XML

2003: Year of the Architect

Michael Flanakin — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 01:12:00 GMT

SD Times released an article that mentioned key topics/technologies from each of the past 5 years. The article also discussed a few possibilities for 2003. Here are the labels given to '98-'02, according to SD Times:

2002	Year of Web Services
2001	Year of XML, .NET
2000	Year of Enterprise Java
1999	Year of Linux
1998	Year of the Web

I think that 2003 should be the Year of the Architect or the Year of Architecture. I know that software architecture has been around for a while, but I don't think I've seen anything boom as much this year as architectural topics, discussions, and most of all, job titles. I have never, in my years within IT, heard one single word thrown around so much, and have people understand so little about what it actually means. Sure, everyone can make a general assumption as far as what an “architecture” is and what “architects” do, but these generalizations are usually not true to reality. I have heard XML a lot, but the term “architect” goes beyond a technology implementation like XML does. We have software architects, component architects, enterprise architects, data architects, domain architects, requirements architects, document architects, and PowerPoint architects. Basically, if you work with some sort of noun, you can be a noun architect, too! Heck, throw it all together and you can be a .NET/J2EE XML Web Service Architect. Sounds pretty good, huh? Ridiculous. Bah!

Applied IT Forum was a Success

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:21:00 GMT

AITF was a success! Juval Löwy, Michael Wheaton, and Dan Malks came and spoke to a group of developers and managers, and they all loved it. This forum was more focused on software development than I'd like for the future, but I had to minimize the scope because of other things going on at work.

I must say that if you haven't experienced one of Juval's talks, you're missing out. Juval is very eccentric and opinionated, which is always a good thing in my book. He's worked with Microsoft on a number of ventures and has even been named as one of the top 10 developers in the world (by Microsoft). Anyway, enough about him...

Michael and Dan were meant to attract some of the Java developer groups within the organization. While I did get a few, the majority of the attendees were interested in .NET - which is primarily due to the AF .NET User Group that got Juval to come (thanks INETA). I didn't get to hear much of their talks, but the feedback seemed to be that Dan is an awesome speaker. I did talk to him a little and will probably try to get him to come back to talk to architects and lead developers about patterns - Dan co-authored Core J2EE Patterns, which is still in my stack of to-read's.

I'm looking at AITF² for the July time-frame. Hopefully, I can get Juval, Dan, and perhaps a few more good speakers. If possible, I'd like to get Chris Kinsman, but we'll see how that goes. I need to hear some other speakers before I nail down who I want to get. We'll see. I'd like to cover topics in the areas of .NET, J2EE, databases, XML, and maybe a few more. Requirements elicitation/analysis, project management, wireless, and tablet PCs are possible topics. I want to cover a wider range, tho - after all, the idea is to be focused on IT, not just software. Oh well, I guess I'll just wait to hear what people are asking for.

Markup Validators

Michael Flanakin — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:12:00 GMT

Here are a few nice markup validators. Let me know if you have any favorites/preferences.

Then again, a lot of tools provide support for this. Visual Studio is ok, but questionable - we'll see if it gets any better. I'm sure someone has probably built a plug-in to validate code from within VS.

Coding Standards

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:32:00 GMT

One thing that I've always seen, but never understood was the use of spaces over tabs. Does anyone have any good reasons for this? I prefer tabs because they are easier to use. For instance, if I need to delete an indention, I press backspace. If I need to move left one indention, I press the left arrow...both ONE time, not four. Different editors work in different ways, but I think that tabs completely ensure the same functionality. If it's a tab, it's treated the same way, no matter what.

One person mentioned that when you open code in a normal text editor, like Notepad, you get huge spaces. True, but how much do you use Notepad? If you use notepad, then you're crazy. There are a ton of good tools to edit all kinds of code. They can do all kinds of cool things.

So, I'm left with my quandry: Why do most standards include the mandatory use of spaces instead of tabs?

CIO Faith in Web Service Platforms

Michael Flanakin — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 04:42:00 GMT

Ain't it beautiful?

369 CIOs were asked which platform is preferred in building Web services

Microsoft .NET 46.5%
IBM WebSphere 19%
Sun One 8.2%

Thanks to Rebecca Dias for the slides. Check them out if you get a chance. Good stuff, but I would have preferred a little less marketting-type info...then again, it's really not that bad.

It's All in the Name

Michael Flanakin — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 14:28:00 GMT

I'm looking for a good name for a software development conference-summit-forum-thing. This is an internal event to help share information as well as bring in good people to talk about software issues/innovations. Does anyone have any suggestions? Here are some of the ideas I've been mulling over:

Application Development Forum (ADF)
Applied Technology Forum (ATF)
Applied Information Technology Forum (AITF or “8F”)
Information Technology Forum (ITF)
Software Development Forum (SDF)
Software Technology Forum (STF)

I think we will be calling this thing a forum, because the idea is that people need to be highly integrated into the discussions and presentations. Other ideas are: conference, summit, forum, symposium, expo, convention, seminar, ... you get the idea.

Of course, everyone will use whatever acronym is available to describe it. Most of these don't sound very good, in my opinion. The audience for the forum includes all primary stakeholders (customers, project managers, requirements analysts, designers, developers, database and system admins, testers, etc.) I'm afraid that calling it “Software Development Forum” will make people think that only developers are included. I think “8F” sounds the best (out of the suggestions above).

Any opinions??? TIA.

Coding Conventions

Michael Flanakin — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 09:54:00 GMT

There was a recent survey on the Code Project website that asked, “What notations do you use when coding?” I was surprised to see that nearly 53% of the respondants claimed to use Hungarian notation, with all but a few of those using prefixes (i.e. m_ for member variables). Now, I'm sure none of the respondants use only one naming convention, but I thought it was refreshing to see that Hungarian hasn't died - I am still a big fan. Generally, I use the following...

Local variables: Hungarian (w/o prefixes)
Private properties: Hungarian (w/ prefixes)
Protected/public properties/methods: Pascal casing
Method parameters: Camel casing
Markup tags/attributes: Camel casing

RSS-Calendar

Michael Flanakin — Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:13:00 GMT

I read a post mentioned by Jason Olson and thought it was pretty interesting. One thing that I've been interested in, and plan on looking at in more detail in the future, is an RSS calendaring capability. The basic functionality is already within RSS, but I want to see where RSS would need to be extended to fit more advanced capabilities. I also plan on working with XSL to transform the RSS feed into actual iCalendar events. I haven't looked into this, yet, but plan on it. The project should be pretty simple.

I haven't looked around any to see if this sort of thing has been done before, so I'm assuming that I'll find some good guidance. Either way, let me know if you have any suggestions or know of good places to check out for information. I'll let everyone know what I find out.