Single-sign-on (SSO) is a critical component in large enterprise architectures, either from security prospective or usability of systems. There are many different approaches to implement SSO functionality, the most common is the Windows domain authentication based approach, but that has many limitations while it is still plausible and useful for many of the companies. The limitations we should highlight are the platform limitations (desktops are fine, other devices are so limited) and extendibility (multi-factor, user profile data access). All the steps you will read are the summary of a living project executed in a large company, it was not only a l'art pour l'art activity of a boing architect.

This article describes an alternative solution, using OpenID Connect protocol, utilising Windows authentication, supporting different platforms and user channels, handling multi-factor authentication and so.

I work on the next step of the complexity as architecture management problem: find the cost of complexity. The approach is based on the complexity measurement has many articles here in the portal and I try to find a way to define the cost of a single SCU (the Standard Complexity Unit).

For the research of defining the cost equivalent of SCU, we have the following hypothesises. The cost equivalent of SCU will be referred as CCE – Complexity Cost Equivalent.

Did you know that, if you are analyzing a program code, then you can visualize and create the relationship diagram of the program? You can show, which application is connected to the others, and the internal calling graph of the given software.

To utilize this knowledge, you need to learn how to analyze a real program code properly.

The perpetual question for enterprise architects is, which is the best enterprise architecture management tool. I have my favourite based on the past years experience, which I selected after a careful analysis of potential candidates. One of my clients requested a comparison between two tools and I would share the results here. Shortly the two tools are SAMU from Atoll and EA from Sparx. The summary of the comparison is, that they have to exchange the name they have! SAMU (System Architecture Management Utility) is a real enterprise architecture management tool, with all necessary aspects, while EA (Enterprise Architect) is a great system design tool, with very limited capability to be extend to enterprise wide repository.

Referring back to article The structural strength of steel, I will share some practical examples to encourage architect colleagues to break out of the role of „boxes and lines“ - which is usually expected from us. All of us should know stones and bricks what our architecture is built from - still should not be the best bricklayer, but even not the worst!

This first article is an infrastructural task, building a Redis cluster in well-controlled Linux environment on a RHEL7 host.

Today, all companies wants to become agile. This is great. Most of them wants to be agile by applying one of the Agile methodologies. What is strange. Let’s go through the intention, what shrives this „agility movement“!

I saw and heard many times (certainly not at you), that professionality is over in the IT field. Quality falls, deadlines are missed, costs are increasing and the joy of creation lost somewhere on the road. In the past everything was better and so. 

What could be the reason? Large projects are still exists, empowering targets are still there, more money spent then ever - it seems to be a perfect situation to fly and still... I collected you some reasons for those cases when this bad feeling is right. Some ammo for the feeling of 'anno Domini'.

Without competition, the things will not improve. On the other hand multiple parties in a competitive situation may cause different problems. Let's go through these issues and get some tips to handle them.

If you never met this question you are living somewhere else but not in the IT industry! Here I collected some practical examples you may refer to when facing the question in the title. Here at the start my position about rules and principles: freedom is made by great rules and this is a basement to maximise ability to change! This article is the continuation of Rules and exceptions article.

What is the best development methodology? Waterfall? Agile? An iterative model? Something else? Companies and projects are looking to find the best approach to deliver on time and on budget and still keeping the scope. People are arguing in personal discussions and forums highlighting pros and cons about their best one, but I did not see the ultimate answer. Now I can help you to have it!

The eternal question is if size matters or not? One says it is important others think it is not, while there are people saying: it depends. What is the best size? Sure you may say the larger is better? You are maybe right. May be not... Come and read more to get the answer!

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