Product Reviews

Book Review: The CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST

All in all I highly recommend this book to every Java programmer. I really like the CERT books. This one is no different, however, it is not one to read from cover to cover, at least not for me. It contains a catalog of rules for programming secure java code. What I have been doing is using it to look up rules about topics found in other resources that I have been using to learn the java environment. Although the book contains a great index, there is an online version of this book which is really nice. It contains a really sweet search. I have been using that a lot to find the topics I am interested in, marking them in the book, and then reading about them in the book. The online version of the book contains all the code samples found in the book.

Java, A Beginner's Guide, 5th Edition

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EDT

This book is great for the person who is new to Java and new to programming. Let’s first set the context of my normal skillset. I am a .NET Software Architect and Developer. I have been 100% in the .NET world since 2001 (with a very little sprinkling of VB6). I recently decided to expand my skillset into the Java and iOS world. This is the first book on my long journey into the world of Java. I think this book is great for the person who is new to Java and new to programming. Although the book does not use an IDE to create, compile, and run the programs, that does not take away from the book's learning quality. I used both the SDK command lines and the IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition to compile and run the programs. The book covers the core language in-depth, has a short chapter on Swing, briefly introduces applets, but does not touch on Servlets. The book covers Data Types and Operators, Control Statements, Classes, Objects, Methods, Packages, Interfaces, Exception Handling, Inheritance, I/O, Multithreading, Enumerations, Autoboxing, Static Import, Annotations, Generics, Applets, Events, introduces Swing, and using Java's Documentation Comments.

Manage Your Source Data Assets . . .

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:15:00 EDT

Every Software Configuration Management tool is different in terms of functionality; however, they all have common threads of functionality that are consistent with all Software Configuration Management tools. Common activities include checking out, checking in, adding files, deleting files, obsoleting files and loading an initial baseline. The way these tasks are achieved is of course different from tool to tool but many of the SCM tools perform these basic activities. This article will focus on a product called Rational Application Developer and the integration with SCM AllFusion Harvest R12.0.2 using the CA SCM Eclipse plug-in.

Exadel JavaFX Plug-in for Eclipse v. 1.3.4 with Organize Imports

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:10:00 EDT

Exadel has released Exadel JavaFX Plug-in for Eclipse version 1.3.4. The biggest feature in this release is Organize Imports (just like in Java editor). The class for Text node is missing, pressing Ctrl+Shift+O, will display the dialog where the correct class can be selected. You can also invoke Organize Imports from the editor context menu (right-click anywhere in the editor and select Organize Imports). You can also invoke Organize Imports from the editor context menu (right-click [...]

WireframeSketcher: An Eclipse Plug-In

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:00:00 EST

This article will focus on a product called WireframeSketcher developed by Peter Severin. WireframeSketcher allows you to quickly create wireframes and mockups right within the Eclipse IDE. Wireframes are put together by laying out pre-drawn widgets using a familiar drag-and-drop interface. There are widgets to represent buttons, combos, trees, tables and many more. While dragging widgets conveniently snaps to nearby edges, which makes the layout task quick and efficient.

Reporting Solutions Using Crystal Reports for Eclipse

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:17:00 EST

SAP (Business Objects) has recently released Crystal Reports for Eclipse version 2.0 to provide reporting solutions for Java-based applications. This is available as free to use (within an organization) and has the advantage that it is built on the most tested and reliable component (Java Reporting Component in Crystal Reports) that has been in market for quite a few years now. This article discusses the features of CR4Ev2.0, usability of its designer and API, and starting off with an overview of Crystal Reports product architecture.

WebSphere CloudBurst in Test Organizations

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:15:00 EDT

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance can bring speed and agility to test organizations by drastically increasing the pace and ease with which users interact with WebSphere Application Server environments. I recently got a chance to catch up with IBM's Robbie Minshall. Robbie is a WebSphere Test Architect, and he is responsible for a team of testers that harness a lab of over 2,000 physical machines to put our WebSphere Application Server product through some pretty rigorous testing. Toward the beginning of 2009 Robbie’s team started to leverage the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance in order to create the WebSphere Application Server environments needed for their testing.

Cloud BI & Amazon VPC

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Today RightScale did a webinar on their Cloud Business Intelligence offering with Talend, Jaspersoft and Vertica. One of the bigger objections to cloud BI in the past has been security — how can I move all of this mission critical data to a public insecure cloud? With Amazon VPC now in the picture, the BI datasets are now as secure at Amazon as they are in your data center. Why wouldn’t you use the cloud for your BI needs?

Eclipse Europa 3.3.2 Integration with SCM Tools

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:30:00 EDT

Presently, I am the administrator of SCM AllFusion Harvest. SCM AllFusion Harvest is a process-based Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool for managing application source code. I manage 121 applications housed in SCM AllFusion Harvest and support 185 users using the product. The development tools we currently use are PowerBuilder PBV8, PBV11; Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008; and Java.

Open Source Selenium Web Application Testing System

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:15:00 EDT

In my recent blog post – Get more out of functional web testing: How to correlate test reports with server side log information? – I discussed the problem that testing results are usually not linked to the log and diagnostics information captured by the application under test. The blog entry offered a way to link the two sides using HTTP Tagging via an HTTP Proxy. Tagging individual Web Requests allows linking each individual request executed by the testing tool with the transactions that are executed on the server side. Your logging framework or diagnostics solution can then take this tag and link the transaction to the originating web request. Tagging Web Requests with Selenium

Social Networking Tip For Programmers – and Everyone Else

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Set aside one hour daily for active marketing: Software developers love to spend days and nights coding great stuff. Focusing on marketing, sales and customer activities is not quite as exciting. Put some discipline in place. A good starting point is to devote one hour per day of your time to work exclusively on marketing. [...]

Zend Studio for Eclipse

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:00:00 EST

In my many years of programming, almost 20 years now, I have used countless integrated development environments (IDEs). I have used everything from a simple text editor all the way up to the high-end IDEs that Sybase, IBM, and Oracle use. More recently I have come to embrace the open source movement and development in Web environments. My programming language of choice for these days is PHP, so it stands to reason that I would be looking for an IDE. Like so many other developers I followed the path of looking for the pinnacle of IDEs for PHP. I started with basic text editors, moved into text editors with code colorizations, and then into project-based development environments, and finally to a fully robust IDE. The one that I've been using for a few years now is Zend's Studio Professional.

Product Review: Zend Studio for Eclipse

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:30:00 EDT

Zend has decided, and I think this is a great idea, to join in with the Eclipse community that was founded in large part by IBM a number of years ago. The values that can be added by joining with the Eclipse community are many and varied. Since Eclipse was primarily established as a Java development environment it has certainly grown in leaps and bounds by way of add-on libraries just to name one popular area.

Dokuwiki - A Practical Open Source Knowledge Base Solution

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 03:30:00 EST

Whether you're a company of one or 100, managing knowledge is a core concern and implementing a knowledge base is a sensible way to capture your content. Dokuwiki is a practical open source Web application for creating a knowledge base that's easy for novice Webmasters to set up but flexible and full-featured.