InfoQ: 10 Ways to Improve Your Code

InfoQ: 10 Ways to Improve Your Code: Neal Ford, an architect at ThoughtWorks, shows 10 ways to write better code. This is practical advice for developers, but application architects can benefit from it too.

InfoQ: Ross Mason Discusses MuleSource, Mule ESB and Galaxy

InfoQ: Ross Mason Discusses MuleSource, Mule ESB and Galaxy: "within the enterprise, so inside the firewall and typically those sort of applications are message-centric, sometimes XML-centric, sometimes legacy formats. We also see a fair bit of web services work, both in the enterprise, but also another sort of pattern of customer we have is gateways to the outside world that use web services there for their partners - like a B2B type of scenario. The third trend we're seeing and which I think is very interesting and is widening the appeal of Mule is the REST interfaces. How do you leverage the power of Mule from the web?"

Ross Mason discusses Mule, ESBs, Enterprise vs Community Edition, monitoring, cloud-based deployments, Galaxy, governance, Mule integrations, MuleForge, and the recession's effect on open source.

InfoQ: Transparency: A Great Leap Forward or Exposed Artery?

InfoQ: Transparency: A Great Leap Forward or Exposed Artery?: Agile propagandists make great claims about the advantages of being transparent about the state of their projects. But is this true? Surely Transparency is just not pragmatic?

Axum, Microsoft’s Approach to Parallelism

InfoQ: Axum, Microsoft’s Approach to Parallelism: "Axum, previously known as Maestro, is a Microsoft incubation language project meant to provide a parallel programming model for .NET through isolation, actors and message passing. The language borrows many concepts from Erlang but with a C#-like syntax."

Technology Space and Integration Issues

InfoQ: Investment Banking: Technology Space and Integration Issues: "John Davies discusses investment banking technology, integration, complex data models, distributed architectures and SWIFT MT to MX migration."

Service Level Management

Taken from Cert-EX0-101
Related Exam: ITIL Cert-EX0-101 ITILCert: ITIL Foundation Certification in IT Service Management version 3

Which type of agreement specifies the level, scope, and quality of services to be provided to the customers?


Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Operational Level Agreement (OLA)
Service Level Requirement (SLR)
Service Failure Analysis (SFA)

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) specifies the level, scope, and quality of service to be provided to the customers. It is an agreement between the service provider and a customer.

An Operational Level Agreement (OLA) is an agreement between a service provider's departments used to ensure that a service is provided and supported to the customer. OLAs are agreements between two departments of the same service provider.

A Service Level Requirement (SLR) documents the customer's requirements for an aspect of an IT service. SLRs are used to agree on the service level targets.

A Service Failure Analysis (SFA) is a process that is used to identify underlying causes of one or more IT service failures.

References:

Office of Government Commerce. Foundations of IT Service Management Based on ITIL v3, Chapter 10: Functions and Processes in Service Design, 10.2 Service Level Management, pp. 196-199.

Office of Government Commerce. Service Design, Chapter 4: Service Design Processes, 4.2 Service Level Management, 4.2.6 Triggers, inputs, outputs, and interfaces, 4.2.6.2 SLM process outputs, pp. 75-76.

Chris Bowen's Blog : 2008 Winter Northeast Roadshow - Resources and Summary

Chris Bowen's Blog : 2008 Winter Northeast Roadshow - Resources and Summary

DB2 Magazine - TechEncyclopedia - Term: dancing baloney

DB2 Magazine - TechEncyclopedia - Term: dancing baloney: "Small animated GIF images and other moving objects that are used to quickly and cheaply add 'excitement' to a Web page. At best these images are harmless and not too distracting. At worst, they can make a given Web page look like the online equivalent of an animated ransom note. See cornea gumbo and eye candy."

Activity Resource Estimating

Taken from Cert-PMP3ED
Related Exam: PMI Cert-PMP3ED PMCert: Project Management Professional Third Edition

You are a project manager for a new software development project for your company. You have identified the project's goals and objectives, and you need to determine resource requirements for the project. All of the following would be resource requirements, EXCEPT:


network connections needed by software developers
contractors needed to perform specialized programming tasks
additional staging servers that will be need for the testing phase of the project
the programming assignments that represent the individual modules to be developed

The programming assignments that represent the individual modules to be developed would not be considered resources necessary for the project. Instead these would most likely be considered deliverables of the project.

All of the other options are incorrect because they do represent resources needed for the project. Project resources include human resources and other non-human resources, such as equipment, materials, hardware and software, supplies, training, and travel.


References:

1. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge - PMBOK Guide 3rd Edition - Glossary - Resource

2. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge - PMBOK Guide 3rd Edition - Project Time Management - 6.3 Activity Resource Estimating

Servlets Using HTTP Protocol

Taken from Cert-CX-310-081
Related Exam: Sun Cert-CX-310-081 JVCert:Certified Web Component Developer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4

You are developing a Web application in which you have the user credentials stored in a session object. In which two situations will the valueUnbound()method of the HttpSessionBindingListener be called? (Choose two.)
when the session time outs
when the session is created
when the session is invalidated
when the object is bound to the session

The valueUnbound() method of the HttpSessionBindingListener interface is called to inform the object about its unbound from the session when the session times out, when the session is invalidated, or when the object is removed from the session through servlet code.

The options that state the method valueUnbound() of the HttpSessionBindingListener interface is called when a session is created or when the object is bound to the session are incorrect. The valueBound() method is called when the object is bound. When the session is created, the HttpSessionListener interface's method sessionCreated() is called. This is because the valueUnbound() method is called when the object is removed from the session and when the session is invalidated or times out.

References:

1. Java Servlet Specification Version 2.4, javax.servlet.http, SRV.15.1 Servlets Using HTTP Protocol, SRV.15.1.11 HttpSessionBindingListener

2. Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition, v 1.4 API Specification, Interface HttpSessionBindingListener, http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/api/javax/servlet/http/HttpSessionBindingListener.html