Application Development Outsourcing

How to Get the Financing You Need

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Aaron Whittenberger

Any good Business Analyst will tell you that IT and business speak in different languages. Good CIOs and IT Infrastructure Management know that CFOs have a language all their own. “That being said, it is the money people who generally stand in the way of engineers and technologists and the spending required to accomplish great things with IT.”, according to an CTOEdge article. CIOs generally don’t speak in the language of the CFO when making spending requests, so we walk away feeling that they “just don’t get it”. Here are 10 areas where we, as the promoters of IT, can begin to communicate better with the CFO.

1. Think TCO, not ROI

To the CFO, return on investment is how much money you’re going to give back to the company. Let’s face it. Most IT projects — no matter how compelling — don’t bring “return” to the organization like an additional sales person, a new marketing campaign, or a new product launch. Preach total cost of ownership (TCO); repeat it until you are blue in the face. Whether business application development, web application development, IT infrastructure investment; you can demonstrate “fiscal stewardship” through cost reduction or increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Cloud Computing

CFOs like what they hear about cloud computing as a cost saver. Don’t fight them on it.

3. Green IT

Are you surprised when the CFO is not willing to pay a premium to keep the environment cleaner? The reality is that no green projects exist unless they have a better TCO. So whether to upgrade your IT infrastructure, better IT infrastructure cooling, or saving space for your IT infrastructure you can build a strong business case of the decreased TCO and community relations intangibles of being an “environmentally conscious” firm.

4, 5 and 6. Virtualize, Virtualize and VIRTUALIZE

“This subject takes up three spots because there are three key virtualization targets -- servers, desktop and storage. But again, the key here is how to justify and how now NOT to justify.” Again build your TCO case for virtualization, but be realistic in your cost savings estimates. Many times virtualization projects are viewed as unsuccessful because they did not meet the upfront cost estimates. Be sure to include high traffic times such as end-of-month close periods.

7. Adopt IT-Centric Business Continuity

Over the years responsibility for business continuity have been put on IT management. This needs to change. Organizations need to understand that there are three phases to a business continuity plan; event response, disaster recovery and business continuity. With the financial impact on the organization of disaster recovery and business continuity, business management must be involved and responsible for these areas. It should not be IT management’s responsibility to determine which business units are most important.

8. Align with the Big Picture

Along with TCO, build your requests showing how the request aligns with the business objectives and goals of the organization.

9. Proactive Cost Reduction

Boy does that sound like another way to say TCO to you? Take a proactive stance on reducing cost. The article showed how to reduce cost of document retention.

10. Reduce Data Center Costs

The organization’s data center is usually the center of the IT infrastructure, both in physical space and cost. Just as in application software development, modular building of a data center can cut cost of the IT infrastructure through avoiding construction cost, reduced cooling cost and reduced capital expenditures.

“While the relationship between CFO and CIO can sometimes have more debits than credits, it is definitely worth the investment in time and effort to highlight IT projects in terms the CFO will understand.”

Stop Whining

Friday, January 29, 2010 by Matt Warman

I don't often get on my soapbox, but I feel it's time for this. Stop whining! This refers specifically to application development, but I guess it can be applied to most everything. The point I am talking about is application frameworks.
I am using JavaFX, which is relatively new. The problem it is trying to solve is to remove the cruft from desktop application development (Swing), add 2d animations, and be able to run on a variety of devices and platforms. For me the holy grail of Java development would be to create an application that runs on mobile, desktop, and browser, all using the same code! JavaFX does this nicely. Some application development people won't even look at it because features like menus are not there yet. Are there some things missing? Yes, but there is a difference between “where's function X?” and “Epic fail! I can't do anything because function X is missing!”.
All languages, especially new ones have holes in them. You must learn to work around things, that's why I call myself a hacker. Would I want to have something work out of the box? Of course I would, but I also understand that knowledge comes with getting your hands dirty. Just because I can't drag and drop a control doesn't mean it doesn't work. I think the rule of thumb for me is, if the work takes more code than the application I am working on, then's it's broken. I think the whining is more apparent in the younger guys, because of the great things we can do in our IDEs. Not to sound like a greybeard (but I will anyway) is that I started coding Java in NOTEPAD! The same is true with HTML and XML. I love that code completion and other useful features have become standard now, but I bring this point up for a reason. I know how to fix it when breaks, because I know how it's put together.
Sure code is tough, but if you think writing an application is tough, you should see what it takes to write an API. The application development “magic” doesn't write itself. If something doesn't work right, investigate it, instead of complaining. You may have the key fix to make it great. I know you will learn something during your research. You can't drag that control, so you will wait until it's so easy, even a caveman can do it. If you do, you may be replaced by a cheaper caveman.

Fun with JavaFX

Friday, December 4, 2009 by Matt Warman

I have recently discussed my application development with JavaFX. After using it for a while, I am generally impressed. I come from a Swing background, so desktop application development is not difficult. The concepts that you will most use are sequences, binding, and triggers. Sequences are arrays of objects, but JavaFX makes it easier to use. You can use an index of course, but the insert and delete keywords give more control. You can simply add to the end of the sequence, or insert or delete before or after any item in the sequence. The hardest thing to deal with is that there are no multi-level arrays in JavaFX.

Bind and triggers are an interesting way to dynamically update values on the screen. They seemed awkward to me first, but once you get the hang of it, they work well. You can use the bind keyword assign a variable or attribute a dynamic value. There are times though that the runtime won't update. Instead of Listeners, JavaFX uses the on replace keyword to change the value in runtime. Anything inside the brackets will fire when the value changes. Just update the bound variable in the on replace, and the runtime will update. It seems like you are creating the same value twice, but it is a better way to control runtime events, without a bunch of unused Listeners taking up space.

For most application development people, it is the ability to customize and extend controls that makes a language useful. One thing that I have been doing is creating custom groups. Each control, (Text, buttons, progress Bar, etc) are actually a node on a scene. You can use the Group container to combine the controls into a single class. The Group control is more than a container because application development people can add special attributes that affect the group. I have created a group of polygons that act as buttons. I can't use the ButtonGroup control, so I change the selected button and hover color inside the class by using attributes. The cool thing though, is that I don't create the mouse events in the class, but when I create the group. The mouse events interact with variable on my main class, so there isn't any coupling of my custom class to my main class. That means I can use my polygon buttons in any project I wish.

The are many different effects that you can apply to the controls, too many in fact. As most application development folk don't have a solid background in graphics, a solid guide on gradients, reflection, glowing and other effects, and animation would be great. I just don't know how to control some effects, and I am still learning how to blend effects to make things look cool. That tutorial or book would be my new best friend.

Is IT Qualified To Satisfy The Business?

Monday, November 9, 2009 by Aaron Whittenberger

“IT executives increasingly implement marketing initiatives to improve the communications with their business customers. But these efforts often focus solely on the brand aspects of the services under the IT’s control without understanding the business’ perception of IT. To maximize the success, IT must add business satisfaction assessments to its tool kit. Understanding business satisfaction requires qualitative and quantitative data that capture customer expectations and perceptions through different types of interactions such as interviews, panels, focus groups, complaint systems, and surveys. This report provides best-practice recommendations, survey templates, and questions to guide IT executives through the deployment of a business satisfaction assessment. It applies Forrester’s deep expertise in external customer satisfaction to the interface between business customers and their internal IT suppliers.” says a new Forrester report.

I have served on countless business application development teams within several organizations in the Southwest Ohio and Cincinnati Information Technology community, one thing I can say is that most IT organizations do not gauge business satisfaction with IT business solutions. I have served in only a couple of organizations where the business serves on the IT governance committee. An organization does not have to be “big” to have an IT governance committee. No matter what the size of the organization decisions are made as to priorities in IT work. IT governance does not have to be a long drawn out process or take great time commitment from the business or IT executives, but business involvement in IT governance goes a long way in gaining business buy-in as you roll out the IT business solutions to the business.

Involvement in IT governance is just one way that many organizations in the Greater Cincinnati area can improve the IT-business relationship. The Forrester report goes into ways to solicit and gauge business satisfaction with IT business solutions. Doing so should affect decisions concerning not only IT business solution delivery but also IT Infrastructure and IT outsourcing initiatives.

IBM, Java, and the Community

Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Matt Warman

I recently read an article about the state of the IBM “i” and the amount of complaining by IBM application development and business partner folk. I know several RPG application development folk, and it sounds familiar. That made me think about my Java Application development and career. Are there things to complain about, and uncertainty about the future? Yes, but there are 2 reasons why the Java community is in a better place; the business model and the community. Before the IBMers call for a holy war, I said COMMUNITY! I am not talking about the strengths or weaknesses of the hardware or software. The business model for IBM is that they make the hardware and software, and partner for the sales and service. I think that is a viable model until IBM competes in the sales and services with their partners. If a lead is brought in by a small partner, they are awarded by giving the business to someone bigger. This sets up a confrontational relationship between IBM, the big partners, and the little partners. IBM can also decide whether or not you are worthy to be a partner. Why does this affect the software application development team? Because most consulting firm are selling SERVICES not HARDWARE. If they are not seeing business because of political fighting, they don't have to sell it. There are viable options on other platforms, where interference does not happen. IBM never fostered a community, they created a hierarchy with themselves as the head.

Certainly Sun has done some things that made myself and others unhappy. Besides, complaining, we actively pushed to remove barriers in our path. We do have an open source Java. Is there a IBM community that can work with RPG to make it work for them? I also think its about scale and timing. It's not like IBM software developers have their own AS/400 at their home. It's easy for me to create and use nearly any kind of application at my home in Cincinnati, and pretty cheaply. It makes it fun to tell non-technical people about my application development. Nobody but accountants want to hear about accounting programs. Java, and newer languages have grown up with the Internet. I have friends from all over the globe that have similar interests. If I have a problem, I can go online to a forum, friend, or web page to find what I need. I can read and write blogs to voice my opinion (like now). These things are not ingrained in the Legacy community, and in fact, have been actively campaigned against. It is my belief that any software, hardware, or service will die when there is no vocal community to support it.

My Learning Recipe

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Matt Warman

As a consultant and application development person, I have to learn new things all the time. Take for example, my work with JavaFX. The language does have some familiar aspects, but there is a lot new there too. How do you go about learning something new? I have come up with some guidelines that I use in learning new things (in this case a language):

Read as much about it as you can first. No one wants to wade through tomes of technical information, but that is where you learn. I try to get a feel for what problem the new thing is trying to solve first.
Understand the core elements. Whether it's a programming language, a car, or a philosophical construct, knowing how it works is the first step. I know it's time to go to the next step when I have some ideas on how to use the item, and I start formulating a project.
Examine and breakdown examples, if you can. You would be surprised at how many application development people think they're “smart enough” to figure out how things work just by following a few examples. I don't know about you, but I don't figure out a complex things just from a few simple “Hello World” examples. That being said, seeing how things works is the quickest to way get a basic understanding. Couple that with knowledge you acquired by reading the manual, and you get the “why” of how it's put together.
Create your own knowledge base. I like to Google more than most people, but things do need to get done. I will create a separate folder to contain links to examples, other application development team members' blogs, white papers and other documentation. If you can, create a “how-to” WIKI. Having a centrally located repository makes it simple to answer questions.
Create a test project. I do this especially for languages. I create a test project where I can test specific “how do I?” questions. It keeps you from removing code, adding unnecessary functions, and commenting and uncommenting code in your main project. Figure it out in its own project first, then transfer the code and knowledge to your main project. It is always good to revisit it after a period inactivity.
Write or teach what you learned. As application development people, we tend to get blinders on when doing something. Having a different set eyes, or different questions being asked makes you examine what you actually know.

So there's my “Secret Sauce” for learning. You still have to come up with ideas on how to utilize you knowledge though.

Working with Magento

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Matt Warman

People outside of Cincinnati may be shocked to know that I work with languages OUTSIDE of Java! I don't know any application development person, especially one who does web application development who doesn't use several languages. I have recently been working on Magento. What is that you say? Magento is an Open Source PHP ECommerce application based on the Zend Framework. You don't need to download Zend, just the Magento PHP files. We actually have Magento internally setup with a LAMP package, but I already have MySQL and Apache on my local machine, so I thought I'd tackle and individual install. The verdict? Well after a couple of small hiccups (don't use the Windows install for PHP, just unzip, and localhost needs to be a virtual host), setup was a breeze! Fortunately, STAR BASE, Inc. has enough experience to over come these issues. Magento is easy to customize products and catalogs, and would be a good choice for organizations to create their own ECommerce site. Magento is easy enough to implement without an IT Consultant, but an experienced consultant can save you time and frustration.

Takin’ the Basset Hound to the Farm (Part One)

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Jeff Welsh

Seems like it has been a while since I have had a chance to do a post. For the last 3 weeks things have been absolutely crazy in our IT consulting world, but in a good way. We had a chance to go to the Techserve Alliance national conference in Las Vegas. I have heard all the jokes, including the one about it staying in Vegas. We did learn that just because you are pre-checked with the airline, does not mean that your bags are. We got our bags checked with literally a minute to spare and fortunately all made it back to Cincinnati.

Upon return, we signed a support contract for a new customer. They trust us enough to outsource their entire IT applications support to us. We have a real life example of an IT Strategy that was discussed at the conference (See #3). Not only was IT strategy discussed but business strategy as well. Here are some highlights:

1. Market Differentiation - customers have lots of choices, how will you stand out?

2. Improve Systems and methodology for delivering service- excellence, efficiency, depth of service.

3. Outsource what you can-eliminate the busy work that does not add strategic value.

4. Deal with the economy being slow to recover till 2012, spend your money wisely, hire wisely, fire quickly, and refine what is working, stop what is not.

5. Build Alliances with like minded providers in different industries and sell collaboratively to serve the customers' need.

My favorite of these five is number four. Said another way, its takin’ the basset hound to the farm. I’ll expand more on that in my next post.

IT Outsourcing in for some big changes

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 by Aaron Whittenberger

A new report from Gartner Research Firm

IT Outsourcing is not going away anytime soon, but a new report from Gartner Research states that the market is in for some big changes. The report predicts that one in four business-process outsourcing firms will disappear within the next three years.

The article in InformationWeek gives advice to CIOs who wish to initiate a new IT Outsourcing contract on warning signs to look for in your prospective BPO partner that would indicate this firm may not be able to fulfill any new contract:

1.    Are they losing money?
2.    Are they winning new business?
3.    The loss of marquee clients.
4.    Poor capitalization is impeding growth.
5.    Toxic exposure to tainted financial firms.
6.    Lock down your exit strategies.

In another article in EconomicTimes I read that IBM will goble up half of India’s IT outsourcing business in 2010.

This is not to suggest that the offshore IT outsourcing business is coming home. IBM’s business is international. With IBM awarding one-half to 1 billion dollar contracts, many India firms will not be able to compete in delivering hardware, software, IT consulting services and integrated business solutions. IBM is one reason that 25% of IT BPO firms will meet their demise within the next three years.

Take a Team Approach to IT attacks

Tuesday, September 8, 2009 by Aaron Whittenberger

You more than likely already know you need the best security possible to prevent an attack. You also need IT infrastructure and IT staffing in place to respond to an attack if one happens.

Incidence response should be one of the most important items on your IT security agenda. Your company must be prepared to respond to an incident once it occurs and quite possibly to stop the next one.

As of late, disgruntled employees violate internal policies or misuse system access for their own monetary gain or for revenge on employers due to mergers, outsourcing of business or IT jobs or employee lay offs. Internal threats are as real as external threats.

IT experts say that security professionals with the right skills can help lower the number of and potential for incidents at any organization with their responses.

An article in this week's GovInfoSecurity.com outlines the experts you will need:

Network security specialist: A person familiar with intrusion detection systems.
Penetration testers: Someone who can assess a system's potential vulnerabilities.
Incident handlers: People who understand attack methodology and can apply critical thinking skills to respond to incidents.
Forensics Analyst: The person who looks for evidence after an attack.
Research Analyst: The person to keep abreast technological advances in incident response activities.
Team Leader: Leads the team through crises and communicates to the business incident activities and cost to the business.

The article also outlines a typical methodology the team should follow to respond to all types of attacks:

Preparation and Training: for both prevention and incident response.
Identification: fast identification of an occurring attack and its impact on the IT infrastructure can help in minimizing the duration and cost of clean-up.
Containment: Once an attack has been identified, steps must be taken to minimize the effects of the attack.
Recovery and Analysis: The recovery period allows analysis and lessons learned of What happened? Why did it happened? Was the response effective?

Is your IT infrastructure safe from internal and external attacks? The proper IT infrastructure safeguards and IT staffing with proper security skills can help ensure your organization's security.

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 by Mark Murphy

Sometimes the solution to a problem is staring you right in the face. Sometimes you already know the answer but can't see it because the pieces are labeled in a way that is outside the scope of the solution. Sometimes you can just use an old tool to provide a piece of functionality you thought you needed to code a home grown solution for. Recently, such a time occurred for me.

I was in a meeting discussing the logistics of transferring multiple gigs of text data across the internet. The source computer was an iSeries, the target was something else. Much of the discussion centered on network latency and the time it was going to take to transfer that much data, and how processes were going to have to be pushed back a day because the window was too short. Well I said why don't we just zip up the file and send it that way. Data files tend to be highly compressible, up to 90%. "Can you do that on an iSeries." That was the infrastructure guy. Why not, I can run Java on it. I shouldn't be too hard to find something, even if I have to write a simple Java program. "Don't do anything we won't be able to understand." That was one of the RPG programmers. IMHO, the legacy tag belongs with those who use the technology, and the technologies they choose to use rather than with the hardware and operating system. For me it was a challenge.

A day later I had a working command using a tool that is bundled with every Java Development Kit. I knew this, but it took a slight memory jog from a college to remind me. A JAR file is a ZIP file with a different extension. IBM explicitly provides a tool to convert a database file to a CSV file, or a flat text file, but to compress that file into a ZIP file you need to use the JAR utility and give the file a .ZIP extension. Works like a champ. IBM even provides an alternate JAR utility that acts more like a command line compression utility to create zip files, but instead of calling it zip, or izip or something like that they call it ajar.

Well, a short CL later and I have a full featured program that takes a database file name, a zip file name and path (in the integrated file system or IFS), and a format selector (*DLM or *FIXED). It probably would have made more sense to name that format *CSV instead of *DLM, but IBM's conversion utility calls it *DLM. The output is a zip file with the name and path as specified in the input parameters.

And Here it is:

             PGM        PARM(&DBF &ZIPFILE &FORMAT)


             DCL        VAR(&DBF) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(32)
             DCL        VAR(&ZIPFILE) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(255)
             DCL        VAR(&FORMAT) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(6)
             DCL        VAR(&FILE) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10)
             DCL        VAR(&LIB) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10)
             DCL        VAR(&MBR) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10)
             DCL        VAR(&CMD) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(255)
             DCL        VAR(&TEXTFILE) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(15)
             DCL        VAR(&TEMPFILE) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(40)
             DCL        VAR(&ERRLOOP) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(1) VALUE(N)
             DCL        VAR(&INTER) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(1)

             MONMSG     MSGID(CPF0000 QSH0000) EXEC(GOTO CMDLBL(ERROR))

             RTVJOBA    TYPE(&INTER)

             CHGVAR     VAR(&FILE) VALUE(%SST(&DBF 3 10))
             CHGVAR     VAR(&LIB) VALUE(%SST(&DBF 13 10))
             CHGVAR     VAR(&MBR) VALUE(%SST(&DBF 23 10))

             /* Ensure ZIP directory exists for error logging */
             MKDIR      DIR('/zip')
             MONMSG     MSGID(CPFA0A0)

             /* Delete &zipfile if it exists */
             RMVLNK     OBJLNK(&ZIPFILE)
             MONMSG     MSGID(CPFA0A9)

             /* build text file name */
             IF         COND(&FORMAT *EQ *DLM) THEN(DO)
                CHGVAR     VAR(&TEXTFILE) VALUE(&FILE *TCAT '.csv')
             ENDDO
             ELSE       CMD(DO)
                CHGVAR     VAR(&TEXTFILE) VALUE(&FILE *TCAT '.txt')
             ENDDO

             /* generate temporary file name */
             RTVTMPIFSN NAME(&TEMPFILE)
             IF         COND(&TEMPFILE *EQ ' ') THEN(CHGVAR VAR(&TEMPFILE) +
                          VALUE('/tmp/$$__tempfile'))

             /* export DBF to temporary file */
             CPYTOIMPF  FROMFILE(&LIB/&FILE &MBR) TOSTMF(&TEMPFILE) +
                          MBROPT(*REPLACE) STMFCODPAG(*STDASCII) +
                          RCDDLM(*CRLF) DTAFMT(&FORMAT) RMVBLANK(*TRAILING)
             MONMSG     MSGID(CPF2817) EXEC(DO)
                SNDPGMMSG  MSGID(CPF9898) MSGF(QCPFMSG) MSGDTA('Error +
                             converting Database File to Interface File') +
                             MSGTYPE(*DIAG)
                GOTO       CMDLBL(ERROR)
             ENDDO

             /* Send 'compressing' status message */
             IF         COND(&INTER *EQ '1') THEN(SNDPGMMSG MSGID(CPF9897) +
                          MSGF(QCPFMSG) MSGDTA('Compressing file ' *CAT +
                          &FILE) TOPGMQ(*EXT) MSGTYPE(*STATUS))

             /*---------------------------------------------------------------*/
             /* This command is using the unix environment to zip up the file */
             /* extracted above.  All errors are logged to a text file        */
             /* named error.txt.  The 2>> operator redirects stderr to the    */
             /* file following it, and adds any messages to the end of the    */
             /* file.                                                         */
             /*                                                               */
             /* The following unix utilities are used here:                   */
             /*  ajar - create an archive                                     */
             /*                                                               */
             /* The following environment variables are used here:            */
             /*  QIBM_QSH_CMD_ESCAPE_MSG - Sends QSH0005 as an escape message */
             /*        if the exit status is not 0 (Qshell error condition)   */
             /*---------------------------------------------------------------*/
             /* Send an escape message if the command fails */
             ADDENVVAR  ENVVAR(QIBM_QSH_CMD_ESCAPE_MSG) VALUE(Y) +
                          REPLACE(*YES)

             /* Create &zipfile from temporary file */
             CHGVAR     VAR(&CMD) VALUE('ajar -c -M' *BCAT &ZIPFILE *BCAT +
                          '''' *CAT &TEMPFILE *TCAT ''' :' *BCAT &TEXTFILE +
                          *BCAT '2>>' *BCAT '/zip/error.txt')
             QSH        CMD(&CMD)
             MONMSG     MSGID(QSH0005) EXEC(DO)
                SNDPGMMSG  MSGID(CPF9898) MSGF(QCPFMSG) MSGDTA('Error +
                             creating ZIP file') MSGTYPE(*DIAG)
                GOTO       CMDLBL(ERROR)
             ENDDO

             /* Delete temporaty file */
             RMVLNK     OBJLNK(&TEMPFILE)
             MONMSG     MSGID(CPFA0A9)

             /* Exit Normally */
             GOTO       CMDLBL(OUT)


             /* Process Errors */
 ERROR:      IF         COND(&ERRLOOP *EQ Y) THEN(GOTO CMDLBL(OUT))
             CHGVAR     VAR(&ERRLOOP) VALUE(Y)

             /* Delete temporaty file */
             RMVLNK     OBJLNK(&TEMPFILE)
             MONMSG     MSGID(CPFA0A9)

             /* Send Escape message */
             SNDPGMMSG  MSGID(CPF9898) MSGF(QCPFMSG) MSGDTA('Error +
                          Processing File') MSGTYPE(*ESCAPE)

 OUT:        ENDPGM

Check it out. Create a ZIP file using the Java Archive utility. A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet!

Are IT Jobs on the Rebound?

Sunday, August 30, 2009 by Aaron Whittenberger

A Network World article reports that the U.S. gained 7,400 IT jobs in August. Gaining back what was lost the month before and following five months of losses of IT jobs in the U.S. Hopefully this is the first signs of the U.S. coming out of the recession that has gripped the country.

Adding to the good news for IT Services Companies in Cincinnati, across Ohio and the country; as well as application development personnel is news from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that demand for H-1B Visas are on the decline. They expect the entire 85,000 visas to be given out this year, just not as quickly and with the same frenzy as in the past few years. FierceCIO continues to state that ‘employers are putting a greater emphasis on hiring American workers, buying American goods and abandoning offshore outsourcing’. Where I do not believe this to be the general direction of employers in America, some smaller employers may have taken this direction but large firms continue their offshore IT outsourcing plans.

So does all this mean that better times are in store for IT business solutions professionals in America? I remain pessimistically optimistic.

Is the IIBA Buckling Down Too Hard?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 by Aaron Whittenberger

I have return.....from my eight month siesta. No, I have not been in Mexico; so I can guarantee that I do not have the swine flu. Although Mexico is on my bucket list, I don't believe now is a great time to visit. I am back and still on my soap box. What has gotten me back on my soap box are some recent articles and blogs I have read complaining that the International Institute for Business Analysis ® has made the application and recertification process for their Certified Business Analyst Professional (CBAP)® certification too stringent.

I have been and continue to be a strong proponent for IT certifications. Even since I obtained my CBAP® certification last year the application process has changed. The exam itself is now based on version 2.0 of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK)®.

I have heard that CBAP® applicants are rejected due to the IIBA® reducing their documented hours for tasks or deliverables that do not qualify as business analysis work. Such reduction of hours left them short of the 7,500 hour requirement. Some applicants are unaware of the new 900 hour requirement in four of the six knowledge hours, again leaving them short of the requirement.

First of all I believe that the application process itself is more rigorous than the exam. It is part of the whole process of obtaining the certification. The IIBA® , by putting all applicants through a rigorous review process, protects the value of the certification. A couple of tips I can give you in applying for the CBAP® certification:

Document more than the minimum 7,500 hours of business analysis work. This ensures that if your hours are reduced in the review process that you will still have enough hours to qualify to sit for the exam. This goes for total hours as well as hours in each of the knowledge areas. I personally documented 9,000 hours on my application.
Put the language on your application in the wording of the BABOK®. By putting your work tasks and deliverables in the language of the profession it is less likely that the hours will be discounted in review.

Remember that any certification worth getting will not be a give-me. You will have to work for it. Any certification worth getting will have a re-certification process, usually just as rigorous as the original application process itself. In my opinion, the CBAP ® certification and the business analysis profession is what turns IT solutions into IT business solutions. When it comes to web application development or any business application development projects, the business analyst is as much a valued resource as the project manager. Business analysis done right can help ensure the success of your IT business solutions projects.

What’s new at JavaOne 2009 – Part 2 JavaFX, JavaFX Designer, and The Java Store

Thursday, July 9, 2009 by Matt Warman

Part one discussed Open Solaris. Part Two is all about what is new with JavaFx and the Java Store.

I have talked about, and been impressed with JavaFX since its debut at JavaOne 2007. It was a key part of my presentation to Cincinnati area application development members that year. For those application development people who don’t know what JavaFx is, I blogged about it here. So what’s new really with it? The JavaFx in 2007 was JavaFX script. JavaFX was limited in where you could run the script. In January, JavaFX released its first runtime, and now JavaFX 1.2 is out. You can have graphic designers create media for your application using JavaFX production and easily import them into JavaFx. The JavaFx language can now be run on the desktop, web page or mobile device. JavaFx has been integrated with the new version of web start, but more on that later. New widgets have been created, and third-party widgets are being created at JavaFx widgets. There still are issues, though. Some swing like widgets like menus and tables have not been completely done. You can create a wrapper around Swing components, but it’s not the same as a native widget. Integration with NetBeans 6.7 isn’t there because of the new designer isn’t ready, but an update is scheduled at the end of July The reason I think application development teams should use JavaFX, is that the same code can run in multiple areas. I can now create a desktop application and have it run on the web and mobile devices without having to rewrite my code.

The JavaFX designer will help in a wider adoption rate of JavaFX for the things it can do. A big part of JavaFx is making animation simple to create. With the timer piece of designer, it’s a breeze. In the demo here, (starts 10:25 in) you can take an image, give it a starting point, and pick intermediate points and the times and the designer creates all of timings for you. You can bind media and widgets to data or events. For example you can drop a video and some buttons on the scene. You then drag a link from a button to the media, and all available actions popup (play, pause, etc.). Select the action in the popup and it’s done. Application development guys can create a media player in minutes. You can open different windows with different screen sizes, and all of the children inherit their changes from the parent. You can edit each screen though, and those changes are kept for that window.

What is the Java Store, and why do I need it? The Java store is a warehouse for free, and for fee Java applications. Right now, everything is for free while the community decides the best way to charge (or not) for applications. If you need an application quickly, you can check the store without having to do extensive searching, or worse, recreating the wheel. The cool thing about the store is its use of the new Web Start technology. Users can preview the application before keeping the application. If you decide to keep the application, just drag it to your desktop. It’s just that easy.

Quantum Leap, Part 1

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 by Jeff Welsh

By the title of this post you might think that it is about an 80’s television show by the same name. I really enjoyed Quantum Leap when it first aired and you can still catch re-runs if you have cable or satellite TV, but I digress.

In the past, I have talked about rate of change and its impact on IT infrastructure and application development. Today, I’m continuing along that line.

IT infrastructure is going to go through a massive transformation in the years ahead. Quantum technologies that were only theories in scientific journals just a few years ago are being prototyped in labs now. These new components will change the way we live forever.

Currently, data is processed by moving bunches of electrons about in huge batches. Think of the components in your PC as electrical plumbing. Data is usually stored as batches of electrons or in computer terms, bits. Imagine your computer’s hard drive as a bunch of very small buckets, some full of water, some not. This would represent the on and off that current computers understand or binary language. This will change:

Improved technologies from emerging nanosciences are allowing us to replace batches of electrons with the smallest individual unit: the electron. As a result, computers will work at far higher speeds. Additionally, far less electricity will be required to do the same amount of work. So what’s the big deal you may be thinking, that’s been happening for years.

The big difference now is “quantum superposition”. In a nutshell, this means that a quantum particle can exist in multiple states and everything in between at the same time. This is because a quantum particle, such as an electron, behaves as both a particle and a wave. Quantum physics is going to have a huge role in how we store and represent data in the future.

Next time, I will take a quantum dive deeper into this.

Creating an Object-Role Model - Part 2 - Internal Constraints

Monday, June 8, 2009 by Mark Murphy

Last time I discussed the basics of an Object-Role Model. The model we created, however, was simplistic, and didn't give us a way to say that a Person must have exactly one name, or that a person might have more than one phone number. These things are handled by constraints placed on the roles. The application development team has a fairly extensive set of constraints at it's disposal when creating an ORM. I will talk about the most common of these this time.

Internal Constraints are those that apply completely to roles within a single fact type. Let's go back to the Person model we developed last time (slightly modified).

Person has Name
 Person has Phone Number
 Person has Address
Person has E-mail Address

We can attach an internal mandatory constraint to the Person role in the Person has Name fact. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but constraints apply to the other role in the fact. I attach the mandatory constraint to the Person role in the Person has Name fact. That means that each person must have some name. If I attached the mandatory constraint to the name role, it would mean that for each name, some person must have that name. Another way to say it is that a constraint goes on the controlling or primary role.

This is what this constraint will look line on the diagram:

We can also attach uniqueness constraints to roles. As with the mandatory constraint, the uniqueness constraint applies to the other role. So to say that a Person may have at most one Name, we will attach a uniqueness constraint to the Person role of the Person has name fact.

The uniqueness constraint will look like this on the diagram:

When combined, these two constraints mean that a person has exactly one name:

What about that phone number? I have multiple phone numbers, my home phone, my cell phone, and a couple of work phones. In addition, my home phone and my work phone numbers could be claimed by other people as well, and some people may not even have a phone number, or it is unlisted and we don't know it. In this case, the Person has Phone Number fact type has no mandatory constraints, and it takes both the person and the phone number to make a unique fact. As an aside here, up until now, I have been using fact type and fact rather interchangeably, but that is not strictly correct. The fact type is an abstraction of the real facts, thus Person has Phone Number is a fact type, and Mark has Phone Number 123-4567 is a fact. The point here is it takes both the person Mark and the Phone Number 123-4567 to make a unique fact, so to add the uniqueness constraint we would add it against both roles simultaneously.

This, for the application development team, is a many-to-many relationship, and looks like this on the diagram:

I will show one final combination today. For the sake of example, suppose that I could only have a single e-mail address, and every e-mail address could only be used by a single person, not reality I know, but what you would have is a one-to-one relationship. In that case you could say it like this: Each person has at most one e-mail address, and each e-mail address is used by at most one person. There are two internal uniqueness constraints here one for the person role, and one for the e-mail address role of the Person has E-mail Address fact type.

These constraints would look like this on the diagram:

As you can see, with just binary fact types and a couple internal constraint types (mandatory and uniqueness), the application development team can model nearly everything that can be modeled on an ER diagram. And you have natural language descriptions of the model that are readable by the business users the solution is being developed for. But wait there's more. I will tell you about external constraints, and reference modes next time.

And So It Ends..

Monday, June 8, 2009 by Matt Warman

I was hoping to post more last week on JavaOne, but it was a busy week. First, let me get my application development friends up speed. The general theme at this year's conference was Clouds and JavaFX. There were many talks on what Clouds were, how to deploy them, and the new tools available to utilize them. Sun is promoting their Cloud, but there were plenty of talks on Amazon's EC2. JavaFX was also a big player this year. There were talks on creating and utilizing JavaFX, but the most of the focus was on the upcoming tools, importing of graphics, and deployment of JavaFX. Tor Norbye is working on an excellent visual tool for JavaFX that should ship by the end of this year. Think of dragging and dropping widgets and just wiring them up. If any application development team members are interested, materials will be posted on Java's Software Developers Network (SDN) site.
Personally, it was probably my favorite J1. I meet a lot of new people from the Java User Group (JUG) and JUG-USA, the JavaFX team, and members of the NetBeans Dream Team. Sven Raimers, a Dream Team member, and his team won a Duke's choice award for his work on satellite tracking and data collection. I was fortunate enough to be in a small group of application development team members to meet and have a Q&A with James Gosling. I wrote the text for a Java video called "Pushing Java". It is up on Youtube, so check it out. I did present this year as part of the "Making Music With The java Programming Language". I also had a "Java Rockstar" interview here. I met many great people, and made some new friendships.

Creating an Object-Role Model - Part 1

Friday, June 5, 2009 by Mark Murphy

The object role model is a simpler approach to creating the information model that the application development team will use to create the physical database for IT solutions. It centers around a single structure called the fact type. Here are a few fact types for a simple address book application.

Person has First Name
 Person has Last Name
 Person has Phone Number
 Person has Address

This is nice, and easily understood, but I like diagrams, and that is simple too. The tools I have seen allow typing fact types in a natural language manner, or by adding them graphically to a diagram like this.

Note that there are three different symbols: the oval with a solid line which represents an entity, the oval with a dashed line which represents a value, and a rectangle with two boxes which represents a fact (sometimes called a predicate). It is up to you to determine if an object is a value or an entity. There are a couple of ways to do this. One is if you can write it down, then it is a value, otherwise it is an entity. For example, you can write a person's name on paper, but can not write the person. Another way to determine this is if it has components, then it is an entity, otherwise it is a value. An address could be written down, but sometimes we want o refer to a component of the address, so we make that an entity, and the individual components of the address become values like this:

Address has Street Address
 Address has City
 Address has State
 Address has Postal Code

Or graphically

You get the idea. As an exercise you might want to try extending the model to allow states in different countries.

That's it. An Object-Role Model is built using simple facts. In this case, and most cases, the application development team can use binary facts (ones that reference or or two objects playing two roles). The tools I have seen allow n-ary fact types as well, but the uses for these are uncommon, and in my experience can be replaced by binary fact types. In my next post I will discuss uniqueness and mandatory fact types

Object-Role Modeling In your Enterprise

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Mark Murphy

Recently I have been working on a project revamping a very poorly designed database. This activity brought me to look for some new tools, and I came across something called ORM. That is Object-Role Modeling, not to be confused by my developer friends in the OO world with ORM or Object Relational Mapping. Somewhere, somehow, we have to get a handle on all these TLAs, but I digress. In the past I have touched briefly on the apparent divide between the business and IT. If both of those groups would just speak the same language then application development be better for it, and IT would be able to support the business in the way it was intended.

So what does Object-Role Modeling do for me?

ORM is not a new concept - it dates back to the 1970's, but it is a way to build simple information models using nothing more than simple facts. For example a Customer has a Name. When designing a new system, or even upgrading an existing system, we can easily retrieve these natural language facts, and combine them into a powerful information model that the business can look at and say "yes that is true, but you forgot that a customer also has an address!" Add a couple constraints that tell about the relationship between the object and it's roles, and the developers can automatically generate all the ER diagrams and class models it wants. ORM provides a simpler, more accurate and more powerful approach to information modeling than other approaches such as Entity-Relational Modeling and UML.

ORM is really a very simple approach that, once you get past the "there has to be more to it" reaction, will give you some better communication tools for use between the business and the application development team. In fact if they don't already know it, ORM has been part of Visio for Enterprise Architects for quite some time now, and there are even some open source ORM tools that plug into Visual Studio. The integration of these tools into your application development environment will make your business analysts and database analysts far more productive. As such I will impart, over the next couple of posts, some tidbits that will get you going. In the mean time if you are chomping at the bit, I suggest you jump over to The ORM Foundation for some additional reading.

Oracle and Java

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 by Matt Warman

The news this week is Oracle buying Sun. As a Java application development guy, this is very important news. I recently wrote about my feelings for an IBM merger, so this pairing is interesting. Larry Ellison had big praise for Solaris and Java, but nothing on MySQL. This is my take on the big points and questions I have.
Solaris
It is apparent that Oracle wants an OS to be a full service enterprise application development provider. They want to compete against Microsoft and IBM. I don’t see Oracle doing anything to hurt Solaris. I think Oracle can do a better job than Sun in this regard, as long as they use Sun’s customer service model.
Java
Oracle is a big Java user. The question for me is will Oracle "IBMify" Java? Creating proprietary hooks where none is needed to make a profit is dead wrong. Java is the dominate language, but other languages were dominate in the past. If Oracle can resist the temptation and just be the caretaker, java application development will be dominant for some time. If not, Java is open source, which means a "free" Java will be around, but multiple, incompatible versions of Java will kill it. I see Scala as a viable successor to Java, so I think the fragmentation issue will disrupt application development, but not move everything to .Net.
NetBeans
The fate of my favorite IDE is in much better hands with Oracle than IBM. NetBeans is a big part of Sun’s offerings, so I don’t think there is an issue.
MySQL
Many people lament that Oracle has MySQL finally. There is some well founded concern, but I see Oracle using MySQL as an entry into smaller markets. If you can brand MYSQL as Oracle’s "lite" database, then small businesses can use MySQL, and then seamlessly move to Oracle when the business grows.
Questions
What about JavaFX? This is the first step to the great convergence of write one set of code to run on mobile desktop and web. How much autonomy will Sun staff have? What about Glassfish? Only time will tell.