The Field Archive

Balsamiq Mockups is a good tool for requirement elicitation

We’ve all heard how a substantial number of software projects fail or are cancelled routinely. For years developers have said if only the requirements were right, the software would have worked right. Intuitively we all…

[Balsamiq Mockups is a good tool for requirement elicitation](http://shahidshah.com/blog/architure-engineering/2009/07/27/balsamiq-mockups-is-a-good-tool-for-requirement-elicitation/)

How To Demo Your Startup

This is an article I wish I wrote. It’s about how to demonstrate your startup or business idea to a stranger on the phone or in an audience. Since people pitch me their products (which I enjoy, of course), I see lots of demos…

The Evolution of Virtualization: Qumranet joins Red Hat

I saw this press release that caught my eye (thanks, Rich):

XTS’s Citrix reporting tools just keep on getting better

It has been some time since I last wrote about XTS, a rapidly growing virtualization management vendor focused on the Citrix market. In my recent interview with Eric Spiegel, CEO, I found out that XTS has had many important…

OS choices not as easy as they once were

As most of us probably know, Windows Server is currently the most popular choice for most “mission critical” packaged applications for office automation — but, that’s changing. According to Forrester Research, “firms name a…

Running ColdFusion applications on Java using the smith project

I’ve written thousands of lines of ColdFusion in my web-career (the last line being around 2001) and I was always impressed by CF’s capabilities. I just ran across this new freeware (not open source yet, though) project that…

Independent Verification and Validation: The NASA Approach

Very few of us deal with the kinds of problems that engineers at NASA face, except for perhaps other engineers working in safety critical fields like avionics and medical devices. I live nearby NASA’s Goddard Space Flight…

The Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks

In case you haven’t seen them before, it’s interesting to look at how different computer languages implementations fare on different hardware. Check them out at The Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks.

The Benefits of Working With Tech Startups

My friend Eric Spiegel’s just finished a nice article on working with startups. It’s a great explanation to customers on why they should do it and what some of the challenges are.

NIST Releases Recommendations for Securing Web Services

NIST Special Publication 800-95 addresses security needs for networks in which automated Web services are being deployed in service-oriented architectures. It’s only in draft but it covers the basics fairly well. If you’re…

Data Modeling Tools

If you’re looking for a good overview of available data modeling tools (includes open source and commercial ones), check out this link: Data Modeling Tools.

Web-based QA

I saw an interesting service offering recently. Check Autoriginate: Intelligent testing made convenient. Here’s how they describe themselves:

Event: Profiling the Agile Architect

As many of you know, last year I co-founded the International Association of Software Architects’ (IASA) Mid-Atlantic Chapter and we’ve had some great events in the DC area. This Thursday we’ve got Jeff Nielsen, Chief…

Multi-Tenant Data Architecture

Microsoft has a couple of good articles on Multi-Tenant data architecture, where software as a service [SaaS] applications can all share a single database for multiple customers (“tenants”). The multi-tenant architecture and…

Can’t We All Get Along?

I read a nice article on QA groups: Can’t We All Get Along?.

Open Source Versus .Net Stacks

eWeek did a decent review of open source (including Java) versus .NET “stacks” a few weeks ago. While the review wasn’t as thorough as I would have liked, the conclusions will let each side to walk away. And, it demonstrates…

Don’t forget to do network simulation in all your testing efforts

I’ve noticed that most of my clients have finally been convinced that unit testing and regular automated acceptance testing is a “good thing.” However, I’ve noticed that load/stress testing, while moving up in importance,…

Using the Federal Transition Framework (FTF) to design your own governance documents

In case you haven’t seen it already, the OMB’s new Federal Transition Framework (FTF) is an excellent approach to creating architecture governance documentation. I’ve been working with federal agencies on various enterprrise…

Threat Modeling Web Applications

I just ran across Microsoft’s Threat Modeling Web Applications article on MSDN. Worth checking out if you’re writing secure web apps.

Presentations from April 26th Oracle Architect Forum in Tysons Corner

Some of you may not have had the opportunity to attend the Oracle Architect Forum a couple of weeks go so here’s the link that contains the briefing contents.

Vitamin, Nourishment to help the web grow

Vitamin, a resource for web designers, developers and entrepreneurs just went live in version 2.0. It’s a pretty nice site discussing AJAX, the business of Web 2.0, CSS, Ruby, and other topics important to creators of SaaS and…

Teaching people how to become architects

Ron Jacobs talks about Project “Noodle”, a new Microsoft project designed to help people become architects. There’s a PowerPoint presentation called Architects and the Architecture of Software that’s a pretty nice intro and…

Open Source Business Intelligence and Reporting with BIRT

JDJ ran an interesting article on BIRT, one of a now growing number of open source Biz Intelligence platforms that compete with the likes of Actuate and BusinessObjects. I haven’t used it yet, but if any of you have and would…

Prejudging Talent Can Cost You

My friend Eric Spiegel has just published his most recent article *Prejudging Talent Can Cost You* at Datamation.

AgileDraw “Virtually Notation-Free Modeling Technique”

I just ran across this interesting site, AgileDraw.org, that helps agile modelers and programmers produce diagrams. Here’s how they describe it:

Conference on Intellectual Property in the Global Marketplace

I’m a patent holder and I train patent examiners on technology topics so I often see and sometimes work with the folks at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If all you know about the USPTO is what you read in the…

Comparing SDO and EJB 3

Mike Keith posted recently Compared SDO and EJB 3.

Code reviews vs. pair programming vs. static code analysis

My friend Andy over at *The Disco Blog* wrote recently about Code reviews vs. pair programming vs. static code analysis. He compares and contrasts some of the mechanisms used to improve code quality and why some may work…

Business Value of Enterprise Architecture

I’ve been doing lots of Enterprise Architecture work these days and I’m inevitably asked: “what’s the point? Aside from it being required by many business cases being prepared for new IT system, there really is utility in…

Securing Your Desktops from Pod Slurping

The EMR and HIPAA blog has posted additional information on “pod slurping”: Securing Your Desktops – Pod Slurping. He’s started a good discussion out there and we should join in to see if we can talk about policies health IT…

SaaS (Software as a Service) single instance, multi-tenancy architecture

The Microsoft MVP Architect’s mailing list today had a pleasant surprise: Fred Chong’s WebBlog : SaaS is a journey, walk with us.

Open Source Embedded Database for Java and C#

A friend of mine, Don Muldoon, sent me this link to a new Open Source Embedded Database for Java and C#. This is one of the first open source databases promising transparent persistence that I’ve seen targeting both C# and…

Calculating reliability in software

My friend Andy Glover (finally!) started his blog and he’s got a great first article on software reliability. He’s already a published author and writes for online magazines but as an expert in software quality it’s great to…

Excellent Architecture resources repository unveiled

Jeff Tash recently unveiled the Architecture ‘Resources’ Repository. It’s a great addition to any architects’ bag of links.

Waterfall 2006

I nearly busted a gut reading about the Waterfall 2006 conference that my friend Suvajit emailed me this morning. If you’ve been doing large-scale software development for more than 5 minutes you’ll be rolling with laughter too.

In pursuit of code quality: Don’t be fooled by the coverage report

My friend Andy Glover has written a great article on code coverage: *In pursuit of code quality: Don’t be fooled by the coverage report*. Definitely worth checking out because it corrects some misconceptions about code coverage.

IBM has released a free version of their DB2 database

Following in the recent footsteps of ORACLE, IBM Sets DB2 Database Free. Watch out though, getting hooked is free but once you get beyond the initial small database size the upgrades will cost you a pretty penny.

I Don’t Get Spring

Good discussion of the relative merits of the Spring Framework are found in *Bob Lee: I Don’t Get Spring*. It’s worth a look because lots of people are jumping on the Spring bandwagon these days without regard to their…

Oracle offers its JSF UI components to Apache

Oracle ADF JSF Components is now open source. If you’ve been looking for a reason to go to JSF, this may be the reason to do it. They have a long list of rich UI components available in their library.

Math Will Rock Your World

Nice article on how math is making a resurgence in corporate America: Math Will Rock Your World.

Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0 is now available

Microsoft recently released the Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0.

Tonight’s IEEE/IASA “Architecting Software Effectively” presentation

Suvajit Gupta gave a great presentation in which he discussed how to architect software effectively. The talk was co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Chapter I co-chair and our new Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the…

Blogging Your Way Up the Career Ladder

Eric Spiegel writes in Datamation’s online magazine about *Blogging Your Way Up the Career Ladder*. The article discusses how professionals, especially in IT, can enhance their careers through blogging. The column features…

Knowing When to Quit

As a serial entrepreneur, I found this *Knowing When to Quit* very useful. I advise new startups regularly and sometimes I give them this same speech that Jim wrote about:

IronPython (Python for .NET) 1.0 Beta 1 is out

You can now download IronPython 1.0 Beta 1. I think this is big news for .NET because dynamic languages like Perl, Ruby, and Python are at the forefront of modern language design. I’m still a C++, C#, and Java guy at heart…

Dinner with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft email bosses

Lee Gomes, of the Wall Stree Journal, recently wrote *The Men Who Came To Dinner, and What They Said About Email*. It’s an interesting discussion with the heads of the GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) email groups about how each…

Yapping in a podcast may be worse than on TV

There’s a lot of talk these days about video podcasts taking off in 2006. And, I certainly agree that hobbyists will take to it like they have with audio blogging/podcasting. Jakob Nielsen recently discussed how video…

Results from testing SQL Server, MySQL, ORACLE, DB2 “lite” databases

Here’s an interesting article reporting the results of testing SQL Server Express, MySQL, DB2 Express, and ORACLE 10g Standard Edition. MySQL generally comes out on top but the report is worth reading for what else it says.

Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs

With CSS finally being available in all modern browsers most of us should already be using it on our sites. In case you need some help with navigation (using tabs), take a look at the More Free CSS Navigation Menu Designs.

Free icons for developers

famfamfam.com offers some great, free, icons in friendly web image formats. Great Christmas present for yoursefl if you’re a developer.

VC firms spot enterprise trends

Most of my readers are in enterprise software development. As we all know, enterprise software has seen some tough times over the past few years. If you’re interested in what’s coming up in this space, *follow the money*: VC…

Java People, Stop Worrying and Start Coding!

Weiqi Gao’s observation is Java People, Stop Worrying and Start Coding!.

IBM Buys Web Services Pioneer Bowstreet

The recent purchase of Bowstreet, who tried to ride the wave of web services and later service oriented architecture, demonstrates how hard it really is to succeed in enterprise software in general but especially in software…

Fact or myth? Will 9 in 10 new businesses close in the first year?

Balanko-Dickson reports:

2005 Year-end Google Zeitgeist

The year-end 2005 Google Zeitgeist is now live. It’s pretty interesting:

D.C./Baltimore lead nation in tech postings on job Web site

Anyone looking for a job? Come on over to my neck of the woods: D.C./Baltimore lead nation in tech postings on job Web site

It’s Time to Start Networking

I interviewed Eric Spiegel and blogged about him a couple of weeks ago. He’s written a great piece recently called *It’s Time to Start Networking*.

Hospital to txt message its patients

Victor at HITSphere reports Hospital to txt message its patients. This is a great example of how simple tools like using email and now text messaging can save costs without introducing much new IT infrastructure. Of course, in…

SNARFing your way through e-mail

CNET News.com’s SNARFing your way through e-mail article is interesting.

CPOE studies generate buzz

I was interviewed by Andis Roberznieks of *Modern Healthcare* in his latest article entitled *CPOE studies generate buzz*. It was about my thoughts on the Cerner CPOE study that I wrote about a couple of times last week.

Java Surpasses C++ on SourceForge

Since eWeek reports that Java surpassed C++ on SourceForge all us Java architects can now rest assured that we have job security. 🙂

What puts the 2 in Web 2.0?

Check out this slick document that the guys at ActivePath put together on Web 2.0: What_puts_the_2_in_Web_20.pdf (application/pdf Object).

developerWorks : Architecture

IBM developerWorks now has an Architecture specialty subsite. Yippee!

WikiMatrix / Wiki Feature Comparison

A wiki is a great way to do project communication and engineering collaboration but sometimes it’s hard to know which one to pick. The WikiMatrix can help you decide.

Use Stored Procedures for Java Persistence

An interesting alternative to ORMs is presented at DevX.com in their *Use Stored Procedures for Java Persistence* article. Worth chewing on.

Jini offers a striking framework for building SOAs

When I did some architecture work for NIH a couple of years back we put Sun’s Jini technology on the evaluation shortlist. I’d almost forgotten about it until I read this JavaPro *Jini at Your Service* article. It’s worth…

Java static analyzer with automatic refactoring capabilities

Check out JRewriter, a Java static analyzer with automatic refactoring capabilities. We’re all familiar with refactoring tools built into our IDEs but JRewriter can automate the process.

Tax credits from R&D investments

I spoke with the BizDev manager of Fortis TCS today. They are an interesting company that focuses on the tax side of technology. That is, if you spend money on R&D and would like to get tax credits (refunds of what you’ve…

Introduction to ServiceMix

A friend of mine sent me a link to this nice introductory article on ServiceMix. We’ve been using it for a proof of concept at a client and it looks pretty strong.

Eric Spiegel’s got the cure for Citrix reporting blues

I met with Eric today to talk about his company and what it does for its customers and came away thinking “why didn’t I think of that?” Eric Spiegel is CEO and co-founder of eXpert Technology Solutions, which provides turnkey,…

FreePatentsOnLine.com

I think the domain name says it all! One feature I like is their RSS feed that shows new patent filings and awards. If you follow new patents like I do, it’s a nice service.

Splunk is fascinating

Take a look at Splunk. Quickly. It’s one of those things that you didn’t know you needed but once you see it you’ll be wondering how you did without it. Their description:

ESB vs. BizTalk Debate Heats up in Barcelona

Check out this link a friend of mine sent: ESB vs. BizTalk Debate Heats up in Barcelona. Dave Chappell writes:

UML-based open source data migration tool

Since most of us in IT spend at least part of our time combining and moving data to and from multiple databases, it might be worth taking a look at an open source toolkit called Hydrate that eases the process. From their…

Microsoft Touts New Ajax Tools

There’s a nice interview on Microsoft’s new found respect for AJAX: Q&A: Microsoft Touts New Ajax Tools. Microsoft says:

Does “Web 2.0” mean anything?

Paul’s a great writer and he’s just posted a grea piece on Web 2.0. Some of my favorite snippets:

Data Modeling Tools

I just ran across this very nice Data Modeling Tools list.

IDC Survey: Microsoft Products Run Most Mission Critical Apps

There’s an interesting article about use of Microsoft technologies in mission critical systems at TheServerSide.NET. The survey, conducted by IDC, was commissioned by Microsoft. I can’t wait for the Sun and IBM surveys that…

Andy’s Interview with Paul Duval on Continuous Integration

My friend Andy Glover recently interviewed Paul Duval, co-author of an upcoming book entitled “Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk” and a frequent No Fluff Just Stuff speaker. It’s a good…

Caching expensive content

A friend of mine asked me for some suggestions for tools that allow caching content that was generated through some expensive process. I’ve had good success with OSCache but offered him this list of open source projects to…

AJAX driven ERD diagramming tool

Most of us who’ve lived in the enterprise database space for even a few years know that Embarcadero and Erwin are two powerful ERD diagramming tools. I just ran across this WWW SQL Designer tool that provides some of the same…

SchemaSpy 2.0 is out

SchemaSpy, a graphical database schema documentation tool, was recently upgraded. I’ve blogged about it before and thought it was great. It’s now even better. It’s written in Java but can create offline HTML browsable…

Portal-enabling non-portlet web apps

I’ve been involved in number of portal projects this year and one of the problems that all my customers complain about is the inability to integrate non-portlet based webapps into their portals. I just ran across this open…

Peer to peer messaging middleware

As we all know, SOA (service oriented architecture) is not a technology, it is a way of architecting and designing complex distributed systems so that real business value is gained and maintained. As SOA begins to make sense…

Database migration tool

I’ve been involved in a few large scale database migration efforts in the past few years and usually ended up custom coding or using an ETL tool to help. I just ran across the Monarca database migration tool that seems pretty…

IEEE Seminar on Transition from Practicing Engineer to Manager

On Saturday, November 12, 2005 IEEE will be hosting the “Making the Transition from Practicing Scientist, Engineer or Technologist to Practicing Manager” seminar. Details:

Leading commercial ESB tools

Given that all the major players like IBM and BEA are looking to make ESB announcement these days, it’s good to remember that you can’t just take an older product and just throw in a few bells and whistles and then relabel it…

IntelliJ IDEA vs. Eclipse

I’m not sure i completely concur with Tim’s post on the basic difference between IDEA and Eclipse but as a huge fan of IntelliJ’s IDE I found that it did have some truth to it. Tim says:

Developer’s Top 10 replies when code doesn’t work…

I loved the list of top 10 developer excuses that Enrique posted on his blog.

Compiling C code to run on a Java VM

I haven’t worked on C code for a few months now but I thought this technology was pretty nifty. They provide an IDE that can take C code and compile it to Java bytecodes to run on any VM. From their description:

AJAX libraries and frameworks

I found a nice survey of AJAX libraries and another site with a great overview of AJAX frameworks.

A few early HHS awards for interoperable health information technology

A few important early contracts have been awarded by HHS to learn more about the EMR, EHR, and Healthcare IT market. If you’re in the healthcare world, take a look at this report and this one.

Attitudes of Americans Regarding Personal Health Records

The Markle Foundation has released the *Attitudes of Americans Regarding Personal Health Records and Nationwide Electronic Health Information Exchange* research report. It’s numbers are bit lower than the numbers from the 2004…

HHS National Health Information Infrastructure contract awards forthcoming

Those of us involved in the healthcare IT (HIT) market may want to keep an eye on these new awards and other RFIs related to it. According to Government Computer News (GCN):

Real-time data/app state replication

Several of my clients need the ability to write thin-client applications that need to work consistently even when momentarily disconnected. I ran across an interesting technology at IBM called FluidSync. It seems to be helpful…

.NET test automation getting serious

As a consultant with clients that are on both the .NET and Java platforms (and many other legacy ones, too) I follow Microsoft’s progress closely. Over the past few years the test automation and test early (unit testing,…

My favorite DocBook/XML editor has been upgraded

My favorite DocBook editor, XMLMind XML Editor (XXE) is now at version 3.0. If you’ve not tried it before, check it out since it’s got a free *standard edition* and then a more powerful professional version. If you’re an ISV…

Finally, someone else takes care of physical mail

For those of us that are tired of spam in our snail mail and haven’t quite found the equivalent of a physical bayesian filter for their real postal mail, take a look at Remote Control Mail. I found their idea of a permanent…

How blogging is shaping the tech debate

Most small companies don’t think they can afford a PR firm but Alice Marshall of Presto Vivace is looking to change all that by giving top-notch PR advice to small and medium sized businesses. She recently interviewed me for…

A few hours with Michael Keith, EJB 3.0 co-Spec lead

This week I was in San Diego attending JavaPro Live! 2005. I found the conference cozy (small :-)), informative, and for the most part useful. One of the highlights of my trip (aside from attending with a client of mine, Mr.…

Documenting your databases

As we all know, one of the most important aspects of our complex systems architecting and design phases is documentation. But, given the challenges created by high-speed development where code (both application and database…

Create Microsoft Office Documents in Java

If you’re writing code using Windows COM or in .NET it’s pretty easy to script Microsoft Office applications like Excel, Word, and PowerPoint to create MS Office documents. However, if you’re running a Java application on…

This year’s visit to the US PTO

Every year I teach a few classes to patent examiners at the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). In the past I’ve taught topics like “Agile Software Development” and “Aspect-oriented Programming” but this week the topics were…

Open Healthcare Framework

The Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework Project was proposed back in June and seems to be a great undertaking. Although it is *going* to do (assuming it succeeds) some of the same things that our open source Medigy Platform…

Another nice open source ESB

I’ve been talking to customers for months about Mule, one of the first open source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) implementations. I just ran across ServiceMix which is also an open source ESB built around JBI (JSR 208)…

Another HL7 library

I spent some time in Canada this week talking to a health informatics client of mine and they pointed me to a nifty little open source HL7 parser called HAPI. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but it looks to solve a…

Problems with HTML and CSS

I have been using HTML and CSS for years and since most browsers are starting to support CSS fairly well I’ve been dropping HTML formatting in favor of CSS formatting. However, there are problems that creep up and I’ve found…

Silly statement of the month: Java “Generics Considered Harmful”

I just read through Ken Arnold’s blog entry where he claims that Java generics may be harmful. His point was that generics are too hard to explain (he’s writing a book) and have some limitations so they should be considered…

Do we technologists care about our customers?

Software developent is a complex process, driven by technology and innovation. However, as developers we often rely on a product-focus driven by innovations in technology rather than by the needs of the customer. Developers…

“Typesafe, Ontology Driven RDF Access from Java”

I’ve blogged recently about ontologies, semantic frameworks, and other knowledge management tools like Protege. If you were interested in those topics, check out Jastor, which allows OWL (an XML format for ontology storage)…

Automate runtime classfile modification

I ran across this great article that demonstrates how to change Java classes on the fly (at load time). The article discusses how to automatically implement the useful but difficult to maintain toString() methods we’re all…

AJAX Patterns and Frameworks

I’ve been doing AJAX programming for several years (ever since I learned about XMLHttpRequest) but of course it didn’t have a cool name before. Many of the patterns I’ve used have not been cataloged before but I was delighted…

Open source Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software

I just ran across this link that provides a list of existing open source *Electronic Medical Records* (EMR) solutions. I’ve been working off and on in this space for almost 8 years but the field just doesn’t seem to mature.…

Koders.com pretty nice

I was looking for some code I needed for a project I’m working on today and ran across koders.com, a search engine specificially geared towards searching source code. It’s a great site and helped me find what I was looking for…

Monospace/Fixed Width Programmer’s Fonts

Stop hunting for the right fonts for your IDE: go right to this article.

List of all java os.name system property values

I need this every once in a while and I can never find it when I do, a list of all the variations of the os.name java system property. Take a look at this page for a pretty comprehensive list: What os or arch value can I use?

A great use of AOP

I just ran across Surrogate, a great little library that really puts AOP (aspect oriented programming, something I’ve been training clients on for some time) to excellent use. As a complement to Junit and a really great…

What is an ontology and how to develop one

These days my consulting work is taking me more and more into the area of *Knowlege Modeling* (see my blog from a few days ago). After my clients read that blog additional questions came up and two of the most prevalent were…

MD Logix might actually make MDA useful

There’s been a lot of talk recently about *Model Driven Architecture* (MDA) being perhaps a silver bullet or at least a potentially great solution for development of complex software. In my travels as a consulting architect to…

Meta data and semantic/conceptual data storage

Check out Kowari, an open source database specifically designed to store knowlege-type semantic, conceptual, or meta-data. Instead of being built on top of a relational database designed for loading small amounts of larger…

Authenticating Java users using underlying operating system

We all need the ability to have our Java programs talk to the underlying operating system for many aspects just as file system management and user interface population. Java abstracts those pretty well but one thing that’s…

Free Tutorial and Presentation creation software

If you ever write software documentation such as tutorials or create demos of your software, you know you need “screen capture” software to take snapshots of screens. What you may find more useful is “screen motion capture”…

FFP – Flat file parsing library

Just ran across this nice Java library for easing the parsing of text from flat files. Since most of us still have to do this kind of parsing all the time, it seems like a great library to take a quick look at.

Expensive but useful Ontology-based EII tool

Today I attended a presentation on PiiE by Digital Harbor which seems like a great tool to build Enterprise Information Integration (EII) solutions. EII tools address the data access challenges that arise from data…

Good low-cost Java profilers

One of my clients asked me today about my favorite profilers for performance improvement of Java code. My favorite a few years ago used to be jprobe but these days I’m using the YourKit Profiler. It’s easy to use and has some…

A great RSS reader is born

If you spend as much time on the Internet as I do you probably spend much of time going from website to website tracking and reading interesting articles. After getting sick of going to almost a dozen or more sites per day…

Easier to use Java Date/Time classes

For those of us who deal with business applications for a living, date/time functionality is crucial. The Joda Time package is an open source library that makes dealing with Calendar, Date, Time, and other related classes…

XML DTD (Schema) for Patient Medical Record

If you’re looking to enable a service-oriented healthcare architecture you’re going to need some good DTDs and XSDs (XML Schemas) for managing patient data. This link contains information about the ASTN DTDs for exchanging…

EMMA: a free Java code coverage tool

If you’ve been looking for a free code coverage tool that rivals the features in Clover, look no further.

Open source health care resources

Just ran across this nice link that lists many open source projects that could be useful for health/medical informatics professionals. Another good link is http://www.linuxmednews.org/ which is a Slashdot-like site with links…

Javascript library for GMail style remoting

I just ran across the DWR library that lets you call Java code asynchronously through Javascript without reloading a webpage. The “Direct Web Remoting” library allows you to easily call server-side Java POJOs through…

Version Control System Comparison

I’ve been a longtime user of CVS and am still generally happy with it. However, to keep up to date on the latest technologies I’ve been considering moving to something more modern. While studying up on the subject of revision…

Time to give EJB 3.0 a serious look

Senior Java architects like myself have complained for years that the EJB standard and its associated programming model was overly complex and probably didn’t provide a good return on investment. While EJB 2.x was a big…

HL7 in Java

Much of my consulting work happens to be in the healthcare industry so HL7 is a major standard that I have to deal with. I just ran across this great set of HL7 utilities, all written in Java. Mike’s written some good code to…

Documentation Enhancer for Java

One of the most hardest problems all engineers have to deal with is the appropriate, accurate, and timely documentation of their code. I just ran across a new tool called Documentation Enhancer for Java that adds some real…

Easier Java Generics object construction

I’ve been programming with JDK 5.0 for a bit now and just love the generics features. However, I find that I keep repeating myself when constructing collection instances.

Offshoring: a challenge or opportunity?

Although we all have mixed feelings about offshoring of our technology jobs, most of the data that’s available is generally anecdotal. I just ran across this report from the British Computer Society (BCS) about offshoring of…

Finding the right code generation tool

I just ran across this helpful graphical decision tree to help programmers decide on some code generation tools for Java, C#, and other languages. It’s worth taking a look.

Rich-text editor for HTML Textarea

A couple of my clients recently requested my suggestions for rich-text editors that can replace a standard HTML textarea tag. The best (free) one that I’ve seen is FCKEditor. It’s very nice and it will across on multiple browsers.

Open Source Software in Java

I’m often asked by my clients, “where can I find an open source tool for doing X in Java?” Recently I’ve been telling them to take a look at Java-Source.net.

Simple but effective Software Project Management

I just discovered the TargetProcess web based project management tool. It’s described as an “Agile Project Management System” and states that “The Primary Goal of TargetProcess system is extremely clear ? fast feedback about…

Automate and manage your builds

Just ran across another open source build management tool called LuntBuild. Seems like it’s similar to AntHill and CruiseControl but somewhat easier to use as is doesn’t require any edits of configuration files (fully…

.NET Tools for Sophisticated Builds

If you enjoy using Ant, JUnit, and other tools for doing builds on Java, check out this article for how to use similar Open Source tools to do sophisticated builds on the .NET platform.

Monitor Java applications’ Windows memory usage

Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just forget about memory management if you’re using Java. I’ve been meaning to write an article on memory usage and how developers can monitor their applications’ memory footprint for some…

Rules Engines for .NET

This morning I was asked about my recommendations for rules engines. On the Java side I’ve always recommended Drools or Jess (though there are many more Java-based open source engines listed on this site). The .NET rules…

New version of PuTTY is out

If you’re a heavy user of PuTTY, like I am, you’ll want to grab the latest release which fixes a major security hole. In case you don’t already know, PuTTY is a free Windows SSH and Telnet client (which is actually now…

Good substitutes for Rational Rose

I’m often asked about what tools I recommend for certain tasks and today I was asked about some good replacements for Rational Rose (open source or inexpensive commercial ones). Although I’m not a huge fan of UML (I’ve seen…

Mozilla Firefox 0.9 is out, take a tour

A Release Candidate of the latest version of my favorite browser (Firefox) is out and Neil Turner has written a great article describing all the new features.

Keep the Ant, Hold the XML

Saw a great article on running Apache Ant without putting the entire build file in XML. Why would you want to do this? Read this. It talks about how to “employ Ant programmatically in Java code without the constraints of XML…

A network music player that doesn’t look like a box

I’ve been searching for a nice music player that would connect to my existing tunes on my PC and play them wirelessly. I’ve seen many offered but they all look like computer devices and the room I want to put the player in…

Throwing away the first version of a project

This afternoon I was contemplating the idea of “throw away” applications and whether that was a Good Thing. One of my clients is just training new developers who are more versed in desktop computing applications (like VB,…

Simulaneously running Linux and Windows

Over the past few years I’ve been using PC virtualization software such as VMware and Virtual PC to run multiple operating systems simulatneously (I’ve got a dual-CPU AMD with 2GB RAM and about 400GB disk space so computing…

Put a slick calendar on your desktop

I just discovered a neat little free utility called Rainlendar that can read my Microsoft Outlook calendar and put a {{popup rainlendar.gif rainlendar 377×174}}slick transparent window on my desktop that shows my schedule.…

AppRocket helps keep your hands on the keyboard

If you’re a heavy keyboard user (and what programmer or technical person isn’t) you probably get tired of grabbing the mouse to go to the quick launch bar or click the start menu to start an application. If you want to keep…

Microsoft OneNote actually works

As a person that spends equal time with business and technology issues I take lots of notes and have tried my share of “note taking” software. However, I never spent more than a few weeks on any particular note taker or…

UMD Netcentricity Conference was useful

I attended the Robert H. Smith School of Busines Fourth Annual Netcentricity Conference yesterday at the University of Maryland. I expected it to be a stuffy academic conference without much applicability to my life as a CEO…

Java + Perl + Ruby + Python + JVM = Groovy

My goal is to learn a new language or two every year and this year i’ve focused on scripting languages. Being an expert in Perl and having used Ruby and Python off and on for a while, I was very intrigued when I saw an…

Comprehending Java application structures

I’m regularly brought in to a client site when their applications are nearing completion. Usually, it’s for taking a look at performance problems or for completing some features that the existing staff couldn’t get to in time.…

Measuring web client performance

Today I was asked about the best way to measure client-side performance for heavily-used web applications. Since I spend more of my time in Java/J2EE I pretty much end up using tools written for Java. I have found and use two…

FreeMarker 2.3 RC 1 is out

If you haven’t heard already, you should mosey on down to this page to see the new features. FreeMarker is my favorite Java-based templating engine and IMHO easily beats out engines like JSP, Velocity, or WebMacro. It’s got a…

Who’s Shahid Shah and what’s this blog about?

I am the founder and CEO of Netspective Communications LLC and an expert software engineer, systems architect, and technology evangelist. This blog is about my personal opinions on software development, the state of software…