Ralf's Sudelbücher

Conscious Incompetence - The need to transcend conventions

2008-09-17T07:09:50Z

In his recent blog posting Seth Godin once again questions the value of competence. Sure, he does not want to people dumber. He just argues that sole reliance on competence as a compass to navigate the future can - well - be a hindrance. He´s written about it already in 1999 and made clear, that competence is about accomplishing something on the basis of existing knowledge - and thus is different from finding new ways of doing stuff. Whoever is competent is not necessarily innovative or imaginative...(read more)

What´s in a Book?

2008-07-25T21:58:46Z

As I read Kevin Kelly´s "Fate of the Book" I come to wonder what this debate he´s referring to is all about? Is it about form or content? Is is about texts as opposed to video or audio? Is it about texts of a certain minimum length and/or structure as opposed to text snippets? Or is it about a certain physical container for texts as opposed to digital texts? Or is it about certain types of physical containers? Until digital word processing it was pretty clear what a book was: a text longer than a...(read more)

New blog on software architecture - The Architect´s Napkin

2008-06-12T15:40:33Z

Since I´m mostly concerned with software architecture and my clients are asking again and again when I´m going to write a book about the topic, I finally decided to set out and compile the material to go into the book. And I decided to do it publicly, in a new blog. Not that I haven´t done that before here and in my German blog . But now I´ll try to be more comprehensive, put everything in a single place, and add some new stuff I have not written about before. Plus, through a blog all´s open for...(read more)

Software Architect 2008 Sample Code

2008-06-06T16:53:00Z

Please find the sample code for my presentations at Software Architect 2008 on Aspect Oriented Programming with PostSharp and Software Transactional Memory with NSTM here for download: http://www.ralfw.de/download/Software_Architect_08_Samples.zip If you´ve any questions, feel free to contact me by email. Enjoy!...(read more)

Component orientation explained - Modern software development viewed from a musical perspective

2008-03-02T21:36:28Z

You´re fluent in object oriented programming. But now and again you´re wondering what the fuzz about component orientation is? There is supposed to be more to it than just using 3rd party controls in your user interfaces. But, what and how? Component orientation is about higher productivity, easier maintenance, better testability, more flexibility, and - if you´re fond of it - reusability. But how´s that? How does component orientation reach all those lofty goals? The trick is pretty simple: component...(read more)

NSimpleDB - Use Amazon´s SimpleDB data model in your applications now - Part 4

2008-01-28T11:17:58Z

As explained in my previous postings , I implemented a local/embeddable version of the Amazon SimpleDB data model and API in C#. You can download the sources from my NSimpleDB Google Code Project and build the tuple space engine yourself, or you download the demo application which includes the engine as a single assembly: NSimpleDB.dll . Using the SimpleDB API then can be as easy as referencing the engine assembly and opening a local tuple space file like this: using NSimpleDB.Service.Contract; ISimpleDBService...(read more)

NSimpleDB - Use Amazon´s SimpleDB data model in your applications now - Part 3

2008-01-19T21:05:21Z

In my previous postings about Amazon´s SimpleDB data model and API I explained, what Amazon´s online database service - or to be more precise: tuple space - has to offer in general. If this sounds interesting to you, then now welcome to the desktop. Because it´s the desktop on which you can actually experience what it´s like to use such a tuple space. SimpleDB currently (as of Jan 08) is just in limited beta and you have to line up to get one of the limited test accounts. But you don´t need to wait...(read more)

NSimpleDB - Use Amazon´s SimpleDB data model in your applications now - Part 2

2008-01-19T08:14:07Z

Amazon´s SimpleDB is an exciting new player in the database world. It´s free, it´s online, it´s not relational. SimpleDB is a dynamic database implementing a tuple space . Currently SimpleDB (as of Jan 08) is in beta - but not everyone can get his hands on it. You have to apply and line up for one of the limited test accounts. Nevertheless it´s worthwhile to take a closer look at SimpleDB. It´s a brave step forward by Amazon to offer an online database (accessible via a web service) that´s deviating...(read more)

NSimpleDB - Use Amazon´s SimpleDB data model in your applications now - Part 1

2008-01-18T19:37:52Z

Have you heard about Amazon´s online "database service" SimpleDB ? They describe it like this: "Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time." So it´s not a RDBMS, because Amazon does not call the data "relational", but just "structured". And you use a web service based API to access the data, not good old ADO.NET. Currently SimpleDB is in beta. You can get a test account to play around with it - if you´re patient. As of this writing (Jan 08) evaluation is...(read more)

Code instrumentation with TraceSource - My personal vade mecum

2007-10-31T19:42:32Z

When writing more complex code you cannot really step through during debugging, it´s helpful to put stud it with statements tracing the execution flow. The .NET Framework provides for this purpose the System.Diagnostics namespace. But whenever I just quickly wanted to use it, it turned out to be a hassle to get the tracing running properly. That´s why I wrote down the following, to make it easier next time. How to instrument the code? In the code set up different System.Diagnostics.TraceSource objects...(read more)