Big Data and Cloud Computing

For fun I started building a small application using PhoneGap. More than anything I want to build a simple mobile app and see how easy it would be to deploy to multiple platforms. Problem was the app needed to store some data locally. I immediately thought of HTML 5 and web sql databases as an option. Turns out it is pretty simple if you have done any database work in the past. There are a few gotchas when working with SQLite and for me it was particularly frustrating working with the date/time features. Create a database For simplicity I made an object called Database and added methods to the proto chain for each database action. One thing to note is that a reference to mydb has been placed in the function for the Database object. This way once the database is open we can set this.mydb to that open database connection for further calls. var Database = function(){ var mydb=false; } Database.prototype.initDB = function() { try { if (!window.openDatabase) { ...

This tutorial shows you how to fetch Facebook Friends if you have Facebook accessToken. Here is the the code for Scheduled task called getFriends function getFriends() { //Name of the table where accounts are stored var accountTable = tables.getTable('FacebookAccounts'); //Name of the table where friends are stored var friendsTable = tables.getTable('Friends'); checkAccounts(); function checkAccounts(){ accountTable .read({success: function readAccounts(accounts){ if (accounts.length){ for (var i = 0; i < accounts.length; i++){ console.log("Creating query"); //Call createQuery function for all of the accounts that are found createQuery(accounts[i], getDataFromFacebook); } } else { console.log("Didn't find any account"); prepareAccountTable(); } }}); } function prepareAccountTable(){ var myAccount = { accessToken: "", //enter here you facebook accessToken. You can retrieve ...

1. Flat or declining IT budgets 2. Securely add capacity on demand 3. Risk mitigation of natural disaster or technical failure 4. Limited IT staff and resources to accommodate growth 5. Speed deployment of new products and services On-demand access to IT resources for new application development as well as for running existing applications. VMware vCloud Hybrid Service is a secure, dedicated infrastructure-as-a-service hybrid cloud owned and hosted by VMware, built on the trusted foundation of VMware vSphere. The service supports existing applications and new application development, giving you a common platform for seamlessly extending your existing data center to the cloud while leveraging the same tools and processes you use today. Early cloud adopters have found success in moving development and testing to the cloud. It’s an easy, fast, and cost-effective way to get on-demand capacity for a limited time period. But other workloads may also be good candidates for hybrid...

Cloud service contracts are still too complex for many businesses to grasp the potential risks and liabilities,  Businesses are buying into cloud services without fully understanding what they're paying for and what they can expect from the service. "One of the big barriers to using cloud computing is a lack of trust. I think you should be able to know what you're getting and what it means — and it should be easy to ensure that the terms in your contract are reasonable: open, transparent, safe and fair. Even if you don’t have a law degree," "Sensible, plain language contracts" be designed to spell out clear service level agreements and what a businesses' rights are on a range of issues, such as which third parties would be able to access a businesses' information or whether a firm will be notified in the event of data being stolen. Drawing up model contracts for cloud services is a "key pillar" of the  Cloud Computing strategy ....

1. Confidentiality If you back up your data to the cloud, your Cloud Service Provider (CSP) shouldn’t be able to see the data you store. “They can’t guarantee that!” you say. “I have to encrypt the data before it leaves my machine.” That’s all well and good, until you are relying on your CSP for this service, like Server Side Encryption available in AWS S3 where they manage your keys. How does one ensure the management of these keys to prevent an administrator from decrypting your data? 2. Integrity How do you know that your CSP didn’t log into your machines when you weren’t looking? Well, unfortunately in most cases, you don’t. Sure, you can check your logs, but the really good hackers (and even the script kiddies with good tools) can remove log entries and modify timestamps. You need a way to verify that you’re the only one logging into your machines. To expand on this, customers typically have the ability to manage their images and snapshots they run in the cloud. How does o...

Today, no CSP can guarantee that your data will be secured “For Your Eyes Only.” Encryption algorithms and compliance policies can only achieve so much. From the CSP perspective, we have to take reasonable measures to ensure customer data is not used in any way by the provider that is unintended by the customer. As a way to mitigate exposure of customer data, some CSPs encrypt data at rest using encrypted hard drives or encrypted file systems. The other part of the equation for risk mitigation is proper device destruction either logically, using an appropriate method of sanitization like DoD 5220.22-M  or physically  DSS Clearing and Sanitization Matrix  and  Special Publication 800-88: Guidelines for Media Sanitization . And then, there are the backups. CSPs manage several copies of data to prevent total failure in both onsite and offsite facilities, and more than likely, the data stored on tape or other hdds is encrypted. Once you have encrypted drives and e...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a web identity service with support for Google, Facebook and its own AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).  The service allows developers to grant temporary authorization to people using these three services and simplifies development as all the identity management is done by AWS. All the server-side code is managed without long-term credentials for the app. The service introduces a new AWS Security Token Service (STS) API that allows for temporary security credentials for customers who have been authenticated by Amazon.com, Facebook, or Google. The “app can then use the temporary security credentials to access AWS resources such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) objects, DynamoDB tables, or Amazon Simple Queue Service queues.” This means that an app developer can more easily integrate identity features into an app. AWS uses the example of allowing end users to upload an image file as their personal avatar. In this case, a ...