Review: The Best Ajax-Based Apps

By Preston Gralla and Barbara Krasnoff
With Ajax, we'll no longer need desktop applications. Our data will be available to us everywhere we go, because it will all be stored on Ajax-based Web sites. Who needs Microsoft or other makers of desktop software? We're finally free!
We've scoured the Internet for the best Ajax-based applications in six categories to see how they stack up against Google's online offerings. Find out the winners, challengers and runners-up.

More >http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/192203368?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_ArchitectDebug

Free ITU Documents? Data Compression, Serial Communications, Standards by Mark Nelson

Industry standards can be a handy--but expensive--resource
Read more>>http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/192201183?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All

A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software by Herb Sutter

The face of hardware is changing, impacting the way you'll be writing software in the future.
Your free lunch will soon be over. What can you do about it?
....
The Free Performance Lunch
There's an interesting phenomenon known as "Andy giveth, and Bill taketh away."
Read More >>http://www.ddj.com/184405990

General Principles of Software Validation

A voluminous report (prepared by the FDA) discusses all important strategic and tactical aspects of software validation. Recommended by Roger S. Pressman

Read more >>http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/comp/guidance/938.html

The Performance Woe of Binary XML

This article by Jimmy Zhang dissects "XML's performance issue by focusing on three key questions: (1) Does XML have a performance issue? (2) What is the real culprit behind XML's slow performance? (3) Can binary XML fundamentally solve the problem. "
Read more >> http://webservices.sys-con.com/read/250512.htm

Declared Unchecked Exception: The Best of Both Worlds

In "Declared Unchecked Exception: The Best of Both Worlds," an architect suggests deriving exceptions from RuntimeException, and then declaring them in method signatures, providing documentation of exceptions and the ease of use of unchecked exceptions.
Read the complete Blog Entry: http://www.jroller.com/page/hackingarchitect?entry=declared_unchecked_exception_the_best

The Burning Bag of Dung—and Other Environmental Antipatterns

"In my youth a favorite prank of the local delinquents (being a geek, I was not one of them) was to place a paper bag full of doggy doo on a neighbor’s porch, light it on fire, ring the doorbell, and then flee. "
by Phillip Laplante, Penn State University
Read More >>http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=228

Abstraction and Efficiency : A Conversation with Bjarne Stroustrup, Part III by Bill Venners

"Bjarne Stroustrup talks with Bill Venners about raising the level of abstraction, why programming is understanding, how "oops happens," and the difference between premature and prudent optimization."
Read More >>http://www.artima.com/intv/abstreffi.html

BOOK: Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L. Glass

"This book is an invaluable resource for those people preparing to be software engineers in the future and also for those practitioners which want to refresh what they ought to know or just to reinforce what they believe in spite of existing controversies (mostly from "hypesters"). Since the book covers topics which are usually controversial, this book will also give you arguments for the next time you will find yourself trying to refrain your team of doing things the wrong way. If you love software development, you'll love this book. Enjoy it! "
Read Review by Fernando Berzal at >>http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0069.html

Brian Kernighan: Code Testing and its Role in Teaching

"This report from the trenches focuses mainly on testing, with some digressions on topics that have led to useful class lessons. I am ignoring other important issues, like formal methods for both writing correct programs and for validating them after the fact. These are often of great value, but I am reminded of Don Knuth's apposite comment, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." "
Read More >> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/testing.html

Case Study - Bay Creates Technology Architecture for the Future

"Thus far, the results have been very positive. A number of large and mission-critical functions is now on the new architecture. Currently, over 75 percent of user traffic are on the new architecture, with no negative impact on the experience of more than 62 million registered users. eBay has also seen performance improvements."
Read More>> http://www.sun.com/service/about/success/ebay.xml

Combine Polymorphism and Web Services - By Paul Kimmel

"Have you wondered how to apply polymorphism across Web services? Wonder no more. Paul Kimmel reviews polymorphism, demonstrates XML Web services, and most importantly, shows you how to combine polymorphism and Web services."

http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/3459001

One Hundred Rules for NASA Project Managers

"Jerry Madden, Associate Director of the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, collected these gems of wisdom over a number of years from various unidentified sources.
Jerry was apparently well respected at NASA, and his list continued to circulate. One NASA site includes these comments: "Madden retired from NASA in 1995 as Associate Director of Flight Projects at Goddard Space Flight Center. Considered by many of his peers to be one of NASA's premiere project managers, Madden's reputation for frank, on-target observations of project management continues to be celebrated today, as his list of lessons is handed down to a new generation of project managers. "
Read More >> http://www.altisinc.com/Links/100_Rules.html

Patterns for Testing Software -by Manfred LangeSure

"Sure, testing does not guarantee defect free software. In addition, tests should never be used to “test quality in”. However, some scenarios occur repeatedly when testing software. This paper tries to describe a few of these patterns in order to allow for new perspectives on how to test software."
Read More >>