Small Business+Phoenix+Software

Of course not, but here is a great article on the freemium wiki’s out there.  Hmmm, I wonder is Google has a product in this space?  Read on to find out…

I’ve had the good fortune lately to review all of the available reporting software for the Microsoft .NET Framework.  A client of mine is undertaking a rewrite of their enterprise software with about 80% of the work in desktop development and the remaining 20% in web development.  Such an undertaking, and because of the length of the project, requires careful review of what’s available today and what’s going to be maintainable tomorrow.  What follows is a quick review of my impressions:

1)  DevExpress XtraReports:  For a relative newcomer to this space, this is a surprisingly mature tool.  Integration with all of the IDE’s, including Express Editions, is supported.  Plenty of data source and data exchange support.  Great price.

2)  Telerik Reporting:  Uses it’s own paging and rendering for browser printing.  Report converter available if migrating from other third party tools, but no report converter for MS Access.  Very high price per developer seat.  Also, given my past experience with Telerik controls and some testing, Telerik controls are something that must studied and learned.  There is no such thing as Rapid Application Development when it comes to using Telerik.

3)  Crystal Reports:  Can be considered free if you already own Visual Studio Standard or Professional.  Parameterization can be a pain if reports are embedded in their own DLL.  Abundance of books and web sites available for picking up tips and tricks.  If deploying to a web server with high concurrency, may need to purchase server version, since VS version only supports triple concurrency.  Subsequent requests are queued.

4)  XML with XSL-FO:  There are a number of formatting engines available today, but most were built for Apache, and do not come cheap.  The visual designers available today just do not support advanced topics such as multicolumn layouts.  Overall, this technology has the brightest future but as of today, suffers from first generation toolset capabilities.

This is not an overnight success story, it is a story of many long nights.

The service is the client and the client becomes the service.

Choose the last responsible moment.  (Thanks Trent!)

I’d rather engage in social networking in person.

Everyone has problems.  Not everyone deals with them.

People must master the rules before they break them.

Some people will say you work hard and you earned it.  (Thanks Randal!)

Assess the person in terms of their capability, not their price.

Lately, I’ve been writing ASP.Net Web Services for more than a few projects.  With the advent of AJAX and the slow demise of EDI, so much data is moving over the web via XML.  With that, comes a need to develop, test and debug those web services.  Luckily, there is a great open source tool out there called SoapUI.

I can’t tell you how handy this tool is for building Soap requests against those web services.  It’s helped me unit test my code, helped confirm a production site is online and load test too.  Take a look at all of these features.  If you don’t agree that this is a developer’s friend, well… go build your own.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon www.highscalability.com this morning.  I, like any developer, would love to build that one great website that generates some revenue with little to no overhead (think Craigslist).  That being said, I have almost no chance of doing so.  The reasons are plenty but the main reason is scalability and how to achieve it.

Luckily (or not so luckily) highscalability.com offers valuable tips and lessons learned from people who work at or run some of the major web sites.  This makes for some great reading.  It wasn’t that long ago, when people like myself, wondered aloud “How did they do that?” or “I wonder what they learned or uncovered along the way?”.  Well, in today’s community oriented development mindset (re: open source), sharing is the path to enlightenment (and/or asymmetric competition).

Enjoy the read… I’ve got to get back to database sharding.

I’m as excited as anyone at the prospect of SQL 2008 and its requisite certifications coming out later this year, but this took me by surprise.  Not only is the price of admission into this certification $18,500, it also requires 3 weeks of classroom training in Redmond.  At least you get to breath the heady air of the Microsoft Campus.  That must be worth something.

I was extremely excited to participate in Independents Week last week (see post). Now it’s time to recount the hits and misses from my original goals and a few surprises along the way. How did you do? I managed to spend $626.00 locally.

The surprises:

Chompies: Attended the COR3 Referral Group - Chompies meeting, but only had a soda. $3. P.S. Great group of people here, I may just join this group.

Casa Reynoso: A developer who works for a client, took me here for lunch on Tue for some great Tex-Mex food. $12

George & Dragon: I met up with some ex-coworkers for happy hour (and dinner) right before the Silverlight User Group meeting. $20

Amano Bistro: Also a miss but I did get my Italian locally, we went to La Piazza El Forno, in downtown Glendale. Fantastic! I will be back! $40

Diamondbacks: Took in the baseball game on Fri, hired a pedal cab, and had some amazing tamales from a stand right near section 138. $20

The hits:

New windshield: Done. $378.

Groceries: Done at Bashas Ahwatukee store. $146.

Golf: Done. Snuck out at 3pm on Wed. for Aguila. $7.

The misses:

AC checkup: They never called me back. Typical contractors….probably on Lake Havasu in the biggest boat you can imagine.

Ad buy: I couldn’t get my graphics together in time, spending too much time managing my current projects.

Athenian Express: Client couldn’t meet this week. So sad on two fronts (i.e. need to touch base with client and stomach needs some amazing Greek food).

Thanks a log! (Anonymous poster)

It’s like the first brownie out of the tin, it’s ugly.

I am harvesting.  (Thanks - Clate Mask for the post).