Summa

The “Selecting the Right Flex Application Framework” post provided a summary comparison of the Flex application frameworks out there, highlighting the ones I thought were the “heavyweights” a Flex developer should focus on. The purpose was primarily to help you make a quick, easy, but well-informed decision, without looking at the code.

But many of us wish to look under the covers and see a detailed comparison of the frameworks. So I took Adobe’s Flex Builder 3 Getting Started tutorial example of a simple Flickr photo search and re-implemented it in Cairngorm, PureMVC and Mate.

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JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding) is a very powerful and comprehensive XML binding framework for Java which can significantly reduce XML programming and testing time by abstracting cumbersome details specific to XML schemas. This post goes through a simple sample for generating a Java class from an XML schema and using JAXB for marshalling and unmarshalling.

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In my opinion, binding is one of the trickiest concepts for a Java developer to really understand when first learning Flex. It’s not because it is overly complex, but because binding is similar enough to other concepts in JSP, Swing, etc. that we begin to form mental models without fully understanding the differences. But those subtle differences are important for the last 20% of correctness in a lot of code.

To illustrate, I cooked up a Java Puzzler-esque Binding puzzle. The application in this post contains a panel with a button on it. It has 2 states. Clicking the button switches to the ‘large’ state, at which point the panel widens and the button’s label changes to “Contract…” instead of “Expand….”

So go ahead and click the button, then see if you can answer this question: Why doesn’t the text change?

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Service Oriented Architectures add a new twist to an old problem. Imagine this simple scenario:

Sounds simple, right? In the old days of integrated applications, it would be – just join the customer and order tables and apply said criteria. Voila!

Ahh…but it’s a brave new world of SOA, and some old tricks no longer apply. In your architecture, instead of one integrated application, you have two loosely coupled services, Customer and Order. Both services are deployed independently and have their own data – i.e. the Customer service has a Customer data store and the Order service an Order store.

The question stands then – how can you answer a business question about customers and orders, given that this data spans across multiple services?

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During the course of a corporate portal upgrade project, we were able to reduce the new hardware budget by 50% of the original estimate. We were also able to reduce the customer’s original software licensing and support costs by 50% of their previous operating environment while creating four new additional operating environments — three of which were clustered. This was done by leveraging Solaris 10 zones and sub-capacity licensing.

This project was proof that virtualization is becoming more important, especially in tough economic times. People are being asked to do more with less, IT managers are being asked to cut budgets while at the same time delivering value to the organization. When people talk about virtualization these days, VMWare is what typically comes to mind first. Although, there are several other virtualization options available. Here’s a story about how we were able to achieve significant cost savings for one of our customers in 2008.

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Summa is proud of our history of consistently delivering successful outcomes for our customers. Our reputation is built on being a trusted business partner that can be counted to “get it right the first time. “ Our track record of delivering success is illustrated by the fact that 90% of our customers have done repeat business with us. But this level of consistency and achievement does not just happen by itself, so how does Summa do it? There are three main factors that contribute to our strategy for success: having the right people, using the right technology, and utilizing the right methodologies.

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I’m sure you’re saying “Who needs this in this day and age?” Well, as recently as last year, I encountered a development team that was still not using ANY version control. I couldn’t believe it!

Throughout my career I’ve encountered several different version control philosophies, from using *.BAK files on a production server (maybe with a date/timestamp added to the filename to know when the change was made) to systems where automated builds let developers know within minutes whether or not their latest check-in broke something (and most everything in between).

This article contains the nuggets that I’ve gleaned from my experiences and from reading various other items. It is not intended to be a be-all, end-all, but a starting point (perhaps just a starting point for discussions… and that’s why I’ve decided to write this). Searching for “Version Control Best Practice” in Google yields some 20 million results. So, I’d at least like to put this in a place where I can point people to when I want to explain to them about Version Control Practices.

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The bar is continually being set higher for customer and user experience in web-based applications.  Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) offer user experience benefits that increase user satisfaction, improve ease of use, increase user productivity and promote faster adoption, while still providing the benefits of Internet-based application platforms.  In addition to the benefits to users, proper use of RIA framework technologies also greatly increases developer productivity.

Join us as we highlight the technology and business benefits of RIA, provide selection comparisons between current RIA frameworks and highlight tips that will help you start or improve your adoption of RIAs.

We will cover:

• Business Drivers and selling points for use of RIA
• Background and comparison of current RIA technologies
• Pros and cons of various open source and proprietary RIA frameworks and components
• Case studies and lessons learned from Summa’s application of RIA technology to mission-critical applications

Date:  February 19, 2009

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 EST

Register:  https://events.webdialogs.com/portal/wipevents/register.php?id=c48c0fbca4&l=en-US

The webinar is intended for:

• Technical Architects and Managers
• Development Managers
• Product Managers
• Line of Business Managers

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In most medium and large IT shops there are more people who can say “no” to a project than can say “yes” to it. From an IT governance perspective, it’s important to ensure that the only people who can obstruct a project are people who are authorized to do so.

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