InfoQ Homepage News
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Singularity: Rethinking the Software Stack
Singularity is a Microsoft research project aimed at producing a new operating system built for dependability. Relieved of commercially viable burdens such as backward compatibility, Singularity contains many alluring ways of solving classic problems using newer programming tools and methodologies. InfoQ spoke to the Singularity team to learn more.
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Free PowerShell Book
Frank Koch of Microsoft Switzerland has released a free mini-book on Windows PowerShell. Highlights include piping objects instead of text between commands and browsing the registry as if it were a file system.
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Article: Service Composition
In an InfoQ article, Boris Lublinsky discusses the main approaches to service composition, both from design and implementation point of view, and outlines the benefits of using orchestration. Topics covered include hierarchical vs. conversational composition, composition topologies, and the pros and cons of difference implementation approaches.
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Partitioned-Iterative more appropriate for EA than Zachman, TOGAF?
Roger Sessions claims that the most popular EA frameworks (Zachman, TOGAF, FEA, and Gartner) have failed to evolve to the needs of today's more complex development needs. Instead, Sessions proposes a 'Partitioned-Iterative' Approach that reduces complexity through partitioning an organization in smaller pieces, rather than defining the architecture for the whole company at once.
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Java and Web Application Development: Is Too Much Abstract A Bad Thing?
RedMonk analyst, Michael Coté, has written a lengthy opinion piece comparing Java web application development to development with frameworks such as Rails and Django. He suggests that Java applications often are developed having a "view" which is the web while other frameworks embrace the web more at their core.
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Interview: Anne Thomas Manes on SOA, Governance, and REST
In an InfoQ interview, recorded at QCon London, Anne Thomas Manes, research director at Burton Group, talks about the state of SOA, explains different ways of getting funding for SOA initiatives, the value of SOA governance and governance tools. Another topic covered is the applicability of REST to SOA, the need for a RESTful description language, and REST support in SOAP toolkits.
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Microsoft Research's Accelerator: A Data-Parallel Library for .NET that Targets GPUs
Microsoft Research's Accelerator Project exposes a .NET library for performing parallel data processing using a computer's GPU.
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Testing and Quality Control the only Certification Needed?
A new certification for software developers that is neither about in depth knowledge of programming languages, nor any modelling and design techniques, was suggested by Reginald Braithwaite. Only one subject would be on the examination list - "Testing and quality control". Safety has to be the prerequisite to any software development job. For the rest marketplace will decide.
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Patrick Curran replaces Onno Kluyt as JCP Chair
Onno Kluyt has announced that he will be stepping down as the Chair of the Java Community Process. He has held this role since July 2004 and managed the JCP program in several previous roles. Replacing him as Chair will be Patrick Curran, a fifteen-year veteran of Sun, and most recently the lead of Sun's Conformance Engineering team.
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Kaizen in Lean Software Development
Lean methods employ Kaizen, or continuous improvement, to reduce waste and improve results on a regular, even daily, basis. On the leanagilescrum group, Alan asked, "Are there known techniques for facilitating kaizen activities within Lean/Agile software development?"
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Google Base vs. Microsoft's Astoria
Dare Obasanjo has done a comparison of two new protocols for access database style data via HTTP. These protocols, based on REST, are the Google Base and Microsoft's Astoria.
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InfoQ Launches Architecture Community
InfoQ has launched a 6th community on 'Architecture', the intention of which is to serve as a source for tracking change and innovation of interest to those with an architecting/design role but not specific to any of our other communities on InfoQ which currently include Java, .NET, Ruby, SOA, and Agile.
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Code reuse highly overrated?
Dennis Forbes bucks the conventional wisdom that has caused the industry to trend toward architectures focused on asset reuse, asserting that code reuse is highly overrated and rarely pans out as advertised.
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Using Amazon Web Services to Implement a Video File Conversion app
As covered on InfoQ in the past, Amazon's infrastructure services platform is enabling new levels of cost savings as well as capabilities for certain classes of applications that can map to its scalable compute and storage services. One recent sample application demonstrates building a complete video file conversion service.
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Agile Team Size
Using Agile methods with large teams is a reality - the old Agile = Small Team equation is no longer valid. Nonetheless, team size is still an issue. How important is team size and what, if anything, should we do about it?