SE News

You should, by now, be familiar with the benefits of RFID: non-contact, non-line-of-sight reading, read/write capability, etc.

The problem is that different RFID systems have different capabilities and costs.

Not all tags, for example, are read/write. Some tags are active, some are passive some are semi-passive. They don’t all have the same data capacity or range. Similarly, the different operating frequencies don’t offer the same range or data transfer rates. And not all frequencies are legal in all countries.

Nonetheless, we often find hopeful stories that conglomerate all the best features of every available system into an imaginary product that, in the words of Dr. David Allais, “does everything, costs nothing and fits on the head of a pin.” (At the time, Dr. Allais was referring to bar codes, but the analogy is perhaps even more appropriate for RFID.)

Many companies, nonetheless, are waiting for this mythical system to be made available. And a common perception is that it will be “some time early next year” — whenever “next year” happens to be.

Waiting for this system to be announced is rather like waiting for Elvis to reappear.

http://www.aimglobal.org/technologies/rfid/resources/articles/June03/implementingRFID.htm

Now that the SharePoint API is fully .NET-based, you’ve gained access to almost the entire SharePoint object model. Learn how to use this new functionality while building a very simple console application using C# and the .NET Framework.

by Amar Galla

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/22387

Last month we looked at XSLT’s role in the reference implementation for Schematron, a schema language that lets you express many constraints that can’t be expressed in RELAX NG (RNG) or the W3C Schema language (XSD). Instead of defining an entire schema, Schematron rules usually supplement the structural and typing rules described using one of the other two languages-or perhaps even written as a DTD-so that a Schematron rule set typically accompanies a schema written in one of the other languages.

Bob DuCharme

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/11/10/xslt.html

To be a better programmer, practice programming.

It’s not enough to practice, though. You must practice well and persistently. You need to explore branches and ideas and combinations as they come to your attention. Set aside some time to experiment with a new idea to see what you can learn and what you can use in your normal programming.

How do you find new ideas? One way is through code katas, short pieces of code that start your learning. This article is the first in a series of code kata for Perl programmers. All of these exercises take place in the context of writing tests for Perl programs.

chromatic

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/10/21/taint_testing_kata.html

Software Development teams constantly battle to increase productivity while maintaining or improving quality. Four Motorola teams piloted Extreme Programming to see if it would let them satisfy their customers’ constantly changing requirements while improving productivity.

According to proponents, Extreme Programming creates focused, efficient software development that heavily emphasizes customer involvement. As software developers for mission-critical two-way radio systems in Motorola’s Commercial, Government, and Industrial Solutions Sector, we’d been hearing a lot about XP’s benefits. We’d also heard stories about Web applications and small development projects that successfully used XP. The nagging questions remained, however. Would XP work for us? Could developers in an established company use XP to develop complex mission-critical systems that could be maintained for decades? What would be the ramifications for quality and maintainability?

Jerry Drobka, David Noftz, and Rekha Raghu

http://www.computer.org/SOFTWARE/homepage/2004/nov-dec/piloting.htm

A Wiki is a web site that can be edited directly by people browsing it. That way, they can add new content, correct errors or inaccuracies, and add their own comments, among other things. Since the debut of the original Wiki Wiki Web, many publicly available, usually open source, Wiki implementations have appeared, enabling webmasters to set up their own Wikis on their sites. These Wiki implementations vary in their features, ease of installation, syntax, and semantics.

The purpose of this article is to give an overview of several popular Wiki implementations and see how they fare. It is not trivial to switch from one Wiki implementation to the other, because this will usually require translating all of the pages from the old syntax to the new one. Thus, choosing a Wiki engine requires some care, taking possible future developments into account. This article will hopefully help you make that choice if the need arises.

Shlomi Fish

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/04/which_wiki.html

Over the last two years, I spent some time developing a GUI application using Java Swing. The application was small, consisting of several classes in the MVC (Model-View-Controller) model, but was moderately complicated, having many external components with which to communicate. To avoid total confusion, my team applied extreme programming (XP) methods, which emphasize testing, as much as we could to the project. But we encountered technical problems testing the view part: how would we perform unit tests and automate acceptance tests?

Ichiro Suzuki

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-11-2004/jw-1115-swing.html

We’re losing ground. Only 28% of IT projects succeed these days, down from 34% a year or two ago. Outright failures — IT projects canceled before completion — are up to 18% from 15%. The remaining 51% of IT projects are “challenged” — seriously late, over budget and lacking expected features.

Those numbers are from the just-completed Chaos report from The Standish Group. Standish has been doing this study since 1994, and ever since, we’ve been steadily improving our ability to deliver projects. A decade ago, only 16% of IT projects were successes. By last year, it was twice that. Now we’re backsliding.

How did we get headed in the wrong direction?

Frank Hayes

http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/project/story/0,10801,97283,00.html

Want to build Java user interfaces without drowning in the minutia of the Java GUI libraries? WindowBuilder Pro may be the tool for you. Learn all about this Eclipse plug-in as Jason Morris puts it to the test.

As much of an improvement as Swing and SWT have been for building Java GUIs, Java still lacks the ease of free-form GUI creation available in products such as Visual Basic. In fact, coding Java GUIs is so tedious and requires such detailed knowledge of the AWT, Swing, and SWT APIs that it has become a specialty within the Java programming community. WindowBuilder Pro, a tool developed by Instantiations, Inc. of Portland, Oregon, allows all Java developers to bi-directionally create, edit, and manage all types of GUI components. As an Eclipse plug-in, it also integrates seamlessly with Eclipse’s Java Perspective. This article offers a review of WindowBuilder Pro’s features, benefits, and usability, and a discussion about the direction of Java GUI development with Instantiations’ vice president of product development.

Jason Morris

http://www.devx.com/Java/Article/22186

The composition model in the Unified Modeling Language, version 2 (UML 2), is a major upgrade to the familiar “black diamond” composition of earlier versions. It supports connections between parts at the same level of decomposition, in addition to the usual part-whole associations. Complex networks of entities can be represented within a single class, inherited to subclasses, with links maintained between objects playing parts at runtime. The model also supports connections between parts of parts (ports), enabling more detailed structural modeling and message forwarding, which increases independence of reused applications and provides better plug-compatibility for components.

Conrad Bock

http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2004_11/column5

Carefully researched over ten years and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams is a lucid and practical introduction to running a successful agile project in your organization. Each chapter illuminates a different important aspect of orchestrating agile projects.

Perhaps the most important contribution this book offers is the Seven Properties of Successful Projects. The author has studied successful agile projects and identified common traits they share. These properties lead your project to success; conversely, their absence endangers your project.

http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0201699478

Wat zijn nu de echt kritische aspecten van mijn software-ontwikkelingstraject? Hoe verhouden product en proces -kwaliteit zich tot elkaar? Hoe kan ik de gewenste producteigenschappen borgen in het ontwikkelproces? Hoe beheers ik de kwaliteit van software op een praktische wijze? Sluit mijn ontwikkelproces wel aan bij onze bedrijfsdoelstellingen?

De Masterclass Kwaliteit van Software van CIBIT en SERC speelt in op problemen die vaak spelen bij de ontwikkeling van software, zoals het te laat opleveren van software met te veel fouten, de oorzaken en mogelijke oplossingen en biedt kennis en ervaring van de nieuwste methoden en technieken rond de kwaliteitszorg in de ICT.

Start dinsdag 7 december 2004

http://www.cibit.nl/site.nsf/page/opleiding_architectuur_masterclass_kwaliteit_van_software

De kwaliteit van software wordt voor een groot gedeelte bepaald door de kwaliteit van de broncode. Desondanks zijn er relatief weinig methoden en technieken in de software engineering direct gericht op het schrijven van betere code. Testgedreven ontwikkelen is een relatief recente techniek die juist wél concrete handvaten biedt voor het ontwikkelen van betere programmatuur.

Start woensdag 15 december 2004

http://www.cibit.nl/site.nsf/page/opleiding_architectuur_cursus_testgedreven_software_ontwikkeling

Een selectie uit 22 ingezonden casussen over architectuur in de praktijk. Lessen en winst die te behalen valt aan de vooravond van het Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2004. Er blijkt een standaardaanpak te zijn om zakelijke eisen te vertalen naar architectuur. Dat is winst. Wat de uiteindelijke winst voor de organisatie echter is, blijkt nog altijd moeilijk vast te stellen.

http://www.informatie.nl/