Any Technology

A tour of Microsoft System Center 2012 | Microsoft Windows - InfoWorld

2012-02-01T14:33:00.001-08:00

A tour of Microsoft System Center 2012 | Microsoft Windows - InfoWorld

monitoring and managing your network using OpManager

2012-02-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

Network Monitoring Software | Network Performance Monitor | Network Management Software - ManageEngine OpManager:

OpManager is a complete, end-to-end network monitoring software that offers advanced fault and performance management functionality across critical IT resources such as routers, WAN links, switches, firewalls, VoIP call paths, physical servers, virtual servers, domain controllers & other IT infrastructure devices.

Network Monitoring Dashboards
Network Discovery
Automatic Network Mapping
Custom Maps
Google Map View
Network Traffic Analysis
WAN RTT hop-graph
VoIP Monitor Dashboard
Network Configuration Management
VMware Dashboard
Hyper-V Monitoring
IT Workflow Automation
REST API

TechNet Virtual Lab: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager: Advanced Software Distribution

2012-02-01T13:49:00.001-08:00

Microsoft Virtual Labs - Hyper-V Edition

Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

2012-02-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:
Billy Anders, a group program manager on Microsoft's devices and networking team, digs into the details of how we have re-engineered the wireless networking stack to optimize it for both mobile broadband and Wi-Fi networks.

Resilient File System (ReFS), being introduced in Windows 8, will replace the venerable NTFS file system.

2012-02-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

Building the next generation file system for Windows: ReFS - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Building Cloud Applications with the Windows Azure Platform

2012-02-01T13:46:00.000-08:00

Windows Azure Jump Start (01): Windows Azure Overview | Channel 9

February 24-26, 2012: Boston Startup Weekend

2012-02-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

Boston Startup Weekend

Boston Startup Tech Talent Fair

2012-02-01T13:43:00.000-08:00

Boston Startup Tech Talent Fair - Student Registration - Eventbrite

February Technical Calendar - Jim O'Neil - Developer Evangelist - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

2012-02-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

February Technical Calendar - Jim O'Neil - Developer Evangelist - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Modern Web Development - Part 3

2012-01-31T12:34:00.001-08:00

Modern Web Development - Part 3:

1: A New World

2: Architecting JavaScript

3: A Better CSS (This post)

4: Debugging JavaScript (upcoming)

5: Joy and Pain of jQuery Plugins (upcoming)

6: Packaging Assets (upcoming)

7: Distributed Source Control (upcoming)

8: Working with Facebook (upcoming)

9: Mobile Pages (upcoming)

10: Deploying to the Cloud (upcoming)

WCF Extensibility – IExtension and IExtensibleObject - Carlos' blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

2012-01-31T12:34:00.000-08:00

There are four extensible objects in WCF:

ServiceHostBase, the base class used for hosting WCF services
InstanceContext, the class which represents the running service, connecting the service class instance with the WCF runtime
OperationContext, the class which represents the operation information gathered by the runtime and passed (as a thread-local static variable)
IContextChannel, an interface which allows for the inspection of channels and proxies built by the WCF runtime.

WCF Extensibility – IExtension and IExtensibleObject - Carlos' blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:
using the IExtensibleObject pattern.

Matt Heusser - Software Test Professionals - Testing, Quality Assurance, and People

2012-01-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

Matt Heusser - Software Test Professionals - Testing, Quality Assurance, and People:

TWiST #78 - Interviewing Testers, Part I

Friday January 13th 5am 9 3 Comments podcast

In which Matt talks with Paul Carvalho, Eric Jacobson, Wade Wachs and Benjamin Yaroch about what kind of a tester it takes to turn on a lightbulb... no, really!

What Mel Brooks Can Teach Us about “Group Flow” | Greater Good

2012-01-26T15:09:00.000-08:00

What Mel Brooks Can Teach Us about “Group Flow” | Greater Good:

Drawing on research with mountain climbers, club dancers, artists, and scientists, Csikszentmihalyi found that people are more likely to get into flow when their environment has four important characteristics.

First and most importantly, they’re doing something where their skills match the challenge of the task. If the challenge is too great for their skills, they get frustrated; if the task isn’t challenging enough, they simply get bored.

Second, flow occurs when the goal is clear, and third, when there’s constant and immediate feedback about how close you are to achieving that goal.

Fourth, flow occurs when you’re free to fully concentrate on the task.

Visual Studio 2010 Overview – A day in the life of … Plan, Code & Test | Process, Practices and Tools

2012-01-26T14:59:00.000-08:00

. See An index to all Visual Studio 2010 Overview webcasts for a full list of webcasts.

Visual Studio 2010 Overview – A day in the life of … Plan, Code & Test | Process, Practices and Tools:
Slide deck: Training – [DayInTheLife] – Develope & Test

Versioning WCF APIs

2012-01-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

johnmurray.io:
Microsoft has a long article here

It has a binding of api.mysite.com (or whatever you’re using)

It points to the folder containing your “default” version (if no version is specified).

Umlaut - Wikipedia

2012-01-25T08:50:00.000-08:00

Umlaut - Wikipedia:

Coding in HTML
Sign	Unicode position	HTML
Sign	Unicode position	hexadecimal	decimal	named
Ä	U +00 C4	Ä	Ä	Ä
Ö	U +00 D6	Ö	Ö	Ö
Ü	U +00 DC	Ü	Ü	Ü
ä	U +00 E4	ä	ä	ä
ö	U +00 F6	ö	ö	ö
ü	U +00 FC	ü	ü	ü

Prepare to Ace Your Job Interview with This Interview One-Sheeter

2012-01-24T14:57:00.000-08:00

Prepare to Ace Your Job Interview with This Interview One-Sheeter

How To Become A Freelancer | Starting A Freelance Business | Pitch

2012-01-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

The Briefcase Technique - to earn thousands of dollars | I Will Teach You to Be Rich

How To Become A Freelancer | Starting A Freelance Business | Pitch

Your Resume vs. Oblivion - WSJ.com

2012-01-24T14:37:00.000-08:00

Your Resume vs. Oblivion - WSJ.com:

How to Beat the 'Black Hole'

You don't have to be an astronomer to know about one kind of black hole: the online job application process.

But have hope. There are things you can do to increase the chances of getting your résumé through employers' applicant screening systems, say experts Josh Bersin, CEO of human-resources consulting firm Bersin & Associates and Rusty Rueff, career and workplace expert at Glassdoor.

Below, five tips to up your odds:

1. Forget about being creative. Instead, mimic the keywords in the job description as closely as possible. If you're applying to be a sales manager, make sure your résumé includes the words "sales" and "manage" (assuming you've done both!).
2. Visit the prospective employer's website to get a sense of the corporate culture. Do they use certain words to describe their values? If a firm has a professed interest in environmental sustainability, include relevant volunteer work or memberships on your résumé. The company may have programmed related keywords into its resume screening software.
3. Keep the formatting on your résumé simple and streamlined—you don't want to perplex the software. With a past position, the system "sometimes gets confused about which is the company, which is the position, and which are the dates you worked there," especially if they're all on a single line, says Mr. Bersin. To make sure you hit all the categories, put them on separate lines. And "don't get cute with graphics and layout," says Mr. Rueff.
4. Some screening systems assign higher scores to elite schools. You may not have gotten your B.A. from a top-tier university, but if you attended a continuing-education class at one, include such qualifications on your résumé.
5. But don't ever lie or exaggerate just to get through the screening process. Recruiters and ATSs are savvy about tricks jobseekers use (such as typing false qualifications in white font). "You don't want to get through the black hole and find out it's a worse hole you got yourself into," Mr. Rueff says.

10 new open source projects you may not know about - JavaWorld

2012-01-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

10 new open source projects you may not know about - JavaWorld:

1. Bootstrap, a toolkit from Twitter designed to kick-start development of Web applications and sites;

2. BrowserID, a secure, decentralized, open source, cross-browser way to sign onto websites based on the user's email address;

3. Canvas, billed by Black Duck as "the only commercial open source learning management system and the only LMS native to the cloud";

4. Cloud Foundry, an open Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providing a choice of clouds, developer frameworks, and application services;

5. Moai, a mobile platform for game developers that offers cloud-based game services and rapid development of iOS, Android, and Chrome titles using the Lua scripting language;

6.Mooege, an open source educational game server emulator;

7. OpenShift, a free, auto-scaling Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) from Red Hat;

8. Orion, a browser-based open tool integration platform built by the Eclipse platform team;

9. rstat.us, a microblogging platform that's set apart by its simplicity and openness, Black Duck says; and

10. Salt, an open source configuration management and remote execution application.

Building Offline Experiences with HTML5 AppCache and IndexedDB - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

2012-01-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Building Offline Experiences with HTML5 AppCache and IndexedDB - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:
Users expect websites and apps to work well even when the network isn't available. With data stored in the cloud, developers want fluid experiences that allow access to data when there is no connectivity.

AD FS 2.0 Step-by-Step Guide: Federation with Shibboleth 2 and the InCommon Federation

2012-01-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

AD FS 2.0 Step-by-Step Guide: Federation with Shibboleth 2 and the InCommon Federation:
instructions for configuring a basic identity federation deployment between Microsoft® Active Directory® Federation Services 2.0 (AD FS 2.0) and Shibboleth 2 (Shibboleth) by using the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 protocol (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=193996) with the SAML 2.0 HTTP POST binding. In Appendix A: Using AD FS 2.0 in the InCommon Federation, this basic deployment is modified to demonstrate interoperability between AD FS 2.0 and a Shibboleth instance that is participating in the InCommon Federation.

AD FS 2.0 name	Shibboleth name	Concept
Security token	Assertion	An XML document that is created and sent during a federated access request that describes a user
Claims provider	Identity provider (IdP)	A partner in a federation that creates security tokens for users
Relying party	Service provider (SP)	A partner in a federation that consumes security tokens to provide access to applications
Claims	Assertion attributes	Data about users that is sent inside security tokens

AD FS 2.0 also supports the WS-Federation protocol for Web-based federation and SSO. The Shibboleth SP likewise supports WS-Federation.

For information about how to deploy a test lab between Shibboleth and AD FS using WS-Federation, see the legacy ADFS Step-by-Step Guide: Federation with Shibboleth Federation Services (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=204190).

The primary benefit of using certificates that are issued by a CA for token-signing is the ability to check for possible certificate revocation against the certificate revocation list (CRL) from the issuing CA when acting as a relying party or service provider.

Shibboleth does not perform CRL checking. Instead, it uses continuously refreshing/expiring metadata to manage the replacement and discontinuation of support for a given certificate. In AD FS 2.0, CRL checking is enabled by default for all claims provider trusts. This has implications in federation deployments between Shibboleth (acting as an IdP) and AD FS 2.0 (acting as an RP)

Hadoop, Ruby on Rails Among Top 16 Open-Source Projects of 2011 - Linux and Open Source - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

2012-01-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

Hadoop, Ruby on Rails Among Top 16 Open-Source Projects of 2011 - Linux and Open Source - News & Reviews - eWeek.com:

nginx (pronounced “engine-x”) is a Web server and a reverse proxy server for HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP protocols, with a strong focus on high concurrency, performance and low memory usage. It’s licensed under a BSD-like license and it runs on Unix, Linux, BS

Node.js is a software system designed for writing highly scalable Internet applications, notably Web servers. Programs are written in JavaScript, using event-driven, asynchronous I/O to minimize overhead and maximize scalability. Node.js consists of Google's V8 JavaScript engine plus several built-in libraries.

MongoDB is an open-source, high-performance, schema-free, document-oriented NoSQL database system written in C++. It manages collections of BSON documents that can be nested in complex hierarchies and still be easy to query and index, enabling many applications to store data in a natural way that matches their native data types and structures. 10gen began developing MongoDB in October 2007 by 10gen. The first public release was in February 2009.

The Spring Framework is an open-source application framework for Java. The first version was written by Rod Johnson, who released the framework with the publication of his book "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development" in October 2002. The framework was first released under the Apache 2.0 license in June 2003. The first milestone, release, 1.0, was released in March 2004, with further milestone releases in September 2004 and March 2005. The core features of the Spring Framework can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions for building Web applications on top of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE).

PostgreSQL—often referred to as Postgres—is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It’s released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, making it free and open-source software. PostgreSQL is developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, consisting of a handful of community volunteers employed and supervised by companies such as Red Hat.

Grails is an open-source Web application framework that uses the Groovy programming language (which is, in turn, based on the Java platform). It’s intended to be a high-productivity framework by following the "coding by convention" paradigm, providing a standalone development environment and hiding much of the configuration detail from the developer.

Apache Struts is an open-source Web application framework for developing Java EE Web applications. It uses and extends the Java Servlet API to encourage developers to adopt a model-view-controller architecture. It was originally created by Craig McClanahan and donated to the Apache Foundation in May 2000.

5-4-3: An Ebook Recommending Business Books

2012-01-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

5-4-3: An Ebook Recommending Business Books:

1. Those who persevere win. Be resilient and wel-come ailure. That’s how you become a better businessperson.

2. You learn by reusing to make excuses andlooking inside yoursel or the reason things have gone wrong.

3. Focus and discipline are more importantthan identiying opportunities, but they have to be balancedwith exibility.

4. The solutions are seldom right in ront o you.You need to learn how to spot them out o the corner o your eye

HTML editor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2012-01-19T06:10:00.000-08:00

HTML editor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

online WYSIWYG HTML editors, some of them are:

Announcing Visual Studio Achievements Beta | C9Team | Channel 9

2012-01-19T05:44:00.000-08:00

Announcing Visual Studio Achievements Beta | C9Team | Channel 9:

With the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, various achievements are unlocked based on your activity. When you unlock an achievement, Visual Studio lets you know visually with a pop-up. In addition, your Channel 9 profile is updated with any achievements you earn, recalculating your position on the leaderboard. Now, all that hard work won’t go unnoticed! Download it today!

There are six categories of achievements you can earn, including categories like Unleashing Visual Studio, Power Coder, Don't Try This At Home and more. Some examples of individual achievements include Regional Manager(have more than 10 regions in a single class), Close To The Metal (use 5 preprocessor directives), Stubby (generate method stubs 10 times) or Interrupting Cow (have 10 breakpoints in a file). All in all, there are 32 achievements awaiting to be unlocked.

To see a list of all the achievements, check out this page. You can also see where you and your fellow niners stand on theleaderboard.

RSVP for Refresh Boston

2012-01-18T18:32:00.000-08:00

RSVP for Refresh Boston:

Refresh Boston is Back for 2012

After a long hiatus, Refresh Boston returns in 2012 with our first of many events starting in February. We've already confirmed events for March & April and have May & June events in the works.

We're always on the lookout for new speakers and event sponsors. If you're interested in speaking at Refresh Boston, fill out our New Speaker Survey

and let us know what you'd like to talk about. If you or your company would like to sponsor an event, read up on the benefits of helping out

Our February Event is Thursday the 2nd

Our next event is Thursday, February 2nd, with designer/speaker Patrick Haney presenting Getting Shit Done, his spin on GTD that will give you a better understanding of your process and your tools so you can get your work done without distractions.

We'll meet in our usual location, on the 11th floor of the Microsoft NERD Center

in Cambridge, next to Kendall Square. Doors open at 6:30pm, presentation starts at 7. For more information, visit the Refresh Boston website

HBase: The Definitive Guide - O'Reilly Media

2012-01-18T14:36:00.000-08:00

HBase: The Definitive Guide - O'Reilly Media

TeamPulse's Blog Posts > 5 Agile Project Management Techniques You Can Start Using Today

2012-01-13T07:24:00.000-08:00

TeamPulse's Blog Posts > 5 Agile Project Management Techniques You Can Start Using Today:

The term “Agile” sometimes conjures up a nebulous end-state that seems unachievable or unpractical to a lot of organizations. So, why call it Agile?

If you can’t meet face to face, then think about other forms of higher bandwidth communication such as video chat with Skype or Lync. Try to NOT rely upon email for your primary form of discussion as meaning and intent are quickly lost or misinterpreted the more you rely upon written words for communication.

3.Be Visible: This doesn’t need to be electronic and could be as simple as sticky notes on a whiteboard. There are lots and lots of examples of this – yet, you should start off with something simple to create and more importantly, simple to maintain and update.

4.Regular Checkup

TeamPulse's Blog Posts > Need to have a Cross Project Perspective?

2012-01-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

TeamPulse's Blog Posts > Need to have a Cross Project Perspective?

The year's best hardware, software, and cloud services | Cloud computing - InfoWorld

2012-01-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

The year's best hardware, software, and cloud services | Cloud computing - InfoWorld:

There's certainly no place like Amazon Web Services, a turnkey supercomputer available to anyone with a credit card. Hadoop, too, appears here in all of its glory (making the leap fromBossies fame)

CakePHPand Web2py have been adding features that make it simpler to build and deploy PHP and Python applications to the cloud or, for that matter, to any machine. We also took notice of application platforms Heroku and CloudBees

The explosion of handheld power is tightly linked to cloud-based services. We gave awards to bothPhoneGap and Rhomobile Rhodes for simplifying the creation of mobile applications that run smoothly on iOS, Android, BlackBerry

Your Problem Isn't Motivation - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review

2012-01-09T14:27:00.000-08:00

Your Problem Isn't Motivation - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review:

Make a very specific decision about something you want to do and don't question it. By very specific, I mean things like: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will only point out the things my employee does right or I will say at least one thing in the next meeting.

Crovitz: A New Challenge for Web Freedom - WSJ.com

2012-01-09T06:22:00.000-08:00

Crovitz: A New Challenge for Web Freedom - WSJ.com:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known by the acronym Icann, is accepting applications for an infinite number of new Web addresses, known as top-level domain names. In addition to the existing two dozen suffixes, such as .com, .org and .net, Icann will let people apply, for a fee of $185,000, to create whatever suffixes they like, which will be reviewed and go live next year. Expect .hitachi and .paris, for example. Icann is also adding local-language Web names in non-Latin characters such as Chinese and Cyrillic.

3 big screw-ups you can expect from cloud providers in 2012 | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld

2012-01-06T16:55:00.000-08:00

3 big screw-ups you can expect from cloud providers in 2012 | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld:

No. 1: Security.

Blunder No. 2: Cost of migration.

Performance.

Give us your feedback on Visual Studio 11 etc. and receive a gift!

2012-01-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

Survey:

What types of applications do you typically build?
Business like CRM and ERP systems
Consumer like retail websites
Gaming like Halo and Angry Birds
Engineering like avionics
Frameworks like jQuery and Eclipse API
Hardware like sensors and embedded systems
Productivity like vacation time entry tools, budget tracking
Entertainment like sports apps, movie showtimes, celebrity gossip
Social and Business Networking like LinkedIn, Foursquare, Facebook
Communications like telecommunications and protocol development
Utility Applications like calculators, antivirus, hardware drivers

Which of the following describes the organization you work for?
Startup: New and small organization in the early stages funding and product development
Independent Software Vendor: Resale of specialized applications that require little or no customization, either packaged or as a service
Systems Integrator: Creates, recommends, and implements computer solutions for customers
Value Added Reseller: Customizing and reselling solutions to business. Web development may be part of your company’s portfolio
Academic/Scientific/Engineering Research: Advanced computing software and services development
Consultant:Provide professional or expert advice
Gaming: Creating games and entertainment applications for desktops, consoles and/or mobile platforms
Web Design and Development for Clients: Focused on creating websites and light web applications for external clients
Marketing Agency: Creating marketing campaigns for clients. This can include designing and developing websites/applications
Internet Content Provider: An organization that offers its services or products, including information, primarily on the Internet
Moonlighter: Do software development as a side job
Internal Applications: Develop applications for internal use at my company

Web Platforms that you develop for:
.NET
Java
Ruby
Apache
IIS
Facebook

Five Tech Start-Ups to Work For in 2012 - Technology and IT Jobs News and Advice

2012-01-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Five Tech Start-Ups to Work For in 2012 - Technology and IT Jobs News and Advice:

Square makes a portable credit card reader that plugs in to the iPhone. It enables anyone, anywhere to accept credit card payments.

Ooyala makes a Web video platform that enables customers to like ESPN to analyze user behavior in real time and alter their monetization efforts accordingly.

Evolv makes a software platform that helps companies in high-turnover industries like call centers make data-driven hiring decisions. The company uses advanced algorithms developed by statisticians and psychometricians to determine whether an applicant is likely to quit soon after starting a job or stick with it.

Simple makes a personal banking platform that aims to cut out the clunky user interfaces of traditional online banking services. The company itself isn't a bank -- it puts your money into an FDIC-insured bank's coffers -- but it does everything else for you. Saving, spending, and bill payments are all handled through the company's platform.

LiveIntent helps marketers personalize their email advertisements based on the recipient's location, device and the time of day they are opening it. For instance, a restaurant coupon will read as being 40% off lunch if it's opened in the morning, and 40% off dinner if opened in the afternoon. The company's technology is used in email newsletters by publishers like MSNBC and the Daily Beast.

My Review of Hadoop Summit 2011 #hadoopsummit « Byte Mining

2012-01-05T19:36:00.000-08:00

My Review of Hadoop Summit 2011 #hadoopsummit « Byte Mining

RHIPE: An Interface Between Hadoop and R for Large and Complex Data Analysis | LectureMaker, LLC

2012-01-05T19:28:00.000-08:00

RHIPE: An Interface Between Hadoop and R for Large and Complex Data Analysis | LectureMaker, LLC

Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation | InformIT

2012-01-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation | InformIT:

Part I: Foundations

Chapter 1: The Problem of Delivering Software

Some Common Release Antipatterns

Antipattern: Deploying Software Manually

Antipattern: Deploying to a Production-like Environment Only after Development Is Complete

Antipattern: Manual Configuration Management of Production Environments

Can We Do Better?

How Do We Achieve Our Goal?

Every Change Should Trigger the Feedback Process

The Feedback Must Be Received as Soon as Possible

The Delivery Team Must Receive Feedback and Then Act on It

Does This Process Scale?

What Are the Benefits?

Empowering Teams

Reducing Errors

Lowering Stress

Deployment Flexibility

Practice Makes Perfect

The Release Candidate

Every Check-in Leads to a Potential Release

Principles of Software Delivery

Create a Repeatable, Reliable Process for Releasing Software

Automate Almost Everything

Keep Everything in Version Control

If It Hurts, Do It More Frequently, and Bring the Pain Forward

Build Quality In

Done Means Released

Everybody Is Responsible for the Delivery Process

Continuous Improvement

Chapter 2: Configuration Management

Using Version Control

Keep Absolutely Everything in Version Control

Check In Regularly to Trunk

Use Meaningful Commit Messages

Managing Dependencies

Managing External Libraries

Managing Components

Managing Software Configuration

Configuration and Flexibility

Types of Configuration

Managing Application Configuration

Managing Configuration across Applications

Principles of Managing Application Configuration

Managing Your Environments

Tools to Manage Environments

Managing the Change Process

Chapter 3: Continuous Integration

Implementing Continuous Integration

What You Need Before You Start

A Basic Continuous Integration System

Prerequisites for Continuous Integration ........................................ 59

Check In Regularly ....................................................................... 59

Create a Comprehensive Automated Test Suite ................................ 60

Keep the Build and Test Process Short ............................................ 60

Managing Your Development Workspace ........................................ 62

Using Continuous Integration Software ......................................... 63

Basic Operation ........................................................................... 63

Bells and Whistles ........................................................................ 63

Essential Practices .......................................................................... 66

Don’t Check In on a Broken Build ................................................. 66

Always Run All Commit Tests Locally before Committing, or Get Your

CI Server to Do It for You .............................................................

Wait for Commit Tests to Pass before Moving On ............................ 67

Never Go Home on a Broken Build ................................................ 68

Always Be Prepared to Revert to the Previous Revision ..................... 69

Time-Box Fixing before Reverting .................................................. 70

Don’t Comment Out Failing Tests .................................................. 70

Take Responsibility for All Breakages That Result from Your Changes . 70

Test-Driven Development ............................................................. 71

Suggested Practices ........................................................................ 71

Extreme Programming (XP) Development Practices ......................... 71

Failing a Build for Architectural Breaches ........................................ 72

Failing the Build for Slow Tests ...................................................... 73

Failing the Build for Warnings and Code Style Breaches .................... 73

Distributed Teams ......................................................................... 75

The Impact on Process .................................................................. 75

Centralized Continuous Integration ................................................ 76

Technical Issues ........................................................................... 76

Alternative Approaches ................................................................. 77

Distributed Version Control Systems ............................................. 79

Chapter 4: Implementing a Testing Strategy ......................................... 83

Types of Tests ................................................................................ 84

Business-Facing Tests That Support the Development Process ............ 85

Technology-Facing Tests That Support the Development Process ....... 89

Business-Facing Tests That Critique the Project ................................ 89

Technology-Facing Tests That Critique the Project ........................... 91

Test Doubles ............................................................................... 91

Real-Life Situations and Strategies ................................................. 92

New Projects ............................................................................... 92

Midproject .................................................................................. 94

Legacy Systems ............................................................................ 95

Integration Testing ....................................................................... 96

Process ........................................................................................... 99

Managing Defect Backlogs ............................................................ 100

Part II: The Deployment Pipeline ................................................................103

Chapter 5: Anatomy of the Deployment Pipeline .................................105

What Is a Deployment Pipeline? ....................................................106

A Basic Deployment Pipeline ......................................................... 111

Deployment Pipeline Practices .......................................................113

Only Build Your Binaries Once ...................................................... 113

Deploy the Same Way to Every Environment ................................... 115

Smoke-Test Your Deployments ...................................................... 117

Deploy into a Copy of Production .................................................. 117

Each Change Should Propagate through the Pipeline Instantly ........... 118

If Any Part of the Pipeline Fails, Stop the Line ................................. 119

The Commit Stage .........................................................................120

Commit Stage Best Practices .......................................................... 121

The Automated Acceptance Test Gate ...........................................122

Automated Acceptance Test Best Practices ...................................... 124

Subsequent Test Stages ..................................................................126

Manual Testing ............................................................................ 128

Nonfunctional Testing .................................................................. 128

Preparing to Release ......................................................................128

Automating Deployment and Release ............................................. 129

Backing Out Changes ................................................................... 131

Building on Success ...................................................................... 132

Implementing a Deployment Pipeline .............................................133

Modeling Your Value Stream and Creating a Walking Skeleton .......... 133

Automating the Build and Deployment Process ................................ 134

Automating the Unit Tests and Code Analysis .................................. 135

Automating Acceptance Tests ........................................................ 136

Evolving Your Pipeline ................................................................. 136

Metrics ..........................................................................................137

Chapter 6: Build and Deployment Scripting .........................................143

An Overview of Build Tools ..........................................................144

Make .......................................................................................... 146

Ant ............................................................................................. 147

NAnt and MSBuild ....................................................................... 148

Maven ........................................................................................ 149

Rake ........................................................................................... 150

Buildr ......................................................................................... 151

Psake .......................................................................................... 151

Principles and Practices of Build and Deployment Scripting ...........152

Create a Script for Each Stage in Your Deployment Pipeline .............. 152

Use an Appropriate Technology to Deploy Your Application ............. 152

Use the Same Scripts to Deploy to Every Environment ...................... 153

Use Your Operating System’s Packaging Tools ................................ 154

Ensure the Deployment Process Is Idempotent ................................. 155

Evolve Your Deployment System Incrementally ............................... 157

Project Structure for Applications That Target the JVM ................157

Project Layout ............................................................................. 157

Deployment Scripting ....................................................................160

Deploying and Testing Layers ........................................................ 162

Testing Your Environment’s Configuration ...................................... 163

Tips and Tricks ..............................................................................164

Always Use Relative Paths ............................................................. 164

Eliminate Manual Steps ................................................................. 165

Build In Traceability from Binaries to Version Control ..................... 165

Don’t Check Binaries into Version Control as Part of Your Build ....... 166

Test Targets Should Not Fail the Build ............................................ 166

Constrain Your Application with Integrated Smoke Tests .................. 167

.NET Tips and Tricks ................................................................... 167

Chapter 7: The Commit Stage ..............................................................169

Commit Stage Principles and Practices ...........................................170

Provide Fast, Useful Feedback ........................................................ 171

What Should Break the Commit Stage? ........................................... 172

Tend the Commit Stage Carefully ................................................... 172

Give Developers Ownership .......................................................... 173

Use a Build Master for Very Large Teams ....................................... 174

The Results of the Commit Stage ...................................................174

The Artifact Repository ................................................................. 175

Commit Test Suite Principles and Practices ....................................177

Avoid the User Interface ............................................................... 178

Use Dependency Injection ............................................................. 179

Avoid the Database ...................................................................... 179

Avoid Asynchrony in Unit Tests ..................................................... 180

Using Test Doubles ...................................................................... 180

Minimizing State in Tests .............................................................. 183

Faking Time ................................................................................ 184

Brute Force ................................................................................. 185

Chapter 8: Automated Acceptance Testing ..........................................187

Why Is Automated Acceptance Testing Essential? ..........................188

How to Create Maintainable Acceptance Test Suites ......................... 190

Testing against the GUI ................................................................ 192

Creating Acceptance Tests .............................................................193

The Role of Analysts and Testers .................................................... 193

Analysis on Iterative Projects ......................................................... 193

Acceptance Criteria as Executable Specifications .............................. 195

The Application Driver Layer ........................................................198

How to Express Your Acceptance Criteria ....................................... 200

The Window Driver Pattern: Decoupling the Tests from the GUI ....... 201

Implementing Acceptance Tests .....................................................204

State in Acceptance Tests ............................................................... 204

Process Boundaries, Encapsulation, and Testing ............................... 206

Managing Asynchrony and Timeouts .............................................. 207

Using Test Doubles ...................................................................... 210

The Acceptance Test Stage .............................................................213

Keeping Acceptance Tests Green .................................................... 214

Deployment Tests ........................................................................ 217

Acceptance Test Performance ........................................................218

Refactor Common Tasks ............................................................... 219

Share Expensive Resources ............................................................ 219

Parallel Testing ............................................................................ 220

Using Compute Grids ................................................................... 220

Chapter 9: Testing Nonfunctional Requirements .................................225

Managing Nonfunctional Requirements ........................................226

Analyzing Nonfunctional Requirements .......................................... 227

Programming for Capacity .............................................................228

Measuring Capacity .......................................................................231

How Should Success and Failure Be Defined for Capacity Tests? ........ 232

The Capacity-Testing Environment ................................................234

Automating Capacity Testing ........................................................238

Capacity Testing via the User Interface ........................................... 240

Recording Interactions against a Service or Public API ...................... 241

Using Recorded Interaction Templates ............................................ 241

Using Capacity Test Stubs to Develop Tests ..................................... 244

Adding Capacity Tests to the Deployment Pipeline ........................244

Additional Benefits of a Capacity Test System ...............................247

Chapter 10: Deploying and Releasing Applications ..............................249

Creating a Release Strategy ............................................................250

The Release Plan .......................................................................... 251

Releasing Products ....................................................................... 252

Deploying and Promoting Your Application ..................................253

The First Deployment ................................................................... 253

Modeling Your Release Process and Promoting Builds ...................... 254

Promoting Configuration .............................................................. 257

Orchestration .............................................................................. 258

Deployments to Staging Environments ............................................ 258

Rolling Back Deployments and Zero-Downtime Releases ..............259

Rolling Back by Redeploying the Previous Good Version .................. 260

Zero-Downtime Releases .............................................................. 260

Blue-Green Deployments .............................................................. 261

Canary Releasing ......................................................................... 263

Emergency Fixes ............................................................................265

Continuous Deployment ................................................................266

Continuously Releasing User-Installed Software ............................... 267

Tips and Tricks ..............................................................................270

270

The People Who Do the Deployment Should Be Involved in Creating

the Deployment Process ................................................................

Log Deployment Activities ............................................................ 271

Don’t Delete the Old Files, Move Them .......................................... 271

Deployment Is the Whole Team’s Responsibility .............................. 271

Server Applications Should Not Have GUIs ..................................... 271

Have a Warm-Up Period for a New Deployment ............................. 272

Fail Fast ...................................................................................... 273

Don’t Make Changes Directly on the Production Environment .......... 273

Part III: The Delivery Ecosystem .................................................................275

Chapter 11: Managing Infrastructure and Environments .....................277

Understanding the Needs of the Operations Team .........................279

Documentation and Auditing ......................................................... 280

Alerts for Abnormal Events ........................................................... 281

IT Service Continuity Planning ...................................................... 282

Use the Technology the Operations Team Is Familiar With ............... 282

Modeling and Managing Infrastructure .........................................283

Controlling Access to Your Infrastructure ....................................... 285

Making Changes to Infrastructure .................................................. 287

Managing Server Provisioning and Configuration ..........................288

Provisioning Servers ..................................................................... 288

Ongoing Management of Servers .................................................... 290

Managing the Configuration of Middleware ..................................295

Managing Configuration ............................................................... 296

Research the Product .................................................................... 298

Examine How Your Middleware Handles State ................................ 298

Look for a Configuration API ........................................................ 299

Use a Better Technology ............................................................... 299

Managing Infrastructure Services ...................................................300

Multihomed Systems ..................................................................... 301

Virtualization .................................................................................303

Managing Virtual Environments .................................................... 305

Virtual Environments and the Deployment Pipeline .......................... 308

Highly Parallel Testing with Virtual Environments ........................... 310

Cloud Computing ..........................................................................312

Infrastructure in the Cloud ............................................................ 313

Platforms in the Cloud .................................................................. 314

One Size Doesn’t Have to Fit All .................................................... 315

Criticisms of Cloud Computing ...................................................... 316

Monitoring Infrastructure and Applications ..................................317

Collecting Data ............................................................................ 318

Logging ...................................................................................... 320

Creating Dashboards .................................................................... 321

Behavior-Driven Monitoring ......................................................... 323

Chapter 12: Managing Data .................................................................325

Database Scripting .........................................................................326

Initializing Databases ................................................................... 327

Incremental Change .......................................................................327

Versioning Your Database ............................................................. 328

Managing Orchestrated Changes .................................................... 329

Rolling Back Databases and Zero-Downtime Releases ..................331

Rolling Back without Losing Data ................................................. 331

Decoupling Application Deployment from Database Migration ......... 333

Managing Test Data ......................................................................334

Faking the Database for Unit Tests ................................................. 335

Managing the Coupling between Tests and Data .............................. 336

Test Isolation ............................................................................... 337

Setup and Tear Down ................................................................... 337

Coherent Test Scenarios ................................................................ 337

Data Management and the Deployment Pipeline ...........................338

Data in Commit Stage Tests .......................................................... 338

Data in Acceptance Tests .............................................................. 339

Data in Capacity Tests .................................................................. 341

Data in Other Test Stages ............................................................. 342

Chapter 13: Managing Components and Dependencies .......................345

Keeping Your Application Releasable ............................................346

Hide New Functionality Until It Is Finished ..................................... 347

Make All Changes Incrementally .................................................... 349

Branch by Abstraction .................................................................. 349

Dependencies .................................................................................351

Dependency Hell .......................................................................... 352

Managing Libraries ...................................................................... 354

Components ..................................................................................356

How to Divide a Codebase into Components ................................... 356

Pipelining Components ................................................................. 360

The Integration Pipeline ................................................................ 361

Managing Dependency Graphs ......................................................363

Building Dependency Graphs ........................................................ 363

Pipelining Dependency Graphs ...................................................... 365

When Should We Trigger Builds? ................................................... 369

Cautious Optimism ...................................................................... 370

Circular Dependencies .................................................................. 372

Managing Binaries .........................................................................373

How an Artifact Repository Should Work ....................................... 373

374

How Your Deployment Pipeline Should Interact with the Artifact

Repository ..................................................................................

Managing Dependencies with Maven ............................................375

Maven Dependency Refactorings .................................................... 377

Chapter 14: Advanced Version Control ...............................................381

A Brief History of Revision Control ...............................................382

CVS ........................................................................................... 382

Subversion .................................................................................. 383

Commercial Version Control Systems ............................................. 385

Switch Off Pessimistic Locking ...................................................... 386

Branching and Merging .................................................................388

Merging ...................................................................................... 389

Branches, Streams, and Continuous Integration ............................... 390

Distributed Version Control Systems .............................................393

What Is a Distributed Version Control System? ................................ 393

A Brief History of Distributed Version Control Systems .................... 395

Distributed Version Control Systems in Corporate Environments ....... 396

Using Distributed Version Control Systems ..................................... 397

Stream-Based Version Control Systems ..........................................399

What Is a Stream-Based Version Control System? ............................. 399

Development Models with Streams ................................................. 400

Static and Dynamic Views ............................................................. 403

Continuous Integration with Stream-Based Version Control Systems ... 403

Develop on Mainline .....................................................................405

Making Complex Changes without Branching ................................. 406

Branch for Release .........................................................................408

Branch by Feature ..........................................................................410

Branch by Team .............................................................................412

Chapter 15: Managing Continuous Delivery ........................................417

A Maturity Model for Configuration and Release Management ....419

How to Use the Maturity Model .................................................... 419

Project Lifecycle .............................................................................421

Identification ............................................................................... 422

Inception .................................................................................... 423

Initiation ..................................................................................... 424

Develop and Release ..................................................................... 425

Operation ................................................................................... 428

A Risk Management Process ..........................................................429

Risk Management 101 .................................................................. 429

Risk Management Timeline ........................................................... 430

How to Do a Risk-Management Exercise ........................................ 431

Common Delivery Problems—Their Symptoms and Causes ..........432

Infrequent or Buggy Deployments .................................................. 433

Poor Application Quality .............................................................. 434

Poorly Managed Continuous Integration Process ............................. 435

Poor Configuration Management ................................................... 436

Compliance and Auditing ..............................................................436

Automation over Documentation ................................................... 437

Enforcing Traceability .................................................................. 438

Working in Silos .......................................................................... 439

Change Management .................................................................... 440

Amazon.com: Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)) (9780321601919): Jez Humble, David Farley: Books

2012-01-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com: Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler)) (9780321601919): Jez Humble, David Farley: Books:

Coverage includes

• Automating all facets of building, integrating, testing, and deploying software

• Implementing deployment pipelines at team and organizational levels

• Improving collaboration between developers, testers, and operations

• Developing features incrementally on large and distributed teams

• Implementing an effective configuration management strategy

• Automating acceptance testing, from analysis to implementation

• Testing capacity and other non-functional requirements

• Implementing continuous deployment and zero-downtime releases

• Managing infrastructure, data, components and dependencies

• Navigating risk management, compliance, and auditing

The Stop Online Piracy Act could oblige cloud providers to harm their own customers

2012-01-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

How SOPA threatens the move to the cloud | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld:

On this issue, cloud providers such as Rackspace, Amazon.com, and Microsoft are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. They'll be forced to carry out these actions. But as a result -- at a time when businesses are moving data and content to the cloud -- SOPA would provide a reason not to trust cloud computing providers for fear one day the providers would be legally obliged to turn off the users' business, without a day in court.

Microsoft 70-515-CSHARP - Free 70-515-CSHARP Exam Guide, 70-515-CSHARP Questions and 70-515-CSHARP Practice test -uCertify

2012-01-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

Microsoft 70-515-CSHARP - Free 70-515-CSHARP Exam Guide, 70-515-CSHARP Questions and 70-515-CSHARP Practice test -uCertify

The Likes & Dislikes of Microsoft in 2011 | RIAGENIC.com

2012-01-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

The Likes & Dislikes of Microsoft in 2011 | RIAGENIC.com

Microsoft Research Redmond: Year in Review - Inside Microsoft Research - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

2012-01-04T13:36:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Research Redmond: Year in Review - Inside Microsoft Research - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

TechNet Flash Editor's Note from Mitch Irsfeld

2012-01-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Windows Server 2008 Tips

TechNet Flash Editor's Note from Mitch Irsfeld:

Windows Server 2008 R2: BranchCache. This feature is designed to reduce wide-area network (WAN) utilization and enhance application responsiveness over the network by locally caching frequently used data.

Allocating Memory
If you are hosting virtual workloads with Hyper-V, you'll want to read Posey's other TechNet Magazine article Optimizing Hyper-V Memory Usage. He provides several key considerations for allocating memory to virtual machines, such as calculating the size of non-uniform memory access (NUMA) nodes, accounting for the memory overhead of Hyper-V, allocating memory for guest VMs, committing dynamic memory to VMs, and more.

A Well-Tuned Machine
Hardware considerations go beyond memory allocation. A great place to start is the Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server.

The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received - David Silverman - Harvard Business Review

2012-01-03T13:46:00.000-08:00

The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received - David Silverman - Harvard Business Review:

Dear David:

I am writing in response to the opening for xxxx, which I believe may report to you.

I can offer you seven years of experience managing communications for top-tier xxxx firms, excellent project-management skills, and a great eye for detail, all of which should make me an ideal candidate for this opening.

I have attached my résumé for your review and would welcome the chance to speak with you sometime.

Best regards,

Xxxx Xxxx

Five Resolutions for Aspiring Leaders - John Coleman and Bill George - Harvard Business Review

2012-01-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

Five Resolutions for Aspiring Leaders - John Coleman and Bill George - Harvard Business Review

Download: Enterprise Library 5.0 for Windows Azure - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

2012-01-03T11:14:00.000-08:00

Download: Enterprise Library 5.0 for Windows Azure - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details:

The Microsoft Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure is an extension to the Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 that can be used with Windows Azure. It includes the Autoscaling Application Block, the Transient Fault Handling Application Block, a protected configuration provider and the Blob configuration source.

Enterprise Library 5.0 Windows Azure Integration Pack

2012-01-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

patterns & practices – Enterprise Library

WCF

2012-01-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

MSDN Archive - Browse Gallery

February 2011 Releases of the Identity Training Kit & the MSDN Online Identity Training Course - AppFabric Community Blogs via Syndication - AppFabric - BizTalk Gurus

2012-01-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

February 2011 Releases of the Identity Training Kit & the MSDN Online Identity Training Course - AppFabric Community Blogs via Syndication - AppFabric - BizTalk Gurus:

Read this blog post by Vittorio Bertocci, one of our Windows Azure AppFabric evangelists, regarding the most recent updates to the Identity Developer Training Kit and the first release of the MSDN-hosted Identity Developer Training Course.

If you are already using the Access Control service, or would like to get started, these would be very useful resources.

You can start using our CTP services in our LABS/Preview environment at: https://portal.appfabriclabs.com/ to get a feel for the features and enhancements

Download: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

2012-01-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

Download: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

Windows Azure Training Course

2012-01-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Windows Azure Training Course

The October release of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit (WAPTK) is now available as a freedownload. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes hands-on labs (HOLs), presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications that utilize Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and theWindows Azure AppFabric. Download the full training kit including the hands-on labs, demo scripts, and presentations here. Browse through the individual hands-on labs on MSDN here.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) for .NET Framework 4

2012-01-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

Download: WCF WF Samples for .NET Framework 4 - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details:

'via Blog this'

Download: Windows Server 2008 Developer Training Kit (Beta 3) - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

2012-01-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

Download: Windows Server 2008 Developer Training Kit (Beta 3) - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details: "The Windows Server 2008 Developer Training Kit includes a set of hands-on-labs and presentations for technologies such as IIS7, Management, WCF, WF, Windows CardSpace, Windows PowerShell, Virtualization and the Transactional File System (TxF)"

Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit - Daniel Egan DotNetDoc - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

2012-01-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit - Daniel Egan DotNetDoc - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Bytes by MSDN Interview: Scott Guthrie

2011-12-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

Bytes by MSDN Interview: Scott Guthrie:

Join Tim Huckaby, Founder of InterKnowlogy & Actus Software, and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President in Microsoft's Server & Tools Business Division, as they discuss the new features in the next release of Visual Studio 11 Dev Preview (Dev 11) and Windows Azure, announced at the Build 2011 Conference. Scott takes us through the many new improvements to Dev 11 which include the next release of .NET 4.5. It is also side-by-side compatible with other releases of Visual Studio and its solution and project file compatible with older releases, making it easier for project sharing. Scott also discusses Windows Azure, its cadence of release as it is a service based, and the coming waves of innovation that we can expect in the near future.

What is the Pimpl Idiom, and why is it useful?

2011-12-28T07:56:00.000-08:00

GotW #100: Compilation Firewalls « Sutter’s Mill:

I wait for C++11 TR1, which is rumoured(?) to include real modules: http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2006/n2073.pdf

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/825018/pimpl-idiom-vs-pure-virtual-class-interface

Tough tests flunk good programmer job candidates | Application Development - InfoWorld

2011-12-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

Tough tests flunk good programmer job candidates | Application Development - InfoWorld:

See if you can pass InfoWorld's programming IQ test, round 1, andprogramming IQ test, round 2. |

The company best known for this is Google. Past applicants tell tales of a head-spinning battery of coding problems, riddles, and brain teasers, many of which seem only tangential to the task of software development. Other large companies have similar practices -- Facebookand Microsoft being two examples.

Simon Cooper : Subterranean IL: Explicit overrides

2011-12-22T14:17:00.000-08:00

Simon Cooper : Subterranean IL: Explicit overrides:

Normally, virtual method overrides in .NET are done implicitly; if a subclass has a virtual method with the same name and signature as a virtual method in a base class, then the method in the subclass overrides the method in the base class.

This is in contrast to C# and VB, where a 'base' virtual method has to be declared as virtual, and all overrides of that method in subclasses have to be declared as override. But, similarly to IL, exactly which method it overrides in a base type depends on the name and signature of the methods concerned.

Five startup predictions for 2012 | Digital Media - CNET News

2011-12-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

Five startup predictions for 2012 | Digital Media - CNET News:

OpenCourseWare movement at M.I.T

ALM Groups Survey

2011-12-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

ALM Groups Survey:

ALM tools listed below that are used in your organisation.

Atlassian - JIRA or Confluence

Clearvision - Agile SCM

Collabnet - Teamforge

Digite - ALM Software

HP - ALM

IBM - Rational Team Concert

Intland Softoware - Code Beamer

Kovaire - ALM Studio

Jama Software - Jama Contour

MKS- Integrity

Micro Focus

Microsoft -Team Foundation Server

Orcanos

Rally Software

Parasoft - Concerto

Polarion - ALM

Seapine - ALM

Serena - Dimensions CM & RM

Smart Bear - ALM Compete

Techexcel - ALM DevSuite

Thoughtworks - Agile ALM

VersionOne

What were the primary motivations for introducing ALM tools in your organisation?
Enable collaborative work practices

Enable distributed work practices

Increase visibility across stakeholder groups

Reduce costs

Improve software quality

Reduce delivery times

Standardise Processes

Automate processes

Compliance

Improve Auditability

For what purposes are ALM tools used in your organisation?
Select all that apply.

For what purposes are ALM tools used in your organisation? Audits

Reporting

Planning

Process management

Requirements management

Source code change control

Test Management

Automated builds

Release management

Defect tracking

What Facebook knows about you

2011-12-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

What Facebook knows about you:

Taking a Look at Facebook Statistics from All Facebook

Facebook: On the Road to 200 million Users

Does Technology Evolve? – Urban Times

2011-12-21T21:37:00.001-08:00

Does Technology Evolve? – Urban Times

2011-12-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

Does Technology Evolve? – Urban Times

Who Controls the Internet and Mobile Technology? Hidden Forces that Define Our Choices | Age of Engagement | Big Think

2011-12-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

Who Controls the Internet and Mobile Technology? Hidden Forces that Define Our Choices | Age of Engagement | Big Think

Primerlife: More Human Than Human | Think Tank | Big Think

2011-12-21T21:35:00.000-08:00

Primerlife: More Human Than Human | Think Tank | Big Think

Dependency Injection | Software Design - Factory Overload

2011-12-21T14:09:00.000-08:00

ploeh blog - Factory Overload: she’s working in a code base where there’s an explosion of Abstract Factories which seems to be counter-productive.

First of all, the Fluent Builder pattern implies that you can forgo invoking any of the WithXyz methods (WithUserType) and just accept all the default values encapsulated in the builder. This again implies that there’s a default user type, which may or may not make sense in that particular domain. Looking at Kelly’s code, UserTypes is an enum (and thus has a default value), so if WithUserType isn’t invoked, the Create method defaults to UserTypes.Admin. That’s a bit too implicit for my taste.

* Since all involved classes are now concrete, the proposed solution isn’t extensibile (and by corollary hard to unit test).

* The builder is essentially a big switch statement.

Alternative 1a: Make UserType Polymorphic
The code smell is Feature Envy and a possible refactoring is to replace the enum with a Strategy.

Alternative 1b: Tell, Don’t Ask
Why have the user type return an modifier? Why can’t it perform the update itself?

Alternative 2a: Distinguish by Type
While I personally like alternative 1b best, it may not be practical in all situation

he root cause of the problem is that there’s a lot of stored procedures.

the Reused Abstractions Principle (RAP).

Alternative 2b: Distinguish by Generic Type

The problem with introducing interfaces like IUserFirstNameAdminModifier, IUserFirstNameRestrictedModifier, IUserFirstNameGuestModifier etc. is that they differ only by name. The Commit method is the same for all these interfaces, so this seems to violate the RAP. It’d be better to merge all these interfaces into a single interface

Alternative 3: Distinguish by Role

The problem at the heart of alternative 2 is that it attempts to use the type of the interfaces as an indicator of the roles that Services play.

How Big is Big Data? | Infochimps Blog

2011-12-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

How Big is Big Data? | Infochimps Blog

Man Survives Steve Ballmer's Flying Chair To Build '21st Century Linux' | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

2011-12-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

Man Survives Steve Ballmer's Flying Chair To Build '21st Century Linux' | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: There are many services that do what Cloud Foundry does. Google offers a similar service known as Google App Engine, letting outside developers hoist applications onto its internal infrastructure. Microsoft serves up Windows Azure. And Salesforce.com now owns Heroku, a San Francisco startup that helped pioneer the idea.

They’re typically called “platform clouds,” or “platform-as-a-service” — not to be confused with “infrastructure clouds” such as Amazon EC2. Whereas EC2 gives you raw resources for running apps, including virtual servers and storage, a platform cloud hides all that. It runs atop an infrastructure cloud, giving you tools for actually creating applications while taking care of the rest underneath the covers.

the platform was specifically designed to run the same way on any infrastructure.

“The code is absolutely infrastructure agnostic,”

VMware doesn’t have a concrete plan for making money from Cloud Foundry. “A leap of faith,” he calls it. And yes, the company could close up the project, much as Oracle has done with the many open source projects it inherited from Sun Microsystems. But the project already has a life of its own.

Microsoft Embraces Elephant of Open Source | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

2011-12-21T13:54:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Embraces Elephant of Open Source | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com:

Whereas a relational database such as SQL Server organizes information into neat rows and columns, letting you carefully slice and dice that data as needed, Hadoop is a way of processing large unstructured datasets. In essence, Microsoft’s Hadoop port will run on its Windows Server operating system alongside SQL Server, and the company is providing “connectors” for moving data between the two. On Azure, Microsoft will provide its Hadoop port as a service to developers, letting them build applications atop the platform without installing it inside their own data centers.

The rub is that with a distributed number-crunching platform like Hadoop, operating system overhead can be an issue, and Windows carries an awful lot of baggage. Linux, a more streamlined OS, seems much better suited to the platform.

How Yahoo Spawned Hadoop, the Future of Big Data | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

2011-12-21T13:46:00.000-08:00

How Yahoo Spawned Hadoop, the Future of Big Data | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

cloud economics « Vijay Gill's Blog

2011-12-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

cloud economics « Vijay Gill's Blog: The results were not surprising to anyone familiar with the term ‘duty cycle.’ Think of it as taking a taxi vs. buying a car to make a trip between San Francisco and Palo Alto. If you only make the trip once a quarter, it is cheaper to take a taxi. If you make the trip every day, then you are better off buying a car. The difference is the duty cycle. If you are running infrastructure with a duty cycle of 100%, it may make sense to run in-house.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgWfa8v6EGzjdElXQVFzU1plSXdEQmVHZ3M5YjlsNVE&hl=en&authkey=CM_RzL0E

Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers? • The Register

2011-12-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers? • The Register:

Google network and data center chief departs • The Register

2011-12-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

Google network and data center chief departs • The Register: Google projects.

"You have to have integration with everything right from the chillers down all the way to the CPU," Gill said. "Sometimes, there's a temperature excursion, and you might want to do a quick load-shedding - a quick load-shedding to prevent a temperature excursion because, hey, you have a data center with no chillers. You want to move some load off. You want to cut some CPUs and some of the processes in RAM."

The implication was that Google was not only running a data center with no chillers, but also that it had developed a means of automatically redistributing loads to other facilities when temperatures spike. "How do you manage the system and optimize it on a global level? That is the interesting part," he continued. "What we’ve got here [with Google] is massive - like hundreds of thousands of variable linear programming problems that need to run in quasi–real time. When the temperature starts to excurse in a data center, you don’t have the luxury of sitting around for a half an hour. ... You have on the order of seconds."

As it turns out, Gill was referring to a chillerless data center Google had recently built in Belgium and a new distributed software platform the company calls Spanner. Google has since built another chillerless data center in Finland, and other web outfits have followed suit, including Facebook and Microsoft.

Cloud Computing and Shorting « Vijay Gill's Blog

2011-12-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

Cloud Computing and Shorting « Vijay Gill's Blog: Free Cash Flow (FCF)

We will be working to improve the FCF conversion trend in 2011. On a long term basis, FCF should track net income reasonably closely, as it has in the past, with stock options as an offset against small buildups in PPE and prepaid content. Nearly all of our computing is through Amazon (AMZN) Web Services and CDNs, which are pure opex.

Nearly all of Netflix computing is on-demand based, which is pure opex. Is it more expensive than building it in-house on a per-unit of compute? Almost certainly.

Morgan & Claypool Publishers - Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture - 4(1):1 - Abstract

2011-12-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Morgan & Claypool Publishers - Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture - 4(1):1 - Abstract: As computation continues to move into the cloud, the computing platform of interest no longer resembles a pizza box or a refrigerator, but a warehouse full of computers. These new large datacenters are quite different from traditional hosting facilities of earlier times and cannot be viewed simply as a collection of co-located servers. Large portions of the hardware and software resources in these facilities must work in concert to efficiently deliver good levels of Internet service performance, something that can only be achieved by a holistic approach to their design and deployment. In other words, we must treat the datacenter itself as one massive warehouse-scale computer (WSC). We describe the architecture of WSCs, the main factors influencing their design, operation, and cost structure, and the characteristics of their software base. We hope it will be useful to architects and programmers of today's WSCs, as well as those of future many-core platforms which may one day implement the equivalent of today's WSCs on a single board.

Google streams data center pods to world+dog • The Register

2011-12-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

Google streams data center pods to world+dog • The Register: Google pieces together its data centers using intermodal shipping containers pre-packed with servers and cooling equipment.

According to Google, it holds 45 shipping containers, and each of these data center pods houses around 1,160 servers. The entire facility has a power capacity of 10 megawatts and a trailing twelve-month average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) value of 1.25.

The video tour begins in the outdoor equipment yard, which houses the cooling towers, the power-distribution centers, and the generator farm. Google says its transformer exhibits a better than 99.5 per cent efficiency, and boasts about the relatively small size of its cooling radiators.

According to Sun Microsystems, which has built its own data center containers, a data center can save four per cent in energy costs for every extra degree (Fahrenheit) on the thermostat. If a data center can run at a higher temp, you can use less power and spend less money on cooling equipment.

Google says the high cool-aisle temperatures are "enabled by attention to good airflow management."

its newer data centers - Google runs at least 36 sites across the globe, and several more are under construction

Today, countless other operations are following suit, including arch-rival Microsoft. The idea is that you can manufacturer these standardized data centers from a central location and ship them across the globe where needed. This is cheaper - and quicker - than building centers from scratch.

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it • The Register

2011-12-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it • The Register: The secret to Google's success, Gill said, is not in the company's mystery data centers, but in its software infrastructure, including GFS, its distributed file system; BigTable, its distributed database; and MapReduce, its distributed number-crunching platform.

"[Data centers] are just atoms," he said. "Any idiot can build atoms together and then create this vast infrastructure. The question is: How do you actually get the applications to use the infrastructure? How do you distribute it? How do you optimize it? That's the hard part. To do that you require an insane amount of force of will."

"Microsoft has various vertical lines of business that use various portions of infrastructure from soup to nuts," Google's Gill said. "Our guys are more horizontally distributed. Pretty much every service runs on GFS as a baseline system.

"If we make a minor change to, say, disk storage to get a three per cent gain, and we roll that out to the GFS library, suddenly the entire base of applications stored on GFS sees that gain."

Facebook's new comms: 'our largest ever engineering project' • The Register

2011-12-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

Facebook's new comms: 'our largest ever engineering project' • The Register: he system is designed to provide a single interface for handling email, IM, text messages, and on-site Facebook messages, and it includes a single archive for all these various communications. To accomodate this, Bosworth said, the company needed a new database infrastructure. The company was already using MySQL as the primary repository for user data, the open source Cassandra platform for inbox search, the Hadoop-friendly SQL-like language known as Hive for analytics, and the proprietary Haystack for photos. But Hbase provided something different.

Facebook: Why our 'next-gen' comms ditched MySQL • The Register

2011-12-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

Facebook: Why our 'next-gen' comms ditched MySQL • The Register:

Ranganathan and crew like the way HBase works to prevent failure. As he puts it, when HBase breaks data into pieces and distributes them across a cluster, it puts multiple and completely separate data "shards" on each machine. This means that if one server dies, its work can be picked up several different machines and not just one. In other words: better load balancing.

If you put your data shards on just a few machines and a machine goes down, Ranganathan says, the burden is picked up by a single server, and this may end-up toppling other servers like dominos. "[The second server] dies, and then two machines' slack has to be taken up by a third, and this thing cascades all the way down," he says. "HBase shards the data into a lot of virtual shards and puts multiple shards on a single machine. So a machine dying spreads [its data] across multiple machines and the utilization of your entire cluster goes up."

Ranganathan also likes HBase's LZO (Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer) data compression – "it's easier on the CPU," he says – and he likes that when you read, modify, and write in HBase, you can expect all readers to get the same values. "This really helps with counting – number of unread messages and things like that," he says.

But HBase did require modification. Facebook engineer Nicolas Spiegelberg and another company developer spent a year adding commits to the platform, mainly in an effort to minimize data loss. "The goal was zero data loss," says Spiegelberg. Committers updated HDFS Sync support, added some ACID properties, and even redesigned the HBase master.

For many, it's surprising that Facebook didn't put the messaging system on Cassandra, which was originally developed at the company and has since become hugely popular across the interwebs. But Ranganathan and others felt that it was too difficult to reconcile Cassandra's "eventual consistency model" with the messaging system setup.

He also felt that the system needed HBase physical replication as opposed to Cassandra's logical replication. With Cassandra, he says, if something gets corrupted and you lose a disk and you have to restore the data, you have to restore the entire replica. Because Facebook uses very dense machines, this would mean a very long recovery time.

Ex-Google Man Sells Search Genius to Rest of World | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

2011-12-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

Ex-Google Man Sells Search Genius to Rest of World | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com:

Google doesn’t actually run Hadoop — Yahoo and Facebook and others built Hadoop using Google research papers that describe its back-end infrastructure — but his point is well taken. Yahoo and Facebook use Hadoop to crunch epic amounts of data using thousands of ordinary servers, and most businesses that adopt the technology will run the platform across much smaller clusters of machines.

But as M.C. Srivas points out, the open source version of Hadoop is still plagued by what are commonly called “single points of failure.” If one particular server goes down, it can bring down the entire platform. This sort of thing is something a Yahoo or a Facebook can deal with, Srivas says, but not necessarily the average business. “The reason that Yahoo and Facebook can run it is that they employ 50, 60, 70 engineers to feed the thing,” he says. “Other companies don’t have that.”

Before founding MapR, Srivas says, he met with the founders of Cloudera and considered joining their effort. But they wanted to tackle Hadoop the way Red Hat tackled Linux — i.e., offer support, services, and additional software around the open source platform — and he felt the before doing anything else, you had to fix the holes in the platform.

he attributes Google’s success not to its search algorithms but to its infrastructure. “From my acquaintance at Google, I observed — earlier than most — the power of MapReduce,” Scroeder says. “In 1998, they were the 19th search engine to enter the market. Remember doing an Alta Vista search, anyone? Google’s implementation of MapReduce on GFS and [Google's distributed database] BigTable vaulted them to leadership within two years.”

Hadoop consists of a file system (HDFS) and a number-crunching platform (Hadoop MapReduce). The file system lets you spread data across a cluster of machine, and the MapReduce processes this data by sending little pieces of code to each individual server. During those two years of development, MapR essentially rewrote the file system. “It could not be saved,” Srivas says. The company also revamped Hadoop’s “job tracker,” which distributes jobs across machines and then manages their execution, and its “name node,” which oversees file names across the system. On the open source platform, both are single points of failure, and the name node limits the number of files the platform can handle.

For the most part, Hadoop is a “batch” system. You give it a task. It works for a while. And then it churns out a result. It’s not designed to generate information in “real time.” With its search engine, Google has now abandoned MapReduce, moving to a platform called “Caffeine” that can update its search index on the fly, and John Schroeder hints that MapR is moving in a similar direction — though its solution will likely look very different from Caffeine.

Best startup ideas of 2011 | Rafe's Radar - CNET News

2011-12-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Best startup ideas of 2011 | Rafe's Radar - CNET News:

Nest thermostat and the minimal Roku LT streaming media box.

On the mobile front, new apps like Path 2 and Oink are distilled into spare and engaging mobile experiences, instead of going overboard with features and slowing down the on-the-go user.

The startup IntoNow (sold to Yahoo) is a mobile app that listens for TV shows airing in the same room. Consumers use it to get additional data about the show they're watching; marketers get much richer data about who's watching what, where, and when.

Other sensor technologies are showing up in wearable devices: The Jawbone UP bracelet monitors activity and sleep. And Basis is building a watch that measure skin temperature, sweat level, heart rate, and even blood oxygen level.

The Internet is awash in information and data, but few companies, other than Web giants themselves (Google, Facebook, Amazon), make real use of it.

KickStarter and Quirky both encourage nascent inventors (and artists, in KickStarter's case) to pitch their ideas to their audiences

Related to this is the emergence of specialized services for sharing the stuff you own:
your house (AirBnB),
your office (Loosecubes), and
your car (Wheelz, RelayRides, and GetAround).

Services like
TaskRabbit,
Zaarly, and
Coffee and Power
are opening up

As Facebook and Salesforce.com have shown, a tech company's proprietary data can be valuable as a substrate to other businesses. Build a tool that other people can build upon and then collect the rent when they do.

IBM’s Five in Five 2011 predicts mind-controlled devices, goodbye to passwords - SlashGear

2011-12-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

IBM’s Five in Five 2011 predicts mind-controlled devices, goodbye to passwords - SlashGear

ASP.NET 4 Breaking Changes: The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site

2011-12-19T14:48:00.000-08:00

ASP.NET 4 Breaking Changes: The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site

WURFL - Mobile Device Detection by ScientiaMobile

2011-12-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

WURFL - Mobile Device Detection by ScientiaMobile:

2012 Database Trends Data Integration Tools Survey

2011-12-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

SurveyMethods: The easiest way to Ask, Analyze, and Improve.:

What technologies do you employ to manage data growth?

Enterprise data warehouse
Relational database
Data cleansing
ETL
Content management system
Internal cloud storage
External cloud storage
File system
Non-relational database

What technologies do you employ to search, analyze and/or deliver data?

Data mining
Data virtualization
Federated search / enterprise search
Text analytics
Content management system
Real-time data visualization tools
Relational database
E-discovery applications
Non-relational database

Which of the following emerging technologies is your organization currently implementing?

Hadoop/MapReduce
Data virtualization/data services
Cloud-based data services
NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra, etc.)
In-memory databases (e.g., VoltDB, Oracle TimesTen, QlikView, etc.)
MPP data warehouses (EMC Greenplum, Aster Data, etc.)
Log monitoring and reporting tools (e.g., Splunk)

Which leading cloud and SaaS solutions does your company now use?

Amazon Web Services
Google
HP
Informatica Cloud
IBM CloudBurst
Microsoft Azure
RackSpace
Salesforce/Force
Oracle Cloud
VMWare
Private/hybrid/hosted cloud

Which of the following data management platforms and tool vendors do you use to manage most of your enterprise data?

Appistry
CA Technologies
expressor
DataStax
Gluster
IBM
Microsoft
Informatica
Oracle
Pervasive
Progress DataDirect
Quest
SAP
SnapLogic
Sybase
Talend
Teradata
TIBCO
Versant

What areas would you consider to be Vendor's strengths going forward?

Ability to integrate cloud-based solutions
Ability to integrate “Big Data”
Ability to support heterogeneous data environments
Ease of use and deployment
Cost relative to value and return on investment
Service and support organization
None of the above

What areas would you consider to be Vendor's challenges going forward?

Competition from open-source environments such as Hadoop
Competition from cloud or SaaS-based data integration providers
Competition from native database management tools (Oracle, IBM)
Too much emphasis on extract, load, transform (ETL) technologies
Cost relative to value and return on investment
Service and support levels

NerdDinner being updated to MVC3 with Razor, HTML5, GeoLocation, EF CodeFirst, jQuery Mobile, YepNope and Modernizr and a fixed Mobile Device Capabilities ViewEngine - Scott Hanselman

2011-12-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

NerdDinner being updated to MVC3 with Razor, HTML5, GeoLocation, EF CodeFirst, jQuery Mobile, YepNope and Modernizr and a fixed Mobile Device Capabilities ViewEngine - Scott Hanselman:

After John V. Petersen moved us to MVC3 and Razor, Peter Mourfield got on a feature tear and now we've added or updated:

Mvc 3 + Razor
EF Code First (for a database that already exists!)
All libraries via NuGet
YepNope with Modernizr
JQuery Mobile beta 2
An updated MobileCapableRazorViewEngine fixing a nasty caching bug I introduced a few years back
- The new MobileViewEngine is on NuGet and has been blogged. MVC4 will have formal support for mobile views baked in.
Geolocation, both desktop and mobile
MvcHtml5Templates by Scott Kirkland
ELMAH (and MiniProfiler to come soon)
51Degrees Mobile capabilities module
DotNetOpenAuth by Andrew Arnott
proper Web Deploy Transforms

up live at http://www.nerddinner.com and the source continues to move forward in the Trunk on Codeplex. We've got some inconsistencies with the mobile site and back button, and geoloc is not working completely on an iPhone but it's decent on a browser. We're working on this an hour here and an hour there, but if you, Dear Reader, find any bugs in the trunk or obvious stupid mistakes, please to let us know and *cough* submit a patch *cough*. Or at least leave a nice Issue we can track.

As we get these features working rock solid, Pete and I will do a series of posts digging in to what worked well and what didn't in each feature. Already Pete has a good blog post talking aboutadding HTML5 Geolocation to Nerd Dinner with yepnope.js, and Modernizr.

Learning about Progressive Enhancement - Supporting Mobile Browsers with CSS3 Media Queries - Scott Hanselman

2011-12-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

Learning about Progressive Enhancement - Supporting Mobile Browsers with CSS3 Media Queries - Scott Hanselman

the general structure of the CSS. Note that none of this is JavaScript. This is all just descriptive "when the screen is like this, apply these styles" stuff.

Using 51Degrees.Mobi Foundation for accurate mobile browser detection on ASP.NET MVC 3 - Steve Sanderson’s blog - As seen on YouTube™

2011-12-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

the quickest way to simulate a mobile device (without downloading any emulators) is by using Firefox and its User Agent Switcher add-on: it already knows how to simulate the iPhone’s user agent string

Using 51Degrees.Mobi Foundation for accurate mobile browser detection on ASP.NET MVC 3 - Steve Sanderson’s blog - As seen on YouTube™:

ASP.NET MVC allows for lots of possible architectures to support this:

You could render different views for mobiles, as in Scott Hanselman’s recent post
You could have a separate MVC area for mobiles, so you can handle their requests using different controller logic as well as different views
You could simply have a separate layout/master page for mobiles, but otherwise let them share the same controller logic and views as desktop browsers

Oracle Database Technology: Downloadable Webinars: Training Sessions on SQL, Reports, ETL

2011-12-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

New Oracle 11g SQL Features
PowerPoint Presentation
John King, King Training

Using the Oracle Database with PL/SQL to Manage the Delivery of Digital Images and Photos
Marcelle Kratochvil, Piction CTO

Back to Basics: Simple Database Web Services Without the Need for SOA
Chris Muir, Sage Computing

Understanding Explain Plans
Dan Hotka, www.danhotka.com

DBA for Developers
Marcelle Kratochval, Piction CTO

Finding Query Problems Proactively With Query Reviews
Sheeri Cabral, PalominoDB

Introduction to SQL Developer Session 2
Lewis Cunningham, Database Architect

Introduction to SQL Developer Session 1
Lewis Cunningham, Database Architect

PL/SQL Programming for .NET Developers: Tips, Tricks, and Debugging
Christian Shay, Oracle Corporation

Golden Rules for Developers
Steven Feuerstein, Quest Software

SQL Developer 3.0 New Features
Lewis Cunningham

My SQL and NoSQL Rethinking Data Architecture
Patrick Galbraith, Blue Gecko

New Features in PL/SQL for 11g
John King, King Training

SQL Server MVP Deep Dives

2011-12-14T08:34:00.000-08:00

Download your free PASS eBook!:

BI for the Relational Guy by Erin Welker

Business Intelligence can be intimidating if you spend most of your time in relational database development. This chapter provides an overview of building BI solutions from the perspective of traditional relational database development--including tips from someone who's been there.

Louis and Paul's 10 key relational database design ideas by Paul Nielsen and Louis Davidson

Database design hasn't changed considerably in the past ten years, and yet we often see the same mistakes now that we did in the early days of SQL Server. Paul and Louis take a swing at ten key concepts required to design and implement a database the right way.

Practical Auditing in SQL Server 2008 by Jasper Smith

Starting with SQL Server 2008, Enterprise Edition, instance and database audits are built into the database engine. This chapter looks at the lightweight audit model and the new extended events infrastructure.

Tracing the Deadlock by Gail Shaw

Have you ever seen a deadlock? If so, you've also stared at the incomprehensible error messages and deadlock graph pages that accompany it. Here, Gail Shaw shows you how to trace the details of a deadlock and tease the necessary information out of the deadlock graph so you can figure out what happened and how to fix it.

From SQL Server MVP Deep Dives, Volume 2

TSQL: Bad Habits to Kick by Aaron Bertrand

We all have bad habits, but not many are as obvious as using SELECT *. In this chapter, Aaron explains a few of these bad habits that affect performance and maintainability, how they develop, and why they're so bad in the first place.

Yes, we are all "individuals" (A look at uniqueness in the world of SQL) by Rob Farley

You may know that you can put uniqueness constraints on your data. You may not realize the significant benefits uniqueness constraints can have on your SQL queries. Here, Rob Farley shows you how to make the most of this unique feature.

SQL Server Cost Recovery by Peter Ward

IT departments are continually being asked to do more with less because it's difficult to recover the costs associated with database management. Peter Ward shows you techniques to recover the costs associated with SQL Server management in a way that will satisfy the corporate bean counters.

Parameter Sniffing: Your Best Friend...Except When It Isn't by Grant Fritchey

Parameter sniffing has two faces. Here, Grant Fritchey shows you the good side of the technique, which should be complimented and promoted. He also outlines several ways that bad parameter sniffing can be addressed and presents mechanisms for investigating bad parameter sniffing issues.

BlackBerry - Development Approaches

2011-12-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

BlackBerry - Development Approaches:

Create browser-based applications and deploy them with minimal effort
Leverage industry standards from HTML to AJAX
Push data to user devices and leverage offline queuing

BlackBerry web development

Dependency injection and good design - Being Cellfish - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

2011-12-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

Dependency injection and good design - Being Cellfish - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:

there are two types of developers when it comes to understanding code; the ones who execute the code in their head and the ones who like to read the code as a book. The former hates lots of small methods since it means jumping back and forth in the code and the latter hates long methods since they need to "extract method" in their head

Diagnosing Errors with Managed Debugging Assistants

2011-12-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

Diagnosing Errors with Managed Debugging Assistants:

You can enable MDAs by adding the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\MDA subkey (type REG_SZ, value 1) in the Windows registry.

Debugging, Tracing, and Profiling

How to Market Your Book - Sources of Insight

2011-12-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

How to Market Your Book - Sources of Insight:

“If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Leadership Books Sweep - Sources of Insight

2011-12-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

Leadership Books Sweep - Sources of Insight:

Leadership Books list.

The 5 Levels of Leadership, by John Maxwell,

StandOut, by Marcus Buckingham

177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class, by Steve Siebold,

Executive Presence: The Art of Commanding Respect Like a CEO, by Harrison Monarth,

The Leadership Test, by Timothy Clark.

180 Climbing the Two Ladders to Inner Strength & Outer Freedom, by Rob White

Fables for board tables - FT.com

2011-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Fables for board tables - FT.com:

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24252b00-e5fa-11e0-b196-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1gLVFa3mL

Roger Jones’s tips:

● Before writing, think what you want to achieve

● Find a story that reinforces the key message

● Make sure the story will resonate with your audience

● Make sure it has a beginning, middle and end. Include an element of surprise to sustain the audience’s interest

● Make sure you are interested in the story – if you’re not, this will come across

● Ensure it has a challenge you or your company had to overcome

● Say what you learnt from overcoming it

● Keep your story concise. In a speech it should be no longer than two to three minutes.

Developing Executive Presence - Joshua Ehrlich - Harvard Business Review

2011-12-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

Developing Executive Presence - Joshua Ehrlich - Harvard Business Review

Sinatra: Up and Running - O'Reilly Media

2011-12-09T14:22:00.001-08:00

Sinatra: Up and Running - O'Reilly Media:

Take advantage of Sinatra, the Ruby-based web application library and domain-specific language used by GitHub, LinkedIn, Engine Yard, and other prominent organizations. With this concise book, you will quickly gain working knowledge of Sinatra and its minimalist approach to building both standalone and modular web applications.

Sinatra serves as a lightweight wrapper around Rack middleware, with syntax that maps closely to functions exposed by HTTP verbs, which makes it ideal for web services and APIs. If you have experience building applications with Ruby, you’ll quickly learn language fundamentals and see under-the-hood techniques, with the help of several practical examples. Then you’ll get hands-on experience with Sinatra by building your own blog engine.

Learn Sinatra’s core concepts, and get started by building a simple application
Create views, manage sessions, and work with Sinatra route definitions
Become familiar with the language’s internals, and take a closer look at Rack
Use different subclass methods for building flexible and robust architectures
Put Sinatra to work: build a blog that takes advantage of service hooks provided by the GitHub API