Collaborative Blog Post: Backups, Personal Virtualization, and Unhealthy Dependencies
http://www.collaborative.com/blog/view/95/
Amusing blog post about having to rebuild a new environment and learning a lesson about the benefits of personal virtualization and unhealthy machine dependencies. How good are your backups?

Richards, Mark, June 2009, IBM DeveloperWorks, "Transaction Strategies: The High Concurrency Strategy"
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts5/index.html
There may be times when you need to reduce a transaction's scope to gain throughput, improve performance, and increase concurrency in the database. How do you do this and still maintain a high level of data integrity and consistency? The answer is to use the High Concurrency transaction strategy.

Richards, Mark, May 2009, IBM DeveloperWorks, "Transaction Strategies: The Client Orchestration Strategy"
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts4/index.html
Sometimes an application's presentation layer must handle the coordination of multiple API layer method calls to complete a single transactional unit of work. In this article, I describe the Client Orchestration transaction strategy and explains how to implement it in the Java platform.

Richards, Mark, April 2009, IBM DeveloperWorks, "Transaction Strategies: The API Layer Strategy"
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts3/index.html
An effective and robust transaction strategy is critical for maintaining data consistency and integrity. The API Layer transaction strategy is easy to implement and is well-suited for most business applications. Using examples from the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0 specification, I explain what this transaction strategy is and how to implement it in the Java platform.

Richards, Mark, March 2009, IBM DeveloperWorks, "Models and Strategies Overview"
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts2.html
It's a common mistake to confuse transaction models with transaction strategies. This second article in the Transaction strategies series outlines the three transaction models supported by the Java platform and introduces four primary transaction strategies that use those models. Using examples from the Spring Framework and the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0 specification, I explain how the transaction models work and how they can form the basis for developing transaction strategies ranging from basic transaction processing to high-speed transaction-processing systems.

Richards, Mark, February 2009, IBM DeveloperWorks, "Understanding Transaction Pitfalls"
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts1.html
Transaction processing should achieve a high degree of data integrity and consistency. This article, the first in a series on developing an effective transaction strategy for the Java platform, introduces common transaction pitfalls that can prevent you from reaching this goal. Using code examples from the Spring Framework and the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0 specification, I explain these all-too-common mistakes.

Richards, Mark, March 2009, NFJS Magazine, "Message Driven POJOs - Messaging Made Easy"
http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/magazine_subscribe.jsp?id=1
Spring provides a simple yet powerful messaging framework for receiving and sending messages. In this article I demonstrate how to develop messaging-based applications using message-driven POJOs (MDPs) and describe some ways to use them in messaging-based applications. Given that no framework is entirely perfect, I also discuss some of the limitations with MDPs and how to get around them.

Richards, Mark, October 2008, SOA World, "Creating an Effective SOA Service Taxonomy"
http://soa.sys-con.com/node/738704
PDF Version of Article
It is difficult to have a technical or business related conversation these days without mentioning the "SOA" buzzword. However, despite the increased knowledge and awareness of SOA, many SOA-based initiatives still struggle to get off the ground or even fail altogether. One of the many reasons for this is a lack of proper understanding and definition of what is meant by a "service" in the context of SOA. Software developers see a service as a unit of source code that must be written and deployed (usually as a web service), whereas business users see a service as representing a part of a task or workflow that is needed to help them do their job. The challenge within SOA is that there are in fact many types of services. Developing a clear and effective SOA service taxonomy is crucial for any SOA initiative. A service taxonomy defines the types of services used within the context of a particular SOA engagement and provides managers, business users, software architects, and developers with a common vocabulary for defining and building services. This article will discuss the basic types of services used within SOA and how to build an effective service taxonomy. It will also introduce a common service taxonomy to use as a starting point for any SOA initiative.

Howell, S.B., Richards, W.M., Barden, S.C., Bopp, B.W., 1986, PASP, 98, p.777, "EZ Pegasi: The Last Pieces of the Puzzle"
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1986PASP...98..777H
Publication based on the research paper "On the Nature of the RS Canum Venaticorum Binary -- EZ Pegasi", Howell, S.B., Richards, W.M., Barden, S.C., Bopp, B.W., Originally published under incorrect name W.M. Williams, later corrected to W.M. Richards, published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP ISSN 0004-6280) Volume 98 and archived in the NASA Astrophysical Data System. This publication provides conclusive evidence of the orbital and photometric period of the cataclysmic variable star EZ Pegasi through photometric observations taken while working at Braeside Observatory through NSF Grant AST 81-15098.

Videocast: iBatis vs. Hibernate
In this videocast recorded in early 2007 I briefly discuss the major differences between iBatis and Hibernate and what the implications are of using each as your Java persistance framework

Videocast: Java EE Command Pattern Architecture
This videocast is a recording (with slides) of my 2006 NFJS conference session on Command Pattern Architecture.

The Role of the Enterprise Service Bus
In this 2005 NFJS Conference videocast (with slides) I go over what an ESB is, its role, what capabilities it provides, and the various ways an ESB can be implemented. I take a close look at the JBI specification (JSR-208) and explain what impact it will have with the ESB world. This session will teach you how to determine your own specific requirements for an ESB and then match these requirements to the product space.

Videocast: How Do You deal With SOA?
In this 2006 videocast Neal Ford and I talk about some of the issues surrounding SOA.

The Enterprise Service Bus: Do We Really Need It?
In this podcast I discuss a few of the topics I will be covering in my ESB Session at the 2007 TSS Java Symposium and NFJS Software Symposium Sessions

FDD and Agile Architecture
2005 Interview with Bob Payne from the Agile Toolkit on Feature Driven Development and Agile Architecture.