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• How to handle this unfortunately non hypothetical situation with end-users?

  - by User Smith

  I work in a medium sized company but with a very small IT force. Last year (2011), I wrote an application that is very popular with a large group of end-users. We hit a deadline at the end of last year and some functionality (I will call funcA from now on) was not added into the application that was wanted at the very end. So, this application has been running in live/production since the end of 2011, I might add without issue. Yesterday, a whole group of end-users started complaining that funcA that was never in the application is no longer working. Our priority at this company is that if an application is broken it must be fixed first prior to prioritized projects. I have compared code and queries and there is no difference since 2011, which is proofA. I then was able to get one of the end-users to admit that it never worked proofB, but since then that end-user has went back and said that it was working previously......I believe the horde of end-users has assimilated her. I have also reviewed my notes for this project which has requirements and daily updates regarding the project which specifically states, "funcA not achieved due to time constraints", proofC. I have spoken with many of them and I can see where they could be confused as they are very far from a programming background, but I also know they are intelligent enough to act in a group in order to bypass project prioritization orders in order to get functionality that they want to make their job easier. The worst part is is that now group think is setting in and my boss and the head of IT is actually starting to believe them, even though there is no code or query changes. As far as reviewing the state of the logic it is very cut and dry to the point of if 1 = 1, funcA will not work. So, this is the end of the description of my scenario, but I am trying not to get severally dinged on my performance metrics due to this which would essentially have me moved to fixing a production problem that doesn't exist that will probably take over 1 month. I am looking for direct answers to this question. This question is not for rants, polling, or discussions as this is not the format for StackExchange. Please don't downvote me too terribly it is pretty common on this specific site of stack, I am looking for honest answers to this situation and I couldn't find a forum more appropriate.

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• Was I wrong about JavaScript?

  - by jboyer

  Yes, I was. Recently, I’ve taken a good hard look at JavaScript. I’ve used it before but mostly in the capacity of web design. Using JQuery to make your web page do cool stuff is different than really creating a JavaScript application using all of the language constructs. What I’m finding as I use it more is that I may have been wrong about my assumptions about it. Let me explain.   I enjoyed doing cool stuff with JQuery but the limited experience with JavaScript as a language coupled with the bad things that I heard about it led me to not have any real interest in it. However, JavaScript is ubiquitous on the web and if I want to do any web development, which I do, I need to learn it. So here I am, diving deep into the language with the help of the JavaScript Fundamentals training course at Pluralsight (great training for a low price) and the JavaScript: The Good Parts book by Douglas Crockford.   Now, there are certainly parts of JavaScript that are bad. I think these are well known by any developer that uses it. The parts that I feel are especially egregious are the following: The global object null vs. undefined truthy and falsy limited (nearly nonexistent) scoping ‘==’ and ‘===’ (I just don’t get the reason for coercion)   However, what I am finding hiding under the covers of the bad things is a good language. I am finding that I am legitimately enjoying JavaScript. This I was not expecting. I’m not going to go into a huge dissertation on what I like about it, but some things include: Object literal notation dynamic typing functional style (JavaScript: The Good Parts describes it as LISP in C clothing) JSON (better than XML) There are parts of JavaScript that seem strange to OOP developers like myself. However, just because it is different or seems strange does not mean it is bad. Some differences are quite interesting and useful.   I feel that it is important for developers to challenge their assumptions and also to be able to admit when they are wrong on a topic. Many different situations can arise that lead to this, such as choosing the wrong technology for a problem’s solution, misunderstanding the requirements, etc. I decided to challenge my assumptions about JavaScript instead of moving straight into CoffeeScript or Dart. After exploring it, I find that I am beginning to enjoy it the more I use it. As long as there are those like Crockford to help guide me in the right way to code in JavaScript, I can create elegant and efficient solutions to problems and add another ‘arrow’ to the ‘quiver’, so to speak. I do still intend to learn CoffeeScript to see what the hub-bub is about, but now I no longer have to be afraid of JavaScript as a legitimate programming language.   Has something similar ever happened to you? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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• Paranoid management, contractor checking work [closed]

  - by user833345

  Just wanted to get some opinions and experiences on an issue I'm having at work. First, a little background. I've been working at a company for some time (past any probation periods) and rewriting a horrendous system. No tests, incomplete and broken functionality everywhere, enough copypasta to feed a small village, redundant code, more unused SQL tables than used ones and terrible performance. I've never seen such bad code, pretty much all of it is worthy of being posted on TheDailyWTF. The company has been operating for a number of years and have had a string of bad developers working on this system. I made a call on rewriting instead of refactoring since I judged it to be less work overall and decided that the result will address the requirements more appropriately, since the central requirement is to have a future-proof system for the next decade with plenty of room to scale up. Refactoring would have entailed untangling a huge ball of yarn and at the same time integrating it with a proper foundation or building a foundation from scratch. I've introduced the latest spiffy framework, unit & functional testing, CI, a bug tracker and agile workflow to the environment. I've fixed most of the performance issues of the old system (there were no indexes on any of the tables, for example). I've created an automated deployment process for the old system. The CTO has been maintaining the old system while I have been building the new one and he has been advising management that everything is being done as per best practices. However, management is hiring a contractor to come in and verify my work. In my experience, this is unprecedented. I can understand their reasoning to an extent, since they've had bad luck in the past, but can't help but feel somewhat offended at the fact that they distrust two senior developers who have been working with them for some time enough that a third party is being brought in. And it's not just me who is under watch - people's emails are constantly checked, someone had a remote desktop application installed on their computer of which I was asked to check the usage logs to try to determine if they were stealing sensitive data and there are CCTV cameras in one of the rooms. It's the first time I've decided to disable my Skype history at work. Am I right to feel indignant here? Has anyone else ever encountered such a situation? If so, how did it work out in the end? Was it worth sticking around? Should I just find another job?

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• Are we ready for the Cloud computing era?

  - by andrewkatumba

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} "Elite?" developer circles are abuzz with the notion of Cloud computing . The increasing bandwidth, the desire for faster and leaner operations and ofcourse the need for outsourcing non core it related business requirements e.g wordprocessing, spreadsheets, data backups. In strolls Chrome OS (am sure other similar OSes will join with their own wagons for us to jump on), offering just that, internet based services(more like a repository of), quick efficient and "reliable" and for the most part cheap and often time even free! And we all go rhapsodic!  It boils down to the age old dilemma, "if the cops are so busy protecting us then who will protect them" (even the folks back at Hollywood keep us reminded)! Who is going to ensure that these internet based services do not go down(either intentionally or by some malicious third party) leading to a multinational colossal disaster .At the risk of sounding pessimistic,  IT IS NOT AN ISSUE OF TRUST, this is but a mere case of Murphy's Law!  What then? Should the "cloud" be trusted to this extent at this time?  This is an era where challenges are rapidly solved with lightning promptness to "beat the competition", my hope is that our solutions are not just creating problems that we may not be able to solve!  Keeping my ear on the Ground.

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• PeopleSoft Grants & the Federal Agency Letter of Credit Draw Changes

  - by Mark Rosenberg

  For decades, most, if not all, US Federal agencies that sponsor research allowed grant recipients to request and receive payments using pooled accounts, commonly known as pooled letter of credit (LOC) draws. This enabled organizations, such as universities and hospitals, fast and efficient access to reimbursement of the expenditures they incurred conducting research across a portfolio of grants. To support this business practice, the PeopleSoft Grants solution has delivered an LOC Draw report to provide the total request amount along with all of the supporting invoice details for reconciliation and audit purposes. Now, in an attempt to provide greater transparency, eliminate fraud, strengthen accountability for grant-related financial transactions, and simplify grant award closeout, many US Federal sponsors are transitioning from the “pooling” letter of credit draw method to requesting on a “grant-by-grant” basis. The National Science Foundation, the second largest issuer of Federal awards, already transitioned to detailed grant draws in 2013. And, in response to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) directive to HHS-supported Agencies, the largest Federal awards sponsor, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will fully transition to the new HHS subaccount draw method. This will require NIH award recipients to request payments based on actual expenses incurred on an award-by-award basis. NIH is expected to fully transition to this new draw method by the end of Federal fiscal year 2015.  (The NIH had planned to fully transition to this new method by the end of fiscal 2014; however, the impact to institutions was deemed to be significant enough that a reprieve was recently granted.) In light of these new Federal draw requirements, we have recently released these new features to aid our customers on both PeopleSoft Grants releases 9.1 and 9.2:1. Federal Award Identification Number on the Proposal and Award Profile 2. Letter of credit fields on contract lines to support award basis draws and comply with Federal close out mandates3. Process to produce both pro forma and final LOC Draw Reports in BI Publisher report format4. Subacccount ID field on the LOC Summary and a new BI Publisher version of the LOC Summary report 5. Added Subaccount Field and contract info to be displayed on the LOC summary page6. Ability to generate by a variety of dimensions pro forma and invoiced draw listings 7. Queries for generation and manipulation of data to upload into sponsor payment request systems and perform payment matching8. Contracts LOC Close Out query to quickly review final balances prior to initiating final draws and preparing Federal Financial Reports prior to close The PeopleSoft Development team actively monitors this and other major Federal changes and continues working closely with the Grants Product Advisory Group of the Higher Education User Group to ensure a clear understanding of what our customers need in order to transition to new approaches for doing business with the Federal government. For more information regarding the enhancements to the PeopleSoft Grants solution, existing customers can login to My Oracle Support and review the Enhancements to Letter of Credit Process (Doc ID 1912692.1) associated with resolution ID 904830. This enhanced LOC functionality is available in both PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Bundle #31 and PeopleSoft FSCM 9.2 Update Image 8.

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• Is it okay to have people with multiple roles in a Scrum team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm evaluating some Agile-style methodologies for possible introduction to my team. With Scrum, is it allowable to have the same person perform multiple roles? We have a small team of four developers and a web designer; we don't really have a lead (I fulfill this role), QA testers or business analysts, and all of our development tasks come from the CIO. Automated testing is seen as a total waste of time, and everything focuses on speed and not quality. What will happen is the CIO will come up with a development task (whether a feature or a bug) and give it to a developer (not to the whole team, to an individual, often in private or out of the blue) who is then expected to get it completed. The CIO doesn't gather requirements beyond the initial idea (and this has bitten us before as we'll implement something only to find out that none of the end users can use the feature, because they weren't consulted or even informed about it before we developed it, and in a panic we'll be told to revert the change) but requires say in/approval of everything that we do. First things first, is a Scrum style something to consider to introduce some standards and practices? From reading, Scrum seems to rely on a bit more trust and communication and focuses more on project management than on development, which is something we are completely devoid of as we don't have any semblance of project management at present. Second, if it can work is it unreasonable for someone, let's say myself, to act as both ScrumMaster and a developer? Or for a developer to also be the Product Owner (although chances are this will be the CIO, who isn't a developer)? I realize the Scrum Master and the Product Owner should be different people but at the same time I don't think we have anyone who has the qualities of a Product Owner (chances are it would turn into a "I need all these stories, I don't care how but get it done" type of deal and/or any freeze would be unfrozen on a whim). It seems to me that I might need to pick and choose pieces of Scrum/XP/Lean to compensate for how things are done currently, as it's highly unlikely that the mentality can be changed; for instance Pair Programming would never fly (seen as a waste, you get half the tasks done if you need two people for everything), TDD would be a hard sell, but short cycles would be welcomed.

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• What to answer to a customer who asks which one of two equivalent technologies must be used?

  - by MainMa

  As a freelancer, I am often asked by my customers what they must choose between similar elements, neither of which being better than another. Examples: “Do I need my e-commerce website be in PHP or ASP.NET?” “Do I need to host this ordinary web service in Cloud or use an ordinary hosting service?” “Which one is better for my new website: MySQL or Oracle?” etc. There is maybe at most 1% of cases where the choice is relevant, and there is a real, objective reason to use one over another, based on the precise metrics and studies. In all other cases, it doesn't matter at all. It is totally, completely irrelevant, either because there are no implications¹, or because those implications are too small to be taken in account², or, finally, because it's impossible to predict those implications³. If you know one thing and not another one, the answer to those questions is easy: “You can either write the application in C# or Java, both being probably equivalent in your case. Note that I'm a C# developer, so if you choose Java, I would not be able to work on your project and you would need to find another freelancer.” When you know both technologies, you can't answer that. In this case, how to explain to the customer that the question he asks is subject to flamewar and has no real consequences on his project? In other words, how to explain that you've chosen to use one technology rather than an equivalent one for the reasons related to human resources, without giving the impression to be unprofessional or to not care about the project? ¹ Example: Is MySQL better (worse?), performance-wise, compared to Oracle, for a personal website which will be accessed by, oh, let's be optimistic, two people per day? ² Example: for a given project, I was asked to asset if Windows Azure hosting would be cheaper than the hosting of the same application on a well-known ASP.NET hosting provider. The cost revealed to be exactly the same. ³ Example: your customer have an idea of a future application (the idea itself being extremely vague). There is no business plan, no requirements, nothing at all. Just an idea. You are asked if Java is better than C# for this app. What do you answer?

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• Dadaism and Agility

  - by alexhildyard

  We all have our little bugbears, and something that has given me particular pause over the years is the place of Agility in the software development life cycle. While I have seen it used successfully on both small and Enterprise-level projects, I have also seen many instances in which long-standing technical debt has also originated under its watch. Ironically the problem in such cases seems to me not that the practitioners in question have failed to follow due process (Test, Develop, Refactor -- a common "what" of Agile), but basically that they have missed the point (the "why" of Agile). It's probably a sign of my age that I'm much more interested in the "why" than the "what", since I feel that the latter falls out naturally from the former, but that this is not a reciprocal relationship.Consider Dadaism, precursor to the Surrealist movement in the early part of the twentieth century. Anyone could stand up and proclaim he or she was Dada; anyone could write cut-ups, or pull words out a hat, or produce gibberish on duelling typewriters under the inspiration of Dada. And all that took place at such performances was a manifestation of Dada, and all the artefacts that resulted were also Dada. Hence one commentator's engimatic observation that 'when one speaks of Dada, then one speaks of Dada. But when one does not speak of Dada, one still speaks of Dada.'What is Dada? Literally, Dada is what you say it is. But that's also missing the point. Dada is about erecting a framework within which utterances like this are valid; Dada is about preparing a stage for itself. Dadaism exemplifies the purity of a process-driven ideology -- in fact an ideology that is almost pure process, with nothing extraneous in the way of formal method, and while perhaps Agile delivery should not embrace the liberties of Dadaism too literally, some of the similarities nevertheless are salutary.Agile -- like Dada -- is an attitude; it is about *being* agile; it is not really about doing a specific set of things that are somehow *part* of being Agile. It is an abstract base rather than an implementation, a characteristic rather than a factor. It is the pragmatic response to the need for change in the face of partial information, ephemeral requirements and a healthy dose of systematic uncertainty. In practice this will usually mean repeatedly making the smallest useful changes to a system, recognising that systems evolve, and that all change carries risk. It will usually mean that instead of investing effort in future-proofing a system against a known technology roadmap, one instead invests one's energies in the daily repetition and incremental development of processes best designed to accommodate change quickly. But though it may mean these things in practice, it isn't actually *about* either of these things; it's about the mindset, the attitude that conceives of such responses as sensible solutions given the larger and ultimately unclassifiable thing that constitutes the development lifecycle of a specific project.

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• Navigational Flows in Web Forms

  - by Mona Rakibe

  Navigation flows in the Web UI is a common requirement. In 11.1.1.7 we do not have out of the box support for navigational flows but this is surely on our road-map.Until then this simple approach might meet some of the requirements. In this sample we use a trigger control and Web Form rules show navigation flow for Customer, Orders and Line Items. Start by creating  a new Web Form and adding 3 tabs as Customer,Order,Line Items.Add the elements to each tab. Change the visibility for Order and Line Items to false Tab1 : Customer Tab 2 : Order Tab 3 : Line Item N    Notice we have added trigger controls for Next & Back Buttons.        Now write form rules to change the visibility and selection of tabs based on the clicks of trigger You can now navigate through the forms using the trigger control. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:10%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} a So Solution to this sample can be downloaded from here.

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• Partner BI Applications 4-Day Hands-on Training Workshop

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} 12th - 15th February 2012, Oracle Reading (UK) - REGISTER NOW This training will provide attendees with an in-depth working understanding of the architecture, the technical and the functional content of the Oracle Business Intelligence Applications, whilst also providing an understanding of their installation, configuration and extension. The course will cover the following topics: Overview of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications Oracle BI Applications Fundamentals and Features Configuring BI Applications for Oracle E-Business Suite Understanding BI Applications Architecture Fundamentals of BI Applications Security Prerequisites - This training is only for OPN member Partners. Good understanding of basic data warehousing concepts Hands on experience in Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Hands on experience in Informatica Good understanding of any of the following Oracle EBS modules: General Ledger, Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables Some understanding of  Oracle BI Applications is required (See Sales & Technical Tutorials for OBI, BI-Apps and Hyperion EPM)  Please note that attendees are required to bring a laptop. Laptop 4GB RAM-Recognized by Windows 64 bits 80GB free space in Hard drive or External Device CPU Core 2 Duo or Higher Operating System Requirements Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 2003 NOT ALLOWED with Windows Vista An Administrator User

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• Some Problems Can't Be Outsourced

  - by mikef

  More and more companies are becoming attracted to the idea of Infrastructure as a Service (or IaaS). It would seem that you can outsource the provisioning and management of your services, encompassing everything from Email, through to your servers, workstations and software, all the way down to your LAN and internet services. This type of outsourcing can be a very attractive option for companies who have tight budgets who are short of technical skills or don't have the means to provide long-term IT support. Essentially, they can outsource your services at low short-term costs that are knowable and controllable, are quickly and easily scalable, and generate a minimum of hassle for your internal staff. If you want to get a sophisticated IT infrastructure set up in a hurry without the usual high buy-in costs, or the task of finding and hiring the right specialists. It would seem the way to go, particularly when their salesmen are hypnotizing you with oleaginous phrases such as "we are closely aligned with our client organization's core business requirements, providing agile services". It sounds too good to be true, and so it is. Whereas the costs will have initially been calculated on the annual renewal fees and service fees for ongoing support, there are other charges too which aren't so obvious. It can end up costing far more than the conventional solution once you take into account the extra costs, the fees for customization and upgrades. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) only becomes apparent when it is too late to extract the company easily from the arrangement. After a few years, these annual fees can add up to more than the initial cost of implementing a traditional in-house system. Worse than that is that you can then lose your power to determine your priorities: When you become reliant on this company, with its own schedule of priorities, to implement every change, however simple, you have effectively lost control of your technical infrastructure. This will make senior management very nervous. There is definitely a requirement for this sort of service. If you urgently need an exceptionally high class of service or more expertise than you currently possess, then outsourcing is probably for you. You and your IT colleagues will always have something to do, be it user assistance, smoothing out integrations with an external provider, or working on something entirely new. Heck, if you outsource to IBM, the SysAdmins can go along for the ride and polish their expertise. What you need to figure out is how much your time is worth, because time is ultimately all that outsourcing will buy you and your organization. Now you just need to convince your nervous CEO. Cheers, Michael

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• Professional immigration

  - by etranger

  Hello all, Does anyone here have a practical advice on professional relocation from Russia to Europe? The reasons behind making such a decision are far beyond the subject, perhaps, so I'll stick to the practical part. Having done some of the "common stuff" for finding a job, I am now facing two serious problems: I am a "dual-class" person, with university degree in marketing, and multiple years of self-studied computer competence (hence my writing here). Have professional experience in both areas. I don't currently hold a European work permit. From what I can see, this results in normal HR person throwing out my CV as either being "overqualified" or "too much trouble with making the permit". I do have the skills and character to start my own business, but it requires start-up capital that I don't have, over the last years I had to pay high bills for medical treatment of my family member, who had deceased. Now, I'm almost out of debts. As you can probably guess, English is not a problem, and I'm open to new languages, but first steps of entering the market, or the society, is the problematic part. I live close to Norway, and am trying to get some professional contacts there, but it hasn't got me any practical perspective so far. Any advice is greatly appreciated. EDIT: I am currently making my living off web site development, and occasional consulting services both in IT and marketing. For purely geographic reasons I'm dealing with clients that reside in the same city where I live, pop. 350 000. Being quite local, market requirements for web sites are simple and stable — clients need to control navigation, write articles in a word-like editor, upload illustrations and place ad banners, all with no additional programming. As many web developers do, I'm using my own content management system that fits these expectations. I have also started developing a newer version of this system that has better support for international environments, but I'm too distant from the real market demand in Europe to speak of the right track here. Technically it's based on php/mysql and uses xslt for templating. It allows for quick website deployment, and has architectural neatness, lack of which made me abandon similar opensource solutions (Joomla and the like). Deploying time from rasterized design proofs is normally under 6-8 working hours, don't know how that compares to the world practice. EDIT 2: Can anyone share what Norwegian (Scandinavian) web solutions market currently demands?

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• So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• prism and multiple screens

  - by Avi

  OK - I am studying Prism a little because of a "free weekend" offer on Pluralsight. As this is proving too complex for me, I went to the Prism book and looked at the forward, and this is what it said: What comes after “Hello, World?” WPF and Silverlight developers are blessed with an abundance of excellent books... There’s no lack of tutorials on Model-View-ViewModel ... But they stop short of the guidance you need to deliver a non-trivial application in full. Your first screen goes well. You add a second screen and a third. Because you started your solution with the built-in “Navigation Application Template,” adding new screens feels like hanging shirts on a closet rod. You are on a roll. Until the harsh reality of real application requirements sets in. As it happens, your application has 30 screens not three. There’s no room on that closet rod for 30 screens. Some screens are modal pop-ups; you don’t navigate to a pop-up. Screens become interdependent such that user activity in one screen triggers changes that propagate throughout the UI. Some screens are optional; others are visible only to authorized users. Some screens are permanent, while other screens can be opened and closed at will. You discover that navigating back to a previously displayed screen creates a new instance. That’s not what you expected and, to your horror, the prior instance is gone along with the user’s unsaved changes. Now the issue is, I don't relate to this description. I've never been a UI programmer, but same as everyone else I'm using Windows apps such as MS-Office, and web sites such as Amazon, Facebook and StackExchange. And I look at these and I don't see many "so many screens" issues! Indeed, the only applications having many windows I can think of is Visual Studio. Maybe also Visio, a little. But take Word - You have a ribbon and a main window. Or take Facebook: You have those lists on the left (Favorites, Lists, Groups etc.), the status middle, the adds and then the Contacts sidebar. But it's only one page. Of course, I understand that in enterprise scenarios there are dashboad applications where multiple segments of the screen are updated from multiple non-related services. This I dig. But other scenarios? So - What am I missing? What is the "multiple screens" monster Pirsm is supposed to be the silver bullet solution for? Shoud I invest in studying Prism in addition to learning WPF or ASP.NET MVC?

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• Oracle OpenWorld - Events of Interest

  - by Larry Wake

  I mentioned the "Focus On Oracle Solaris" document the other day, which lists many of the Solaris-related events at Oracle OpenWorld this year; today I thought I'd highlight a few sessions you might find interesting. Monday, October 1st: 4:45 PM - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining and Upgrading Oracle Solaris (Moscone South 252) This session covers best practices for upgrading and patching and how to take advantage of unique technologies in Oracle Solaris 10 and 11. Learn how to get maximum value from My Oracle Support for both reactive and proactive requirements. Understand the benefits of secure remote access and how Oracle Support experts use collaborative shared sessions combined with Oracle Solaris technologies such as DTrace. Tuesday, October 2nd: 10:15 AM -  How to Increase Performance and Agility with an Open Data Center Fabric (Moscone South 200) If you haven't had a chance to hear about Xsigo Systems, this is a golden opportunity while you're at OpenWorld. Now part of Oracle, Xsigo's network virtualization technology is designed to increase both application performance and management efficiency, through a combination of software-defined network technology and the industry’s fastest fabric, allowing data center to converge Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity to a single fabric, to reduce complexity by 70 percent and CapEx by 50 percent while providing more I/O bandwidth to your applications. Wednesday, October 3rd: 10:15 AM - General Session: Oracle Solaris 11 Strategy, Engineering Insights, and Roadmap (Moscone South 103) Markus Flierl, head of Oracle Solaris Core Engineering, will outline the strategy and roadmap for Oracle Solaris,  how Oracle Solaris 11 is being deployed in cloud computing and the unique optimizations in Oracle Solaris 11 for the Oracle stack. The session also offers a sneak peek at the latest technology under development in Oracle Solaris, and what customers can expect to see in the coming updates. Plus, there are several Hands-On Labs: Monday, October 1st: 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Reduce Risk with Oracle Solaris Access Control to Restrain Users and Isolate Applications (Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15) 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Managing Your Data with Built-In Oracle Solaris ZFS Data Services in Release 11  (Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15) Tuesday, October 2nd: 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Virtualizing Your Oracle Solaris 11 Environment  (Marriott Marquis - Salon 10/11) Wednesday, October 3rd: 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Large-Scale Installation and Deployment of Oracle Solaris 11 (Marriott Marquis - Salon 14/15) There's plenty more--see the "Focus On Oracle Solaris" guide. See you next week in San Francisco!

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• The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Create Phase

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

   Originally posted by John Brunswick. In this installment of our Minimalist Approach to Content Governance we finally get to the fun part of the content creation process! Once the content requester has addressed the items outlined in the Request Phase it is time to setup and begin the production of content.   For this to be done correctly it is important the the content be assigned appropriate workflow and security information. As in our prior phase, let's take a look at what can be done to streamline this process - as contributors are focused on getting information to their end users as quickly as possible. This often means that details around how to ensure that the materials are properly managed can be overlooked, but fortunately there are some techniques that leverage our content management system's native capabilities to automatically take care of some of the details. 1. Determine Access Why - Even if content is not something that needs to restricted due to security reasons, it is helpful to apply access rights so that the content ends up being visible only to users that it relates to. This will greatly improve user experience. For instance, if your team is working on a group project many of your fellow company employees do not need to see the content that is being worked on for that project. How - Make use of native content features that allow propagation of security and meta data from parent folders within your content system that have been setup for your particular effort. This makes it painless to enforce security, as well as meta data policies for even the most unorganized users. The default settings at a parent level can be set once the content creation request has been accepted and a location in the content management system is assigned for your specific project. Impact - Users can find information will less effort, as they will only be exposed to what they need for their work and can leverage advanced search features to take advantage of meta data assigned to content. The combination of default security and meta data will also help in running reports against the content in the Manage and Retire stages that we will discuss in the next 2 posts. 2. Assign Workflow (optional depending on nature of content) Why - Every case for workflow is going to be a bit different, but it generally involves ensuring that content conforms to management, legal and or editorial requirements. How - Oracle's Universal Content Management offers two ways of helping to workflow content without much effort. Workflow can be applied to content based on Criteria acting on meta data or explicitly assigned to content with a Basic workflow. Impact - Any content that needs additional attention before release is addressed, allowing users to comment and version until a suitable result is reached. By using inheritance from parent folders within the content management system content can automatically be given the right security, meta data and workflow information for a particular project's content. This relieves the burden of doing this for every piece of content from management teams and content contributors. We will cover more about the management phase within the content lifecycle in our next installment.

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• What arguments can I use to "sell" the BDD concept to a team reluctant to adopt it?

  - by S.Robins

  I am a bit of a vocal proponent of the BDD methodology. I've been applying BDD for a couple of years now, and have adopted StoryQ as my framework of choice when developing DotNet applications. Even though I have been unit testing for many years, and had previously shifted to a test-first approach, I've found that I get much more value out of using a BDD framework, because my tests capture the intent of the requirements in relatively clear English within my code, and because my tests can execute multiple assertions without ending the test halfway through - meaning I can see which specific assertions pass/fail at a glance without debugging to prove it. This has really been the tip of the iceberg for me, as I've also noticed that I am able to debug both test and implementation code in a more targeted manner, with the result that my productivity has grown significantly, and that I can more easily determine where a failure occurs if a problem happens to make it all the way to the integration build due to the output that makes its way into the build logs. Further, the StoryQ api has a lovely fluent syntax that is easy to learn and which can be applied in an extraordinary number of ways, requiring no external dependencies in order to use it. So with all of these benefits, you would think it an easy to introduce the concept to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, the other team members are reluctant to even look at StoryQ to evaluate it properly (let alone entertain the idea of applying BDD), and have convinced each other to try and remove a number of StoryQ elements from our own core testing framework, even though they originally supported the use of StoryQ, and that it doesn't impact on any other part of our testing system. Doing so would end up increasing my workload significantly overall and really goes against the grain, as I am convinced through practical experience that it is a better way to work in a test-first manner in our particular working environment, and can only lead to greater improvements in the quality of our software, given I've found it easier to stick with test first using BDD. So the question really comes down to the following: What arguments can I use to really drive the point home that it would be better to use StoryQ, or at the very least apply the BDD methodology? Can you point me to any anecdotal evidence that I can use to support my argument to adopt BDD as our standard method of choice? What counter arguments can you think of that could suggest that my wish to convert the team efforts to BDD might be in error? Yes, I'm happy to be proven wrong provided the argument is a sound one. NOTE: I am not advocating that we rewrite our tests in their entirety, but rather to simply start working in a different manner for all future testing work.

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• How do I know if I am using Scrum methodologies?

  - by Jake

  When I first started at my current job, my purpose was to rewrite a massive excel-VBA workbook-application to C# Winforms because it was thought that the new C# app will fix all existing problems and have all the new features for a perfect world. If it were a direct port, in theory it would be easy as i just need to go through all the formulas, conditional formatting, validations, VBA etc. to understand it. However, that was not the case. Many of the new features are tightly dependant on business logic which I am unfamiliar with. As a solo programmer, the first year was spent solely on deciphering the excel workbook and writing the C# app. In theory, I had the business people to "help" me specify requirements, how GUI looks and work, and testing of the app etc; but in practice it is like a contant tsunami of feature creep. At the beginning of the second year I managed to convince the management that this is not going anywhere. I made them start from scratch with the excel-VBA. I have this "issue log" saved on the network, each time they found something they didn't like about the excel-VBA app, they will write it in there. I check the log daily and consolidate issues (in my mind) mainly into 2 groups: (1) requires massive change. (2) can be fixed in current version. For massive change issues, I make a copy of the latest excel-VBA and give it a new version number, then work on it whenever I can. For current version fixes, I make the changes in a few days to a week, and then immediately release it. I also ensure I update the same change in any in-progress massive change future versions. This has gone on for about 4 months and I feel it works great. I made many releases and solved many real issues, also understood the business logic more and more. However, my boss (non-IT trained) thinks what I am doing are just adhoc changes and that i am not looking at the "bigger picture". I am struggling to convince my boss that this works. So I hope to formalise my approach and maybe borrow a buzzword to confuse him. Incidentally, I read about Agile and SCRUM, about backlog and sprints. But it's all very vague to me still. QUESTION (finally): I want to tell him that this is SCRUM! But I want to hold my breath first and ask whether my current approach is considered SCRUM or SCRUM-like? How can I make it more SCRUM-like? Note that I have only myself, there's no project leader or teams.

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• Your Cinnamon Roll & Morning Coffee: Powered by Oracle Enterprise Manager

  - by Ruma Sanyal

  1024x768 Truth be told, as I was getting my morning coffee today, I was pondering the recent election results more than Oracle [there, I said it]. But then an email from Glen Hawkins from the Enterprise Management team hit my Inbox and I started viewing this video. It was about the world’s largest convenience store chain, 7-Eleven, focusing on creating the best Digital Guest Experience (DGE) for their customers. Turns out that Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) powers 7-Eleven’s DGE Middleware Platform as a Service solution that consists of Oracle SOA Suite, Exalogic, and Exadata. “We need to present a consistent view of 7-Eleven across all our endpoints: 10,000 stores & various digital entities like our websites and apps”, said Ronald Clanton, the DGE Program Director for 7-Eleven. As 7-Eleven was rolling out a loyalty program with mobile support across multiple geos, it had many complex business & technical requirements, including supporting a wide variety of different apps, 10M guests in NA alone, ability to support high speed transactions, and very aggressive timelines. A key requirement was shortening the cycle for provisioning new environments. Whereas with other vendors this would take a few weeks, Oracle consulting showed them how with OEM provisioning new environments would take half a day, which was quite impressive. 7-Eleven has started to roll out this new program and are delighted to report that some provisioning cycles are as low as 10 minutes which includes provisioning the full Oracle SOA suite, Exalogic and more. They are delighted with OEM’s reporting capabilities and customization thereof. Watch the video to see for yourself. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Changing Your Design for Testability

  Sometimes I come across a way of putting something that it is pithy good, not Hallmark trite, but an impactful and concise way of clarifying a previously obscure concept. A recent one of these happy occurrences was when I was reading the excellent Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. After going through the basics of why youd want to test code and how to do it, Roy confronts a frequent objection to having unit tests, that it ends up changing how you design your components: When we write unit tests for our code, we are adding another end user (the test) to the object model. That end user is just as important as the original one, but it has different goals when using the model.  The test has specific requirements from the object model that seem to defy the basic logic behind a couple of object-oriented principles, mainly encapsulation. [emphasis added by me] When I read this, something clicked for me. I used to find it persuasive that because unit tests caused you to change your design they were more disruptive than they were worth. The counter argument I heard is that the disruption was OK, because testable design was just obviously better. That argument was not convincing as it seemed like delusional arrogance to suggest that any one of type of design was just inherently better for the particular applications I was building. What was missing was that I was not thinking of unit tests as an additional and equal end user to my design. If I accepted that proposition, than it was indeed obvious that a testable design was better because now all users of my component would be satisfied. Have I accepted that proposition? Id phrase it slightly different. I find more and more that having unit tests helps me write better, less buggy code before it gets to production or QA. As I write more unit tests, it gets easier to see how to create testable components, so I dont feel like its taking me as much extra time up front. I pick and choose components that seem most likely to benefit from automated tests and it is working out nicely. If you already implement Test Driven Development, this whole post was probably a waste of your time <g> If you hate the idea of unit tests, well, probably not a great value prop for you either. However, if you are somewhere in between, at least take a minute and check out a sample chapter from Roys book at: http://www.manning.com/osherove/.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• New grad; To overcome complete lack of experience, should I ditch a creative pet project in lieu of one that would demonstrate more applicable skills?

  - by Hart Simha

  I am currently working on a project on github that I think would be a good demonstration of my initiative, creativity and enthusiasm. It is an educational game I am developing in pygame that enables the user to learn to improve their development productivity by using vim, specifically with python, though learning to code faster with vim should be transferable to any language. I think this is something that might have a mass appeal and benefit to a lot of people in a measurable way. -However- I am graduating from college in a month (my degree is computer science with a minor in English), with no experience that is relevant to helping me get any kind of job in the field, and a gpa that doesn't tout my merits. I could pursue a career in game development, but it's not necessarily what I'm most interested in, and see myself applying to startups around the country. To the places I am looking at applying, showing that I have experience with pygame is going to be largely irrelevant, except in demonstration of my ability to code, period. A lot of skills that ARE more marketable, such a data modeling, GIS, mobile application, development, javascript, .net framework, and various web development technologies, are not going to be showcased by this project (on the upside, employers do like to see familiarity with git and python). I'm wondering if I should sink all my free time in the next couple of months into this project, since I'm motivated and interested in it, and if the value of being able to demonstrate ambition and 'good ideas' (for lack of a better term, and in my own opinion) will compensate for the absence of demonstrating more sought-after skills. I am probably at a point where I should either commit fully to this project now, or put it on the backburner in favor of something else, and I am leaning towards continuing with what I am already working on, because I think it's a great idea, and something achievable to me with enough dedication over the next couple months. But the most important thing to me is being able to get a job out of college, which I am exceedingly concerned about as the professional landscape which I am navigating for the first time is a lot more intimidating than I could have anticipated, with almost every job (even short-term contract positions) requiring years of experience which I lack. So in brief, the common denominator to answering the question "How can I overcome experience requirements for a job" seems to be "Show off your own project." I want to know WHICH project I should work on to best increase my chances of getting a job out of college, keeping in mind that I have no experience. I believe this question is applicable to any new grad that lacks demonstrable experience.

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• Problem Solving vs. Solution Finding

  - by ryanabr

  By enlarge, most developers fall into these two camps I will try to explain what I mean by way of example. A manager gives the developer a task that is communicated like this: “Figure out why control A is not loading on this form”. Now, right there it could be argued that the manager should probably have given better direction and said something more like: “Control A is not loading on the Form, fix it”. They might sound like the same thing to most people, but the first statement will have the developer problem solving the reason why it is failing. The second statement should have the developer looking for the solution to make it work, not focus on why it is broken. In the end, they might be the same thing, but I usually see the first approach take way longer than the second approach. The Problem Solver: The problem solver’s approach to fixing something that is broken is likely to take the error or behavior that is being observed and start to research it using a tool like Google, or any other search engine. 7/10 times this will yield results for the most common of issues. The challenge is in the other 30% of issues that will take the problem solver down the rabbit hole and cause them not to surface for days on end while every avenue is explored for the cause of the problem. In the end, they will probably find the cause of the issue and resolve it, but the cost can be days, or weeks of work. The Solution Finder: The solution finder’s approach to a problem will begin the same way the Problem Solver’s approach will. The difference comes in the more difficult cases. Rather than stick to the pure “This has to work so I am going to work with it until it does” approach, the Solution Finder will look for other ways to get the requirements satisfied that may or may not be using the original approach. For example. there are two area of an application of externally equivalent features, meaning that from a user’s perspective, the behavior is the same. So, say that for whatever reason, area A is now not working, but area B is working. The Problem Solver will dig in to see why area A is broken, where the Solution Finder will investigate to see what is the difference between the two areas and solve the problem by potentially working around it. The other notable difference between the two types of developers described is what point they reach before they re-emerge from their task. The problem solver will likely emerge with a triumphant “I have found the problem” where as the Solution Finder will emerge with the more useful “I have the solution”. Conclusion At the end of the day, users are what drives features in software development. With out users there is no need for software. In todays world of software development with so many tools to use, and generally tight schedules I believe that a work around to a problem that takes 8 hours vs. the more pure solution to the problem that takes 40 hours is a more fruitful approach.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 10-24-2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Play Oracle Vanquisher Here's a little respite from whatever it is you normally spend your time on. Oracle Vanquisher is an online diversion that makes a game of data center optimization. According to the description: "Armed with a cool Oracle vacuum pack suit and a strategic IT roadmap, you will thwart threats and optimize your data center to increase your company’s stock price and boost your company's position." Mainly you avoid electric shock and killer birds. The current high score belongs to someone identified as "TEN." My score? Never mind. Book: DevOps for Developers | The Java Source The subject of DevOps has come up in a couple of recent OTN ArchBeat Podcasts, so it's somewhat serendipitous that Tori Weildt's recent blog post offers an overview of Java Champion Michael Hutterman's new book, DevOps for Developers, now available from Apress. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) : Context is everything… | The ORACLE-BASE Blog BOYD is a factor in the evolution of IT, but in what context? "The real IT work in companies is still being done on PCs," says Oracle ACE Director Tim Hall. "Yes, you can use a cloud service on your phone, but look around the office and you will see those cloud services are actually being used by people on PCs." Oracle in the Cloud: Oracle EBusiness Suite sizing | Tom Laszewski Cloud expert Tom Laszewski shares several technical resources that will be helpful for sizing of Oracle EBusiness Suite. Setting Up, Configuring, and Using an Oracle WebLogic Server Cluster Author and expert Yuli Vasiliev shows you how take advantage of multiple Oracle WebLogic Server instances grouped into a cluster to maximize scalability and availability. Webcast: Reduce Costs with Oracle's Database Storage Management Watch this! Join Oracle experts Kevin Jernigan and Margaret Hamburger for an interactive webcast in which you'll learn how Oracle's Database Storage Management can reduce storage costs and management complexity while improving query performance to meet service-level agreements and compliance requirements. Event Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2012 Event Time: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET Thought for the Day "Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves." — Alan Kay Source: softwarequotes.com

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• Cloud Infrastructure has a new standard

  - by macoracle

  I have been working for more than two years now in the DMTF working group tasked with creating a Cloud Management standard. That work has culminated in the release today of the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) version 1.0 by the DMTF. CIMI is a single interface that a cloud consumer can use to manage their cloud infrastructure in multiple clouds. As CIMI is adopted by the cloud vendors, no more will you need to adapt client code to each of the proprietary interfaces from these multiple vendors. Unlike a de facto standard where typically one vendor has change control over the interface, and everyone else has to reverse engineer the inner workings of it, CIMI is a de jure standard that is under change control of a standards body. One reason the standard took two years to create is that we factored in use cases, requirements and contributed APIs from multiple vendors. These vendors have products shipping today and as a result CIMI has a strong foundation in real world experience. What does CIMI allow? CIMI is both a model for the resources (computing, storage networking) in the cloud as well as a RESTful protocol binding to HTTP. This means that to create a Machine (guest VM) for example, the client creates a “document” that represents the Machine resource and sends it to the server using HTTP. CIMI allows the resources to be encoded in either JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or the eXentsible Markup Language (XML). CIMI provides a model for the resources that can be mapped to any existing cloud infrastructure offering on the market. There are some features in CIMI that may not be supported by every cloud, but CIMI also supports the discovery of which features are implemented. This means that you can still have a client that works across multiple clouds and is able to take full advantage of the features in each of them. Isn’t it too early for a standard? A key feature of a successful standard is that it allows for compatible extensions to occur within the core framework of the interface itself. CIMI’s feature discovery (through metadata) is used to convey to the client that additional features that may be vendor specific have been implemented. As multiple vendors implement such features, they become candidates to add the future versions of CIMI. Thus innovation can continue in the cloud space without being slowed down by a lowest common denominator type of specification. Since CIMI was developed in the open by dozens of stakeholders who are already implementing infrastructure clouds, I expect to CIMI being adopted by these same companies and others over the next year or two. Cloud Customers who can see the benefit of this standard should start to ask their cloud vendors to show a CIMI implementation in their roadmap.  For more information on CIMI and the DMTF's other cloud efforts, go to: http://dmtf.org/cloud

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