On January 22, 2008 Zend Technologies, Inc. released Zend Studio for Eclipse 6, a new IDE for the PHP programming language. It is the successor to Zend Studio 5, and as the name implies, is built on top of the Eclipse IDE framework. Unless you have been programming in a cave somewhere, you already know that in the last few years Eclipse has grown to become the most popular and powerful programming environment on the planet. Eclipse has an open plug-in architecture, and Zend has created a set of PHP plug-ins that draw upon the power the Eclipse framework offers. [More…]

If you are looking for a book that describes the process of implementing a Business Intelligence project, authors Larissa Moss and Shaku Atre have done an excellent job. Their book Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications describes a ground plan for BI from a vendor neutral perspective. With the number of BI offerings that are available, each touting their own style, it’s refreshing to finally get an outlook that focuses on managing the project over selling specific features. This book certainly fills that void. [More…]

January 31, 2008. The IBM purchase of Cognos is complete. Following the SAP purchase of Business Object, and the Oracle purchase of Hyperion and now BEA, finalizing the purchase of Cognos must be a relief to IBM. The deal had been in the works for months, and with the approval of Cognos shareholders has now come to pass. [More…]

Originally published in 1995 by authors Eric Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, Design Patterns is probably the most world-changing and important text on Object-Oriented Programming written to date. The book was inspired by the idea of reusable design patterns that originated with Christopher Alexander’s book on architectural design, called A Pattern Language. The Gang-of-Four (GoF) book established a new lexicon for OOP based on their broad and extensive software design experience. [More…]

The LAMP/WAMP (Linux/Windows Apache MySQL & PHP) web server stack has evolved into a viable lightweight network server platform. One of the problems of using WAMP servers is the way CGI processes are evoked. When PHP is used as a CGI process, it is reloaded each time a PHP script is called. A new instance of PHP runs each time a script executes. To get around this limitation, web servers running a FastCGI module can keep a service loaded so it doesn’t need to load anew each time it is evoked. [More…]

Business Process Management (BPM) is an activity focused on the continuous improvement of business operations and the technology that supports it. Business Process Management uses Process Modeling techniques to analyze, design, implement, monitor, and optimize, business functions. From an Information Technology (IT) perspective it is similar to the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The IT aspect of Business Process Management is often called Business Process Modeling, and included as part of an Enterprise Architecture. [More…]

Enterprise Architecture is the process of planning, designing, and implementing the structure of an organization’s knowledge assets, information processes, and workflow, to support and align with its business goals and strategy. The underlying purpose is to ensure that business processes, their organization, and performance, is directly addressed by current and future information technology, including hardware systems, application software, and data storage mechanisms. [More…]

JavaScript has a unique style for Object-Oriented Programming. The style is closer to the syntax of a functional language than a procedural language. The syntax is not difficult to learn, but it behaves completely unlike what you expect from a compiled language like Java or C++. Central to JavaScript OOP is the way that new functions may be attached to existing objects. Here are a few simple example of how a JavaScript object can be instantiated and manipulated. [More…]

Business Intelligence encompasses a range of techniques to collect, integrate, analyze, and present information about business operations. Business Intelligence tools draw upon historical data contained in a relational database, Data Warehouse. or Data Mart. Current information is compared with historical data as well as predictions from models to generate reports that help decision makers evaluate performance. Data Visualization techniques combined with Data Mining tools may be applied to financial, production, and sales data to identify trends through the use of statistical analysis and machine learning techniques. [More…]

Digital Signage could soon be coming to a display screen near you. Imagine Google AdWords tied into a network of Internet-driven kiosk advertisements. Combined with RFID technology it might identify the items you are purchasing and offer coupons through a store display or in a checkout line. The Google patent Allocating Advertising Space In A Network of Displays describes the format in detail. Here is an excerpt… [More…]

Why do some teams work well together and other do not? A great deal of research has been done over the years to determine why some collaborative efforts excel while others fail miserably. While the reasons vary, ten major factors are consistently present in teams that are successful. Here are the top ten, including the number one. Take a look! [More…]

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) uses a combination of JavaScript, XHTML/XML, and DHTML techniques to create dynamic web pages that can update without reloading. The technique is based on the use of the JavaScript XMLHttpRequest() function to perform GET and POST operations with a server script, with additional client side DHTML code to modify the requested page elements. [More…]