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• Need advice concerning Feature Based Development when knowledge DB is involved

  - by voroninp

  We develop BackOffice application which is used to edit our knowledge DB. Now our main product's development team is shifting to the feature based development and we need to support several DB's with not identical data schemes. (DS changes slightly from DB to DB) The information from knowledge Db is extracted by the script and then is distributed to the clients. We also need to support merging these DB's. We now analyze pros and cons of different approaches. We discuss this one: One working DB (WDB) with one DB for each feature branch (FDB). The approved data is moved from WDB to FDB. So we need to support only one script for each branch. This script will extract data from corresponding FDB. Nevertheless we are to code the differences between FDBs and WDB manually. May be some automatic mapping tools exist? I also wish to know whether classic solutions to the alike problems already exist. Can anyone share the best practices for this case?

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• Can it be a good idea to lease a house rather than a standard office-space for a software development shop? [closed]

  - by hamlin11

  Our lease is up on our US-based office-space in July, so it's back on my radar to evaluate our office-space situation. Two of our partners rather like the idea of leasing a house rather than standard office-space. We have 4 partners and one employee. I'm against the idea at this moment in time. Pros, as I see them Easier to get a good location (minimize commutes) All partners/employees have dogs. Easier to work longer hours without dog-duties pulling people back home More comfortable bathroom situation Residential Internet Rate Control of the thermostat Clients don't come to our office, so this would not change our image The additional comfort-level should facilitate a significantly higher-percentage of time "in the zone" for programmers and artists. Cons, as I see them Additional bills to pay (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric) Additional time-overhead in dealing with bills (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric) Additional overhead required to deal with issues that maintenance would have dealt with in a standard office-space Residential neighbors to contend with The equation starts to look a little nasty when factoring in potential time-overhead, especially on issues that a maintenance crew would deal with at a standard office complex. Can this be a good thing for a software development shop?

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• How-To: Run CMSDK against a RAC cluster

  - by frank.closheim

  Using CMSDK in a production environment often requires a robust, reliable and failover enabled repository. When using Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) with your CMSDK repository you need to have a specific configuration in place to support such a setup. This post will explain the configuration steps required when running CMSDK 9.0.4.6 with Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS).In the previous CMSDK 9.0.4.2 version a RAC enabled connect string looked like this: (DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = rac1)(PORT = 1521))(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = rac2)(PORT = 1521))(LOAD_BALANCE = NO)(FAILOVER = ON)(CONNECT_DATA =(SERVICE_NAME = rac)(failover_mode = (type=select)(method=basic)))CMSDK 9.0.4.6 makes use of data sources to connect to the underlying database. These data sources are configured inside your Application Server, such as Oracle WebLogic Server.In Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.4, a single data source implementation has been introduced to support an RAC cluster. It responds to Fast Application Notification (FAN) events to provide Fast Connection Failover (FCF), Runtime Connection Load-Balancing (RCLB), and RAC instance graceful shutdown. XA affinity is supported at the global transaction Id level. The new feature is called WebLogic Active GridLink for RAC; which is implemented as the GridLink data source within WebLogic Server.This GridLink data source also works with Oracle Single Client Access Name (SCAN). SCAN is a feature used in RAC environments that provides a single name for clients to access any Oracle Database running in a cluster. You can think of SCAN as a cluster alias for databases in the cluster. The benefit is that the client’s connect information does not need to change if you add or remove nodes or databases in the cluster.The CMSDK 9.0.4.6 documentation describes how to create a regular JDBC data source named jdbc/OracleDS. Please refer to the following document which describes in detail how to create a GridLink data source in WLS.

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• How to optimize calls to multiple APIs at once and return as one set?

  - by Martin

  I have a web app that searches across 2 APIs right now. I have my own Restful web service that I call, and it does all the work on the backend to asynchronously call the 2 APIs and concatenate them into one result set for my web app to use. I want to scale this out and add as many other APIs as I can (currently looking at about 10 more). But as I add APIs, the call to my service gets (potentially) slower and more complex. How do I handle one API not responding ... and other issues that arise? What would be the best way to approach this? Should I create a service call for each API, that way each one is independent and not coupled to all the other calls? Is there a way on the backend to handle the multiple API calls without all the extra complexity it adds? If I go the route of a service call per API, now my client code gets more complex (and I have a lot of clients)? And it's more work for the client, and since I have mobile apps, it will cost the client more data usage. If I go one service call, is there a way to set up some sort of connection so I can return data as I get it, in case one service call hangs?

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• A simple example of movement prediction

  - by Daniel

  I've seen lots of examples of theory about the reason for client-side prediction, but I'm having a hard time converting it into code. I was wondering if someone knows of some specific examples that share some of the code, or can share their knowledge to shed some light into my situation. I'm trying to run some tests to get a the movement going (smoothly) between multiple clients. I'm using mouse input to initiate movement. I'm using AS3 and C# on a local Player.IO server. Right now I'm trying to get the Client side working, as I'm only forwarding position info with the client. I have 2 timers, one is an onEnterFrame and the other is a 100ms Timer, and one on mouseClick listener. When I click anywhere with a mouse, I update my player class to give it a destination point On every enterFrame Event for the player, it moves towards the destination point At every 100ms it sends a message to the server with the position of where it should be in a 100ms. The distance traveled is calculated by taking the distance (in Pixels) that the player can travel in one second, and dividing it by the framerate for the onEnterFrame handler, and by the update frequency (1/0.100s) for the server update. For the other Players, the location is interpolated and animated on every frame based on the new location. Is this the right way of doing it?

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• XAML RadControls are out with Q1 2010 SP1

  Our main focus with Q1 2010 SP1 release is the official launch of RadControls for Silverlight 4 RTW. Shortly after the official announcement on April 15th we delivered the natively built suite on Silverlight 4 to empower our clients with the advantages of the new capabilities for developing robust enterprise applications. The suite features support for both Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010. With Q1 2010 SP1 we have delivered installations for both Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4. Well keep the support for Silverlight 3 with full installations until the Q2 2010 release and after that will ship upgrades only with binaries. The binaries for Silverlight 3 will contain only major bug fixes but wont include new features. This support will be discontinued with our Q3 release when we believe the full adoption of VS 2010 and Silverlight 4 will be completed. Another important note regarding the current ...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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• Contractor - Mispaid again - Walked out

  - by MeshMan

  Hi all, I'm wondering whether or not I've done the right thing as a contractor. Basically I'm in to my 3rd month, and my current client messed up the payment in the first month, and I just found out that they are again late in paying me for my 2nd month. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't in a bit of a financial situation due to this being my first contract experience. But as a matter of principal, I walked out on them and will be telling them that I will not be going back in until they resolve the pay. Part of me feels as though this was not a very professional thing to do, but I also don't feel that it was very professional for them to mess my payments up, twice in a row. Did I make the right decision? I still want to work for these guys and enjoy the job, but I have a life to attend to that requires finances and I can't afford to keep getting messed up with pay like this. I attempted to phrase the question to be oriented around contractors behaviour around clients that mis-treat them, and as some of the answers that have been posted so far, it's a good discussion. The answers coming in are great around different subjective situations.

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• Is there a way to save MS Word document as HTML w/o the ms proprietary stuff?

  - by sequoia mcdowell

  So normally I wouldn't use this feature ("Save as Web Page") but I have large documents from clients they just want put on their site as HTML, and formatting it all by hand seems like a waste of time. I have tried "save as webpage" in Word 2007, but it produces all sorts of bad stuff. To wit: <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> as well as a large block of XML formatting info: <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Subject> </o:Subject> <o:Author> </o:Author> <o:Keywords> </o:Keywords> ... As I said, formatting it all by hand seems like a waste of time, but the way MS exports currently just has too much cruft. Is there a way to export MS Word doc as html without all this?

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• Should I listen to my employer and use CASE tools?

  - by omsharp

  My employer (Not a Developer) thinks that CASE tools will help us improve our development process and documentation. I am not sure about that, we are a small team of 5 developers building mobile banking solutions for local clients. I think CASE tools will be a waste of time and money as they need to be purchased and we will need some time before we get used to them and be efficient working with them for modeling and stuff. Code generation is another issue, I really think that the CASE generated code won't be as good as code written by good developers. I think that if we stick with agile princeliness, design patterns, use TDD, and keep our code clean. we should be good. And as far as Analysis and Design, I think simple UML diagrams on whiteboard should do the trick. Documentation is good and important, but should be made as little as possible and we should not focus on Docs and forget the code. This is what i think. Am I correct? or should I listen to my employer and start researching for an appropriate CASE Tool?

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• PPT Leveraging Azure for Performance Testing

  - by Tarun Arora

  I have recently presented a session on “How you can leverage Azure for Performance Testing” your application.  It goes without saying that performance testing your application not only gives you the confidence that the application will work under heavy levels of stress but also gives you the ability to test how scalable the architecture of your application is. It is important to know how much is too much for your application! Working with various clients in the industry I have realized that the biggest barrier in Load Testing & Performance Testing adoption is the high infrastructure and administration cost that comes with this phase of testing. In the session I tried to demonstrate how you can use the power of Windows Azure to effectively abstract the administration cost of infrastructure management and lower the total cost of Load & Performance Testing. You can view the session presentation here, http://www.slideshare.net/aroratarun/leveraging-azure-for-performance-testing  I’ll be adding a video on this subject shortly… If you have any feedback or further suggestions to add to the goodness of this solution please get in touch.

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• CSOM (Client Side Object Model) - What's new with SharePoint 2013

  - by KunaalKapoor

  SharePoint CSOMThe Client-Side Object Model or CSOM came out with SharePoint 2010. CSOM is accessible through client.svc but all client.svc calls must go through supported WFC entry points (supported entry points are .NET, Silverlight and JavaScript). So a developer would need to use client side proxy objects exposed by either a .NET assembly or a JavaScript library. Changes with SharePoint 2013REST Capabilities - Direct access to client.svcNew APIs - App ModelREST CapabilitiesOne of the most important changes to the CSOM with SharePoint 2013 is that the web service entry point of client.svc has been extended to allow direct access  via REST-Based web service calls. This is a really critical change since its going to make the SharePoint platform accessible to any other platform, opening the horizons of integration and collaboration with other REST based platforms and devices. OData (a really popular standard data access API for HTTP-based clients) is supported similar to 2010 but will be a more important aspect of SharePoint 2013 development.New API'sCSOM for SharePoint 2013 has been buffed up with several new APIs for not only SharePoint server functionality but also an API for Windows Phone applications. For a SharePoint 2010 farm most of the new APIs mentioned below are available only via server side APIs:SearchTaxonomyPublishingWorkflowUser ProfilesE-DiscoveryAnalyticsBusiness DataIRMFeedsSharePoint 2013 remote APIs being accessible through both CSOM and REST is very important to the new app model where developers can no longer run code in a SharePoint environment nor can they access the server-side APIs. So CSOM plays the savior here.Also, you can now substitute the alias '_api' in order to reference '_vti_bin/client.svc'.

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• High Availability

  - by mattjgilbert

  Udi Dahan presented at the UK Connected Systems User Group last night. He discussed High Availability and pointed out that people often think this is purely an infrastructure challenge. However, the implications of system crashes, errors and resulting data loss need to be considered and managed by software developers. In addition a system should remain both highly reliable (backwardly compatible) and available during deployments and upgrades. The argument is that you cannot be considered highly available if your system is always down every time you upgrade. For our recent BizTalk 2009 upgrade we made use of our Business Continuity servers (note the name, rather than calling them Disaster Recovery servers ? ) to ensure our clients could continue to operate while we upgraded the Production BizTalk servers. Then we failed back to the newly built 2009 environment and rebuilt the BC servers. Of course, in the event of an actual disaster there was a window where either one or the other set were not available to take over – however, our Staging machines were already primed to switch to production settings, having been used for testing the upgrade in the first place.   While not perfect (the failover between environments was not automatic and without some minimal outage) planning the upgrade in this way meant BizTalk was online during the rebuild and upgrade project, we didn’t have to rush things to get back on-line and planning meant we were ready to be as available as we could be in the event of an actual disaster.

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• Is my client correct that I cannot take a vacation as a subcontractor? [closed]

  - by Rae Ann

  I have 2 clients who I do ongoing work for as a subcontractor. Both are sporadic and part-time. Company A sent me to a 3 day certification course out of state. The following week I was scheduled for a 3 day vacation. I warned company B three weeks prior to these events. During my training that Company A was paying for, Company B asked me to leave the training to workon something for them that needed immediate attention. I declined. However I made arrangements to work on it in the evening and in the early mornings after they threatened to take the work and all subsequent work for this client to someone else. I lost all networking and fun from that trip... The following week I was in Florida and was again asked to do more work on the project after the feedback from the client. The integrated product personnel would not cooperate/return any of our calls so I did the best I could. I turned in the work, explained the issue and then was gone for 3 hours. When I returned, all my access to the project had been revoked and after a week of my calls and emails I found out they replaced me. I sent an invoice 3 weeks ago and they tell me they owe me nothing because I did not do the whole project and they cannot bill the client for what I did, because they are billing for the second contractor who started over. I was told that they realize I was on vacation but as a subcontractor I lose the ability to just disappear. I was gone 3 hours! Is this normal, correct, legal?? Not only did they ruin my class and my vacation, but now they expect me to not demand payment? They ended our relationship and I was in the middle of another project of theirs too. They told me to immediately cease all work for them. How do I get paid for the work I have yet to invoice this month?

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• In which fields does quality of the software product matter as much as the completion time?

  - by Nav

  Someone told me that if the software product meets clients expectations, it is good quality. But I've worked with Interaction Designers (the same kind of people who made Gmail's interface and usability so cool!), and I've loved working with them because even though they came up with hundreds of changes in requirements, and emphasised on many many subtle details, when the software was complete, I could look at the product and say WOW! The current place I work, the only thing that matters is completing the project on time. As long as it works and as long as the client says it's ok, nobody bothers to improve it. I'm not talking about gold-plating, but I believe that for a programmer to enjoy his (well, maybe her too ;) ) job, they should be able to proudly say that "Hey, I made that software" and that comes only when the product is of good quality. Apart from your opinions on this, I'd also like to know which fields (Eg. Aerospace, Finance etc.) could I find companies (or you could mention the company name) where the quality of a product is as important as completing the project on time?

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• ubuntu 12.10 Lenovo b570e, WiFi connected but not working

  - by koogee

  I'm running ubuntu 12.10 liveUSB on a lenovo b570e. It has an atheros wifi card that connects with my home network but I can't browse AT ALL. My network is multiple clients --> router --> isp modem --> Internet I can ping my router (192.168.0.1) but not my isp's modem(192.168.15.1). I have 3 other computers connected to the same router that are working fine (infact i'm posting from one) ping -c 3 google.com unknown host google.com ping -c 3 8.8.8.8 shows 100% packet loss I think its some networking issue. I tried directly connecting it to the router via ethernet cable but same issue. It gets an ip, shows LAN connected but can't browse. If I connect it directly to the isp modem via ethernet cable it starts working fine. Connection Information shows: Interface: 802.11 wifi (wlan0) driver: ath9k security: wpa/wpa2 speed: 150mb/s ip: 192.168.0.106 broadcast: 192.168.0.255 subnet:255.255.255.0 default route: 192.168.0.1 primary dns: 192.168.15.1 i have restarted the router and modem many times. Rebooted the LiveUSB many times.

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• How do I break down and plan a personal programming project?

  - by Pureferret

  I've just started a programming job where I'm applying my 'How to code' knowledge to what I'm being taught of 'How to Program' (They are different!). As part of this, I've been taught how to capture requirements from clients before starting a new project. But... How do I do this for a nebulous personal project? I say nebulous, as I often find halfway through programming something, I want to expand what my program will do, or alter the result. Eventually, I'm tangled in code and have to restart. This can be frustrating and off-putting. Conversely, when given a fixed task and fixed requirements, it's much easier to dig in and get it done. At work I might be told "Today/This week you need to add XYZ to program 1" That is easy to do. At home (for fun) I want to make, say, a program that creates arbitrary lists. It's a very generic task. How do I start with that? I don't need it to do anything, but I want it to do something. So how do I plan a personal programming project? Related: What to plan before starting development on a project?

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• Is it possible to use 3G internet for a TCP/IP game server?

  - by Amit Ofer

  I'm working on a turned based multiplayer android game with a friend. I started working on the game server and client using socket programming. I found a few tutorials on how to implement a basic chat on android and I started extending that example to suit my needs. Basically the game is really simple and the communication only include sending a few string from the client to the server every turn and sending the calculated scores back to all the clients after each turn. the idea is that one of the players creates the game and thus initialize the server, and each player connects to this client using ip. I tried this solution and it seems to work great when all the players are using the same wifi connection or by using router port forwarding. The problem is when trying to use 3G internet for the server, I guess the problem is that 3G ip address isn't global and you can't use port forwarding there, correct me if I'm wrong here. Is there a way to overcome this issue? or the only solution is to limit my game to wifi only or think of a different solution than the standard socket programming solution? I.E web server etc. what do you think would be the best approach here? Thanks.

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• design an extendible and pluggable business logic flow handler in php

  - by Broncha

  I am working on a project where I need to allow a pluggable way to inject business processes in the normal data flow. eg There is an ordering system. The standard flow of the application is A consumer orders an item. Pays for it and card is authorized. Admin captures the payment. Order is marked as complete and item is shipped. But this process may vary (extra steps in between) for different clients. Say a client would need to validate the location of the consumer before he is presented with a credit card form, OR his policies might require some other processes in between. I am thinking of using State Pattern for processing orders, saving the current state of the order in database, and initializing the state of order from the saved state. I would also need some mechanism, where a small plugin would be able to inject business specific states in the state machine. Am I thinking the right way? Are there already implemented patterns for this kind of situation? I am working with Codeigniter and basically this would mean for me, to redirect to proper controller according to the current state of the order. Like, if the state of the order is unconfirmed then redirect the user to details page and then change the state to pending. If some client would need to do some validation, then register an intermediate state between unconfirmed and pending Please suggest.

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• Did C++11 address concerns passing std lib objects between dynamic/shared library boundaries? (ie dlls and so)?

  - by Doug T.

  One of my major complaints about C++ is how hard in practice it is to pass std library objects outside of dynamic library (ie dll/so) boundaries. The std library is often header-only. Which is great for doing some awesome optimizations. However, for dll's, they are often built with different compiler settings that may impact the internal structure/code of a std library containers. For example, in MSVC one dll may build with iterator debugging on while another builds with it off. These two dlls may run into issues passing std containers around. If I expose std::string in my interface, I can't guarantee the code the client is using for std::string is an exact match of my library's std::string. This leads to hard to debug problems, headaches, etc. You either rigidly control the compiler settings in your organization to prevent these issues or you use a simpler C interface that won't have these problems. Or specify to your clients the expected compiler settings they should use (which sucks if another library specifies other compiler settings). My question is whether or not C++11 tried to do anything to solve these issues?

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• Storage of leftover values in a situation of having to round down

  - by jt0dd

  I'm writing an app (client and server side) where the number of sales required by each employee must be kept track of in round-number form. Each month, the employees are required to sell a certain number, and this app needs to keep track of how many sales must be made for each 12 hour interval during the work week. Because I have to round the values down to a whole number, I must keep track of leftovers in the rounding process and ensure that they are always carried over. My method must ensure the storage of the leftover value even when client and server side crash, restart, close, etc. Right now, I'm working on doing this by storing the leftovers in a field in the user's account row in the database each time a value is rounded, reading the stored value, removing any portion that is used (when a whole number is reached, most of the leftover is used up), and storing the new value. This practice seems weird because while the leftovers are calculated on the client side, it's the same number for each employee, and every employee using the app is storing a copy of the same leftover data. Alternatively, I could have all clients store the data at once into the same data field on a general table, but this is just as weird. Is there a better way that this can be handled or is my method correct?

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• 724% Return on an SFA project with Oracle Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud combined!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Oracle Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud customer Apex IT gained just that?a 724% return on investment (ROI) when it implemented these Oracle Cloud solutions in its fast-moving, rapidly-growing business. Apex IT was just announced as a winner of the Nucleus Research 11th annual Technology ROI Awards. The award, given by the analyst firm, highlights organizations that have successfully leveraged IT deployments to maximize value per dollar spent. Fast Facts: Return on Investment – 724% Payback – 2 months Average annual benefit – $91,534 Cost : Benefit Ratio – 1:48 Business Benefits In addition to the ROI and cost metrics the award calls out improvements in Apex IT’s business operations—across both Sales and Marketing teams: Improved ability to identify new opportunities and focus sales resources on higher-probability deals Reduced administration and manual lead tracking—resulting in more time selling and a net new client increase of 46% Increased campaign productivity for both Marketing and Sales, including Oracle Marketing Cloud’s automation of campaign tracking and nurture programs Improved margins with more structured and disciplined sales processes—resulting in more effective deal negotiations Read the full Apex IT ROI Case Study. You also can learn more about Apex IT’s business, including the company’s work with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud on behalf of its clients. You can point your prospects and customers to the CX blog for a similar recap of the Apex IT award and a link to the Case Study.

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• Non-dynamic CMS [closed]

  - by user20457

  Some of the web sites I visit every day (news, sports, etc..), although the content changes very often (several times per day), the URLs always have .html extension, what makes me thing that the content has been generated once, and then published as a static page, rather than generated in every call, or even cached in memory. For example, the fictitious site "mysports.com" have a "futbol.html" page, and then yesterday Messi gets injured and they have another thing to put in that page, then I presume they post the new item in their CMS system, and automatically a publishing action is triggered aftewards that recreates "futbol.html" in a CDN with the new item and probably discard the oldest one. Then the ETag changes and clients will get the new page if they try to access it. (the site is fictitious but this is what I believe happened yesterday in the sports site I read) This would fit in the CQRS approach, and I presume they have a huge performance. I know lots of CMS (WP, Drupal, BlogEngine.net, DNN, etc...), but I have never seen any able of doing this, or at least, I was not aware this feautre. How are called those distributed CMS? Which are the most well known? Cheers.

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• Resume on 30 Days of SharePoint

  Dear readers, as you might have noticed... It was an organisational desaster on my end! Even though I continued my studies and research on Microsoft SharePoint 2013 during the last 30 days, I wasn't able to write an article a day to keep you posted on my progress. Nonetheless, I gathered a good number of additional blogs, mainly SharePoint MVP sites, and online forums which will be helpful in the next couple of weeks while I'm actually going to develop a C#-based client which will enable an existing 'legacy' application to SharePoint as a document management system (DMS) besides other already existing solutions. Finding excuses Well, no. Not really. I simply didn't block any or enough time every day to write down my progress during my own challenge. My log book on learning about SharePoint stands at 41 hours and 15 minutes during this month. Which means that I spent an average of more than 1 hour per day on getting into SharePoint. I know that might sound a little bit low but also keep in mind that I went for the challenge on top of my daily job and private responsibilities. During the same period there had been two priority 0 incidents from clients - external root cause - which took presedence over this leisure project. More to come Anyway, it was a first trial and despite the low level of reporting on my blog, I'm confident about what I learned during the last 30 days, and I'm ready to implement the client's requirements. At least, I would say that I have a better understanding about the road map or the path to walk during the next month. As time and secrecy allows I'm going to note down some bits and pieces... During the process of development, I'm going to 'cheat' on the challenge summary article and add links to those new entries. Just for the sake of completeness. Next challenge? Hmm, there had been ideas during the last meetup of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) regarding certifications in IT and eventually we might organise some kind of a study group for specific exams, most probably Microsoft exams towards MCSD Web Developer or Windows Developer.

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• What technologies are needed to be a freelance web developer / designer targeting small businesses?

  - by Jason Wirth

  First off, I'm not looking for this answer: "learn PHP/MySQL, JQuery, HTML/CSS...." My background, I wear many hats, and do many things. Currently I manage investment accounts with a business partner who is also a friend. He happens to be attending business / law school perusing a joint JD and MBA. As a result, we're putting our into "coast", maintaining our current clients, but not acquiring more. Recently I've picked up some freelance graphic design / web development / online marketing side work (Photoshop, HTML/CSS, WordPress) through some personal networks. The work is enjoyable; now I'm thinking about expanding it into a larger business with these primary goals: augment my finances (I'm shooting for about $1,000-2,000 per mo.), learn new technologies, involve myself with meaningful work. As an entrepreneur I don't mind the aspects of running a business that hassle other freelancers... -- the marketing -- the billing -- etc. I'm considering targeting the small to middle market businesses and organizations where I can contribute in marketing, design, and development building projects from the ground up. Thus I'll have freedom to decide the specific technology (I won't have to work with an existing code base). What kinds of projects should I focus on? What technologies are a good fit for this style of work? For example: It might be fun to develop with Ruby on Rails. However, maybe a lot of projects would be rolling out e-commerce solutions. Thus, I should focus on PHP due to more shopping cart options, skipping ROR entirely.

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• The (non) Importance of Language

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  Working with a variety of clients on EA initiatives one begins to realize that not everyone is a fan of EA. Specifically, they are not a fan of the "a-word". Some organizations have abused this term with creating and assigning the title to just about anyone who demonstrates above average prowess with a particular technology. Other organizations will assign the title to those managers left with no staff after a reorg. Some companies, unfortunately, have simply had a bad go of it with regard to EA...or any "A" for that matter. What we call "EA" is almost irrelevant. But what is not negotiable for those to succeed in business is to manage change. That is what EA is all about. I recall sitting in Zachman training led by himself. He posits the only organizations that don't need EA (or whatever you want to call it) are those that are not changing. My experience suggests those orgs that aren't changing aren't growing. And if you aren't growing, you're dying. Any EA program will not succeed unless there is a desire to change. No desire to change suggests the EA/Advisor/Change Agent should just walk the other way.

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