Archive for the ‘Software Engineering’ Category

A review of Adobe Flex Builder

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Adobe’s FlexBuilder is the Software Development Environment for Flex, Adobes Rich Internet Application platform. FlexBuilder is built on Eclipse, so any computer you run on it should have > 1 GB of ram and a processor > 2 ghz.

FlexBuilder is a very satisfying environment to work in. It is much more natural (as a programmer) to use than the actionscript editors in Adobe Flash. Because you are working in a fairly heavyweight Eclipse environment, those used to working in Microsoft Visual Studio may find FlexBuilder a bit slow. FlexBuilder does have a set of very capable debugging tools however, and these tools alone make the near-$250 price tag worth it. The addition of the powerful Designer mode (much like the Design view in Visual Studio) also adds a lot of value. Because of these features I strongly recommend Adobe FlexBuilder for development, and consider it a worthwhile addition to any Rich Internet Application programmers toolkit.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Feature packed, Eclipse environment is very configurable, Natural environment for experienced programmers.
Cons: Eclipse is a resource hog, so check to make sure your computer meets the minimum specs before buying.

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A Detailed Introduction to SOAP

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol and is used for communication between applications through the Internet. SOAP is a platform and language independent. It also allows applications to communicate between each other though both applications are on different operating systems. SOAP messages are typically written using XML.

Here is an example of SOAP syntax:
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A comparison between MFC and Win32 in C

Monday, January 25th, 2010

First let us start with the “Windows SDK” (Software Development Kit) which is designed to create Windows applications. It consists of large set of functions, messages, structures, macros and resources. It is a set of tools designed to help C programmers create Windows applications.

Windows SDK consists of the large set of books describing functions, messages, structures, macros and resources. There are also tools including a dialog editor and an image editor, on-line help files and a set of windows libraries and header files.

It has large collection of API (Application Programming Interface) functions written in C. The API is a set of functions that are part of Windows Operating System. Programs can be created by calling the functions present in the API. One doesn’t have to bother about the internal working of the functions – just knowing the function prototype (name, arguments) and return value one can invoke the API functions. A good understanding of the Windows API will help you to become a good Windows programmer . Windows itself uses the API to perform its GUI magic.

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When does CMMi make sense?

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

CMMi, also known as the Capability Maturity Model Integration, is a hot topic in software developing and/or supplying organizations these days. To many it is the new hot buzzword, replacing ISO as the de facto standard of choice. Many managers feel that if you aren’t CMMi compliant, you’re bleeding money.

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