcare industry.

Inflection Point has collaborated very closely with Wellnet Healthcare’s technology  team in the development of this solution that is revolutionizing healthcare.