Thursday, August 28, 2003

KB Definition - Blog

A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.

Information

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

KB Definition - Agile Modelling For XP

Agile Modeling (AM) is a practices-based software process whose scope is to describe how to model and document in an effective and agile manner. The practices of AM should be used, ideally in whole, to enhance other, more complete software process such as eXtreme Programming (XP) (Beck, 2000), the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) (Microsoft Corporation, 2001), the Rational Unified Process (RUP) (Rational Corporation, 2001), and the Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) (Ambler & Constantine, 2002) to name a few. These processes cover a wider scope than AM, in the first three cases the development process and in the fourth the full software process including both development and production. Although these processes all include modeling and documentation activities, in one form or the other, there is definitely room for improvement. In the case of XP and MSF the modeling processes should be better defined, and in the case of both the RUP and the EUP the modeling processes could definitely stand to be made more agile.

KB Definition - Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme Programming (XP) is actually a deliberate and disciplined approach to software development. About six years old, it has already been proven at cost conscious companies like Bayerische Landesbank, Credit Swiss Life, DaimlerChrysler, First Union National Bank, Ford Motor Company and UBS.

This methodology also emphasizes team work. Managers, customers, and developers are all part of a team dedicated to delivering quality software. XP implements a simple, yet effective way to enable groupware style development.
XP is different. It is a lot like a jig saw puzzle. There are many small pieces. Individually the pieces make no sense, but when combined together a complete picture can be seen. This is a significant departure from traditional software development methods and ushers in a change in the way we program.

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

KB Definition - Enterprise Unified Process

An extension to the RUP lifecycle to include enterprise concerns.
The Unified Process is quickly becoming the de facto standard development process, also referred to as a software development methodology, within the object-oriented and component-based software communities. Is it sufficient? Ronin International, Inc.'s experience is that it isn't, in fact, by its very scope definition it is insufficient because we need more than a development process, we need a full-fledged software process. Enterprise Unified Process (EUP), an extension to the Rational Unified Process (RUP), is sometimes referred to as Enterprise-RUP or simply E-RUP. People familiar with the RUP can see that the extensions includes two new phases, Production and Retirement, and two new disciplines, Enterprise Management (formerly called Infrastructure Management) and Operations & Support.

KB Definition - SALT : Speech Application Language Tags

Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) are a lightweight set of extensions to existing markup languages, in particular HTML and XHTML that enable multimodal and telephony access to information, applications and Web services from PCs, telephones, tablet PCs and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs).


KB Definition - Refactoring

Refactoring is "To evolve the composition of a subject without changing its tangible value.” - Amith Ellur

Code refactoring as stated by Martin Fowler is, “a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behavior.” [Fowler, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Addison-Wesley, 1999)].