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  • Using Definition of Done to Drive Agile Maturity

    - by Dylan Smith
    I’ve been an Agile Coach at a lot of different clients over the years, and I want to share an approach I use to help them adopt and mature over time. It’s important to realize that “Agile” is not a black/white yes/no thing. Teams can be varying degrees of agile. I think of this as their agile maturity level. When I coach teams I want them to start out being a little agile, and get more agile as they mature. The approach I teach them is to use the definition of done as a technique to continuously improve their agile maturity over time. We’re probably all familiar with the concept of “Done Done” that represents what *actually* being done a feature means. Not just when a developer says he’s done right after he writes that last line of code that makes the feature kind-of work. Done Done means the coding is done, it’s been tested, installers and deployment packages have been created, user manuals have been updated, architecture docs have been updated, etc. To enable teams to internalize the concept of “Done Done”, they usually get together and come up with their Definition of Done (DoD) that defines all the activities that need to be completed before a feature is considered Done Done. The Done Done technique typically is applied only to features (aka User Stories). What I do is extend this to apply to several concepts such as User Stories, Sprints, Releases (and sometimes Check-Ins). During project kick-off I’ll usually sit down with the team and go through an exercise of creating DoD’s for each of these concepts (Stories/Sprints/Releases). We’ll usually start by just brainstorming a bunch of activities that could end up in these various DoD’s. Here’s some examples: Code Reviews StyleCop FxCop User Manuals Updated Architecture Docs Updated Tested by QA Tested by UAT Installers Created Support Knowledge Base Updated Deployment Instructions (for Ops) written Automated Unit Tests Run Automated Integration Tests Run Then we start by arranging these activities into the place they occur today (e.g. Do you do UAT testing only once per release? every sprint? every feature?). If the team was previously Waterfall most of these activities probably end up in the Release DoD. An extremely mature agile team would probably have most of these activities in the DoD for the User Stories (because an extremely mature agile team will probably do continuous deployment and release every story). So what we need to do as a team, is work to move these activities from their current home (Release DoD) down into the Sprint DoD and eventually into the User Story DoD (and maybe into the lower-level Check-In DoD if we decide to use that). We don’t have to move them all down to User Story immediately, but as a team we figure out what we think we’re capable of moving down to the Sprint cycle, and Story cycle immediately, and that becomes our starting DoD’s. Over time the team makes an effort to continue moving activities down from Release->Sprint->Story as they become more agile and more mature. I try to encourage them to envision a world in which they deploy to production as each User Story is completed. They would need to be updating User Manuals, creating installers, doing UAT testing (typical Release cycle activities) on every single User Story. They may never actually reach that point, but they should envision that, and strive to keep driving the activities down closer to the User Story cycle s they mature. This is a great technique to give a team an easy-to-follow roadmap to mature their agile practices over time. Sure there’s other aspects to maturity outside of this, but it’s a great technique, that’s easy to visualize, to drive agility into the team. Just keep moving those activities (aka “gates”) down the board from Release->Sprint->Story. I’ll try to give an example of what a recent client of mine had for their DoD’s (this is from memory, so probably not 100% accurate): Release Create/Update deployment Instructions For Ops Instructional Videos Updated Run manual regression test suite UAT Testing In this case that meant deploying to an environment shared across the enterprise that mirrored production and asking other business groups to test their own apps to ensure we didn’t break anything outside our system Sprint Deploy to UAT Environment But not necessarily actually request UAT testing occur User Guides updated Sprint Features Video Created In this case we decided to create a video each sprint showing off the progress (video version of Sprint Demo) User Story Manual Test scripts developed and run Tested by BA Deployed in shared QA environment Using automated deployment process Peer Code Review Code Check-In Compiled (warning-free) Passes StyleCop Passes FxCop Create installer packages Run Automated Tests Run Automated Integration Tests PS – One of my clients had a great question when we went through this activity. They said that if a Sprint is by definition done when the end-date rolls around (time-boxed), isn’t a DoD on a sprint meaningless – it’s done on the end-date regardless of whether those other activities are complete or not? My answer is that while that statement is true – the sprint is done regardless when the end date rolls around – if the DoD activities haven’t been completed I would consider the Sprint a failure (similar to not completing what was committed/planned – failure may be too strong a word but you get the idea). In the Retrospective that will become an agenda item to discuss and understand why we weren’t able to complete the activities we agreed would need to be completed each Sprint.

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  • realistically speaking, could a seasoned .net developer enter the java space and land a job?

    - by mrblah
    I've been working with .net since 2001, and I am considering making a move into the java space. I find that java has so many more mature tools (hibernate is more mature, spring framework, established patters/designs, containers, distributed cache frameworks, etc etc.) I have been doing .net, and just recently I have been getting into design patterns, ORMS, etc. and it just seems the .net side of things are not as mature. Yes the trend going forward looks great as more and more are getting into this design strategy etc. I don't want this to get into a flame war, but I read that its not about the framework/stack, but the tools around it are what make the difference. And to me Java seems to be the winner. Anyhow, the real question here is, could I realistically get into shape in 6 months? i.e. Someone would consider hiring me, and not at a junior dev pay rate? Is this a bad idea?

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  • Very simple, terse and easy GUI programming “frameworks”

    - by jetxee
    Please list GUI programming libraries, toolkits, frameworks which allow to write GUI apps quickly. I mean in such a way, that GUI is described entirely in a human-readable (and human-writable) plain text file (code) code is terse (1 or 2 lines of code per widget/event pair), suitable for scripting structure and operation of the GUI is evident from the code (nesting of widgets and flow of events) details about how to build the GUI are hidden (things like mainloop, attaching event listeners, etc.) auto-layouts are supported (vboxes, hboxes, etc.) As answers suggest, this may be defined as declarative GUI programming, but it is not necessarily such. Any approach is OK if it works, is easy to use and terse. There are some GUI libraries/toolkits like this. They are listed below. Please extend the list if you see a qualifying toolkit missing. Indicate if the project is crossplatform, mature, active, and give an example if possible. Please use this wiki to discuss only Open Source projects. This is the list so far (in alphabetical order): Fudgets Fudgets is a Haskell library. Platform: Unix. Status: Experimental, but still maintained. An example: import Fudgets main = fudlogue (shellF "Hello" (labelF "Hello, world!" >+< quitButtonF)) GNUstep Renaissance Renaissance allows to describe GUI in simple XML. Platforms: OSX/GNUstep. Status: part of GNUstep. An example below: <window title="Example"> <vbox> <label font="big"> Click the button below to quit the application </label> <button title="Quit" action="terminate:"/> </vbox> </window> HTML HTML-based GUI (HTML + JS). Crossplatform, mature. Can be used entirely on the client side. Looking for a nice “helloworld” example. JavaFX JavaFX is usable for standalone (desktop) apps as well as for web applications. Not completely crossplatform, not yet completely open source. Status: 1.0 release. An example: Frame { content: Button { text: "Press Me" action: operation() { System.out.println("You pressed me"); } } visible: true } Screenshot is needed. Phooey Phooey is another Haskell library. Crossplatform (wxWidgets), HTML+JS backend planned. Mature and active. An example (a little more than a helloworld): ui1 :: UI () ui1 = title "Shopping List" $ do a <- title "apples" $ islider (0,10) 3 b <- title "bananas" $ islider (0,10) 7 title "total" $ showDisplay (liftA2 (+) a b) PythonCard PythonCard describes GUI in a Python dictionary. Crossplatform (wxWidgets). Some apps use it, but the project seems stalled. There is an active fork. I skip PythonCard example because it is too verbose for the contest. Shoes Shoes for Ruby. Platforms: Win/OSX/GTK+. Status: Young but active. A minimal app looks like this: Shoes.app { @push = button "Push me" @note = para "Nothing pushed so far" @push.click { @note.replace "Aha! Click!" } } Tcl/Tk Tcl/Tk. Crossplatform (its own widget set). Mature (probably even dated) and active. An example: #!/usr/bin/env wish button .hello -text "Hello, World!" -command { exit } pack .hello tkwait window . tekUI tekUI for Lua (and C). Platforms: X11, DirectFB. Status: Alpha (usable, but API still evolves). An example: #/usr/bin/env lua ui = require "tek.ui" ui.Application:new { Children = { ui.Window:new { Title = "Hello", Children = { ui.Text:new { Text = "_Hello, World!", Style = "button", Mode = "button", }, }, }, }, }:run() Treethon Treethon for Python. It describes GUI in a YAML file (Python in a YAML tree). Platform: GTK+. Status: work in proress. A simple app looks like this: _import: gtk view: gtk.Window() add: - view: gtk.Button('Hello World') on clicked: print view.get_label() Yet unnamed Python library by Richard Jones: This one is not released yet. The idea is to use Python context managers (with keyword) to structure GUI code. See Richard Jones' blog for details. with gui.vertical: text = gui.label('hello!') items = gui.selection(['one', 'two', 'three']) with gui.button('click me!'): def on_click(): text.value = items.value text.foreground = red XUL XUL + Javascript may be used to create stand-alone desktop apps with XULRunner as well as Mozilla extensions. Mature, open source, crossplatform. <?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?> <window id="main" title="My App" width="300" height="300" xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"> <caption label="Hello World"/> </window> Thank your for contributions!

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  • How to create dynamic Scatter Plot/Matrix with labels and categories on both axis in Excel 2010?

    - by user1581900
    Let us consider a following data set: Name | Age | Hair Color ----------------------------- John | Young | Brown Sophie | Old | Blond Adam | Mature| Blond Mark | Teen | Dark Jeremy | Old | Grey Alex | Young | Brown etc... Both Age and Hair Color, can take only defined values(Young/teen/mature/old and Blond/brown/Dark/Grey). Name is the only real variable here. I want to create a Scatter Plot / Matrix that will look something like that: I know that I schould use this tool to add labels to the scatter plot. I also found this youtube video that explains how to display categories on Y-axis Moreover I need the chart to be dynamic as explained in another youtube video. How do I combine all these approaches to get a Scatter Plot with categories as values on both axis?

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  • How to re-configure graphics from Intel integrated to Intel / ATI switchable?

    - by Bucic
    There are lots of 'how to get switchable graphics to work' guides but I found none on how to configure a system for switchable graphics operation on Ubuntu from the ground up, nor explaining the current driver situation for particular computer models (integrated+discrete combinations). Example: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics My system being mature and on Intel integrated card also makes things complicated. System information: Ubuntu 12.04 amd64, installed clean with system configured to use only the integrated Intel card Lenovo Thinkpad T500 Intel GMA 4500MHD / ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 Current situation: Mature and up-to-date system with no configuration changes to what's given above. I've made a backup image of the system (Clonezilla) so regardless of what's written below let's assume it's our starting point. If something in What I have already tried is not clear you may as well diregard it. What I have already tried: Configuring BIOS to switchable graphics and: Installing Additional Hardware drivers - returned an error. Installing proprietary amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.run automatically - system starts to 'low-graphics mode'. Tried fixing as per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI#Manually_installing_Catalyst_12.6.2C_special_case_for_Intel.2BAC8-ATI_hybrid_graphics Got lost, gave up. Please note that while configuring BIOS for integrated graphics only is pretty straightforward, configuring for switchable graphics is not.

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  • Refactoring and Open / Closed principle

    - by Giorgio
    I have recently being reading a web site about clean code development (I do not put a link here because it is not in English). One of the principles advertised by this site is the Open Closed Principle: each software component should be open for extension and closed for modification. E.g., when we have implemented and tested a class, we should only modify it to fix bugs or to add new functionality (e.g. new methods that do not influence the existing ones). The existing functionality and implementation should not be changed. I normally apply this principle by defining an interface I and a corresponding implementation class A. When class A has become stable (implemented and tested), I normally do not modify it too much (possibly, not at all), i.e. If new requirements arrive (e.g. performance, or a totally new implementation of the interface) that require big changes to the code, I write a new implementation B, and keep using A as long as B is not mature. When B is mature, all that is needed is to change how I is instantiated. If the new requirements suggest a change to the interface as well, I define a new interface I' and a new implementation A'. So I, A are frozen and remain the implementation for the production system as long as I' and A' are not stable enough to replace them. So, in view of these observation, I was a bit surprised that the web page then suggested the use of complex refactorings, "... because it is not possible to write code directly in its final form." Isn't there a contradiction / conflict between enforcing the Open / Closed Principle and suggesting the use of complex refactorings as a best practice? Or the idea here is that one can use complex refactorings during the development of a class A, but when that class has been tested successfully it should be frozen?

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  • Is Cassandra production ready for Ruby on Rails?

    - by funkymunky
    I'm working on a project that is considering using Cassandra as a database. We would like to eventually migrate to Cassandra even if we use MySQL to start with, given its scalability. I know that big companies like Facebook, Digg, and recently Twitter is using Cassandra, but I don't believe any of those sites run off Rails. My question is whether or not it's feasible to use Cassandra using Ruby on Rails. Points to consider: We heavily rely on the Authlogic gem. Would switching to Cassandra affect how it works? Are there any mature ruby clients for Cassandra? Looking on Github it seems that fauna's client is the most mature. Has anyone had production experience with it? Appreciate any tips.

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  • FreeBSD or NetBSD based commercial TCP/IP stack vendor?

    - by Vineet
    Hi - Receiving recommendations for commercial TCP/IP stack implementation based on FreeBSD or NetBSD. Requirements are similar to a typical desktop PC running a browser, email and streaming voice/video. Which is to say a rich network functionality for a end-host type of device with mature implementation and reasonable performance. BSD derived network stacks are deployed in wide variety of situations for years and hence have mature implementation. It's supposed to run on a proprietary RTOS. Most vendors I found don't advertise if their stack is based on BSD. Any recommendations? -- Vineet

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  • Migrating from Struts2 to Spring MVC

    - by Vincent Ramdhanie
    Scenario: A fairly mature project uses Struts2 and Spring and Hibernate. I say mature because it has been going on a for a while and there are many struts actions written already. Suppose we wanted to remove Struts2 from the project and instead depend entirely on Spring MVC without rewriting the entire project. Is this something that should even be considered? Are there any migration guides out there? Has anyone done this before and would like to warn me against it?

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  • “Play Now” via website vs. download & install

    - by Inside
    I've spent some time looking over the various threads here on GDSE and also on the regular Stackoverflow site, and while I saw a lot of posts and threads regarding various engines that could be used in game development, I haven't seen very much discussion regarding the various platforms that they can be used on. In particular, I'm talking about browser games vs. desktop games. I want to develop a simple 3D networked multiplayer game - roughly on the graphics level of Paper Mario and gameplay with roughly the same level of interaction as a hack & slash action/adventure game - and I'm having a hard time deciding what platform I want to target with it. I have some experience with using C++/Ogre3D and Python/Panda3D (and also some synchronized/networked programming), but I'm wondering if it's worth it to spend the extra time to learn another language and another engine/toolkit just so that the game can be played in a browser window (I'm looking at jMonkeyEngine right now). Is it worth it to go with engines that are less-mature, have less documentation, have fewer features, and smaller communities* just so that a (possibly?) larger audience can be reached? Does it make sense to even go with a web-environment for the kind of game that I want to make? Does anyone have any experiences with decisions like this? (* With the exception of Flash-based engines it seems like most of the other approaches have downsides when compared to what is available for desktop-based environments. I'd go with Flash, but I'm worried that Flash's 3D capabilities aren't mature enough right now to do what I want easily. There's also Unity3D, but I'm not sure how I feel about that at all. It seems highly polished, but requires a plugin to be downloaded for the game to be played -- at that rate I might as well have players download my game.) For simple & short games the Newgrounds approach (go to the site, click "play now", instant gratification) seems to work well. What about for more complex games? Is there a point where the complexity of a game is enough for people to say "OK, I'm going to download and play that"?

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  • Game development: “Play Now” via website vs. download & install

    - by Inside
    Heyo, I've spent some time looking over the various threads here on gamedev and also on the regular stackoverflow and while I saw a lot of posts and threads regarding various engines that could be used in game development, I haven't seen very much discussion regarding the various platforms that they can be used on. In particular, I'm talking about browser games vs. desktop games. I want to develop a simple 3D networked multiplayer game - roughly on the graphics level of Paper Mario and gameplay with roughly the same level of interaction as a hack & slash action/adventure game - and I'm having a hard time deciding what platform I want to target with it. I have some experience with using C++/Ogre3D and Python/Panda3D (and also some synchronized/networked programming), but I'm wondering if it's worth it to spend the extra time to learn another language and another engine/toolkit just so that the game can be played in a browser window (I'm looking at jMonkeyEngine right now). For simple & short games the newgrounds approach (go to the site, click "play now", instant gratification) seems to work well. What about for more complex games? Is there a point where the complexity of a game is enough for people to say "ok, I'm going to download and play that"? Is it worth it to go with engines that are less-mature, have less documentation, have fewer features, and smaller communities* just so that a (possibly?) larger audience can be reached? Does it make sense to even go with a web-environment for the kind of game that I want to make? Does anyone have any experiences with decisions like this? Thanks! (* With the exception of flash-based engines it seems like most of the other approaches have these downsides when compared to what is available for desktop-based environments. I'd go with flash, but I'm worried that flash's 3D capabilities aren't mature enough right now to do what I want easily. There's also Unity3D, but I'm not sure how I feel about that at all. It seems highly polished, but requires a plugin to be downloaded for the game to be played -- at that rate I might as well have players download my game.)

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  • Is there a good reason I shouldn't use a java applet for a game?

    - by ryeguy
    I want to make a multiplayer browser-based game. The nice thing about using an applet is that I can make the client and the server in the same language (java/closure/scala/etc). I know there's html5 and javascript, but server side javascript isn't as mature as the jvm platform and browser support is still kind of flaky. Applets don't seem to be widely used (except for Runescape), but is there a reason they're unsuitable or is it just because of the bad reputation they developed in their infancy?

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  • Analytics for Windows 8 apps using Markedup

    - by nmarun
    The Windows 8 store does provide some analytics information to you in terms of downloads by market or by age group, ratings, in-app purchases. I find that a little too limiting. What if I want to know what page my users are spending most of their time or what events are being raised more frequently or are my users calling my app through the search contract I implemented or how many times was the share contract called. To answer questions like this, you need a more mature analytics framework. Markedup...(read more)

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  • What could be some objective criteria to compare languages? [closed]

    - by rvcoutinho
    I am performing a study on different programming languages (and its related technologies) for a mature corporate architecture. In order to conduct these studies, I need formulate some criteria prior to this evaluation. Some general (and well known) criteria are: readability, writability, reliability, cost and others (such as well-definedness, generality and portability). That said, I present the following questions: What criteria should I not forget? How to make these criteria objective?

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  • Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6?

    - by Ricardo Ferreira
    In this post, I will cover some technical differences between Oracle WebLogic 12c and JBoss EAP 6, which was released a couple days ago from Red Hat. This article claims to help you in the evaluation of key points that you should consider when choosing for an Java EE application server. In the following sections, I will present to you some important aspects that most customers ask us when they are seriously evaluating for an middleware infrastructure, specially if you are considering JBoss for some reason. I would suggest that you keep the following question in mind while you are reading the points: "Why should I choose JBoss instead of WebLogic?" 1) Multi Datacenter Deployment and Clustering - D/R ("Disaster & Recovery") architecture support is embedded on the WebLogic Server 12c product. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct D/R support included, Red Hat relies on third-part tools with higher prices. When you consider a middleware solution to host your business critical application, you should worry with every architectural aspect that are related with the solution. Fail-over support is one little aspect of a truly reliable solution. If you do not worry about D/R, your solution will not be reliable. Having said that, with Red Hat and JBoss EAP 6, you have this extra cost that will increase considerably the total cost of ownership of the solution. As we commonly hear from analysts, open-source are not so cheaper when you start seeing the big picture. - WebLogic Server 12c supports advanced LAN clustering, detection of death servers and have a common alert framework. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has limited LAN clustering support with no server death detection. They do not generate any alerts when servers goes down (only if you buy JBoss ON which is a separated technology, but until now does not support JBoss EAP 6) and manual intervention are required when servers goes down. In most cases, admin people must rely on "kill -9", "tail -f someFile.log" and "ps ax | grep java" commands to manage failures and clustering anomalies. - WebLogic Server 12c supports the concept of Node Manager, which is a separated process that runs on the physical | virtual servers that allows extend the administration of the cluster to WebLogic managed servers that are often distributed across multiple machines and geographic locations. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no equivalent technology. Whole server instances must be managed individually. - WebLogic Server 12c Node Manager supports Coherence to boost performance when managing servers. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no similar technology. There is no way to coordinate JBoss and infiniband instances provided by JBoss using high throughput and low latency protocols like InfiniBand. The Node Manager feature also allows another very important feature that JBoss EAP lacks: secure the administration. When using WebLogic Node Manager, all the administration tasks are sent to the managed servers in a secure tunel protected by a certificate, which means that the transport layer that separates the WebLogic administration console from the managed servers are secured by SSL. - WebLogic Server 12c are now integrated with OTD ("Oracle Traffic Director") which is a web server technology derived from the former Sun iPlanet Web Server. This software complements the web server support offered by OHS ("Oracle HTTP Server"). Using OTD, WebLogic instances are load-balanced by a high powerful software that knows how to handle SDP ("Socket Direct Protocol") over InfiniBand, which boost performance when used with engineered systems technologies like Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand only offers support to Apache Web Server with custom modules created to deal with JBoss clusters, but only across standard TCP/IP networks.  2) Application and Runtime Diagnostics - WebLogic Server 12c have diagnostics capabilities embedded on the server called WLDF ("WebLogic Diagnostic Framework") so there is no need to rely on third-part tools. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no diagnostics capabilities. Their only diagnostics tool is the log generated by the application server. Admin people are encouraged to analyse thousands of log lines to find out what is going on. - WebLogic Server 12c complement WLDF with JRockit MC ("Mission Control"), which provides to administrators and developers a complete insight about the JVM performance, behavior and possible bottlenecks. WebLogic Server 12c also have an classloader analysis tool embedded, and even a log analyzer tool that enables administrators and developers to view logs of multiple servers at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand relies on third-part tools to do something similar. Again, only log searching are offered to find out whats going on. - WebLogic Server 12c offers end-to-end traceability and monitoring available through Oracle EM ("Enterprise Manager"), including monitoring of business transactions that flows through web servers, ESBs, application servers and database servers, all of this with high deep JVM analysis and diagnostics. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand, even using JBoss ON ("Operations Network"), which is a separated technology, does not support those features. Red Hat relies on third-part tools to provide direct Oracle database traceability across JVMs. One of those tools are Oracle EM for non-Oracle middleware that manage JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere and IIS transparently. - WebLogic Server 12c with their JRockit support offers a tool called JRockit Flight Recorder, which can give developers a complete visibility of a certain period of application production monitoring with zero extra overhead. This automatic recording allows you to deep analyse threads latency, memory leaks, thread contention, resource utilization, stack overflow damages and GC ("Garbage Collection") cycles, to observe in real time stop-the-world phenomenons, generational, reference count and parallel collects and mutator threads analysis. JBoss EAP 6 don't even dream to support something similar, even because they don't have their own JVM. 3) Application Server Administration - WebLogic Server 12c offers a complete administration console complemented with scripting and macro-like recording capabilities. A single WebLogic console can managed up to hundreds of WebLogic servers belonging to the same domain. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited console and provides a XML centric administration. JBoss, after ten years, started the development of a rudimentary centralized administration that still leave a lot of administration tasks aside, so admin people and developers must touch scripts and XML configuration files for most advanced and even simple administration tasks. This lead applications to error prone and risky deployments. Even using JBoss ON, JBoss EAP are not able to offer decent administration features for admin people which must be high skilled in JBoss internal architecture and its managing capabilities. - Oracle EM is available to manage multiple domains, databases, application servers, operating systems and virtualization, with a complete end-to-end visibility. JBoss ON does not provide management capabilities across the complete architecture, only basic monitoring. Even deployment must be done aside JBoss ON which does no integrate well with others softwares than JBoss. Until now, JBoss ON does not supports JBoss EAP 6, so even their minimal support for JBoss are not available for JBoss EAP 6 leaving customers uncovered and subject to high skilled JBoss admin people. - WebLogic Server 12c has the same administration model whatever is the topology selected by the customer. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand differentiates between two operational models: standalone-mode and domain-mode, that are not consistent with each other. Depending on the mode used, the administration skill is different. - WebLogic Server 12c has no point-of-failures processes, and it does not need to define any specialized server. Domain model in WebLogic is available for years (at least ten years or more) and is production proven. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand needs special processes to garantee JBoss integrity, the PC ("Process-Controller") and the HC ("Host-Controller"). Different from WebLogic, the domain model in JBoss is quite new (one year at tops) of maturity, and need to mature considerably until start doing things like WebLogic domain model does. - WebLogic Server 12c supports parallel deployment model which enables some artifacts being deployed at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have any similar feature. Every deployment are done atomically in the containers. This means that if you have a huge EAR (an EAR of 120 MB of size for instance) and deploy onto JBoss EAP 6, this EAR will take some minutes in order to starting accept thread requests. The same EAR deployed onto WebLogic Server 12c will reduce the deployment time at least in 2X compared to JBoss. 4) Support and Upgrades - WebLogic Server 12c has patch management available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no patch management available, each JBoss EAP instance should be patched manually. To achieve such feature, you need to buy a separated technology called JBoss ON ("Operations Network") that manage this type of stuff. But until now, JBoss ON does not support JBoss EAP 6 so, in practice, JBoss EAP 6 does not have this feature. - WebLogic Server 12c supports previuous WebLogic domains without any reconfiguration since its kernel is robust and mature since its creation in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a proven lack of supportability between JBoss AS 4, 5, 6 and 7. Different kernels and messaging engines were implemented in JBoss stack in the last five years reveling their incapacity to create a well architected and proven middleware technology. - WebLogic Server 12c has patch prescription based on customer configuration. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such capability. People need to create ticket supports and have their installations revised by Red Hat support guys to gain some patch prescription from them. - Oracle WebLogic Server independent of the version has 8 years of support of new patches and has lifetime release of existing patches beyond that. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand provides patches for a specific application server version up to 5 years after the release date. JBoss EAP 4 and previous versions had only 4 years. A good question that Red Hat will argue to answer is: "what happens when you find issues after year 5"?  5) RAC ("Real Application Clusters") Support - WebLogic Server 12c ships with a specific JDBC driver to leverage Oracle RAC clustering capabilities (Fast-Application-Notification, Transaction Affinity, Fast-Connection-Failover, etc). Oracle JDBC thin driver are also available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand ships only the standard Oracle JDBC thin driver. Load balancing with Oracle RAC are not supported. Manual intervention in case of planned or unplanned RAC downtime are necessary. In JBoss EAP 6, situation does not reestablish automatically after downtime. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called Active GridLink for Oracle RAC which provides up to 3X performance on OLTP applications. This seamless integration between WebLogic and Oracle database enable more value added to critical business applications leveraging their investments in Oracle database technology and Oracle middleware. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no performance gains at all, even when admin people implement some kind of connection-pooling tuning. - WebLogic Server 12c also supports transaction and web session affinity to the Oracle RAC, which provides aditional gains of performance. This is particularly interesting if you are creating a reliable solution that are distributed not only in an LAN cluster, but into a different data center. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. 6) Standards and Technology Support - WebLogic Server 12c is fully Java EE 6 compatible and production ready since december of 2011. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand became fully compatible with Java EE 6 only in the community version after three months, and production ready only in a few days considering that this article was written in June of 2012. Red Hat says that they are the masters of innovation and technology proliferation, but compared with Oracle and even other proprietary vendors like IBM, they historically speaking are lazy to deliver the most newest technologies and standards adherence. - Oracle is the steward of Java, driving innovation into the platform from commercial and open-source vendors. Red Hat on the other hand does not have its own JVM and relies on third-part JVMs to complete their application server offer. 95% of Red Hat customers are using Oracle HotSpot as JVM, which means that without Oracle involvement, their support are limited exclusively to the application server layer and we all know that most problems are happens in the JVM layer. - WebLogic Server 12c supports natively JDK 7, which empower developers to explore the maximum of the Java platform productivity when writing code. This feature differentiate WebLogic from others application servers (except GlassFish that are also managed by Oracle) because the usage of JDK 7 introduce such remarkable productivity features like the "try-with-resources" enhancement, catching multiple exceptions with one try block, Strings in the switch statements, JVM improvements in terms of JDBC, I/O, networking, security, concurrency and of course, the most important feature of Java 7: native support for multiple non-Java languages. More features regarding JDK 7 can be found here. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not support JDK 7 officially, they comment in their community version that "Java SE 7 can be used with JBoss 7" which does not gives you any guarantees of enterprise support for JDK 7. - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c supports integration with Spring framework allowing Spring applications to use WebLogic special transaction manager, exposing bean interfaces to WebLogic MBeans to take advantage of all WebLogic monitoring and administration advantages. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no special integration with Spring. In fact, Red Hat offers a suspicious package called "JBoss Web Platform" that in theory supports Spring, but in practice this package does not offers any special integration. It is just a facility for Red Hat customers to have support from both JBoss and Spring technology using the same customer support. 7) Lightweight Development - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle GlassFish are completely integrated and can share applications without any modifications. Starting with the 12c version, WebLogic now understands natively GlassFish deployment descriptors and specific configurations in order to offer you a truly and reliable migration path from a community Java EE application server to a enterprise middleware product like WebLogic. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no support to natively reuse an existing (or still in development) application from JBoss AS community server. Users of JBoss suffer of critical issues during deployment time that includes: changing the libraries and dependencies of the application, patching the DTD or XSD deployment descriptors, refactoring of the application layers due classloading issues and anomalies, rebuilding of persistence, business and web layers due issues with "usage of the certified version of an certain dependency" or "frameworks that Red Hat potentially does not recommend" etc. If you have the culture or enterprise IT directive of developing Java EE applications using community middleware to in a certain future, transition to enterprise (supported by a vendor) middleware, Oracle WebLogic plus Oracle GlassFish offers you a more sustainable solution. - WebLogic Server 12c has a very light ZIP distribution (less than 165 MB). JBoss EAP 6 ZIP size is around 130 MB, together with JBoss ON you have more 100 MB resulting in a higher download footprint. This is particularly interesting if you plan to use automated setup of application server instances (for example, to rapidly setup a development or staging environment) using Maven or Hudson. - WebLogic Server 12c has a complete integration with Maven allowing developers to setup WebLogic domains with few commands. Tasks like downloading WebLogic, installation, domain creation, data sources deployment are completely integrated. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited offer integration with those tools.  - WebLogic Server 12c has a startup mode called WLX that turns-off EJB, JMS and JCA containers leaving enabled only the web container with Java EE 6 web profile. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such feature, you need to disable manually the containers that you do not want to use. - WebLogic Server 12c supports fastswap, which enables you to change classes without redeployment. This is particularly interesting if you are developing patches for the application that is already deployed and you do not want to redeploy the entire application. This is the same behavior that most application servers offers to JSP pages, but with WebLogic Server 12c, you have the same feature for Java classes in general. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. Even JBoss EAP 5 does not support this until now. 8) JMS and Messaging - WebLogic Server 12c has a proven and high scalable JMS implementation since its initial release in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a still immature technology called HornetQ, which was introduced in JBoss EAP 5 replacing everything that was implemented in the previous versions. Red Hat loves to introduce new technologies across JBoss versions, playing around with customers and their investments. And when they are asked about why they have changed the implementation and caused such a mess, their answer is always: "the previous implementation was inadequate and not aligned with the community strategy so we are creating a new a improved one". This Red Hat practice leads to uncomfortable investments that in a near future (sometimes less than a year) will be affected in someway. - WebLogic Server 12c has troubleshooting and monitoring features included on the WebLogic console and WLDF. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct monitoring on the console, activity is reflected only on the logs, no debug logs available in case of JMS issues. - WebLogic Server 12c has extremely good performance and scalability. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a JMS storage mechanism relying on Oracle database or MySQL. This means that if an issue in production happens and Red Hat affirms that an performance issue is happening due to database problems, they will not support you on the performance issue. They will orient you to call Oracle instead. - WebLogic Server 12c supports messaging enterprise features like SAF ("Store and Forward"), Distributed Queues/Topics and Foreign JMS providers support that leverage JMS implementations without compromise developer code making things completely transparent. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand do not even dream to support such features. 9) Caching and Grid - Coherence, which is the leading and most mature data grid technology from Oracle, is available since early 2000 and was integrated with WebLogic in 2009. Coherence and WebLogic clusters can be both managed from WebLogic administrative console. Even Node Manager supports Coherence. JBoss on the other hand discontinued JBoss Cache, which was their caching implementation just like they did with the messaging implementation (JBossMQ) which was a issue for long term customers. JBoss EAP 6 ships InfiniSpan version 1.0 which is immature and lack a proven record of successful cases and reliability. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called ActiveCache which uses Coherence to, without any code changes, replicate HTTP sessions from both WebLogic and other application servers like JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere, GlassFish and even Microsoft IIS. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does have such support and even when they do in the future, they probably will support only their own application server. - Coherence can be used to manage both L1 and L2 cache levels, providing support to Oracle TopLink and others JPA compliant implementations, even Hibernate. JBoss EAP 6 and Infinispan on the other hand supports only Hibernate. And most important of all: Infinispan does not have any successful case of L1 or L2 caching level support using Hibernate, which lead us to reflect about its viability. 10) Performance - WebLogic Server 12c is certified with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and can run unchanged applications at this engineered system. This approach can benefit customers from Exalogic optimization's of both kernel and JVM layers to boost performance in terms of 10X for web, OLTP, JMS and grid applications. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no investment on engineered systems: customers do not have the choice to deploy on a Java ultra fast system if their project becomes relevant and performance issues are detected. - WebLogic Server 12c maintains a performance gain across each new release: starting on WebLogic 5.1, the overall performance gain has been close to 4X, which close to a 20% gain release by release. JBoss on the other hand does not provide SPECJAppServer or SPECJEnterprise performance benchmarks. Their so called "performance gains" remains hidden in their customer environments, which lead us to think if it is true or not since we will never get access to those environments. - WebLogic Server 12c has industry performance benchmarks with submissions across platforms and configurations leading SPECJ. Oracle WebLogic leads SPECJAppServer performance in multiple categories, fitting all customer topologies like: dual-node, single-node, multi-node and multi-node with RAC. JBoss... again, does not provide any SPECJAppServer performance benchmarks. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called work manager which allows your application to embrace new performance levels based on critical resource utilization of the CPUs usage. Work managers prioritizes work and allocates threads based on an execution model that takes into account administrator-defined parameters and actual run-time performance and throughput. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no compared feature and probably they never will. Not supporting such feature like work managers, JBoss EAP 6 forces admin people and specially developers to uncover performance gains in a intrusive way, rewriting the code and doing performance refactorings. 11) Professional Services Support - WebLogic Server 12c and any other technology sold by Oracle give customers the possibility of hire OCS ("Oracle Consulting Services") to manage critical scenarios, deployment assistance of new applications, high skilled consultancy of architecture, best practices and people allocation together with customer teams. All OCS services are available without any restrictions, having the customer bought software from Oracle or just starting their implementation before any acquisition. JBoss EAP 6 or Red Hat to be more specifically, only offers professional services if you buy subscriptions from them. If you are developing a new critical application for your business and need the help of Red Hat for a serious issue or architecture decision, they will probably say: "OK... I can help you but after you buy subscriptions from me". Red Hat also does not allows their professional services consultants to manage environments that uses community based software. They will probably force you to first buy a subscription, download their "enterprise" version and them, optionally hire their consultants. - Oracle provides you our university to educate your team into our technologies, including of course specialized trainings of WebLogic application server. At any time and location, you can hire Oracle to train your team so you get trustful knowledge according to your specific needs. Certifications for the products are also available if your technical people desire to differentiate themselves as professionals. Red Hat on the other hand have a limited pool of resources to train your team in their technologies. Basically they are selling training and certification for RHEL ("Red Hat Enterprise Linux") but if you demand more specialized training in JBoss middleware, they will probably connect you to some "certified" partner localized training since they are apparently discontinuing their education center, at least here in Brazil. They were not able to reproduce their success with RHEL education to their middleware division since they need first sell the subscriptions to after gives you specialized training. And again, they only offer you specialized training based on their enterprise version (EAP in the case of JBoss) which means that the courses will be a quite outdated. There are reports of developers that took official training's from Red Hat at this year (2012) and in a certain JBoss advanced course, Red Hat supposedly covered JBossMQ as the messaging subsystem, and even the printed material provided was based on JBossMQ since the training was created for JBoss EAP 4.3. 12) Encouraging Transparency without Ulterior Motives - WebLogic Server 12c like any other software from Oracle can be downloaded any time from anywhere, you should only possess an OTN ("Oracle Technology Network") credential and you can download any enterprise software how many times you want. And is not some kind of "trial" version. It is the official binaries that will be running for ever in your data center. Oracle does not encourages the usage of "specific versions" of our software. The binaries you buy from Oracle are the same binaries anyone in the world could download and use for testing and personal education. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand are not available for download unless you buy a subscription and get access to the Red Hat enterprise repositories. If you need to test, learn or just start creating your application using Red Hat's middleware software, you should download it from the community website. You are not allowed to download the enterprise version that, according to Red Hat are more secure, reliable and robust. But no one of us want to start the development of a software with an unsecured, unreliable and not scalable middleware right? So what you do? You are "invited" by Red Hat to buy subscriptions from them to get access to the "cool" version of the software. - WebLogic Server 12c prices are publicly available in the Oracle website. If you want to know right now how much WebLogic will cost to your organization, just click here and get access to our price list. In the case of WebLogic, check out the "US Oracle Technology Commercial Price List". Oracle also encourages you to get in touch with a sales representative to discuss discounts that would make possible the investment into our technology. But you are not required to do this, only if you are interested in buying our technology or maybe you want to discuss some discount scenarios. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have its cost publicly available in Red Hat's website or in any other media, at least is not so easy to get such information. The only link you will possibly find in their website is a "Contact a Sales Representative" link. This is not a very good relationship between an customer and an vendor. This is not an example of transparency, mainly when the software are sold as open. In this situations, customers expects to see the software prices publicly available, so they can have the chance to decide, based on the existing features of the software, if the cost is fair or not. Conclusion Oracle WebLogic is the most mature, secure, reliable and scalable Java EE application server of the market, and have a proven record of success around the globe to prove it's majority. Don't lose the chance to discover today how WebLogic could fit your needs and sustain your global IT middleware strategy, no matter if your strategy are completely based on the Cloud or not.

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  • Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

    - by Dylan Smith
    I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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  • What is the best practice, point of view of well experienced developers

    - by Damien MIRAS
    My manager pushes me to use his self defined best practices. All of these practices are based on is own assumptions. I disagree with them and I would like to have some feedback of well experienced people about these practices. I would prefer answers from people involved in the maintenance of huge products and people whom have maintained the product for years. Developers with 15+ years of experience are preferred because my manager has that much experience himself. I have 7 years of experience. Here are the practices he wants me to use: never extends classes, use composition and interface instead because extending classes are unmaintainable and difficult to debug. What I think about that Extend when needed, respect "Liskov's Substitution Principle" and you'll never be stuck with a problem, but prefer composition and decoration. I don't know any serious project which has banned inheriting, sometimes it's impossible to not use that, i.e. in a UI framework. Design patterns are just unusable. In PHP, for simple use cases (for example a user needs a web interface to view a database table), his "best practice" is: copy some random php code wich we own, paste and modify it, put html and php code in same file, never use classes in PHP, it doesn't work well for small jobs, and in fact it doesn't work well at all, there is no good tool to work with. Copy & paste PHP code is good practice for maintenance because scripts are independent, if you have a bug somewhere you can fix it without side effects. What I think about that: NEVER EVER COPY code or do it because you have five minutes to deliver something, you will do some refactoring after that. Copy & paste code is a beginners error, if you have errors you'll have the error everywhere any time you have pasted it's a nightmare to maintain. If you repsect the "Open Close Principle" you'll rarely get edge effects, use unit test if you are afraid of that. For small jobs in PHP use at least something you get or write the HTML separately from the PHP code and reuse it any time you need it. Classes in PHP are mature, not as mature as other languages like python or java, but they are usable. There is tools to work with classes in PHP like Zend Studio that work very well. The use of classes or not depends not on the language you use but the programming paradigm you have choosen. I'm a OOP developer, I use PHP5, why do I have to shoot myself in the foot? When you find a simple bug in the code, and you can fix it simply, if you are not working on the code where you have found it, never fix it, even if it takes 5 seconds. He says to me his "best practices" are driven by the fact that he has a lot of experience in maintaining software in production (14 years) and he now knows what works and what doesn't work, what the community says is a fad, and the people advocating such principles as never copy & paste code, are not evolved in maintaining applications. What I think about that: If you find a bug fix it if you can do it quickly inform the people who've touched that code before, check if you have not introduced a new bug, ideally add a unit test for it. I currently work on a web commerce project, which serves 15k unique users per day. The code base has to be maintained and has been maintained this way since 2005. Ideally you include a short description of your position and experience in terms of years effectively maintaining an application which has been in production for real.

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  • Personal Financial Management – The need for resuscitation

    - by Salil Ravindran
    Until a year or so ago, PFM (Personal Financial Management) was the blue eyed boy of every channel banking head. In an age when bank account portability is still fiction, PFM was expected to incentivise customers to switch banks. It still is, in some emerging economies, but if the state of PFM in matured markets is anything to go by, it is in a state of coma and badly requires resuscitation. Studies conducted around the year show an alarming decline and stagnation in PFM usage in mature markets. A Sept 2012 report by Aite Group – Strategies for PFM Success shows that 72% of users hadn’t used PFM and worse, 58% of them were not kicked about using it. Of the rest who had used it, only half did on a bank site. While there are multiple reasons for this lack of adoption, some are glaringly obvious. While pretty graphs and pie charts are important to provide a visual representation of my income and expense, it is simply not enough to encourage me to return. Static representation of data without any insightful analysis does not help me. Budgeting and Cash Flow is important but when I have an operative account, a couple of savings accounts, a mortgage loan and a couple of credit cards help me with what my affordability is in specific contexts rather than telling me I just busted my budget. Help me with relative importance of each budget category so that I know it is fine to go over budget on books for my daughter as against going over budget on eating out. Budget over runs and spend analysis are post facto and I am informed of my sins only when I return to online banking. That too, only if I decide to come to the PFM area. Fundamentally, PFM should be a part of my banking engagement rather than an analysis tool. It should be contextual so that I can make insight based decisions. So what can be done to resuscitate PFM? Amalgamation with banking activities – In most cases, PFM tools are integrated into online banking pages and they are like chapter 37 of a long story. PFM needs to be a way of banking rather than a tool. Available balances should shift to Spendable Balances. Budget and goal related insights should be integrated with transaction sessions to drive pre-event financial decisions. Personal Financial Guidance - Banks need to think ground level and see if their PFM offering is really helping customers achieve self actualisation. Banks need to recognise that most customers out there are non-proficient about making the best value of their money. Customers return when they know that they are being guided rather than being just informed on their finance. Integrating contextual financial offers and financial planning into PFM is one way ahead. Yet another way is to help customers tag unwanted spending thereby encouraging sound savings habits. Mobile PFM – Most banks have left all those numbers on online banking. With access mostly having moved to devices and the success of apps, moving PFM on to devices will give it a much needed shot in the arm. This is not only about presenting the same wine in a new bottle but also about leveraging the power of the device in pushing real time notifications to make pre-purchase decisions. The pursuit should be to analyse spend, budgets and financial goals real time and push them pre-event on to the device. So next time, I should know that I have over run my eating out budget before walking into that burger joint and not after. Increase participation and collaboration – Peer group experiences and comments are valued above those offered by the bank. Integrating social media into PFM engagement will let customers share and solicit their financial management experiences with their peer group. Peer comparisons help benchmark one’s savings and spending habits with those of the peer group and increases stickiness. While mature markets have gone through this learning in some way over the last one year, banks in maturing digital banking economies increasingly seem to be falling into this trap. Best practices lie in profiling and segmenting customers, being where they are and contextually guiding them to identify and achieve their financial goals. Banks could look at the likes of Simple and Movenbank to draw inpiration from.

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  • PubSubHubBub Hubs

    - by PartlyCloudy
    Hi, I'm currently building a live web application based upon the PubSubHubBub protocol. However, I encountered several issues. First, I'm in search of a hub application that I can run on my server. There are several applications, but most of them are not mature yet, or they don't support the 0.3 spec. The official google hub runs on the Google App Engine and can even be executed locally. Unfortunately, "Tasks will not run automatically. Push the 'Run' button to execute each task." This behaviour is useful for debugging and understanding the workflow, but in some live tests, it would be nice not to invoke all tasks manually. Is there a way to tweak the local app engine due automatically run tasks? Next, I have a question concerning the spec itself. The Google reference implementation provides the initial publish method bound to the outpoint uri + /publish. But this is not reflected in the specs. So are there any mature hubs that can be run locally for debugging? Or are there ways to configure the offical google app engine hub to run locally and to execute tasks directly? Thanks in advance

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  • Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

    - by raul.goycoolea
    Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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