Database reporting

Quick Thoughts on Application Value

Experience a major meltdown of your workstation and I suspect the value of various applications will come to mind VERY quickly! There is nothing like going without your favorite applications, or your workhorse applications for a few days to develop a significant appreciation for application value. My last 2 weeks have been filled with recovering from such a meltdown.

If you’re like me as you have used your workstation (…perhaps for years) it has accumulated a number of handy utilities that are not “big” names, yet you use them each and every day. Perhaps they were something you found on the internet years ago and fell in love with and it has become part and parcel of your day-to-day work. What happens IF (or more likely when?) suddenly your workstation has a meltdown? It’s really not pretty!

Replacing a defunct workstation with a brand new one is only the start of the battle - the easy part. Gathering all the software you had, reloading it, re-registering it, restoring all the “little” applications (…finding where you got them from can even be a challenge I found!) all present challenges. Doing all this while at the same time tending (…or trying to tend to) the business needs becomes a stress-producing and frustrating experience.

When it comes to establishing application value I really wonder how one would determine in advance the effect of having an application suddenly NOT available once all the investment in application creation and implementation was made. I believe that if in the early stages of application definition one would be able to look ahead 5 years to look at what the potential dependency might be on the application it could be another way to think of application value.

Applications, the Business and the Processes

Reading Bob Lewis’s most recent article in KJR set my head spinning with thoughts of a commoditized IT similar to that of an electric company.  What Bob Lewis refers to in his article is a recent book entitled The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (W. W. Norton, 2008), and written by Nicholas Carr.  The very concept of IT as a commodity makes my stomach churn, as I’m sure it does with many of my associates.  Continued »

Software Development Using Multiple Environments

I have used the Basic, ASP, Java, Progress 4GL and DataFlex languages to some degree within the past week.  (…as well as operating system specific programs which are another form of programming).  Each of these were used with different tools for different applications.  For Each (…there I go looping again) there are syntaxes which are very similar to identical, and at least for this brain, easily confused.  Thankfully, many of the tools provided for development today shield the programmer from the intricacies of the language. Continued »

Developer - User Communications - Another Visit

Once again I find myself writing about the value of having good communication between the application developer and the users expected to use the program for their day-to-day operations.  Two noteworthy instances of this value came to me once again - just yesterday.  Each incident was unique in its own way, but the common thread was clearly communication - either poor, incomplete, misunderstood or a combination of all.  In each case the end result has been delay in getting the task completed. Continued »

Software Implementations - An Investment of Time

How many times do we hear “I don’t have time for that!” during a software implementation?   I’ve written some about the current implementations which I have going at this time, and some of the challenges, and as I’ve been writing I found myself being guilty of that very statement as it relates to an implementation of my own for which I have not found my “roundtuit”. 

What I refer to here is a piece of software which will help me in countless ways (…once I set it up and begin to use it!).  It will help me in creating this blog — yet it sits loaded on my laptop waiting for me to find the magic “time” to learn enough about it to make it useful to me.  That software waiting for me is Dragon Naturally Speaking, a voice recognition software that I saw demonstrated as part of an application some 8 months ago (…or maybe longer).  I was totally impressed and got myself a copy. Continued »

The Challenges of Application Software Implementations

Contrary to what my blog may be showing, I have not been on vacation this past week, nor have I been sick, nor have I been tending to many matters other than the current projects I have on my plate.  I could certainly use a vacation after this week!

 It’s said that timing is everything.  Well it would seem that my timing is off because I currently have two clients in the throws of new software implementations, and neither one has been without challenges.  For one thing, the challenges at each have been as different as their respective organizations. 

The main ingredient and common thread among these two implementations has been more along the line of user challenges than the technical issues of the software design or network implementation.  You know how users are - don’t you? Continued »

Just What Is Software Quality?

How do you define software quality?  There has been a great deal written about software quality, and as perhaps may be expected, many differing points of view regarding just what constitutes software quality.  I’ll not attempt to add yet another definition to the mix, although I certainly do have some ideas about the subject.

My recent software quality thoughts have been prompted by my getting up close and personal with an application I originally developed sometime in the late 80’s.  It has truly been an eye opener to have the opportunity to look at code which I generated back then.  This is code that fails many tests for quality — particularly understandability, consistency and maintainability…and structure?…what’s that? Continued »

Establishing Application Requirements

Establishing Application Requirements often seems to me to be a “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” scenario.  Just where does one start when looking at a new application?  What IS the “best” place to start?  As an application developer, whether for a small business or a departmental application for a larger corporation, we are often asked to develop something from nothing.  In my experience, what we are given to start with (if anything) is at best vague.  Continued »