All,
As promised last night during my CodeRage 4 session, I have just published a quick whitepaper on the features of the UML, Audits, Metrics, and Doc Generation features for RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++Builder 2010.
The article can be found here: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39931
Hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think.
More to come…
One of the best books:
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Hardcover)
Software Measurement: Establish - Extract - Evaluate - Execute (Hardcover)
Using Wikipedia / web resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_metric
an oldie but goodie: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/88cm012.pdf
If you could have one or two things explained about RAD Studio 2010 or it sub products; Delphi, C++Builder, or Prism… what would it be?
Need ideas? Here is the link to what is new in RAD Studio 2010 link
In the comment box below, tell me what you want to learn.
I will then work to get a webinar scheduled to go over the top things.
More to come…
Mike
While many of the diehard Delphi and C++Builder aficionados are familiar with the old MIDAS technology based on COM/DCOM, many at the Delphi Live conference last week learned the current and future underpinnings of the new DataSnap technologies.
If you are not familiar with the new DataSnap technology, you owe it to yourself to find out more about this impressive approach to building multi-tiered applications.
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/38682 - DataSnap 2009 Overview
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/38685 - DataSnap 2009 Memory Management
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/38686 - DataSnap 2009 Threading Model
The new approach was introduced with RAD Studio 2009 (including Delphi & C++Builder) and was based on a NON-COM/DCOM approach. The new approach used JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) http://www.json.org/ housed on a TCP/IP message layer wrapped in the DataSnap technology.
What makes this approach great is that it is simple to implement:
This is a nine minute demo with explanations, 5 without… at best and IMO, it is the fastest multi-tier approach out there compared to JEE, CORBA, RMI, COM/DCOM, or plain old RPC.
This approach isolates the database layer to the middle tier; there is no reason for the client to know that you are even connecting to a backend database. The exposure of business logic is as simple as writing public functions and the building of the actual server is a form and three (3) components. There are no 7 helper files like with Java’s EJB, or 3 helper files with CORBA, or IDL/RIDL with COM/DCOM, and you surely don’t have to define each side of the communication like with RPC.
So there must be a downside to the technology… there always is… isn’t there? As far as I can see today, there are no advert downsides. There is no royalty to use it, it is simple to understand, it helps to reduce database connections, it very fast, it scales well, and it uses open protocols. What is not to like?
Now could there be more features added or could it even become simpler to use in future releases of the feature/functionality? Sure, but then again, if you are a diehard Delphi/C++Builder developer you already know that we don’t rest on the past implementation we are always trying to push the technology to the next level.
This leads to the next item; I’m going to be publishing the roadmap for RAD Studio very soon and also an audio recording of the presentation. There will be more details about where the technology of DataSnap is going in the future and should give every Delphi/C++Builder/Prism developer some great piece of mind to see the investment being put into our beloved product with Embarcadero!
More to come…
Technical discussions, Delphi lovers, Great content… it is all good at Delphi Live!
Just a quick update from the floor of Delphi Live, everybody appears to be having fun and the feedback so far has been really great.
This morning during the Product Address that Nick and I did, we covered the new public roadmap. So keep your eyes open for the new roadmap to be posted very soon for RAD Studio.
More to come…
As many of you may have read in Nick Hodges post (http://www.delphifeeds.com/go/f/55223) he has a new job for Embarcadero. You may be asking yourself “why is Mike going to comment on this new post?” Well, first because Nick really does deserve the new position and because I get to now work more closely with Nick and the Delphi team going forward as the new Product Manager for RAD Studio.
As many of you know, and for those people I’ve met in the past, I’ve been working with Delphi since 1.0. I have trained, introduced companies to Delphi as an employee, consulted on Delphi as a consultant before joining the company, and have been around Delphi ever since joining Borland back in August 1998. Some of you may remember BorCon 2000 where I was showing the ability for the AppServer and CORBA servers to connect to a simple Delphi GUI application (cutting edge at the time) during the Tech Preview session. Heck, just from a historical note, David I and I were talking during his recent visit to Columbus Ohio about how I was in the audience to see David I preview Delphi 1.0.
So like Nick, who is very excited about his new opportunity… I too, am very excited about the new opportunity to not only get to work with Nick more closely but also reconnect and work with many of the people I’ve known for a very long time. My only hope is that I can meet or exceed the excellent job Nick did as the product manager for RAD Studio and our community at large.
As you can imagine, I have a lot of ideas about the products and what could be introduced, enhanced, improved, and expanded. But, I’m always willing to listen, talk-to, and take advice from any and all who will give it. I’m excited about the ability to present to the community at Delphi Live (http://www.delphilive.com/) this year in San Jose CA and I hope to meet, talk, and discuss any and all issues with you during the conference.
As always if you have a concern, an issue, or you want to say you guys are kicking butt, please don’t hesitate to email me at michael.rozlog@embarcadero.com.
More to come…
Ever since I was a young individual, we have been fortunate to have a major “new” economy almost every decade. If we think about it, in the 80’s we had the PC revolution with almost every company in the world making a personal computer. Heck, I even had a Timex Sinclair 1000 with a massive 2 k of RAM and 2 k of ROM! This was also a golden age of the 2nd generation gaming systems like the Atari 2600, Coleco Vision, and Intellevision.
As these markets faltered and diminished, the 3rd generation of gaming systems started to be introduced with Nintendo, Sega, and Sony releasing new consoles to invigorate the industry in the early to mid-90’s and by then the next big wave had hit called the Internet. Who can forget the heady-times around the internet; no more brick and mortar, everything will be one web. Who can forget the Super Bowl Ads that were almost 100% internet startup companies? Heck, in my neck of the woods, at that time if you had the ability to spell the word “CPU” you could get a good paying programming job. Couple that excitement with the year 2000 scare and it was a good time to be in the computer industry. However, year 2000 came and went without much excitement, but I may add that there was an extreme amount of investment to ensure it worked that way… if companies would not have invested like they did, most likely the year 2000 and beyond would have had serious repercussions. Then the Internet bubble popped and once again the industry was made to re-review the entire process.
In the U.S. after the Internet bubble popped, we moved toward housing, and we had an enormous bubble that also popped and we are in the throws of a massive reset. However, like history before, there is usually something that will rise out of the ashes and start anew. In the U.S. in the middle-to-late 70’s it was also a very bad time in the U.S., we had higher unemployment than today, inflation was at 13.5% annually, and interest rates were almost 20%. Many things happened, but new industries were born and we moved to a time of relative calmness and growing prosperous markets.
So looking around the landscape today, are there any new technologies that are getting people, companies, and the world excited? Could we be at the start of an entirely new market? Could the Apple iPhone be the phone that finally brings the “mobile market” that I’ve been reading about and hearing about for the last 10 years? Could one device really create an Economy? Will the 3.0 SDK enable this micro-economy and could it be big enough to get us out of the market situations we are experiencing now?
As of this writing, Apple has shipped a little over 17,000,000 units and in over 80 countries. If you add the iTouch to the mix, which ironically runs the same OS, the combined number of units is over 30,000,000. This is since the middle of 2007. It has single-handedly created a new game console, communication device, entertainment device, and business tool in a very short time, all in one device. The iPhone has had over 800,000 downloads of its free developer SDK and had over 50,000 developers pay to join the development community. Plus, the AppStore has over 25,000 applications that can be added to the hardware and has already shipped or downloaded over 500,000,000 applications as of Jan 2009 and is increasing. Oh, and one other thing, the iPhone is still not released in the largest market in the world… China! It has spawned an industry of accessories, add-ins, and add-ons, but that is not all. This device has in-my-opinion, brought smart phones to the forefront, not just for the iPhone but for all of the phones on the market today.
If you look at the phone market today, what are we reading about? Of course the iPhone is most-likely at the top of the list, but we are also hearing about the Palm Pre, Blackberry Storm, and the Android based units. Each of these companies is following in the footsteps of Apple, trying to tap in to the excitement that Apple has created. The great news is that Apple is also updating the way business is done; they take a percentage of the selling application and handle the transaction for you. If you already have a way to handle the transaction you can use your own, but for the small company, the 1 man shop, having a company that will be the credit-card provider, tracking, hosting, and management of the software for you is incredibly useful. This has opened a whole new world to a market that 2 years ago was not there. The new 3.0 API is also enabling a few features that will allow applications to be unlocked or enabled during the running of the application, thus, opening a new realm around the micro-transactions and the ability to enable pay as you go or as you need.
All of this leads me to believe that “YES” Apple has created a new economy, and it is that big; they have opened the doors on the mobile market promise, and they have revolutionized the way applications will be delivered in the future. The only question that remains is will this new economy grow fast enough or become big enough to bring the entire world out of a market downturn? Well, as Apple was part of the original PC revolution that spawned a new economy, they revolutionized the music industry, they solidified the vision of a mobile entertainment device, and now are on the edge of a new market in communications… Whew… as my friend likes to say “it is all good” and you know what, that is either light at the end of the tunnel or it’s a train just about to run me over! It’s all good!
For those of you who read this blog regularly and nicely ping me to write more, I thank you for your support. As I mentioned in one of my last blog-postings, many things were changing and that I would fill you in as those changes became clearer.
The first bit of news; I’m now the Product Manager for both the JBuilder and also the 3rd Rail (Ruby on Rails) line of products. I’m very excited about the thrilling opportunities I see for both markets and in the same breath, excited about what “you” the readers of this blog will tell me. Trust me when I say, I really want to hear it. If you like things in the products let me know, if you hate things in the products let me know, if you want to see some ‘x’ functionality, let me know. As you can most likely imagine I have a lot of ideas when it comes to the products and how they should behave, react to changes in the software world, and how products can help developers build better software. But, I also know that there are a ton of great developers out there that need or want things that I may not know of or recognize as extremely important. For example, I have a very good friend that for the last 2 years has been excited about Groovy; YAWTFJ (yet another web technology for java I thought) and I listened, downloaded, played with, and started to understand his passion about its approach and now agree with him that Groovy is truly groovy when it comes to building Java based web applications. Without his insistence that I take a look at it, I would have never (most likely) been exposed to the power of the library / approach.
I also understand that there are great challenges before us in the market place, and not just from the general competition stand-point. I like competition; it means you have a vibrant market and it spurs innovation. I also like the fact that open source continues to put pressure on products to deliver more for less. But, I think the biggest challenge we as developers have before us is getting beyond the Edit, Compile, Debug syndrome that development of all-types has fallen under as of late. Maybe it is the down economy, maybe it is having too much on our plates, maybe we are getting bored, or maybe, just maybe we as developers don’t see the intrinsic value of delivering more with less. Usually in a down-economy it means more will be getting put on our plates, and if it is a lot of the same-old-same-old, then yes boredom is definitely a strong possibility. Some that I’ve talked to say “it does not matter how much I work, the company is going to pay me for doing work from 9 – 5, so if I write 50 lines of code or the IDE generates 50 lines of code, what is the difference?” That comment is scary on so many different levels that it warrants its own blog-posting later. What I’m more concerned about is that developers don’t think they have the time to look beyond the Edit, Compile, and Debug process. Here in lies in my opinion my greatest challenge, as an example, just running software audits on your existing code before it goes to unit testing or QA could save significant cycles because the audits will alert you that you have logic or approach errors in your code and if you fix it now, it will save significant time down the line. What is interesting is when I use that example out in the field, at a software development conference, or talking to a group of developers they all shake their heads in agreement and even comment “well-of-course, that makes sense,’ but when I then ask how many run audits, very few if any raise their hands! Is it the group / heard mentality, or not believing they have time to run the audits, or don’t understand what audits to run, or don’t know where to find the audit functionality in the software, or… a great number of other questions. I think it is all of the above and that is what has to get fixed. If you know about a feature that will save you time, resources, and ultimately money, but you don’t have a clue on how and when to use it or even where it is located, then do you really have that feature? If you don’t have the feature then you don’t have value and you really have Edit, Compile and Debug.
10. RIA’s will show increased signs of weakness; as more and more client side technologies are employed to create Rich Internet Enabled applications that act like Windows applications when the Windows OS is right there to use with real applications. Users, Developers, and management might start to look at using the OS for was it was for… namely supporting applications and finally move away from all the 3rd party client side technologies and start building solid applications that use the Internet as a communication device. Real applications that use the Internet protocols but don’t need a browser? Get out… check out an article I wrote on RIEA (Rich Internet Enabled Applications) for more background information.
9. SSD will own 30% of the market; Just purchased a Terabyte of storage for $89 dollars, which is great. But SSD (Solid State Drives) are coming and I believe that in 2009 there will be a major shift towards these types of drives. They have some inherent advantages over standard hard drives; no moving parts, no heat, and extremely fast read times. SSD’s are still a little expensive, but as adoption and competition increases these will be the drives of the future.
8. Groovy will gain more followers; Want a elegant solution for Web applications with Java? Then check out Groovy… program in Java, simple deployment, nice design pattern. Groovy should be the standard for Java Web development.
7. Specialized chips (task oriented) will become standard on mother boards in an effort to move green. We are starting to see this trend with Graphics chips, where the manufacturer will put a light-weight graphics chip on the mother board and for normal use (email, browsing the web, etc) the on board graphics chip will be utilized. Then when the user wants to use PhotoShop or play the latest Game on the market, the real graphics boards kick in and do the work. Thus, when in general use the machine takes up much fewer resources and then on-demand can increase the resource consumption to fit the task at hand. This approach will be applied to other various other areas of the PC.
6. Agile, Spiral, XP, Waterfall are all the same; I know methodologies are sacred and not supporting one or the other can be bad and they feel much like a religion to me (for comparison check out the Programming Languages compared to religion article; here). But at the end of the day, no matter which approach you use for developing software it is imperative that every member of the team buys-into the approach. If everybody on the team believes and uses Waterfall for example, then the project will usually complete. Now, again that does not mean that the things about the waterfall approach is incorrect, it just means the team was able to follow a process to completion. I’m not bashing for support of any one software development methodology, I’m merely pointing out that to have success, everybody has to be onboard or they will all fail. I believe pick the best methodology for the application being created with the dependencies and constraints taken into account.
5. Specialized maintenance teams will be setup in the down economy; new development is being put on hold during the down economy so companies are now setting up “swat” like teams for doing specialized maintenance of applications. These teams are there to upgrade or update the existing application, so they are usually comprised of the top-talent because they use the latest approaches to squeeze RIO out of the existing application, thus saving companies big money.
4. Google’s Android not so much; Android has a lot of promise and it has some exciting technologies and approaches, but the Apple iPhone will continue to dominate in 2009. The initial phones based on Android are ok but they don’t currently meet the level of the iPhone, maybe next year.
3. It appears to be getting cloudier… The cloud is exciting, and adopting the use of the cloud will continue as more companies start using the cloud, and more companies put services to be consumed on the cloud. There are still issues around cloud computing but in this exciting hype phase of the technologies those issues look to be on the far distant horizon.
2. The browser war will not be settled; Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera, and now Chrome. Who will win the hearts and minds of the internet users? Well it won’t be decided in this year. I love the improvements that Internet Explorer has added with version 7 and the preview of 8. However, for overall speed and functionality it is hard to beat either Firefox 3 or Opera 9. Both of these browsers do a great job and I usually pick one of them for my day to day browsing activities. The new dark horse is Google’s Chrome. While I do like it and some of it features, it is limited in features and it can be a resource hog if you browse like I do with many tabs open at one time. I will be excited to see where Chrome goes in the future, but for now I will stick with Firefox and Opera, then use IE when I have to. But, I will still continue to play with Chrome.
1. Microsoft Vista was a ploy to get everybody to buy Windows 7. Ok, here is my conspiracy theory of the year. I believe Microsoft wanted to introduce Vista with issues they knew most users would not like or want. I know this sound far-fetched, but go with me on this a little longer. What was the best Windows as far as sales was concerned, from a release standpoint? It was Windows 2000. Now over the past few years, Windows XP has caught up to Windows 2000 and surpassed it in the number of sales (due to the number of machines XP was installed on in OEM), but from an out-and-out purchase of an OS, Windows 2000 is the winner. What made Windows 2000 a must have upgrade? I know this goes back a while, but before Windows 2000, the biggest upgrade was Windows 98, and before that Windows 95. Does anybody remember how bad Windows ME (Millennium Edition) was? This version of Windows was despised by almost everybody and even made the list of The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time back in 2006. (Link to Article) It also introduced features that would someday become staples of users like System Restore, Automatic Updates, new version of IE to better support HTML and Media player that included other media types, but the product was extremely buggy and had problems working with existing hardware and software. This paved the way for Windows 2000 sales. The negative press on Win Me and the lack of adoption moved the Windows user community to purchase, upgrade, install and generally get their hands on Windows 2000. Isn’t it odd that Vista introduced various features that someday may be an OS staple, has hardware and software issues, and is generally despised by all? Does this mean that Windows 7 (or whatever they name it by the time it comes out) will be the biggest Windows release ever? The Windows community is definitely ready for a new OS and with Vista softening them up with countless issues, Windows 7 will be a HUGE, must have, need to buy a new computer to get the OS type of release.
I know that it has been a while since my last post, I have been underwater doing a lot of different things with more news to follow soon.
As many of you know, I love static analysis with regards to software Audits and Metrics. If you attended some of my sessions during CodeRage III, you will notice that I almost always sneak in the use of them somehow.
However, I wanted to highlight one simple Software Audit that does a great job. The Audit can be found in both Delphi (Enterprise / Architect) and JBuilder (Professional / Enterprise) and is called: Numerical Literal in Code (NLC)
What does this Audit do? When run, it scans every single line of code and checks to see if the developers of the code used a numeric literal.
Example: Salary := BaseSalary * 1.3234242323 / 4 + 12; //calculating CFO Salary
The above line is fine, it will compile and most likely execute perfectly every time the application is run. The problem comes in to play six months from now when you load up the program and have to make a change to the code. What did 1.3234242323 represent? Why was it divided by 4? What is that + 12 have to do with anything? All great questions, and questions that is going to take time to research and figure out. The embedded comment is not a lot of help other than stating that it is for the CFO.
Run Audits:
The above code line would be highlighted with a flag stating a NLC was found. During a refactoring session; remember refactoring does not change the behavior or results of execution, it is simply a way to enhance and clean up code to make it run better and read easier.
The code would be refactored as:
const AnnualBonusforShowingUp:Double = 1.3234242323;
const NumberOfQuartersPerYear:Integer = 4;
const SpecialAddFigure:Double = 12.0;
…
Salary := BaseSalary * AnnualBonusforShowingUp / NumberOfQuartersPerYear+ SpecialAddFigure; //calculating CFO Salary
The actual calculation has not changed, so when I run unit testing it should pass. Six months from now, when the code is open for modification the developer will have a better idea what those numbers represent and 2 years from now when the new hotshot kid that was just hired comes in to review the code with software archeology, they will also have a better understanding of the code also.
Simple Audit, easy to use, understand, and especially great returns!
more to come…
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