Product Reviews

Book Review: Software Systems Architecture

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:45:00 EDT

This is the second edition of one of the best books written on software systems architecture. If you are in the software development industry, you should read this book. If you are a Software Architect, you must read this book. Some might look at my book collection and think I have hoarding issues. If I had to pick just one Software Architecture book to keep, this would be the one. This is the second edition of one of the best books written on software systems architecture. If you are in the software development industry, you should read this book. If you are a Software Architect, you must read this book. This book covers a vast amount of material but it ties it all together in a way that paints a complete picture of what software systems architecture is all about. The book starts out covering architecture fundamentals. There is a chapter on Software Architecture Concepts, Viewpoints and Views, Architectural Perspectives, and The Role of the Software Architect.

Twelve Essential Skills for Software Architects

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT

A great book of practical advice. The two things I like least about being a software architect is doing documentation and exercising social soft skills. On a lot of projects there comes a time when there is nothing I want to do more than explain to a business user why they are wrong. Dead wrong. We all know that does not fair well with the egos most business users have, and does not fair well with your potential future on the given project. This book contains will show you how to use different skills to help you graciously handle the harder conversations. This book is broken into three sections which cover, relationship skills, personal skills, and business skills. Relationship skills has chapters on leadership, politics, gracious behavior, communication, and negotiation. Personal skills has chapters on context switching, transparency, and passion. Business skills has chapters on pragmatism, vision, business knowledge, and innovation.

Software Inventory Control Systems

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:45:00 EDT

This article will focus on Software Inventory Control Systems (SICS). Recently, I was asked by Bill Rogers (NH DoIT Commissioner) and Peter Hastings (NH DoIT Director) to take a look at SICS, investigate them and provide a recommendation. When I started this research I knew nothing about SICS. I didn’t understand their value. I ate, slept, and breathed these tools for a period of time so that I could understand their value. I got a good education from some smart folks: individuals in DoIT who were familiar with these products, research from the Internet, testimonials from other users on products, many demos and I inquired into what other states were using. Presently, I am the administrator of SCM AllFusion Harvest. SCM AllFusion Harvest is a process-based Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool for managing application source code. I manage 181 applications housed in SCM AllFusion Harvest and support 122 users using the product. The development tools we currently use are PowerBuilder PBV8, PBV11; Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008; Eclipse and Java.

Indispensable - JasperReports, iReport, and R

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:31:00 EDT

A problem has come to my attention over the last few years and I thought Java.net would be a good place to talk about it. I have noticed that many reporting integrations use vendor-supplied examples verbatim. This is an issue. With JasperReports (the Java-based reporting tool), the reports contain SQL code. That SQL code can tell a hacker a lot about the database (type, version, table names, column names, and such). This opens up an attack vector, and many people host their report files in the same directory as the web files. Worse still, some people write JSPs with the database connection information (login, password, host name, database name) in plain text - inside the JSP files!

Product Review: FICO Blaze Advisor

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:30:00 EDT

This article reviews the features of Blaze Advisor, a business rules management system from FICO. Blaze Advisor helps technology teams maintain the business rules/policies separate from application code base and provides business users with ability to author & manage rules/policies in immediate response to business events. Blaze Advisor provides an IDE for developers to model, build, test and deploy rules. Blaze can extract object definitions from legacy systems, databases or XML documents and extend them to define rules as using business terms. There is a performance monitor in the IDE that shows rule statistics like no of times a rule is executed, time taken for execution, rules that take most time etc.

Process-Centric Architecture for IT Systems

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:45:00 EDT

This provides an introduction to the architecture style namely, process-centric architecture (PCA). PCA is suited for IT systems in the enterprise.

Manage Your Source Data Assets . . .

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:15:00 EDT

Every Software Configuration Management tool is different in terms of functionality; however, they all have common threads of functionality that are consistent with all Software Configuration Management tools. Common activities include checking out, checking in, adding files, deleting files, obsoleting files and loading an initial baseline. The way these tasks are achieved is of course different from tool to tool but many of the SCM tools perform these basic activities. This article will focus on a product called Rational Application Developer and the integration with SCM AllFusion Harvest R12.0.2 using the CA SCM Eclipse plug-in.

My First Week With the Amazon Kindle

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST

I received an Amazon Kindle for Xmas. It wasn’t a surprise as I put it on the Xmas list my family insisted I provide. My wife had me order it with her credit card to make sure it was exactly what I wanted. The order was placed at the beginning of December to ensure it [...]

PowerBuilder 12 .NET Review

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:45:00 EST

Yakov Werde has just written an article on DevX, which looks at the new version of Sybase's long running and successfull RAD development tool... PowerBuilder. 'A dormant giant gets a new lease on life as a .NET-compatible development environment.' I dont know if I totally agree with him on the use of dormant, as there are still many customers continuing to use PB, but the rest of his statement...how right he is, as PowerBuilder 12 .NET includes new features such as...

Reporting Solutions Using Crystal Reports for Eclipse

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:17:00 EST

SAP (Business Objects) has recently released Crystal Reports for Eclipse version 2.0 to provide reporting solutions for Java-based applications. This is available as free to use (within an organization) and has the advantage that it is built on the most tested and reliable component (Java Reporting Component in Crystal Reports) that has been in market for quite a few years now. This article discusses the features of CR4Ev2.0, usability of its designer and API, and starting off with an overview of Crystal Reports product architecture.

Kindle 2 vs Nook

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:30:00 EST

So far I’ve remained relatively aloof from the whole “eBook” craze. Ordinarily, given my geeky background and borderline insane craving for technology, one would think that I’d be all over these things. The problem is, my love for the written word also extends to a love for the experience of reading a book. Call me crazy, but I love the smudged thumbs I get from a 3-hour reading session where the real world ceased to exist and it was just me and my alternate reality, lovingly prepared for me by my favorite authors. I love the smell of books and the feel of curling up with a book in a comfortable chair with a ridiculously strong coffee.

Delphi 2009 Development Essentials Reviewed

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Robert Meek has written a book review about my Delphi 2009 Development Essentials, which is sold as paperback from Lulu.com, or offered as free bonus for anyone who purchases Delphi or one or more courseware manuals in PDF format from me.

Developer Tools Update

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:15:00 EDT

NetBeans IDE 6.7.1 with JavaFX and JetBrains Web IDE Early Access are ready for download. In their own words here are some of the benefits these releases deliver. An update to the 6.7 release release that is integrated with Project Kenai, a collaborative environment for developers to host open-source projects. With Kenai and the NetBeans IDE, a team of developers is able to create projects, check out, edit, debug, build, discuss, and commit code, all through one easy-to-use interface.

Book Review: Head First PMP

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:15:00 EDT

Have you tried to prepare yourself for PMP certification or exam? If so, then you share with me the opinion that most of the PMP books and guides are remarkable of hundreds of pages that are full of hard to understand complex sentences that leave you by the end of studying day dizzy and could hardly get couple of information to remember.

Business Challenge: Garmin International Satellite Navigation Web Content Management

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Garmin International uses Enterprise Web Content Integration software that neatly integrates DMS and portal features, allowing enterprises to deliver "mashups" and a variety of value added applications such as CRM, ERP, online shops or product information to one single level

Book Review: The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:55:00 EST

‘The Big Switch’ elaborates on Carr’s earlier comparison of the Electricity Generating industry, at the start of the last century, and today’s Computing industry. He argues that such a move, with its massive economies of scale, was an economic necessity at the time and that today’s technological advances, combined with the same economic forces, will drive us inevitably towards a 'Computing Utility.'

Cloud Computing Journal Book Review

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:50:00 EST

Cloud Computing: Web-Based Applications That Change the Way You Work and Collaborate Online by Michael Miller is an excellent introduction to this phenomenon within the software industry. Written using a style that takes the reader on a gentle journey through a "brief history of computing," explaining where we have been and why we'll be living and working in the clouds in our future, the book is an excellent introduction.

SOA Product Review: Intel XML Software Suite 1.1

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

The one thing that unifies the distributed computing style known as SOA, in most of its manifestations, is self-describing data via the Extensible Markup Language (XML). The benefits of XML over opaque message formats in data interchange are well established. No matter if your focus is SOAP, REST, POX, or syndication with RSS or ATOM, your applications will revolve around XML processing.

Farata Systems Achieves Performance Breakthrough with Adobe BlazeDS

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:56:00 EDT

Live Cycle Data Services is an excellent solution for building scalable RIA, but it’s not cheap. For those who don’t have a budget for LCDS, Adobe has released open sourced BlazeDS as a scaled down implementation of AMF. But BlazeDS is a lot more scalable than one may think.

SOA Product Review: Managed Methods JaxView 4.0

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Whether you work for a very large company with thousands of services in production or a small company with only a couple, visibility into the performance and uptime of those services is critical. Before you start investigating the myriad of governance products on the market, many of which will set you back a great deal of money, let me save you some time (and money).

Kevin Hoffman's Review of Iron Man

Mon, 19 May 2008 06:00:00 EDT

I took the advice of a friend of mine and steered clear of the 'normal' movie theaters and went a little out of the way to go to a DLP movie theater. The experience of comparing a regular movie theater to a DLP movie theater is like comparing standard def analog TV with a 1080i HDTV signal. The movie itself was awesome. I was pleasantly surprised. I expected, wrongly so, another loosely connected chain of high-impact special effects moments like most of the other recent comic book adaptations have been.

A Geek's Bookshelf: An Investment Strategy for the Long Term

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:15:00 EST

There are 8,909 books listed on Amazon.com with the word 'Investing' in the title; there are(!) 27,146 books with the word investment in the title. Without having looked at a representative sample, I can be confident that Sturgeon's Law applies - I suspect if I sampled enough of them I would find that 90% greatly underestimates the amount of junk in this particular area.

.NET Book Review: Murach's SQL Server 2005 for Developers

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:15:00 EST

This book is an update of an earlier version that was written for SQL Server 2000. It employs the Murach approach of dual pages that repeat and enhance the concepts being presented on each page. If you're new to SQL Server 2005 you'll gain a lot from this book. It has three goals: to teach T-SQL (Transact SQL), introduce you to the new .NET CLR integration, and introduce you to the new graphical user interface called SQL Server Management Studio that replaces the enterprise manager and query analyzer that were part of the SQL Server 2000 package of software tools.

AJAX Book Recommendation: "Ajax Security" by Hoffman and Sullivan

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 06:00:00 EST

Reviewers overuse the phrase 'required reading,' but no other description fits the new book 'Ajax Security' (2007, Addison Wesley, 470p). This exhaustive tome from Billy Hoffman and Bryan Sullivan places the specific security concerns of the AJAX programming model in historical perspective. It demonstrates not only new security threats that are unique to AJAX, but established threats that have gained new traction in the Web 2.0 era. It then details both the specific technical solutions and - more importantly - the mindset that are necessary to combat such threats. If you call yourself a professional web developer, you need this book.

Zend Studio for Eclipse

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:00:00 EST

In my many years of programming, almost 20 years now, I have used countless integrated development environments (IDEs). I have used everything from a simple text editor all the way up to the high-end IDEs that Sybase, IBM, and Oracle use. More recently I have come to embrace the open source movement and development in Web environments. My programming language of choice for these days is PHP, so it stands to reason that I would be looking for an IDE. Like so many other developers I followed the path of looking for the pinnacle of IDEs for PHP. I started with basic text editors, moved into text editors with code colorizations, and then into project-based development environments, and finally to a fully robust IDE. The one that I've been using for a few years now is Zend's Studio Professional.

Boost Productivity of Your Flex-Java Project with Log4Fx Component

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:30:00 EST

It's hard to overestimate the importance of having a good logging facility when you develop distributed applications. Did the client's request reached the server-side component? What did the server send back? Add to this inability of using debuggers while processing GUI events like focus change, and you may need to spend hours if not days trying to spot some sophisticated errors. That's why a commercial-grade logger is a must if you work with an application that is spread over the network and is written in different languages such as Adobe Flex and Java.

Developing Rich Internet Applications Using Swing

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:15:00 EDT

The Java development platform always provides limited support for application development based on a graphical user interface, an area where more traditional languages and integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Visual Basic or Delphi have based their success.

SOA Product Review — ActiveBPEL 3.0 from Active Endpoints

Sat, 26 May 2007 14:15:00 EDT

The folks at Active Endpoints carefully thought through how to support users in their move to WS-BPEL 2.0. This resulted in the ability of BPEL 1.1 and WS-BPEL 2.0 processes to co-exist during design, test, and execution in both the designer and the engine. This lets users migrate their processes at their own pace. I've been burned in the past by products that required a big bang conversion so the ability to support 1.1 and 2.0 processes easily is a huge win.

Oracle SOA Suite

Wed, 02 May 2007 15:45:00 EDT

Service-oriented architecture is an architectural approach to building software applications as a collection of reusable business services. Interest in SOA is growing within the business community. To address the need for an infrastructure to enable the building of service-oriented applications, a new breed of SOA suites is emerging. Vendors such as Oracle, BEA Systems, and IBM now provide platforms specifically focused on SOA applications. In established, complex IT environments with diverse applications - including legacy applications that are tied together with custom adapters, and business scenarios that demand extensive partner interaction - the move to SOA may appear challenging. However, new SOA suites make it easy. We at Sierra Atlantic decided to review one of them - Oracle SOA Suite.

Struts Validations Framework Using AJAX

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:00:00 EDT

Real-time data validation is one of the advantages of AJAX technology. By applying this technology, the struts validation framework will enrich the struts MVC and move the Web application closer to the desktop application. The validation framework is used to validate fields. There are many ways to do validation on a Web application. It falls into two categories: server-side and client-side. A struts validation framework is one of the best frameworks for a Java-based Web application environment. It can configure the application using server-side validation and employ the error message that renders on the validation process invoked during the request processing time, or it can do client-side validation by using the JavaScript rendered on the requested page.

Java Product Review — Oracle JDeveloper An IDE Worth a Second Look

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 17:15:00 EST

As the saying goes you never get a second chance at a first impression. In general, that's true, but if you've been thoroughly revitalized, matured, and cosmetically re-engineered, shouldn't you get a second shot at that first impression? I'd argue that's true of Oracle's Java/J2EE Workbench, Oracle JDeveloper.

Java Product Review — Oracle EDA Suite

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:30:00 EST

An event-driven architecture (EDA) reflects the real world in which businesses operate. The real world is constantly changing, chaotic, and unpredictable. An EDA enables organizations to make sense out of all the events occurring within their business, and to detect anomalous business situations by drawing together a number of indirectly related or independent events. Furthermore, EDA builds decision-making capabilities directly into business processes by using analytical insights to drive decisions. EDA offers organizations the ability to track events in real time, thus gaining an early awareness of issues, improving productivity, and reducing manual intervention and errors.

Java Programming with Berkeley DB XML

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:45:00 EST

Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is a popular native XML database. It can be accessed through the shell or within another program. This month I will show you how to use BDB XML in Java. BDB XML has similar APIs for all supported languages such as Java and C++, therefore the ideas presented in this article apply to all supported languages. I have been closely following BDB XML from the very first release, and there have been tremendous improvements in this product.

JDJ Product Review — Parasoft Jtest 8.0

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:45:00 EST

In terms of unit testing and code compliance, Jtest is a real heavyweight in the arena. For those who haven't come across Jtest before, it's an application that will analyze your Java application code for you. At present Jtest has 700 built-in rules and 100 security rules and it will autocorrect 250 of those rules for you. It provides Parasoft SOAtest hooks for testing of SOA/Web services and Web apps. The reporting engine is also built-in so once tests are run, you can view and print results via a Web browser. There are some new features such as improved J2EE testing and the Bug Detective, which I will cover later in this review.

Java Product Review: What to Do If Your Code Has No Tests

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:00:00 EDT

When MailReader - an example application bundled with the Struts Action framework - was created six years ago, most Java developers had yet to discover unit testing. Consequently neither the Struts framework nor the MailReader were created test-first. Since then, we've bolted a few unit tests onto the Action framework, but the MailReader for Struts 1.2 still has no developer tests at all.

Java Product Review: Mindreef SOAPscope Server

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:45:00 EDT

By nature Web Services is a distributed technology. With distribution comes great flexibility for architectural topologies. Components can be strategically placed in different physical locations to optimize performance, maintenance and business processes. In large organizations one physical location may handle sales services, while another delivers contract management. As organizations build Service Oriented Architectures that stitch together these physically dispersed services, distributed development becomes an interesting challenge to overcome. Many collaborative technologies exist today to facilitate better communications and information sharing among workers, but it's rare to find a distributed development environment.

Fiorano SOA 2006 Platform A Honey of A Product

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:15:00 EDT

I recently had the chance to evaluate the next-generation Fiorano SOA Platform 2006 suite from Fiorano Software, Inc. As an architect and developer who's worked with previous versions of the kit over the last three years in addition to several competitor offerings, I looked forward to sitting down with Fiorano's latest release.

AccuRev 4.0 Facilitates Effective Team Software Development

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:00:00 EDT

Sharp tools make software development quicker and more productive. They automate manual tasks to speed development. They provide useful information intuitively to enhance productivity. Eclipse, the powerful and well-designed IDE, is such a tool. Few Java developers would want to return to a text editor, command-line compiler, and standalone debugger after experiencing the power of this integrated development environment. In the same way that an intuitive and elegant IDE aids modern software development, a cutting-edge yet robust software configuration management (SCM) tool enables successful team software development.

Reporting Made Easy with JasperReports and Hibernate

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:30:00 EST

JasperReports is a valuable and viable reporting solution for Java Web applications. It simplifies report generation through the use of XML report templates that are then compiled using the JasperReports engine for use in reporting modules. These compiled report templates can be filled by data received from a variety of sources including relational databases. JasperReports can be integrated into Web applications and create reports in several file formats including PDF and XLS.

How To Give Your Web Applications A Facelift With WebCharts3D To Make It A Blockbuster

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:00:00 EDT

You can create a sophisticated application that implements complex algorithms, but in many cases you sell its GUI part to your users. The presentation layer of plain vanilla HTML/JSP-based Web applications is usually pretty basic unless you use specialized software. Today we are testing the charting engine WebCharts3D 5.0 from GreenPoint.