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Continuous Integration and Standards

One of the most difficult things from a Standard organization aspect is getting people to request changes to a standard. STAR has been pretty good about this over the years, and in many ways I contribute it to the adoption of Agile development and management techniques. In general, people do not contribute or request modifications because they feel it takes too long to get their requirements met. STAR members can get a turn around in as little as a day, sometimes even within an hour. How is this achieved?

One of the technical development techniques that has come out of Agile development is the concept of Continuous Integration. Basically, everybody that is developing on a standard and creating its artifacts are integrating continuously. As code or changes to models are checked into source control, builds are started to generate and check that all artifacts are being produced as expected. Below is a snapshot of an early setup of the STAR Hudson continuous integration server:


STAR actually has about 6500 unit tests that run to check the quality of the XML schemas we produce. As the developers make changes and check in their changes, the Hudson build server monitors for new changes and then runs a build. If a build breaks, notifications are sent out to those that broke the build. This way we catch integration issues early instead of late when they are more difficult to debug and fix. The Hudson instance is made available to STAR members so that they have the ability to pull down changes at their convenience.

Providing your members and community with development snapshots helps improve the overall quality of the standard being produced, but also helps to eliminate one of the road blocks of getting community members to contribute or request changes. Shortening the overall development cycle is something that standard organizations need to do, as adopters can not wait years or even months to use what is being produced. Business moves ever faster, and we need to adapt or get out of the way.

Where in the World is STAR!

Check out the list of countries that have visited the STAR XML Spec page since January 2009:

#	Country	Visits
1	United States	8,497
2	Canada	955
3	India	700
4	Germany	493
5	United Kingdom	493
6	Japan	324
7	China	254
8	Singapore	214
9	Italy	193
10	France	160
11	Philippines	152
12	Australia	124
13	Sweden	106
14	Netherlands	88
15	Belgium	74
16	Brazil	64
17	Spain	60
18	Norway	48
19	Ireland	44
20	Russia	38
21	Malaysia	36
22	South Africa	31
23	Turkey	29
24	Mexico	28
25	Denmark	28
26	Poland	26
27	Switzerland	23
28	Hong Kong	22
29	United Arab Emirates	22
30	Romania	22
31	South Korea	21
32	Greece	19
33	Pakistan	18
34	Saudi Arabia	17
35	New Zealand	15
36	Portugal	15
37	Finland	14
38	Argentina	14
39	Austria	12
40	Indonesia	12
41	Iran	12
42	Puerto Rico	12
43	Thailand	11
44	Egypt	11
45	Ukraine	11
46	Czech Republic	11
47	Colombia	10
48	Algeria	8
49	Kuwait	7
50	Sri Lanka	7
51	Hungary	7
52	Bulgaria	7
53	Chile	6
54	Vietnam	6
55	Taiwan	6
56	Serbia	5
57	Morocco	5
58	Israel	5
59	Slovakia	5
60	Lebanon	4
61	Croatia	4
62	Qatar	4
63	Jamaica	4
64	Oman	4
65	Lithuania	4
66	Syria	3
67	Mongolia	3
68	Cyprus	3
69	Kazakhstan	3
70	Tunisia	3
71	Ecuador	3
72	Venezuela	3
73	Belarus	2
74	Slovenia	2
75	Macedonia	2
76	Ethiopia	2
77	Côte d’Ivoire	2
78	Dominican Republic	2
79	Kenya	2
80	Georgia	1
81	Albania	1
82	Monaco	1
83	Latvia	1
84	Brunei	1
85	Costa Rica	1
86	Estonia	1
87	Laos	1
88	Gibraltar	1
89	Libya	1
90	Burkina Faso	1
91	Uruguay	1
92	New Caledonia	1
93	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1
94	Bahrain	1
95	Yemen	1
96	Palestinian Territories	1
97	Malta	1
98	Namibia	1
99	Peru	1
100	Azerbaijan	1
101	Ghana	1
102	Luxembourg	1

Dealers: It’s Time We Met

On July 21, 2009 STAR posted its second 2009 release of the Dealership Infrastructure Guidelines, more commonly referred to as the DIG. The DIG is a set of guidelines and best practices designed to aid a dealership’s IT staff in the implementation and maintenance of its network infrastructure. STAR has been providing support for the dealer community with the publication of the DIG and its predecessor document, for over 10 years. So it may come as a surprise to some that a majority of dealers are not aware of STAR, the DIG or the STAR data exchange standards. Why is that? Well, here’s my guess.

The spotlight of the STAR organization is typically drawn to its data exchange standards, its common architecture, and the need to promote the interoperable exchange of data between OEMs and DMS providers, the key players in the development and utilization of STAR standards. The data standards themselves are, by their nature and if properly implemented, meant to be transparent to the dealer. Basically, the standards remain hidden in the back-end of a dealer’s systems. The ideal situation leaves the dealer with only the benefits of the standards which are designed to increase and improve vendor choice, lower costs, eliminate redundant data entry, and improve overall business efficiencies.

Unfortunately, with the amount of attention given to the STAR data exchanges standards and the intended transparency to the dealer, in many cases the STAR message itself does not make its way to the dealer.

Then there are some cases where a STAR message or a STAR-related message is given to the dealer, but not necessarily one that conveys the value of the standards. In the case of a dealer’s IT infrastructure, the dealer may be made aware of changes resulting from franchise agreement necessities noted as addendums to STAR’s DIG. For example, an OEM may notify its dealer community that they must be off a proprietary satellite by the end of the year to be in compliance with that OEM’s new IT infrastructure requirements that are in the OEM’s Addendum to the STAR DIG. While this change could end up saving the dealer thousands in return on investment, it is not exactly a glowing STAR recommendation. Instead, the dealer only sees unexpected costs and changes being dictated with no clear understanding of what value or ROI is to be derived from the change and not much choice. Again a message, but not exactly the one STAR wants to convey.

When we are developing value propositions and marketing initiatives, we all too often forget that it is ultimately the dealer that utilizes the systems that implement the standards. Therefore, it is ultimately the dealer that is our end customer. If we miss this point, we are missing a valuable opportunity to grow and support a grass roots movement that has the ability to promote STAR from the bottom up. This is a voice that, to date, as has been under utilized.

Consider the possibility of dealers requiring their vendors’ to utilize STAR standards. What about the possibility of an entire dealer council urging its OEM to not only support STAR standards but to map a course for STAR compliance? Those and more are all possibilities with an educated and empowered dealer community.

So how do we get there? We need to bring STAR from the back-end of dealership systems to the forefront of the dealer’s day to day business. Dealers must understand what STAR is, what it has done for dealers, and what it can do for their business AND how they can support STAR.

Recognizing this lack of brand awareness, STAR has identified as a 2009-2010 objective the need to create more education and awareness within the Dealer community. Education and awareness are basic tools for empowerment when it comes to standards.

One way that STAR is doing this is by partnering with its members such as OEMs and dealer organizations like NADA, who have a common interest in promoting such STAR initiatives as the STAR DIG. Through these types of partnerships STAR can connect with dealers through its members’ dealer facing websites and dealer communications to promote the education and awareness of STAR and the DIG. A good example of this type of successful partnership would be NADA’s “STAR and Internet Guidelines for Dealers” web page. This page is dedicated to promoting the STAR DIG, to post the latest STAR Dealer Tech Sheets, and to encourage dealers to contact their manufacturers about STAR standards.

STAR is also looking to partner with members and their dealers to promote the success that they have had implementing the DIG. STAR would like to capture these success stories along with recommendations to expand and improve the DIG in the form of testimonials to be shared with the larger Dealer community.

Through these joint efforts and more, STAR and its members can ensure that dealers are aware of and have access to STAR materials such as the DIG.

The DIG is the dealer’s gateway into STAR. Once dealers are aware of STAR, aware of the benefits that they can receive from STAR standards both in terms of their network infrastructure and their systems, they themselves can become STAR advocates. They can use STAR compliance as a criterion for selecting vendors. They can encourage their OEMs to adopt and participate in STAR standards. Dealers can even participate in STAR’s Dealer Advisory Group and identify areas of operation within the dealership that could benefit from standards.

The Dealer Community is a critical component in the sale and service of vehicles and even more critical to STAR is it ultimately our end customer. With education and awareness, it is a community that can play an invaluable role in moving the standards movement forward.

Dealing with BIG Data. The XML Way.

One of the constant themes I hear about users in STAR is the size of the XML files. That there is a problem parsing them, processing them, and in general trying to cram them into legacy data stores and using legacy technologies. One of the unfortunate side affects of data binding of XML is that everybody tries to use it for everything. The first and typically last tool a programmer will go for now a-days is a data binding framework. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the best choice. In many cases, if you dig around in the xml tool bag you can find other choices.

Kurt Cagle has written an excellent rebuttal on the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that XML is not right for BIG Data. When we are talking BIG we are talking 50MB or larger. In fact, he rightly says:

Frankly, if you ARE storing your XMLdata in a relational database repository, then you're throwing valuable money away, because you're adding a hideous performance penalty on every transaction.

Kurt Cagle, XMLToday.com

He goes on to talk about the role of XML Databases and how in many ways they are out performing their relational database counterparts. STAR has several very large BODs that may need to be processed and queried. PartsMaster, LaborOperations, PartsPriceList, and RepairOrder are a few that come to mind. Processing these with data binding is definitely not the way to go. Supplementing an existing Relational Database with an XML Database can be very beneficial. It also allows you to work with XML natively without necessarily having to do a data transformation to get at the relevent information. Investigate your existing Relational Database as many have XML Data Storage abilities. XML can be a good fit for Big Data, it just takes using the right tool for the right job, and not trying to use the same tool for every job.

Standards are Strategic

At STAR we like to look at what other Standards organizations and non-profits are doing to help their membership and community. One of the ones we keep an eye on is ACORD, they share many of the same values and opinions on standards that STAR does.

ACORD held a recent meeting in which they outlined their goals for the year:

Portability of YOUR data.

A blog from Vishal Vasu, "Open Source vs Open Standards", has some interesting points on how the two terms get confused. His points about open standards are on target:

The word “Standards” means a set of guidelines to which a lot of people have agreed upon. Putting this definition in the context of software, “standards” allow a company to pick and choose from competing vendors and interoperate their systems without being pinned down to one of them.

He's correct with this statement, the goal of a standard is to promote interoperability amongst vendor implementations. So that a user can pick and choose from vendors that compete, but doesn't lock the user into one of them. Vendors should compete on the value added features they provide the users, not the proprietary nature of the data. Custom extensions to a standard are no-longer a standard, they are proprietary.

In the STAR community this means that customers must require and demand that STAR standards be used in the products they purchase and use. This allows them a greater choice in moving from one vendor to another. Vendors that work with multiple trading partners need to require that STAR be used, and if requirements are not there, work with STAR to get additional changes to the standard made.

However, Vishal, goes on to say:

I feel we should have more specific and beneficial standards that are not vendor specific or not vendor dictated because ultimately it is the interoperability that counts at the end of the day. If open source software fits your environment and gets the work done in terms of costs, features, support or maintenance – all’s well. But if you are putting security, compliance, performance, upgrades and scalability before everything else then proprietary software designed with open standards in mind is your choice. We can even extend this further and run a combination of both – it’s our choice.

Interoperability again is the key here, but the statement on proprietary systems being more secure, compliant, better performing, upgradable, and scalable is not accurate. There are many open source implementations of standards and in general software that is much more secure, performs better, upgradable, scalable and is more compliant to a standard than many proprietary systems. Like any software product out there, this varies by product to product, whether it is open source or proprietary. More and more proprietary software is leveraging open source to help create it.

In general though, interoperability are what standards are about. Customers need to require this interoperability within the products they use or purchase. If a software system does not allow the export and import of their data into an open standard format, they are locking themselves into that vendors product for the long haul. They are limiting their own ability to control the data that belongs to them.