That Technology Magazine

By Richard Hightower and Nicholas Lesiecki

I was just not writing actively on this blog since past 3-4 months. So many books which I read are still not logged here.This book is one of the first books which I read when I took ACM Professional Membership in February 2005.
The book starts with inroduction to XP. XP is extremely disciplined methodology that centers on constant code review, frequent testing, customer involvement and rapid feedback; incessant refactoring and refining the architecture; continuous integration to discover problems early in the development process; ongoing design and redesign; and constant planning. Kent Beck, originator of the XP,defines four key values of XP-
Communication, Simplicity, Feedback and Courage. He iterated four basic practices: coding, testing,listening and designing expressed in 12 major areas : Planning game, Small releases, Simple Design, Testing,Continuous integration, Refactoring, Pair programming, Collective ownership, On-site customer, Metaphor and Coding Standard. The second chapter described J2EE Components and deployment concepts.It describes pet store case study application which highlights the structure of classes, JSP files and build files.The build tool Ant is described very well and its important use in continuous integration.It covered the basics of using Ant and the concept of buildfiles, projects, targets, conditional targets, tasks, filesets, filters, nested buildfiles and properties.The other tools which are described with example usage are JUnit, Cactus,HttpUnit, JMeter and JUnitPerf for load testing. Automated Testing using JUnit and Ant is described with case study of Adding an entity bean to the Pet Store. In-Container Testing is achieved by using tool Cactus and describes its advantages over Mock Objects approach. HttpUnit more closely approximates functional
testing, or black-box testing. Web application tests written using HttpUnit do not test pieces of the application code but rather query the Web server externally and examine the responses received.JMeter is by Apache. You can use JMeter to post and get pages. You can also send HTML parameters to simulate a form post. Sometimes you may want to manage the session information cookie with a JMeter cookie manager. JMeter makes performance testing so easy. JunitPerf is for load testing , but I did not read that chapter in detail.

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By Amit Kalani
The book served as good revision for me for the earlier concepts used in projects and
some of the new things that have cropped up since then.
The book starts with creating and Manipulating datasets -
Manipulating DataSet Schema
Manipulating Dataset Relationship
Creating Strongly Typed Data.
XML and SQL server interface and functions are detailed with practice examples.

Accessing and Manipulating XML data covers DOM model etc, XML reader,XPath and SQL functions that retrieves xml data from SQL server and validating XML data.

The book has good coverage on .NET Remoting. It talkes in depth about Creating and Consuming.NET Remoting object. Implementing server activated and client activated components,selecting channel formatters and protocols. Implementing asynchronous methods.Practical examples of instantiating and invoking .NET Remoting object are well covered.
The book covered all known concepts which I used earlier about basic web services like creating and consuming web services and instantiating and invoking XML web service enabling static discovery and publishing web services.Under advanced web services, it covers creating and consuming asynchronous methods,controlling XML wire formats for XML web service.

Windows services chapter did not offer anything new to me - basically creating services and interacting with SCM and then its starting stopping and pausing programetically.It has some coverage about the toolslike mmc sanp-ins and sc.exe etc. to control and monitor services.

The book has detailed coverage on Component Services like implementing serviced component,creating interfaces,creating strong named assembly, managing the components and how to call unmanaged code from managed and vice-versa.

The book has coverage about testing and debugging and good coverage on all deployment methods.Deploying private assemblies,shared assemblies,web services,serviced components..NET Remoting Objects and packaging .NET application.
In the end it talks about implementing security for windows service,serviced component, .NET remoting Object and an XML web services.

The book has good review questions and practical examples.Certainly served a good purpose.

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Peter R. Hill.

The book starts with effort estimation approches like macro estimation and micro estimation techniques.The macro estimation techniques are based on equation,analogy and comparison.
The micro estimation technique based on work breakdown and wide band Delphi Methods are discussed.The various methods of effort,size and cost estimation are discussed.
The function point Tutorial is covered and its role in Size estimation.A function point case study is discussed.ISBSG Repository is discussed and benchmarking and working your project estimates against history data is outlined.Estimation techniques for project with varying components are discussed. While the book is not “very” good read, but combined with common sense can be served as good reference purpose.

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I read this book in the last April. The beautifully written book about the psychology of the human beings to fear and resist change. It is parable that takes place in maze. Four beings living in that maze are Sniff and Scurry- mice who are nonanalytical and not able to judge the situation well. They just want cheese and willing to do whatever it takes to get it. They are not prepared to imagine even that cheese can run out. The other two are Hem and Haw who have entirely different perspective about the cheese. Cheese is something in this story which is related to our livelihoods-our society,our jobs,our career paths and the workplaces and it can stand for anything from health, beauty, relationships. The point is that we have to be prepared and judgmental about the changes in the cheese and foresight to handle the situation if cheese runs out. This parable is used many times in the management classes, churches, business places to talk about change.

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By Kathy Schwalbe

The book does not have much to offer for seasoned manager and one who has worked in IT for number of years( ). The book started with introduction to project management talking about four core areas like scope,cost,time and quality management and how the discipline relates to other knowledge management areas. The book is more devoted towards people preparing for PMP and introduced even to PMI and all those knowledge bodies.
The book does offer some training in estimating time,requirements,budgets and resources, identifying and evaluating risks, preparing contigency plans, tracking important milestones through tools.The book covers importance of project integration management, handling remote workers, laying effective communication plans for all important stakeholders.The book covered very basic tools like Gantt charts, control chars,critical path method and PERT.
The book talked about Net present value analysis, Earned value analysis,WBS,ROI and payback analysis. It covered project network diagrams, fishbone diagrams, arrow diagramming method and precedence diagramming method for schedule management.
In quality management of the project, it talked about all those well known methods like Deming,Juran,Ishikawa,crosby and also explained quality awards like Malcom Bridge.
Then in the risk management it talked about techniques and tools for quantifying risks like EMV (expected monitory value), calculating risk factors, PERT estimation and simulations and expert judgment.
The book covered Project procurement management involving solicitation planning,procurement planning,source selection and contract administration. The good part of the book is it covered and stressed the importance of good project closing and the procedures and plans for closing.
The book has good case studies of some defense department projects, RESNet and Northwest Airlines.

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