Architecture Chat #46, #47 & #48

Apologies for not posting these sooner - here are the write-ups
for the last month and half of Architecture Chats.

  • Word & Excel document generation - testing approaches,
    the problems with verifying document structure without styling,
    interop performance bottlenecks etc.
  • Metadata, n-triples &
    semantic
    web
    .
  • Supporting micro formats, formats that aren't formats etc.
  • Symantec SVS.
  • Software Engineering degrees vs. Comp Sci degrees, comparing
    volumes of practical experience, projects etc.
  • NDA's & Student projects and the risks involved with
    offering projects to students vs. protecting IP / perceived
    business advantages.
  • NUnit 2.5 details.
  • Winforms to WPF -
    talking about why such a thing exists, the obvious risks and
    potential messes such a tool can create if not taken as just a
    learning tool.
  • Longevity of purpose built languages vs. general purpose
    languages.
  • ExtJS - I've talked about
    this JavaScript library a few times, but I don't think I've
    ever linked to it - so go check out the samples if you
    haven't.  Great fit for MVC based RIA's.
  • Making code changes on site - advantages, disadvantages - and
    the relationship/perceptions it creates with customers (customers
    are either impressed, or begin to feel you can fix anything given a couple of
    hours).
  • Observing customers on site using your software, difficulties
    in doing this without being onsite, ways to automate this etc.
  • Entity Framework - ESQL.
  • NHibernate HQL
    AST

  • Visualising Linq queries, current options, what's missing
    etc.
  • Flagging builds which are released to customers vs. builds
    which are released internally, and different approaches to
    versioning etc.
  • Domainz hacked, msn redirected
  • Sql injection attacks still working far too often.
  • Nokia 1100 - huge demand, changing numbers, banking scams.
  • Scaling and implementing document &
    distributed/persistent hash tables... including talking about
    CouchDB, MyISAM and Esent (Extensible Storage Engine).
  • Lucene.Net -
    using/abusing it for storing your data along with search
    documents, and performance implications (i.e. the observation
    that it's still quick).

Written on June 3, 2009