Loosely Coupled Human Code Factory

New Webtrends Web Services Capabilities

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (Adron) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:52:58 -0700

Not sure what I can or can't talk about, so I am just going to go on about these things anyway - because some new features we've been working on here at Webtrends are literally right around the corner from release! So I will be a little risky here and elaborate a bit.

Over the last several months we've been bustling here at the beehive working on some major efforts for opening up our data to increase the flexibility in which users can use the data we collect. Our strong point at Webtrends has always been exhaustive and elaborate data collection and providing available correlation. Now we've opened that up in a major way by providing data via web service. We've done SOAP in the past but that isn?t really the language of the Internet so we've provided new services that have a new architecture that provide our data from collection directly to client applications. These new web services are built using REST Architecture principles and if I may gloat a bit, are awesome! Yeah, awesome! Nothing else available in the market like this, it is nice to lead.

For more information on these web services for pulling analytics data check out http://developer.webtrends.com for more info. You can even ping me via the site if you have any further questions - I love talking shop so feel free to get in touch.

On the other end of the spectrum we also have web services for data collection or as we refer to them DC web services as in Data Collection Web Services. The DC web services are going to allow us to step far beyond mere web site data collection. Currently we use a lot of JavaScript for collecting data & an assortment of tools, but these new services only require a mere HTTP stack availability within your application, language, or toolset of choice. They can easily be used then to track nearly anything.

Some of the ideas that keep rushing around in my head include;

mobile device applications that aren't wired into a browser.
Silverlight
Adobe Flash
Adobe AIR
Microsoft WPF Applications
Any RIA Framework built app
Qt on Linux
.NET Server calls, services, etc.
Java UIs of any sort
?and if I spent anymore time I'd make a list so long this entry would get far too wordy.

I believe the initial offering of data collection services will be in a beta for a short time, but as with the web services (which I got to work on the original team ? it rocked ? props to Rob D & James K for the awesome work & continuing awesome work on the web services exchange ? for those curious, I'm working on integrations & consulting now so I get to play with the services that we've built!! )

For any clients out there that would like on premise versions of these services ? please contact us and let us know, as I would love to see the on-premise versions get some high priority ? which they will if you contact us and let us know you want these in addition to our SaaS based OnDemand services!

Anyway, I?m stoked about the offerings coming down the pipeline and am exited to be working with them myself. I look forward to working with clients & future customers on expanding these offerings and seeing what other data points we'll all come up with to track.

SQL Users' Group in PDX

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (Adron) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:36:00 -0700

The SQL Users? Group met at the KOIN tower downtown in the Robert Half Consulting meeting space. The material covered was based on the presentation titled ?Crossing the BI Chasm?.

Some of the key points in the presentation:

You must become knowledgeable about the specific business.
You must be able to speak at a 30k altitude all the way down to the technical nitty gritty.
Maturity of reporting; infancy (excel chaos, multiple truths, ad-hoc workarounds), adolescence (dynamic querying tools, etc), mature (scorcards, etc, KPIs)
ClickTek (anti- data warehouse people because they can get right to the data other ways), DataMart, DataStore, Cubes...
Maturity levels of culture - infancy (don't understand data, IT overloaded with unrelated work), adolescence (learning what is available, IT starts to know business), maturity (data savvy).

After the presentation there was 5 BI Professionals answering questions from the audience. Questions ranged from how many people are in or would be in a BI project to who is the key person to manage a BI project.

The multiple roles answer depended highly on the project size, which is obvious. However the simple idea of people being generalists, and stepping into the communication hat, the guru hat, and then the learning hat all within a short period of time.

The answers where thorough and informative, with audience and panel members participating.

One answer that came later in the panel discussion was something that I?ll just parallel with props for Agile. One of the main ideas behind Agile is lots of communication, effective communication, based on learning. Always learning, eating, breathing, and living the learning, never stop. To learn, one must communicate and successful BI is not possible with effective and steady unending communication and learning.

Again, part of the rocking Portland technology event! A great night.

The Market Prevails, as Always

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (adron) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:23:08 -0700

Microsoft has some new competition coming in Google's new OS. Regardless of their success or failure, this should really be awesome to see, as with any competition when it heats up.

I'm watching, inquisitively.

@cloudcamppdx

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (adron) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:09:06 -0700

Attended Cloud Camp PDX today. Great overall conversation, with a lot of familiar faces & people of the Portland brain trust participating.

The conference started off with a large group gathering in the main cafeteria room. There was an unpanel put together with a few cloud gurus. After a round of questions the main sessions where laid out and everyone started out to the break out session. Open session conference topics ranges from couchdb to cloud security, to the glorious tips and tricks of Amazon. Overall a great bunch of discussions really breaking down what a cloud is and what a cloud does.

Overall a lot of fun, great food, and good people with great minds. One has to love to Portland tech scene. If there was ever a reason for a company to locate in Portland, this room full of talent discussing the bleeding edge of technology is a prime reason.

After that we all broke into second set sessions. I went to the "Is Cloud Computing a return to the time share, maintenance model, and what does that mean?". I have to say, I don't think it will ever be an honest return to truly dumb terminals and server focus, it will continue to be mixed.

That was it for me, being the host I had cleanup and such, so hope all had fun. I had a blast as I tend to at nerd events. All in all, a good day.

Are You Serious? Sharepoint?

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (Adron) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:53:00 -0700

Alright, alright, I'm learning it already?

c#, java, asp.net, vb.net, sharepoint Job Trends

c# jobs - java jobs - asp.net jobs - vb.net jobs - sharepoint jobs

Excel Spreadsheet Tests :: Tip o' The Day

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (adron) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:00:42 -0700

While working through some of the Excel scenarios lately I've come upon some more ways to test Excel.

Create an Excel Application instance with the default workbook. Doing this will drastically speed up your tests. Do this in the fixture setup & assign it to a property of the test class. This way, no more startup and tear down of the Excel object for each test.

public Application ExcelApplication { get; set; }

[TestFixtureSetUp]

public void CreateExcelAppAppropriately()

    ExcelApplication = new Application();

    ExcelApplication.Workbooks.Add(Type.Missing);

    ExcelApplication.Visible = true;

That will give you a good kick start when you end up with a few dozen or more tests. Starting up and killing the Excel Instance on each test can be brutal in overall performance. For the shutdown of the tests, as long as you have clean code and don?t have odd Excel threads or something running off everywhere, the fixture shutdown can be as simple as below.

        [TestFixtureTearDown]

        public void QuitExcelAppAppropriately()

            foreach (Workbook workbook in ExcelApplication.Workbooks)

                workbook.Close(false, false, Type.Missing);

            ExcelApplication.Quit();

One other thing I like to do is add a boolean value that sets the Excel instance to stay visible and not close after the tests. I create a private bool and then set it in any test I?m currently working with. When I?m done I just remove the assignment and let it default to false. This way the Excel instance doesn?t stay open for the build & tests on the build server.

private bool reviewExcelPostTests;

[TestFixtureTearDown]

public void QuitExcelAppAppropriately()

    if (reviewExcelPostTests)

        return;

    foreach (Workbook workbook in ExcelApplication.Workbooks)

        workbook.Close(false, false, Type.Missing);

    ExcelApplication.Quit();

That's it for my Excel tips today, I'll have some more coming in the near future.

Oracle Trashed, Will VB Survive?

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (Adron) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:41:00 -0700

Well, Oracle is officially tossed into the trash bin of providers in .NET 4.0. That?s fine by me, I've not seen an Oracle installation in about 8 years and don?t really care to. Between SQL Server and all the other top notch options, not really sure why anyone needs Oracle anyway. Aside from that a lot of my work has been for highly distributed web applications that decimate RDBMSs anyway. Alternatives where needed, and relational data just doesn?t cut it a lot of the time once scale achieves a certain level.

In other news, will VB survive? That is a good questions? Do I care? No, not really. I don't really have anything against the language, but don't have anything for it either. With what has been wrecked and wrought over the years because of that language, I'm perfectly content to wave it farewell - BUT - alas Lisa Feigenbaum the PM in .NET Managed Languages Group assures us that it does have a life.

In other news, it is time to call it a day and head out for some brew and entertainment.

Yeah! Flex Builder 3 Licensed!

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (Adron) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:51:52 -0700

I've been working on some ActionScript code for work related projects, and was really hoping that I could get a Flex Builder 3 and Flash CS4 License purchased for ongoing use. The Adobe tools & frameworks are really pretty sweet. So with ongoing efforts continuing with the Adobe Tools/Codez the decision was made to purchase the tools. I'm stoked, and looking forward to more ActionScript work and getting to figure out this framework stack.

Excel Programming :: Tip o' The Day

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (adron) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:11:48 -0700

When creating an Excel Application there are some things to keep in mind. Recently I was creating some tests, which I'm not sure if they'd be "unit test", but they do test Excel. I created a fixture setup and a fixture tear down that would create my Excel Application object that I?d want to test again. The code I ended up with is shown below.

[TestFixture]

public class ConnectionManagement

    public Application ExcelApplication { get; set; }

    [TestFixtureSetUp]

    public void CreateExcelAppAppropriately()

        ExcelApplication = new Application();

        ExcelApplication.Workbooks.Add(Type.Missing);

    [TestFixtureTearDown]

    public void QuitExcelAppAppropriately()

        foreach(Workbook workbook in ExcelApplication.Workbooks)

            workbook.Close(false, false, Type.Missing);

        ExcelApplication.Quit();

Now if anyone has a better idea on how to test Excel and knowing the code will work against the actual Excel Application, PLEASE, let me know as this doesn't feel like the best way to do this. I keep getting the sinking suspicion that there should be a better way to test Excel Application Addins, Spreadsheet code and such.

A Failure to Communicate

adron.nospam@nospam.adronbhall.com (Adron) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:04:01 -0700

Customer: If we could understand the difference between these numbers, the gulf so to speak, we'd be able to make choise based on them.

Dilberty: The difference is 3%.

Customer: Yeah, but if we could really understand the difference, the decision making enablement would greatly empower our business.

Dilberty: Wait, the difference is 3%, it is accurate, you can make a decision based on a 3% difference.

Customer: We really need to understand these numbers though.

Dilberty: ?!?!!?@?@#$!%(!$&%^(!#$@!?$!??!?! What?