The .NET Effect by David McAmis

Jun 26

Know when to walk away, know when to run

As a software developer, there are certain projects you want to avoid. For me, that is usually the project where the end-users design the entire application -- you know the type I am talking about. They come to meetings armed with screenshots, screen designs they have made themselves (usually drawn in PowerPoint), advice from their brother-in-law (who developed his own Web page once), and a general [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Tags: software, development, requirements

Nov 13

In a world of Goliaths, who's got a stone?

It seems like it is that time of year again... the days are getting longer, the weather is getting a bit warmer and the top-tier software vendors are on a buying spree. Whether it is IBM snapping up Cognos or the SAP buyout of Business Objects, suddenly business intelligence has become big business. And I understand why vendors want to include business intelligence in their product offering-- it [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Tags: mergers, acquisitions, software, developers, code

May 29

The Fud is Flying! (Again)

It seems like that the latest marketing technique for software vendors is to sling a little FUD and see if it sticks. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt make for some attention-grabbing headlines and are great for scaring potential customers away from a competitor's offering. While IBM is seen as the originator of FUD tactics, Microsoft is often vilified as the perpetuator of the FUD marketing phenomenon [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Tags: fud, fear, uncertainty, doubt, david mcamis, mcamis, informatica, sco, ibm, business objects, linux, unix

Jan 15

Code Camp Oz 2007

It's that time of year again, with Code Camp Oz (http://www.codecampoz.com/) just around the corner 31 March - 1 April, 2007. Code Camp Oz is annual community event for software developers held at the Charles Sturt University campus in Wagga Wagga. There are plenty of opportunities to learn about Microsoft tools and technologies, as well as some technical sessions you won't find anywhere else. If [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 3 comments

Tags: camp, oz, .net, microsoft, code

Dec 14

Internet Exploder

Most developers knew this day would come-- a new version of Internet Explorer comes around and suddenly, the web application you have spent months crafting falls into a heap. No wonder people call it "Internet Exploder". And the majority of the problems I have found are around security. Internet Explorer 7 thinks it knows best when it comes to applying security settings. And it is not too easy [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 3 comments

Nov 03

The Developer Manifesto

You know how sometimes you actually find something in your e-mail worth forwarding? This is sort of the same thing-- I ran across a "Developer Manifesto" while trolling through a vendor Web site and thought I would share it with you. I wouldn't tattoo it on your forearm or anything, but it sums up what developers are about nicely. Developer Manifesto: From the Business Objects web site: We [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 2 comments

Tags: developer, java, .net

Oct 13

Try… Catch… Win!

As a .NET developer, there are a few “best practices” that you should always consider. And one of the biggest is that every application you write should include error trapping to trap critical and non-critical errors that may occur. And the .NET framework makes it easy to use “Try… Catch” statements to intercept any errors that occur and allow you to handle the exception. Another great trick when [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Tags: error, try, catch, development, .net

Oct 05

If only every project ended this way...

Today the birds are singing, the sun is shining and I am just putting the wraps on a .NET application I have been working on for the past 4 months. And what has made me even happier is that around the same time I started developing, I started creating the documentation and training materials to go along with it. So now, instead of the mad scramble to get the doco done with the project, I can sit back [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Tags: .net, documentation, developer

Sep 07

The FUD is flying!

For years, the IT community has accused Microsoft of spreading “FUD” (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about their competitor’s solutions. But it looks like that the FUD has been flying back the other way, with some industry analysts hypothesising that the new IP features in Windows Vista will bring the Internet to it's knees with an overload of traffic. The claims are based on Vista's use of IPv6 [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Aug 29

Build or Buy, Do or Die

In my job as a developer, I get to talk to all sorts of people. And one of the conversations I seem to have a lot lately is "build vs buy", especially when it comes to custom applications. When developing a new application, I try not to reinvent the wheel, for example, if the application requires extensive charting capabilities, I will look for a third-party charting component to buy and integrate. [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Aug 07

The Downside of RAD

Rapid Application Development(RAD) is all the hype lately, with claims of being able to churn out functional applications in under two weeks. One popular technique is to lock end-users and developers in a conference room for 10 days and build the application on the fly. Another technique sees a cycle of iterations, adding features, showing users, gathering more requirements until you have a workable [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 2 comments

Jul 31

Worth getting out of bed for!

There some mornings I don’t want to get out of bed. There are the cold and rainy days, which everyone can relate to... then there are the days when I have something to do at work which I have been putting off. And lately, that has been creating database maintenance screens. I know that data just doesn't appear in a database table by itself and that users need the ability to update data, it is just [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Jul 24

Data dumps are the dumps

I have recently spend a considerable amount of time on a project replacing an old mainframe system with a new Web-based application. Over the first few weeks the requirements grew from a few screens and reports to a staggering number of screens, reports, CSV and Excel dumps, etc. As we started talking to more and more users, we discovered that over the years they had been using data dumps into Excel, [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Jul 14

DB2 Viper Gets A Gong

Alright, I have to admit... I like to whinge as much as the next person. And for the past couple of years, one of my favourite topics has been how much I don't like the DB2 developer tools. I like DB2 as a platform, but the tools used to work with DB2 databases and data warehouses have been clunky Java-based memory hogs that have made developing on DB2 not a fun experience. So when I installed [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 1 comment

Jun 01

Database pros get tools in the know

Microsoft has just released the eagerly anticipated Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (TEDB) which allows developers to build database applications in a team environment. A highlight of the release include the automation of change scripts, which has always been an issue with SQL Server. I will most often go change a field definition to get a particular bit of code to work [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

May 26

Express Yourself!

Microsoft has released a community technology preview of the new Expression Web Designer, their new flagship Web development tool and competitor to Adobe’s Dreamweaver. The tool itself looks good but still needs some catching up to do to match the features and functionality found in Dreamweaver. In addition, a lot of Dreamweaver users are hooked on the tool because of it’s ability to quickly generate [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

May 16

Gone in a Flash

With Adobe’s recent announcement about bringing Flash to the desktop (Flash to jump beyond the browser) they have taken some of the thunder from Microsoft’s own plans for rich-client applications. Microsoft’s strategy centres around their upcoming Expression developer tool set, which includes a graphic design tool, an “interactive” design tool and web development tool. A lot of this technology hinges [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 5 comments

Apr 27

Service Pack or Market Attack?

I will give it to Microsoft. When it wants to capture a particular market, it goes hard or not at all. And with SQL Server 2005, the company has its sights set firmly on the Business Intelligence market. And the strategy makes sense — Redmond is moving to become the "one stop shop" for database servers, data management tools, reporting and analysis, eliminating the need to spend more money on third-party [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Apr 02

Mono a Mano

While the world has been heralding the release of Visual Studio.NET 2005, another project on the back-burner has been bubbling along. The Mono Project is dedicated to bringing the CLR to other platforms (most notably Linux) and has just released version 1.1.13.6. The project is backed by Novell, in addition to a host of open-source developers who freely contribute their time and code to the project. [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Mar 29

.NET doesn't have to mean VB.NET or C#

It’s funny... when people think about the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) they tend to think in terms of either VB.NET or C#. But there are actually a ton of languages out there that support the CLR and on his web site Brian Ritchie provides a pretty comprehensive list of languages you can use with the CLR, including some old favourites and some new. For those of you who have never given up [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 1 comment

Mar 21

The Team of One

There has been a lot of talk lately about the new Visual Studio.NET 2005 Team System, which provides developers with the ability to collaborate and develop complex applications as a team. There are a number of organisations who are looking at training on the new Team System and are really making an effort to lever the features it provides. The only problem is that most developers already work in [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 0 comments

Feb 02

The trouble with contracting

At some point in the career of a software developer or other IT professional, you may consider offering your services on a contract basis. And to that end you may search through the job postings and employment web sites, only to find that the "good" jobs and contracts are advertised by contracting agencies, who want to put you to work and take their cut off the top. There are IT contracting companies [...] Read more »

-- posted by David McAmis | 4 comments