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• How do I decide what type of programmer I want to be?

  - by Pearsonartphoto

  I've been working at my current work for some time, and I'm considering a bit of a change of careers. I'm trying to decide what it is exactly that I want to do, and I'm really just not sure. I'm not wanting a solution for my particular case, but what I'd like to know are some generalities of things I can look for. Here are some positions that I'm considering, and what my definitions are (I'm probably calling them something other than what is standard, but hopefully this will do for now). I'm looking for quizzes, articles, explanations, or anything that can help me figure this out. Manager - Managing programmers in some sense, mostly in making sure they are kept working. Coder - A person who is told to make a program do XYZ, and makes it do that. Doesn't have to model anything, or come up with formulas. Algorithm Designer - A person who comes up with a way to make software do something, but doesn't necessarily code that program, at least, not in it's final form. QA - A person who tests code for bugs, preferably with the code in hand. Architect - This person figures out how all of the pieces fit together, is a technical manager of sorts. Maintainer - This person takes someone else's existing code, and makes sure it is fixed when issues arise. Also of some note is figuring out what industry I want to work in. Feel free to add any of your own categories.

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• Developer with 4 years experience with Java/C++. How to move into web programming? [closed]

  - by JerryC

  Possible Duplicate: Tips for switching jobs and moving into web based programming? I graduated in 2006 with a computer science degree and got solid grades (3.5 overall 3.8 in my major) For the past 4.5 years I've been working as a Software Engineer doing primarily rich client development. Most of my experience is with Java, Swing and C++. I've done a lot of network programming and I have acquired some skill working & debugging in distributed environments. I would like to switch jobs and move into a role where I can get exposure to some new technologies and frameworks. I would like to move into a more web development role but I find my lack of web development experience is hurting me. 90% of the jobs I see advertised are looking for one of two skill sets: 1) Stereotypical server side Java web developer. Experience with Spring, Hibernate, J2EE, etc. 2) Stereotypical front end web developer. Experience with Javascript, jQuery, HTML5, GWT, CSS, etc I find most of these companies are looking really specifically for this experience and they are not willing to take on good programmers/ CS fundamental guys who lack experience with this stuff. I would love to get a job doing stuff like this, but have my skills become out of date and unmarketable? Any opinions on ways to sell myself to help get a new position?

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• How much a programmer should read in order to keep himself updated? [closed]

  - by anything

  There are lots of technical books available. Below are few links which lists some good books If you could only have one programming related book on your bookshelf what would it be and why? What non-programming books should a programmer read to help develop programming/thinking skills? Best books on the theory and practice of software architecture? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read ... and the list can go on and on and on. It will be really difficult to read all of the above mentioned books. I am not sure if its even possible for anyone to do that. Even if you filter it based on one's area of interest or work, list is still very large. .. and the technology keeps on changing (even more books :-( ) So, my question is how much a programmer should read lets say per year? How much hours one should put in such activities to keep oneself up to date? How do we find out the time required? PS: Average programmer reads less than one book per year (Code complete). What about the good programmers?

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• Shoring up deficiencies in a "home grown" programmer?

  - by JohnP

  I started out by teaching myself BASIC on a Vic 20, and in college (mid 80's) I had Fortran, Pascal, limited C, machine and assembler (With a smattering of COBOL). I didn't touch programming from approx 1989 to 1999. At that point, I was lucky enough to get hired as a Clipper programmer. Took me about 6 months to learn most of it, and by now (13 yrs) I'm pretty expert in it. I have also picked up Cold Fusion, some C#, some ASP, SQL, etc. I know programming structures, but in most languages I'm missing the esoterics, and I know my code could be much tighter. The problem is that I've learned what I needed to, to get the job done. This results in a lot of gaps in practical knowledge. I am also missing out on a TON of theory. Things like SRP, Refactoring, etc are alien terms. (Although I grok the intent after a short read). In addition, I am in the position now of teaching junior programmers the company and our software, and I don't want to pass on the knowledge gaps. I know this is somewhat of a subjective question and may be closed, but how do you go back and pick up what you've missed?

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• Need Directions to become a programmer [closed]

  - by Omin

  Before youguys go on about how there are many types of programmers, please read through the post. Long term goal: Develop my own software (company) Short term goal: Get a job that involves coding/programming Current status: Support Analyst (at a software company but does not involve any programming) with 40k salary, 3rd year computer engineering student I had everything figured out. I'm going to develop a 2D scrolling game for iphone or android, publish the app, sell a bunch, and then apply at a studios as a software developer. And then something hit me. I think I need to get a job that involes programming to learn as much as I can in the shortest time possible. So I got a phone interview at a fast growing start up software company, passed that no problem, but then had to take an online technical assessment. That failed miserably. I thought that if I could just present myself, show that I am hard working, positive attitude, eager to make self improvements, type of a guy, I could get the job. I was wrong. And now, I am lost. Im thinking of staying with my job until I find a new one as a programmer. I will be working, self studying, and trying to make this happen without finishing university. I forgot to mention that the online technical assessment was based on data structures/algorithms, OO design, runtime complexity. I was hoping that I could get some guidence. Should I be focusing on app development or study computer science fundamentals? I have a list of books I can be going through: Learning C# O'Reilly (I got interested in C# because of Unity3D and Mono), C# 5.0 in a Nutshell, Head First Design Patterns, Code Complete, Introduction to Algorithms, Programming Interviews Exposed, Cracking the Coding Interview, The Google Resume.

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• Is there such thing like a "refactoring/maintainability group" role in software companies?

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I work in a company that does embedded software development, other groups focus in the core development of different products' software and my department (which is in another geographical location) which is located at the factory has to deal with software development as well, but across all products, so that we can also fix things quicker when the lines go down due to software problems with the product. In other words, we are generalists while other groups specialize on each product. Thing is, it is kind of hard to get involved in core development when you are distributed geographically (well, I know it really isn't that hard, but there might be unintended cultural/political barriers when it comes to the discipline of collaborating remotely). So I figured that, since we are currently just putting fires out and somewhat being idle/sub-utilized (even though we are a new department, or maybe that is the reason), I thought that a good role for us could be detecting areas of opportunity of refactoring and rearchitecting code and all other implementations that might have to do with stewarding maintainability and modularity. Other groups aren't focused on this because they don't have the time and they have aggressive deadlines, which damage the quality of the code (eternal story of software projects) The thing is that I want my group/department to be recognized by management and other groups with this role officially, and I'm having trouble to come up with a good definition/identity of our group for this matter. So my question is: is this role something that already exists?, or am I the first one to make something like this up?

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• why are transaction monitors on decline? or are they?

  - by mrkafk

  http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/cics.do http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/tuxedo.do Look at the demand for programmers (% of job ads that the keyword appears), first graph under the table. It seems like demand for CICS, Tuxedo has fallen from 2.5%/1% respectively to almost zero. To me, it seems bizarre: now we have more networked and internet enabled machines than ever before. And most of them are talking to some kind of database. So it would seem that use of products whose developers spent last 20-30 years working on distributing and coordinating and optimizing transactions should be on the rise. And it appears they're not. I can see a few causes but can't tell whether they are true: we forgot that concurrency and distribution are really hard, and redoing it all by ourselves, in Java, badly. Erlang killed them all. Projects nowadays have changed character, like most business software has already been built and we're all doing internet services, using stuff like Node.js, Erlang, Haskell. (I've used RabbitMQ which is written in Erlang, "but it was small specialized side project" kind of thing). BigData is the emphasis now and BigData doesn't need transactions very much (?). None of those explanations seem particularly convincing to me, which is why I'm looking for better one. Anyone?

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• tips, guidelines, points to remember for rendering professional code?

  - by ronnieaka

  I'm talking about giving clients professional looking code. The whole nine yards, everything you hardcore professional highly experienced programmers here probably do when coding freelance or for the company you work in. I'm fresh out of college and I'm going into freelance. I just want to be sure that my first few projects leave a good after-taste of professionalism imprinted on the clients' minds. When I Googled what i'm asking here, I was given pages that showed various websites and tools that let you make flashy websites and templates etc. The $N package and such stuff. I can't recall the word experts use for it. Standard, framework [i know that's not it]. English isn't my first language so I'm sorry I don't really don't know the exact phrase for it. That abstract way of writing code so that you don't come across as a sloppy programmer. That above mentioned way for programming websites and desktop software [in python/C/C++/Java]. EDIT: i can work on the accruing vast knowledge and know-how and logic building etc. what i'm asking for is the programming standard/guidelines you guys follow so that the client on seeing code feels that its a professional solution. Like comment blocks, a particular indentation style something like that. Is there any book on it or specific list of points for enterprise type coding by them? Especially here as in my case, for building websites [php for now..], and desktop software [c/c++/java/python]

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• What is the steps to make a frame work for a company? [on hold]

  - by bbb

  we want to make a frame work for our company. Our company mission is developing web applications and CMS and websites. Till now we had a lot of problems with the various types of codding. we didnt have a frame work and every programmer codes as he wants and it was too hard for the others to edit them. Now we want to make a frame work for the company. We want to make an archive of dll files that are written by our self our other and make the programmers to use just from them and we want to make a frame work for the type of codding. WE NEED A STRUCTURE FOR THE COMPANY. I dont know how to do this and what is the first and second and third step to do this. I need some guidance about it. For example I say that the frame work should contains the followings: The base should be SOLID The method should be Code-First The standards should be Naming Convention The type should be 3 layer programming The method should be MVC We should use from our dll archive The UI should be with HTML and CSS And using from Bootstrap Am I right or not or is it complete or...???

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• How often do you review fundamentals?

  - by mlnyc

  So I've been out of school for a year and a half now. In school, of course we covered all the fundamentals: OS, databases, programming languages (i.e. syntax, binding rules, exception handling, recursion, etc), and fundamental algorithms. the rest were more in-depth topics on things like NLP, data mining, etc. Now, a year ago if you would have told me to write a quicksort, or reverse a singly-linked list, analyze the time complexity of this 'naive' algorithm vs it's dynamic programming counterpart, etc I would have been able to give you a decent and hopefully satisfying answer. But if you would have asked me more real world questions I might have been stumped (things like how would handle logging for an application, or security difference between GET and POST, differences between SQL Server and Oracle SQL, anything I list on my resume as currently working with [jQuery questions, ColdFusion questions, ...] etc) Now, I feel things are the opposite. I haven't wrote my own sort since graduating, and I don't really have to worry much about theoretical things that do not naturally fall into problems I am trying to solve. For example, I might give you some great SQL solutions using an analytical function that I would have otherwise been stumped on or write a cool web application using angular or something but ask me to write an algo for insertAfter(Element* elem) and I might not be able to do it in a reasonable time frame. I guess my question here to the experienced programmers is how do you balance the need to both learn and experiment with new technologies (fun!), working on personal projects (also fun!) working and solving real world problems in a timeboxed environment (so I might reach out to a library that does what I want rather than re-invent the wheel so that I can focus on the problem I am trying to solve) (work, basically), and refreshing on old theoretical material which is still valid for interviews and such (can be a drag)? Do you review older material (such as famous algorithms, dynamic programming, Big-O analysis, locking implementations) regularly or just when you need it? How much time do you dedicate to both in your 'deliberate practice' and do you have a certain to-do list of topics that you want to work on?

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• Is it a good practice to create a list of definitions for all symbols and words in a programming language?

  - by MrDaniel

  After arriving at this point in Learning Python The Hard Way I am wondering if this is a good practice to create a list of symbols and define what they do as noted in bold below, for every programming language. This seems reasonable, and might be very useful to have when jumping between programming languages? Is this something that programmers do or is it just a waste of effort? Exercise 22: What Do You Know So Far? There won't be any code in this exercise or the next one, so there's no WYSS or Extra Credit either. In fact, this exercise is like one giant Extra Credit. I'm going to have you do a form of review what you have learned so far. First, go back through every exercise you have done so far and write down every word and symbol (another name for 'character') that you have used. Make sure your list of symbols is complete. Next to each word or symbol, write its name and what it does. If you can't find a name for a symbol in this book, then look for it online. If you do not know what a word or symbol does, then go read about it again and try using it in some code. You may run into a few things you just can't find out or know, so just keep those on the list and be ready to look them up when you find them. Once you have your list, spend a few days rewriting the list and double checking that it's correct. This may get boring but push through and really nail it down. Once you have memorized the list and what they do, then you should step it up by writing out tables of symbols, their names, and what they do from memory. When you hit some you can't recall from memory, go back and memorize them again.

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• Is there a website that scrapes job postings to determine the popularity of web technologies? [closed]

  - by dB'

  I'm often in a position where I need to choose between a number of web technologies. These technologies might be programming languages, or web application frameworks, or types of databases, or some other kind of toolkit used by programmers. More often than not, after some doing research, I end up with a list of contenders that are all equally viable. They're all powerful enough to solve my problem, they're all popular and well supported, and they're all equally familiar/unfamiliar to me. There's no obvious rationale by which to choose between them. Still, I need to pick one, so at this point I usually ask myself a hypothetical question: which one of these technologies, if I invest in learning it, would be most helpful to me in a job search? Where can I go on the internet to answer this question? Is there a website/service that scrapes the texts of worldwide job postings and would allow me to compare, say, the number of employers looking for expertise in technology x vs. technology y? (Where x and y are Rails vs. Djando, Java vs. Python, Brainfuck vs. LOLCode, etc.)

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• I can write code...but can't design well. Any suggestions?

  - by user396089

  I feel that I am good at writing code in bits and pieces, but my designs really suck. The question is how do I improve my designs (in order to become a better designer). I think schools and colleges do a good job of teaching people as to how to become good at mathematical problem solving, but lets admit the fact that most programs taught at school are generally around 1000 - 2000 lines long, which means that it is mostly an academic exercise and no way reflects the complexity of real world software (a few hundred thousand to millions of lines of code). This is where I believe that even projects like topcoder/project euler also won't be of much help, they might sharpen your mathematical problem solving ability - but you might become a theoretician programmer; someone who is more interested in the nice, clean stuff, and someone who is utterly un-interested in the day to day mundane and hairy stuff that most application programmers deal with. So my question is how do I improve my design skills? That is the ability to design small/medium scale applications that will go into a few thousand of lines of code? How can I learn design skills that would help me build a better html editor kit, or some graphics program like gimp?

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• What kind of projects are suited as a portfolio? [on hold]

  - by Asyx

  I was thinking about finishing up some hobby projects I used myself or am planing to use myself but I'm not sure if a future employer might be put off by them. For example, if I decided to create a custom website for an online (gaming, maybe) community instead of using an existing CMS, is it a good idea to provide a link to said community website or should I just put up the CMS and pretend like nobody actually uses it? Also, what about very specific things? I like linguistics and constructing languages. Obviously nobody wants to come up with 1000s of words so people usually use word generators or software to emulate sound shift or software to organise everything and produce dictionaries and such. Would such a project be too specific and too abstract for a portfolio or is the "he did programming work simply for enjoyment and his hobby and not just for money or grades" thing more important? It's quite an abstract hobby and most people don't even know that it's a thing and think the languages you hear in Game of Thrones, Avatar or Star Trek are just gibberish. Explaining such things to people is a pain to begin with especially if said people speak no other language. Would such things throw an employer off or is the content itself completely irrelevant? Thanks. Also, if this is not fitting for the programmers stackexchange, then please, don't close the thread right away but tell me where else to go because I got here though a closed question from stackoverflow. Thanks.

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• Top down or bottom up approach?

  - by george_zakharov

  this is the closest I think I can get to define my problem. I'm an interface designer and now I'm working with a team of programmers to develop a new CMS for a heavy media site. I'm sorry if it's a very, very dumb question to ask here, but I really need some help. As I've started developing a specification list for a prototype it turned out a very big one. I do realize now that the client-side will be JS heavy, with lots of DnD and other "cool designer stuff". The CMS will even include a small project management system for its users, nothing big like Basecamp, but with a live feed of comments etc. The problem is the the team has now separated. Someone is proposing the existing backend solution used in other CMS, someone is proposing to rewrite everything from scratch. The point to keep the code is that it is faster, the point to rewrite is to make it better for the proposed design (include Node.js and other stuff I don't actually get). The question is — can the UI specs influence back-end? The guys that propose to use the existing solution did everything with the Yii framework (as far as I know), and they say that everything on server is not affected by this "interface coolness". Others say that it does, that even autosave can't work without server load. Please, if this is really incomprehensible, again, I'm sorry, and I'll happy to clarify it after your questions. Thanks in advance

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• Creating my own PHP framework

  - by onlineapplab.com

  Disclaimer: I don't want to start any flame war so there will not be no name of any framework mentioned. I've been using quite many from the existing PHP frameworks and my experience in each case was similar: everything is nice a the beginning but in the moment you require something non standard you get into lot of problems to fix otherwise simple issues. In case of frameworks following the MVC design pattern there are some issues with the implementation of each layer for example there is a lot of codding used for model and data access with using ORM and presentation is not much more than pure phtml. Some frameworks use their own wrappers for existing PHP functionality and in some cases severely limiting original functionality. Depending on framework you can have additional problems like lack of documentation, slow or non existent development cycle and last but not least speed. While ago I made my own framework which while doing it's job and being used for few different applications after couple of years more of experience with PHP doesn't seem to be perfect piece of codding. I could write my own framework and use additional experience I've gathered during these years to make it better on the other hand I'm aware that there is quite many better programmers working on creating/upgrading existing frameworks. So does it make at all nay sense to write my own PHP framework if there is so many possibilities to choose from?

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• Programming ... where to start?

  - by agnesb

  For the last 4 months, I've working tirelessly on a project with my partner, who is a super programmer. He did 100% of the whole mechanism that makes our site work. My job is to take care of the cosmetic aspects of the site ... thus I should say I am good enough at CSS and html. However, since we are using Drupal to build our site, from time to time, I need his help in order to figure out how to do the customization. Sometimes, I got frustrated. I know that as a partner, I should know a little bit on how to program. However, during the crunch time when you have to deliver lightning fast (we have our site built from scratch to finish in 4 weeks ... and you are all welcome to come join the fun! It's a site for programmers!) there is no time to learn from the basics. All I can do is to pick up whatever I need at the moment. Now the site is launched, I am thinking it should be time to do some learning. So, where should I start? My partner always said I need to start with Python. What's your take on this? Thanks.

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• Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree? [closed]

  - by user20134

  Some back story, and then my question: I took a "break" from getting a university education last year to work full time as back end developer on a GIS application at $10.50 an hour. Later that year I was hired on by a fairly prestigious organization on their GIS application for a meager salary + rockin' benefits (not that I need them). I agreed to work on this project through Summer 2012. I don't feel like I'm being fairly compensated for my time. Other team members make between 3-5 times as much as I do, and their work isn't 3-5 times as good as mine, nor do they have 3-5 times as much output. I don't think this is a rectifiable situation within this institution. They've got a set of personnel charts and the way it gets computed, I make less money than any of the janitors (who are very good, and very nice people to boot, and I'm glad they get paid so well. I wish everyone got livable wages). I'm pretty bright, but school's a drag. I don't want mega bucks, I just want $40k/yr (localized to the southeast united states) so I can save enough money to travel, or maybe "finish [my] education". My question is this: Are people without degrees ever compensated commensurate with other people who have degrees? As a someone who never "finished their education", how badly do you think this as hurt you? How do you navigate the job seeking and hiring process? As someone who hires programmers, do you pay more for diplomas? Is that an institutional necessity, or based on your own value judgement?

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• Which field of programming is known as the best practice for Java? [closed]

  - by user1276509

  I'm a CS student and I have some programming background such as PHP, JavaScript and Pascal. Since Java is so popular among local companies and Java is known as market skill, I'm going to learn it. But I don't know in which field I can use it. So I wonder, what can I do with Java? I heard that Java is not good for web development, although there is Play! Framework. I know a lot of people who prefer to use Python, Ruby and PHP for web development instead of Java and its Play. I also heard that Java is not good to write destkop applications, although it's cross-platform. Many programmers prefer C# for destkop. So I see there's only one field which I can use Java for it - is Android development. But I'm not interested in mobile application development. So my question is which field of programming is known as the best practice for Java? Thanks in advance.

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• MATLAB: What is an appropriate Data Structure for a Matrix with Random Variable Entries?

  - by user12707

  I'm working in an area that is related to simulation and trying to design a data structure that can include random variables within matrices. I am currently coding in MATLAB. To motivate this let me say I have the following matrix: [a b; c d] I want to find a data structure that will allow for a, b, c, d to be either real numbers or random variables. As an example, let's say that a = 1, b = -1, c = 2 but let d be a normally distributed random variable with mean 20 and SD 40. The data structure that I have in mind will give no value to d. However, I also want to be able to design a function that can take in the structure, simulate an uniform(0,1), obtain a value for d using an inverse CDF and then spit out an actual matrix. I have several ideas to do this (all related to the MATLAB icdf function) but would like to know how more experienced programmers would do it. In this application, it's important that the structure is as "lean" as possible since I will be working with very very large matrices and memory will be an issue.

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• How do you quantify competency in terms of time (years)?

  - by o.k.w

  While looking for a job via agencies some time ago, I kept having questions from the recuitment agents or in the application forms like: How many years of experience do you have in: Oracle ASP.NET J2EE etc etc etc.... At first I answered faithfully... 5yrs, 7yrs, 2 yrs, none, few months etc etc.. Then I thought; I can be doing something shallow for 7 years and not being competent at it simply because I am just doing a minor support for a legacy system running SQL2000 which requires 10 days of my time for the past 7 years. Eventualy I declined to answers such questions. I wonder why do they ask these questions anymore. Anyone who just graduated with a computer science can claim 3 to 4 years experience in anything they 'touched' in the cirriculum, which to me can be equivalent to zero or 10 years depending how you look at it. It might hold true decades ago where programmers and IT skills are of very different nature. I might be wrong but I really doubt 'time' or 'years' are a good gauge of competency or experience anymore. Any opinion/rebuttal are welcome!

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• How to learn to program [on hold]

  - by user94914

  I went to a community college and got a degree in computer science, but I found out I only learn very little about programming. As a result I landed byself a office assistant work (for a year now), I want to study on my own and apply for some internship / very entry level development job. I am wondering how should a person learn to program now? I feel that I might not doing it correctly, I understand everyone has a different approach, but I am really clueless on what to do, as it seems I am 5-10 years away. 1) Read the old college programming textbook cover to cover, learn every single concepts, do all the practice problems and master them (1-2 times until error free). Currently reading this java book 2) Work on any project, keep on googling and reading tutorials (including the books on that specific language). I have been doing 1, but the progress is really slow, about 2-5 pages / hour, over a 1000+ page book, I felt really discouraged. I have a few of them to go through (data struction, analyis algorthim, computer theory, operating system.) I wonder is this the right method to do? I know it is going to take time, but I am hoping to get some advice from current programmers.

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• Do I have to change my company to make sure I'm good enough? [closed]

  - by superM

  I have been working as a developer since my fourth year of university until now. I'm getting my master's degree next year (in math modeling). I've worked for the same company all the time, first on .Net, then on Android, and now .Net again. It seems I'm doing quite well in my current company. Some of my coursemates have tried to work in my company, but they failed after some time. This (and not only this) makes me think that I'm really worth something. But we're working on a very specific project. I was wondering if I am good enough and if I can make it in another company. I love my current job, but sometimes I have a feeling that I'm not moving on. So, is it possible to keep improving when working at the same company with the same technology and at similar tasks? I know that most of the programmers go from one place to another very frequently. Is it the only way?

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• How should a non-IT manager secure the long-term maintenance and development of essential legacy software?

  - by user105977

  I've been hunting for a place to ask this question for quite a while; maybe this is the place, although I'm afraid it's not the kind of "question with an answer" this site would prefer. We are a small, very specialized, benefits administration firm with an extremely useful, robust collection of software, some written in COBOL but most in BASIC. Two full-time consultants have ably maintained and improved this system over more than 30 years. Needless to say they will soon retire. (One of them has been desperate to retire for several years but is loyal to a fault and so hangs on despite her husband's insistence that golf should take priority.) We started down the path of converting to a system developed by one of only three firms in the country that offer the type of software we use. We now feel that although this this firm is theoretically capable of completing the conversion process, they don't have the resources to do so timely, and we have come to believe that they will be unable to offer the kind of service we need to run our business. (There's nothing like being able to set one's own priorities and having the authority to allocate one's resources as one sees fit.) Hardware is not a problem--we are able to emulate very effectively on modern servers. If COBOL and BASIC were modern languages, we'd be willing to take the risk that we could find replacements for our current consultants going forward. It seems like there ought to be a business model for an IT support firm that concentrates on legacy platforms like this and provides the programming and software development talent to support a system like ours, removing from our backs the risks of finding the right programming talent and the job of convincing younger programmers that they can have a productive, rewarding career, in part in an old, non-sexy language like BASIC. Where do I find such firms?

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• Framework 4 Features: Summary of Security enhancements

  - by Anthony Shorten

  In the last log entry I mentioned one of the new security features in Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4.0.1. Security is one of the major "tent poles" (to borrow a phrase from Steve Jobs) in this release of the framework. There are a number of security related enhancements requested by customers and as a result of internal reviews that we have introduced. Here is a summary of some of the security enchancements we have added in this release: Security Cache Changes - Security authorization information is automatically cached on the server for performance reasons (security is checked for every single call the product makes for all modes of access). Prior to this release the cache auto-refreshed every 30 minutes (or so). This has beem made more nimble by supporting a cache refresh every minute (or so). This means authorization changes are reflected quicker than before. Business Level security - Business Services are configurable services that are based upon Application Services. Typically, the business service inherited its security profile from its parent service. Whilst this is sufficient for most needs, it is now required to further specify security on the Business Service definition itself. This will allow granular security and allow the same application service to be exposed as different Business Services with their own security. This is particularly useful when you base a Business Service on a query zone. User Propogation - As with other client server applications, the database connections are pooled and shared as needed. This means that a common database user is used to access the database from the pool to allow sharing. Unfortunently, this means that tracability at the database level is that much harder. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 the end userid is now propogated to the database using the CLIENT_IDENTIFIER as part of the Oracle JDBC connection API. This not only means that the common database userid is still used but the end user is indentifiable for the duration of the database call. This can be used for monitoring or to hook into Oracle's database security products. This enhancement is only available to Oracle Database customers. Enhanced Security Definitions - Security Administrators use the product browser front end to control access rights of defined users. While this is sufficient for most sites, a new security portal has been introduced to speed up the maintenance of security information. Oracle Identity Manager Integration - With the popularity of Oracle's Identity Management Suite, the Framework now provides an integration adapter and Identity Manager Generic Transport Connector (GTC) to allow users and group membership to be provisioned to any Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product from Oracle's Identity Manager. This is also available for Oracle Utilties Application Framework V2.2 customers. Refer to My Oracle Support KBid 970785.1 - Oracle Identity Manager Integration Overview. Audit On Inquiry - Typically the configurable audit facility in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework is used to audit changes to records. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework the Business Services and Service Scripts could be configured to audit inquiries as well. Now it is possible to attach auditing capabilities to zones on the product (including base package ones). Time Zone Support - In some of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products, the timezone of the end user is a factor in the processing. The user object has been extended to allow the recording of time zone information for use in product functionality. JAAS Suport - Internally the Oracle Utilities Application Framework uses a number of techniques to validate and transmit security information across the architecture. These various methods have been reconciled into using Java Authentication and Authorization Services for standardized security. This is strictly an internal change with no direct on how security operates externally. JMX Based Cache Management - In the last bullet point, I mentioned extra security applied to cache management from the browser. Alternatively a JMX based interface is now provided to allow IT operations to control the cache without the browser interface. This JMX capability can be initiated from a JSR120 compliant JMX console or JMX browser. I will be writing another more detailed blog entry on the JMX enhancements as it is quite a change and an exciting direction for the product line. Data Patch Permissions - The database installer provided with the product required lower levels of security for some operations. At some sites they wanted the ability for non-DBA's to execute the utilities in a controlled fashion. The framework now allows feature configuration to allow delegation for patch execution. User Enable Support - At some sites, the use of temporary staff such as contractors is commonplace. In this scenario, temporary security setups were required and used. A potential issue has arisen when the contractor left the company. Typically the IT group would remove the contractor from the security repository to prevent login using that contractors userid but the userid could NOT be removed from the authorization model becuase of audit requirements (if any user in the product updates financials or key data their userid is recorded for audit purposes). It is now possible to effectively diable the user from the security model to prevent any use of the useridwhilst retaining audit information. These are a subset of the security changes in Oracle Utilities Application Framework. More details about the security capabilities of the product is contained in My Oracle Support KB Id 773473.1 - Oracle Utilities Application Framework Security Overview.

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