G30 Consultants provides objective consultancy on technology, architecture and the process of designing, developing and deploying software systems. The basis of this authorative and broad coverage comes from experience gained over the past nearly forty years in; Computer Manufacturers at Apricot and Tandon, Systems Software Publishers like Digital Research and Novell, Financial Systems with Pegasus Software, startups like Joost, Platform Architecture and Engineering with BBC Online and STEM Publishing and Technology Enterprise Architecture for Elsevier.
This web site shows some of our ongoing projects, publications and documentation. In doing this the aim is to show the breadth of coverage of technology today. Scientific Research Publishing is a Flipboard magazine on the business of Scientific Research Publishing with ~ 1,500 subscribers. The Walled Garden and Prairie is a Chatauqua on philosophic tensions in Architecture, Security and Infrastructure. The Wiki is a place for us to publish documentation, articles in an open and public way.
This site is cookieless, no cookies are set and no information is captured other than access logs. If the Wiki pages are accessed then no cookies will be set. The Wiki is a now a Mediawiki site but there are no logins.
Projects
Seville Project
Capability Mapping Tool.
Using a curated taxonomy the tool enables the mapping of an Organisation to its capabilities, both internal and external. Progress includes the cleaning up of SIC and NAICS Codes.
Common diagrammatic vocabulary of Architecture
is a repository for public and private notes, a kind of web Kasten as used by Liebniz. Zettel.io will provide a solution as to how to manage notes, papers and slips without regard to the tool or editor used to create them. It is a set of repositories, both public and private, that stores and indexes content and does so with the lowest barrier to entry.
Publications
When scientists make important discoveries, both big and small, they typically publish their findings in scientific journals for others to read. This …
Recognizing the importance of ensuring access to taxpayer-funded scientific knowledge and underlying data, many national governments and …
A scientist reviewing a study spotted figures that looked identical to his own, leading to a frustrating campaign to prevent its publication. When …
DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.
Since ChatGPT was released to the public almost three years ago, generative AI chatbots have had many impacts on our society: They played a large …
We rank almost everything. The top 10 restaurants in our vicinity, the best cities to visit, the best movies to watch. To understand whether the …
If the choice is between impact factor and maintaining the content’s integrity, there is little contest 27 August Difficult conversations about how the …
To add to their problems — a stock in “a downward channel pattern,” an OA brand in the trash, and a CEO sent packing — now Wiley has been hit with …
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This Chautauqua is a series on what is generally seen as two major incompatible views on how to design, implement and operate information systems. The aim is to explore how both general approaches make sense in different ways and in combination rather than in antagonism. In choosing Walled Garden and Prairie to categorise these two general approaches it might seem that I have a negative bias to one or the other, that really isn't where this is coming from. Walled Garden is often treated as a derogatory term, with hard perimeters, command and control hierarchies and long term planning but its also (in its original use) about providing the right conditions for different plants with different requirements and a structured navigation which allows maintenance, gardening without obstructing or affecting the rest of the Garden. In its way the Prairie might seem without controls, borders, vulnerable and inefficient but it's also resilient because there is no single point of failure and burning it down periodically keeps it healthy.
At its simplest level the most obvious feature of the Walled Garden is
the Wall. Walls have all sorts of connotations for us, especially at
this moment in history, and they begin with protection by exclusion.
Being surrounded by a wall gives us a feeling of security and control
over who or what can gain access inside and control as to what and who
leaves. In its original use for a real garden the wall was much more
about protection, shelter and providing the right environment for the
plants and crops. The surrounding wall warms in the sun and raises the
ambient temperature for plants in the north of the garden, it provides
shelter from prevailing and strong winds and it organises the land
separating it for management.
A common habit when coding a new service, or class object with methods is to postpone actually writing the code that does the thing by adding another layer. The initial impetus to this is Good, abstract the detail from the caller, use the interface to be able to flex what the code does and so on. Often though it becomes a kind of procrastination; oh this layer isn't quite right, I need to orchestrate some dependency and filter what happens depending upon some logic that really doesn't belong at this level. And one of the ways out of that conundrum is to make another layer (or in some languages have a friend class).
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Lakes, Pools and Repositories, Oh My
They Are Asking For What?
Modelling
GDPR - What do we do about Archive
Do We Need This?
Do you really want to share?
In the preparation for GDPR and the UK refresh of the Data Protection Act it seems that some organisations, especially government departments and public bodies are asking some very awkward questions.
Assurances, pledges, loyalty oaths that an organisation is 'GDPR' ready.
Copies of the organisation's policies and procedures relating to GDPR
Claiming a right of audit
Contractually requiring agreement and proof of deletion,'forgetting' and, or returning of data.
Contractual requirements which duplicate or place the burden of handling personal data provided to the organisation, by the contracting party.
There are probably others going the rounds as well.
There's somehow a feeling that GDPR changes what should be done about Personal and Personally Identifying Data that we need not do now. But that isn't really true, For instance, EU citizens have had the right to be forgotten since 2014 after the ECJ decision relating to a Spanish case in 2010. What is happening is that the standards of a complaint, audit and penalty have changed and of course its the penalty which is the real motivator to improve systems. Removing an individual's data from a live system can be painful but perhaps not hard, removing it from archived data looks like it will be expensive, and hard. Apart from other regulatory reasons for keeping data does it mean we have to read and rewrite all archives every time someone asks for their data to be removed?