Tag · secondary filter
Architecture
Systems design, integration, data modeling, multi-tenancy, and the structural decisions that are expensive to reverse.
123 pieces, grouped by format
April 25, 2004
Online social and professional networking
For the past few months I’ve been experimenting with the new social networking tools that are available online. The one I’ve found most useful (relatively speaking) is LinkedIn. Internetworking websites and software are…
October 28, 2006
Technical leadership advice
Many of my younger colleagues often ask about what some of the most important leadership aspects are for technical managers like team leads or architects. There are no hard and fast rules but here are some things I’ve learned…
December 30, 2005
Testing is important, automatically generating JUnit tests is magical
A couple of months ago I was introduced to Joe Ponczak, CEO of Codign Software, by my friend Andrew Glover. We had a great meeting where we discussed the current state of software quality management, test driven development,…
May 7, 2004
Learning Java/J2EE and best tools for the job
A friend of mine who was recently put in charge of a decent size programming team talked with me about the best way to consolidate multiple development tools and paradigms (such as PowerBuilder, VB, C/C++, etc) into a single…
March 21, 2004
Automated testing of GUIs
On Friday I attended the annual University of Maryland Technology Fair. Most of the presentations were academic and didn’t seem immediately applicable (due to the fact that I’m a software guy and the presentations were…
August 14, 2006
It’s easier to get in than to get out
We’ve all seen it: we spend weeks or months in the “sales and demo cycle” for our applications. If we’re lucky we consider all workflows, if we’re even luckier we test drive the UI and make sure training goes smoothly, if…
January 4, 2006
Garrett is the Father of Ajax like Gore was the Father of the Internet
I saw an ad recently for the Real World AJAX One-day Seminar and the contents and discussions all sounce useful.
December 23, 2005
The departure of the Java hyper-enthusiasts
Bruce Eckel, author and Java pundit, writes about the departure of the hyper-enthusiasts. He says, “the Java hyper-enthusiasts have left the building, leaving a significant contingent of Java programmers behind, blinking in…
November 17, 2005
Ruby on Rails is excellent but no Java killer
Over the past few months I’ve been playing with Ruby on Rails, and while it’s an innovative solution to small- and medium-scale web development problems, it’s not really the Java killer that everyone’s harping about. Don’t get…
January 20, 2004
Why do we all want to be architects now?
I’ve noticed that the term software architect, a term I use quite often to describe myself, is in vogue these days. It’s interesting to hear that many developers who used to call themselves senior software engineers are doing…
July 27, 2009
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…
September 16, 2007
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…
January 30, 2007
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…
September 13, 2006
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.
September 8, 2006
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…
September 8, 2006
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.
August 26, 2006
Web-based QA
I saw an interesting service offering recently. Check Autoriginate: Intelligent testing made convenient. Here’s how they describe themselves:
August 16, 2006
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…
August 8, 2006
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…
July 29, 2006
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…
July 27, 2006
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,…
July 17, 2006
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…
May 14, 2006
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.
April 23, 2006
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…
April 15, 2006
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…
April 15, 2006
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…
April 14, 2006
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:
March 16, 2006
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…
March 10, 2006
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…
March 9, 2006
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…
February 9, 2006
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…
February 4, 2006
Excellent Architecture resources repository unveiled
Jeff Tash recently unveiled the Architecture ‘Resources’ Repository. It’s a great addition to any architects’ bag of links.
January 31, 2006
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.
January 31, 2006
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.
January 31, 2006
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…
January 29, 2006
Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0 is now available
Microsoft recently released the Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0.
January 19, 2006
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…
January 4, 2006
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…
December 30, 2005
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…
December 29, 2005
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…
December 29, 2005
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.
December 28, 2005
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.
December 23, 2005
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…
December 23, 2005
Java People, Stop Worrying and Start Coding!
Weiqi Gao’s observation is Java People, Stop Worrying and Start Coding!.
December 23, 2005
2005 Year-end Google Zeitgeist
The year-end 2005 Google Zeitgeist is now live. It’s pretty interesting:
December 14, 2005
SNARFing your way through e-mail
CNET News.com’s SNARFing your way through e-mail article is interesting.
December 14, 2005
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.
December 5, 2005
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. 🙂
December 2, 2005
developerWorks : Architecture
IBM developerWorks now has an Architecture specialty subsite. Yippee!
December 1, 2005
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.
December 1, 2005
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…
December 1, 2005
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.
November 30, 2005
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…
November 30, 2005
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.
November 23, 2005
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:
November 23, 2005
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:
November 19, 2005
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…
November 19, 2005
November 17, 2005
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…
November 17, 2005
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…
November 11, 2005
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…
November 10, 2005
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…
November 9, 2005
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…
November 4, 2005
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…
November 4, 2005
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…
October 21, 2005
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…
October 14, 2005
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.
October 14, 2005
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:
October 14, 2005
AJAX libraries and frameworks
I found a nice survey of AJAX libraries and another site with a great overview of AJAX frameworks.
October 7, 2005
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…
October 7, 2005
.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,…
October 7, 2005
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…
September 16, 2005
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.…
September 5, 2005
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…
August 27, 2005
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…
August 25, 2005
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…
July 26, 2005
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…
July 26, 2005
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)…
July 22, 2005
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…
July 1, 2005
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…
June 26, 2005
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…
June 16, 2005
“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)…
June 15, 2005
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…
June 13, 2005
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…
May 18, 2005
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.…
May 15, 2005
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…
May 7, 2005
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?
May 6, 2005
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…
April 23, 2005
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…
April 21, 2005
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…
April 17, 2005
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.
April 13, 2005
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…
April 11, 2005
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…
April 2, 2005
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…
February 22, 2005
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…
February 21, 2005
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…
February 21, 2005
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.
February 17, 2005
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…
February 16, 2005
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…
February 10, 2005
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…
February 5, 2005
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…
February 3, 2005
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…
January 24, 2005
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.
December 6, 2004
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.
November 26, 2004
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.
November 23, 2004
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.
November 22, 2004
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…
November 21, 2004
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…
November 19, 2004
.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.
November 19, 2004
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…
November 3, 2004
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…
October 27, 2004
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…
October 14, 2004
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…
June 10, 2004
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.
June 10, 2004
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…
May 18, 2004
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,…
April 29, 2004
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…
April 27, 2004
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…
March 22, 2004
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…
March 16, 2004
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.…
March 12, 2004
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…
March 11, 2004
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…
December 24, 2003
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…