I will be starting a senior design project in a week with 2 or 3 other engineers. We are electrical engineers but we will need to do some coding for our project.
Right now, I think using Google Code + Visual Studio + AnkhSVN is a good solution on the code side. We also need to:
Maintain design documents
Have a smooth way of communicating
Would you recommend anything in particular beyond a central network storage, and e-mail?
Edit: We are not going to set up or configure anything. I would rather just pay for cheap (
Yes, a good wiki such as Atlassian's Confluence.
Wikipedia has a great list of Collaborative Software. I think a decent content management system would be essential for maintaining design documents (especially over plain network storage).
You might try Basecamp , the basic plan is enough for you already.
Related
I am designing a light-weight accounting application that suits small to medium
business (eg .shops), any reference to materials that help or ideas from anyone who did this kind of software before would be great.
NOTE : reference to a (C# preferably) library would be great.
There are many open-source accounting applications out there; i'm not sure if this one was done in c# but here's a link:
FrontAccounting(accounting software) Note: This one is a web-app.
The links for downloading the software are all the way at the bottom of the page in the "references" section. Hope that helps!
List of other accounting softwares(open source):
Other Softwares Scroll down to "Finance".
Try to keep it generic as possible and consider the adoption a plugin framework to forsee further extension. A good business analysis eventually is a prerequisite.
A friend wants to start a dating website, she wants me to help her. We still haven't discussed on what platform it'll be developed, but I'm thinking she'll suggest LAMP to save a buck (which is one reason already to chose over ASP.NET already). If the dating website does well, it'll potentially hold a large amount of data (I'm not sure if this would be another reason to consider either ASP.NET or LAMP).
Anyway, I ask this from an ASP.NET developer point of view. I have very little, almost null experience with LAMP, and I don't like it very much either, so if she decides to go with PHP odds are I won't help her. So what would be some good points to bring up when deciding which platform to develop on?
Please be objective, I don't want this to be argumentative or anything, try to stick to facts, not opinions alone.
Thanks!
What generally matter in that kind of choice is :
How much time will it require ?
How much money will it cost
Which is often linked to the time ^^
If you have a lot of experience with .NET and none with Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL, choosing LAMP will mean that you'll need much more time : a whole lot of new stuff to learn.
It'll also mean that your code will probably not be as good as it would be with what you know.
After, the question is : do a couple of week "cost" more than a few licences ?
Only you and her can decide, there ;-)
If LAMP makes you queasy, you can try ASP.NET over Mono.
IMO the only good reason to move away from a programming environment that you are already experienced with is the one you already mentioned: cost.
You would use LAMP specifically to build appliances. If you're not building appliances, the software cost for ONE server is marginal, and is not worth the tradeoff for moving to a totally different development environment, IMO.
I think the first question is: Which is the target programming language and environment that you have experience with?
Imagine the site will become a success - how do you scale then? LAMP can scale, and so can WISC, but in both scenarios you need people who actually know the environment and who can secure it. If you don't know Linux and MySQL and PHP, how are you going to scale and secure it?
So even though LAMP may be significantly cheaper (The SQL Server license is the heavy part in the WISC stack), after the first hacker attack or downtime, that initial savings may seem marginal compared to the damage.
The other thing is of course the PHP vs. ASP.net/C# decision. If you don't know PHP, then it's a decision of "Not having the application at all" and "Having the application on an expensive stack", unless your partner of course decides to hire someone else to develop that.
Technically, both have their pros and cons, but there are huge websites built on both stacks, so it really boils down to "Which platform can you reliably/comfortably setup and maintain?"
I agree with Pascal. Go with what you feel comfortable with in completing the project and don't forget that YOUR TIME EQUALS MONEY. You have to put a $$ value on your time. LAMP may be cheaper up front but if it winds up taking 1000 extra manhours, then suddenly it's more expensive.
Also take into account the lost opportunity cost in not being able to bring something to market b/c you chose a technology you were not familiar with.
At the end, if the plans are for this to be a business that is successful, the cost of using ASP.NET should be negligible or else I would question the seriousness of the effort.
One argument for the Apache/MySQL/PHP stack is that it's available on most major platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac/BSD/...) and most webhosters provide it as well.
You also find many (as in "huge amounts") of good tutorials, books and other educational stuff about PHP/MySQL.
Apart from that all tools used in the LAMP stack are free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer"). ASP.NET is still a proprietary technology owned by Microsoft. I'm not a huge open source fan, but knowing that your tools will remain free to use in any way you want is quite nice.
Of course, if you have no experience with PHP at all and much exp. with ASP.NET it's easier for you to stick with ASP.
If your comfortable with Microsoft products there's nothing to stop you from developing code in .NET and using a free database (however you may need to find/develop a custom database adapter if you are not using free versions of SQL server or Oracle). If you are generating a lot of traffic you can swap out the data layer of your code and invest in a better performing database.
Time costs money and if you can develop a better product both from a user and maintenance/performance perspective it will serve you better in the long run.
Some hosting companies include the OS and flexible contracts so I would make fit from your prespective. The market's pretty competitve for that type of site and there's no point throwing a lot of money at it until you get some useful metrics for your site IMO.
The short answer is: it doesn't matter, unless the site is going to do something so amazingly different that one technology is obviously better suited. And I can't think of anything like that off the top of my head.
A big red flag is: if your friend is concerned about the extra $5/month for asp.net hosting instead of LAMP hosting, then you're probably not going to get paid. Ever.
Caveats aside, be realistic: what is the immediate goal? To get something working, or to design something on the scale of plentyoffish.com or facebook.com? [Facebook.com has about 44,000 servers at the moment]
So, what are the chances of your friend's dating web site exploding to the size where scaling is a concern? For most sites, the answer is "very close to zero" - because of the marketing effort required to drive that much traffic.
Now, what is the revenue stream? Is there any expectation that you will get paid to do this? Do you think the site will be profitable? Is the project fully funded?
Friendship is great, but don't let that keep you from asking the appropriate business and client-relationship questions. One sure way to ruin a friendship is to do some work for free and/or without thinking through the full extent of the project. Far too often, you think it is a one-time favor, while they think it is your job!
LAMP is only cheaper until you read the fine print. It's not better or worse technically, just different.
The WebsiteSpark/BizSpark programs will get you all the Microsoft software you need to get started, free for three years. If price is her driving concern, point her to those programs if she's willing to consider the ASP.NET platform.
Hosting will cost a fair amount either way, because for a full-service website you don't want to go shared. You'll need at least one dedicated server to support a dating site. The OS and database will be free either way if you go with one of the *Spark programs I mentioned.
As a small startup company you can get a free 3-year MSDN subscription (well, you have to pay $100 at the end of the 3 years). If you think .Net will be more efficient and this website will make money, seriously consider BizSpark.
Since you are looking for dating site, check out Markus Frind of plentyoffish.com he is running the largest dating site on .net platform with asp.net and sql.
I work in a shop that is mostly .NET based, and we're trying to pick out a content management system to use. This means we mostly likely won't be able to use any of the common open source CMS projects (Plone, phpNuke, anthing not based on .NET, etc.).
Since I'm a huge usability nerd (just finished reading The Design of Everyday Things by Norman), I've been looking at them from that point of view. Frankly, I haven't been too impressed. This quote sums it up:
Most open source content management software is useless. The only thing worse is every commercial CMS I’ve used. - Jeffrey Veen
Here's a short list of our requirements:
Has to be .NET based
Prefer open source or on the inexpensive side
Limited feature set (we don't need too many features and they make things harder to use)
Does need Active Directory integration and robust permissions
Should be focused on web standards and usability
I know it's probably an impossible feature list, but are there any content management systems that kinda sorta look like they might not suck more than a Dyson?
Edit:
Here's the current situation:
I'm going to push for N2. I've got Active Directory integration working well (I even wrote a custom role provider). The only thing missing is workflow functionality. Hopefully I can get something going with that since it's the last sticking point. The N2Contrib project might provide a starting point if I can figure it out.
I would still love to check out Stencil CMS if/when it gets off the ground.
One of my co-workers was trying to get Umbraco going but wasn't having much luck.
Thanks for the help!
Self-plug is lame, but what you're describing is pretty much exactly what I am getting ready to release for $79 a pop. If you're still looking in a few weeks, take a peek. If you'd like, shoot me an email (rex#stencilcms.com).
I've heard both positive and negative feedback about Umbraco. A lot of people like Graffiti, but it's more blog-oriented than a full-blown CMS.
Check out N2 (http://n2cms.com/). I think that it covers most, if not all, of your requirements (I don't think it has Active Directory capability at this time). We are using N2 and I have really enjoyed how flexible it has been.
My company just completed a review of several commercial .NET-based CMS/portal platforms and, while I can't reveal who was in them (thanks, NDAs!), I can tell you that IMO they all sucked very, very badly.
Good luck on your search. I'll keep an eye on this thread in the hopes that there's something we missed.
We had a similar set of requirements and chose Telerik Sitefinity. It's got it's faults but overall I've been happy with it so far.
Unfortunately Jeffery speaks the truth. Which is probably why I build a new custom cms from the ground up every few years. Basically, the motivation for "boxed" CMS packages is to have every feature on earth and be everything to everyone and therefore do nothing particularly well for anyone. With the feature bloat comes the usability nightmares. Unless you start customizing and then you usually end up forking the project and losing the advantage of community updates.
Kentico CMS according your list:
Has to be .NET based
It's .net based, .NET Framework 2.0 or later
Prefer open source or on the inexpensive side
Free edition which can be used for commercial purposes is available, paid license starts at $750, source code is an option
Limited feature set (we don't need too many features and they make things harder to use)
Many built-in modules/features, anyway they can be easily disabled to keep the UI simple to use
Does need Active Directory integration and robust permissions
AD, Forms and Live Id! Integration
Should be focused on web standards and usability
UTF-8 Support including RTL languages, WAI Compliant, XHTML Compliant, XML, XHTML, HTML, XSLT, CSS.
Instant on-line demo or download available at:
http://www.kentico.com/Download.aspx
My company (a large organization) is developing a "road-map" for evolving their rather old, tangled confederation of systems to an SOA model. A few people are pushing hard for using Websphere Integration Developer and Websphere Process Server as the defacto platform for developing future applications...because they feel IBM is a stable vendor, the tools are made for the enterprise, they drank the "business agility" BPEL kool-aid, etc.
Does anyone have positive or negative thoughts on this platform? Do the GUI tools help eliminate monotonous/redundant coding...or just obscure things and make things harder to maintain? Basically, do the benefits justify the complexity?
My experience with the IBM Java tool set is pure pain. Days to install lots of different versions of different components all incompatible with each other, discover a bug in component A get told to update to see if it fixes, updating component A breaks component B and C, get told to update these etc.
I find Eclipse with out the IBM extensions far more stable and quicker and provides more features (as its stable versions are a couple releases ahead of WID/RAD).
I would advise against going the IBM way for development tools. As for process server I have less experience but the people in my team using it seemed to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed WID. not a lot.
So far I havent been impressed by any tools with the "SOA" and/or "BPM" labels on them. My "roadmap" would be very very iterative to see some results with the archetecture as fast as possible while trying to grab some of the easy fruits. That way you gain your feel for what works for you and your people.
I would never let any vendor push me anywhere in the "scuplturing" of the architecture.
I agree with other users complaining about WID. The only reason we are using WID is that a decision was made a while back to use IBM products across the board by our sales department.
That's right, our sales department made the decision to use IBM products.
Development has been painful and frustrating. We have lots of stability problems with Process Server, sometimes it doesn't want to start or shutdown properly. Yeah you can easily draw processes in the IDE, but most any toolset provides that functionality these days. It is nothing special or unique to WID or IBM. IBM is a few iterations behind mainstream.
There are plenty of open source implementations out there that offer great support. Checkout JBoss or RedHat, they are pretty good. If that doesn't float your boat, you can always use Apache tools.
Walter
Developers don't choose WID, WMB, or WPS. Managers do, because IBM is a "stable vendor".
Look at JBoss, or K.I.S.S.
WID/WPS is actually pretty simple. The original intention was for analysts and business people to "compose" services (DO NOT LET THEM DO THIS!) so the UI is simple and easy.
Most of the work will be in defineing and implementing the back end services which depending on the platform will mostly involve wrapping existing code in SOA service.
The most important thing to bear in mind is that SOAP is technoligy and SOA is an architecture and a state of mind.
There is a zen to a succesful SOA implementation. Its all about "business services", if you have a service that you cannot describe to a business user in less than six words you have done it wrong! Ideally the service name alone should be enough to describe the functionality of the service.
If you end up with a service called "MyApp.GetContactData" described as "get name, addresses tel fax etc." then you are there. If You have a service called MyAppGetFaxNoFromOldSys" described as "Retrieve current-fax-nmbr from telephony table in legacy system" you are doomed!
Incidently most of the Websphere tooling for WS* is pretty nice. But I would recommend the very wonderful SAOPUI tool from http://www.eviware.com which is very good for compsing/reading WSDL based messages and also function as a useful test client or server.
Do the GUI tools help eliminate monotonous/redundant coding...or just obscure things and make things harder to maintain? Basically, do the benefits justify the complexity?
As a Developer, I find the tools at varying levels of being bug free. 6.0.1 was a pain, 6.2 is so much better. But once you develop with the tool, there is minimal effort to maintain it. I develop in hours what java developers take days to do. It is also easy to maintain as changes can be made very quickly. I cannot answer your question from the perspective of an architect or a Manager but i would agree with comments of some others here.
Using the GamerServices component for XNA to access Xbox/GfW Live for networking purposes requires developers and players each to have a US$100/year subscription to Microsoft's Creators Club. That's not much of an issue for Xbox360 XNA projects as you need the subscription anyway to be able to put your game on the 360.
But for PC games using XNA, requiring developers and players to put that much up each year is pretty crazy just for the access to a player's gamer card. Are there any solutions for XNA games that provide similar benefits to GamerServices? Or are developers pretty much restricted to building their own networking functionality if they don't want to subject their players (and themselves) to that $100/head hit?
Perhaps you could try Lidgren
Please note that games for windows live is now free:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/22/games-for-windows-live-now-free/
Since using the Live APIs is your only option on xbox and zune, it makes it a pretty compelling option since your only issue was the cost on windows :-) Especially considering the fact that once game studio 3.0 launches, you'll be able to sell your games on xbox live's new community games section
Edit, upon further investigation, it turns out that the games for windows live stuff is kind of half-baked. The gamerservices library doesn't seem to be included in the redistributable bits. So unless you want to break the EULA, your player would have to install gamestudio. That being said, I do still believe that it's free nonetheless, if not inconvenient.
Well, you can use sockets, obviously, and using sockets you can create a seperate, dedicated server app, which you can't do with Live (as far as I know). You could also try SteamWorks; I haven't heard of anyone trying that, however.