Draconis Software Blog

Stumbled across an interesting new bug-tracking tool, called 16bugs.com.  I say interesting, as the main goal of the tool is to provide an interface that makes tracking bugs “an easy and unobtrusive task. It could even be funny!”  Not sure exactly what makes it funny, though the interface looks nice.

The business model behind 16bugs is to provide a free version with limited features, and a subscription-based service at reasonable rates (from $8 to $25 a month).  It’s hosted on the 16bugs server, so your developer/QA folks will need to access this third-party site.  As one visitor brought up in the forum, it would be a great idea to add SSL encryption – I think a lot of companies would be very sensitive to having their software defects kept outside their control.

Personally, I feel this model for bug tracking has some great potential, especially for small companies that aren’t interested in setting up their own BugZilla, or for companies that contract with different firms that need access to a shared bug-tracker.  I know at least one company I’ve done consulting work for that could have really benefited from a system that’s easy for outside developers to access.

If you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out WubHub. Think of it as a programming language for creating mashups, where you can develop your own applications based on existing components from around the web (for instance, querying Slashdot on Java topics, than ranking them based on the results’ geographical location). The idea is there (though the site is still in alpha), and has some incredible potential.

As I’ve discussed earlier, I think this is part of the continuing evolution of the Web 2.0 movement, and an indication of where web application development is headed. Components from many different sources will be brought together to form cohesive, new applications – a Frankenstein of web widgets. The cool part about this is the potential for seriously fast application development, and simplistic creation interfaces that anyone can use.

I wonder about the business potential much of this faces, such as the viability of creating commercial web widgets and the logistics such a thing might entail. Imagine the potential in creating super-sophisticated mashups based on many of the new Web 2.0 companies that have been emerging. Very interesting stuff.

ZDNet’s Dion Hinchcliffe has been discussing Wiki’s, blogs, and Web 2.0 – the read/write web – as the next major applications platform in his article Is the walled garden Web blowing apart? Giving this some thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that this has been an entirely logical extension to current applications development and the route web content creation has taken over the last several years.

Over time, the tools used to create applications have grown increasingly easier to use (though the applications themselves have often grown significantly more complex): witness Visual Basic and Rapid Application Development software that emerged to empower more people to generate their own applications faster. Paralleling this, the web has become even easier and faster to develop content for, with the advent of the community-created website (what better example than Wikipedia), and blogs (where posting messages and comments requires very little effort).

But this isn’t news: what’s interesting is when these two content creation channels converge: applications as content, and the web as an application. Ruby on Rails “doesn’t hurt” to develop sites with, while WordPress and Movable Type have made it easier than ever to setup a blog (to say nothing of LiveJournal and other hosted systems). The web has become an application that anyone – and everyone – can modify, and it’s only getting easier.

The potential in applications delivered via the web is huge: rapid development (especially as mashups become increasingly popular), high-quality software, and on-demand results. As users see the immense potential in the web as a content application, astute executives are beginning to see the profit potential in developing whole new breeds of software using the web as a delivery medium. For instance, the explosion in new Web 2.0 companies lately has been astounding: companies that base their product offering as a web application users can subscribe to (and everyone loves a recurring-revenue business model).

Existing companies – especially those not at the forefront of the Web 2.0 movement – are beginning to appreciate the potential in the web as a software delivery vehicle. With eBay’s new community, large companies that previously focused on a top-down model are embracing the democratization of content creation.

I can only wonder at what the next logical step will be.

A new site is attempting to link together many of the “CSS Gallery” sites out there into a one-stop-shop for web developers. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have one site to visit, and one feed to subscribe to. CSS Galleries makes your life easier by aggregating the major design showcases into one simple RSS feed.”

If you’re a web designer, check this out before you start sifting through Google results.

In continuing with today’s security theme, here’s a great set of 24 tutorials from Max Kiesler for AJAX programmers concerned with security (and who isn’t?). “For the most part AJAX does not significantly increase the security vulnerabilities in most web applications. However, javascript, XML and asynchronous server calls do have potential holes if not properly implemented. If you’re an application developer or security professional there are things to watch out for with AJAX applications.”

If you’re writing web code with AJAX, check these guides out.

Microsoft has published a paper called Microsoft Solutions for Security and Compliance, that’s designed to “help IT managers and Microsoft customers meet specific IT compliance obligations that directly relate to major regulations and standards.”

As the regulatory requirements become increasingly complex, a “big-picture” guide such as this, with ideas on how to implement them, can be a very useful resource for those in the SysAdmin business. The document discusses five major regulations and standards that are likely to affect your buiness:

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• European Union Data Protection Directive (EUDPD)
• ISO 17799:2005 Code of Practice for Information Security Management (ISO 17799)

In addition to giving a succinct overview of the law you need to be aware of, Microsoft Solutions for Security and Compliance discusses what IT controls are and how they might be implemented in your organization. “IT controls regulate and guide the operation of IT in the organization, including all of the processes, and systems within it. These controls focus on processes that concern IT managers, including availability, change management, user provisioning, security, and so on. It is these controls that are the focus of this planning guide.”
Another useful guide from Microsoft is their Security Risk Management Guide, which gives a useful overview of the process IT departments often implement to minimize organizational risk to data theft and other issues.

If you’re in the IT biz, be sure to check these out.

When creating a company, one of the significant choices any entrepreneur makes is deciding how to sell their products. In today’s economy, there are hundreds of different routes to take, often establishing a mix of various strategies tuned for their particular customers. One such route is to create your own online store and sell your products directly.

Recently, my business partner and I were considering opening up an online storefront for our software company, Draconis Software. The idea was to make it easier to reach smaller customers (those who would only be interested in 1 to 5 software licenses, and usually costing only a couple hundred dollars in total). Rather than having these small customers go through our regular sales channel (where we target larger customers with sales presentations, on-site demonstrations, etc), these customers are able to evaluate the software for themselves using a free demonstration version, and make the purchase – all on their own.

Setting up an online store can be a very complex process, and is very dependent on how many customers you’re expecting, the level of control you require over the process, and the amount of legal liability you’re willing to expose yourself to. There are essentially two options: create and host the storefront yourself, or outsource it to a specialized service provider. We chose the latter.

This is a multi-part article that outlines what I found in my research, including reasons for choosing to outsource, how you might do the same, and even info on setting up your own storefront in-house. This part details why you might choose to outsource to a registration service, and some of the options you have.

(Read the article)

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Paul Stamatiou has 5 tips to help speed up your site, focusing on optimizing your code: “Throughout the blogosphere I’m always seeing these blogs, that while they look great, are horribly slow and overburdened. Over the past few months I have become somewhat of a website optimization specialist, bringing my own site from an over 250kB homepage to its current 34kB. I will help you achieve some of the same success with a few, powerful tips.”

The concept of Model-view-controller (or MVC) is a common one and has become increasingly popular as a design framework. However I’ve found that most introductions to the subject are very bland and abstract. In this post I’ll try to discuss some of the more practical reasons to go with MVC. Also while MVC can be used for many different kinds of application design, I’ll focus mostly on its use in web applications, since that’s where it’s use is most common at the moment.

In its most basic sense, MVC is just a clean way of organizing your code. In most web applications, you have a database containing multiple “business objects”, for example different products in an online store. Users can go to different pages in the application to view, update, or delete these “objects”, which are really just rows in a table most of the time. For any given query, the code in your application needs to be able to access the database, retrieve/update the relevant objects, and generate HTML code to be sent back to the browser.

(Read the article)

The latest version of RSP (now at 2.1) has just been released and is available for download. Some of the things that have been updated include:

• The ability to manually create tickets
• Fine-grain control over messages you receive
• An automated check-for-updates feature so you can more easily stay in sync with the latest version
• Several bugfixes and other minor changes

We’ve also put up a link to our new product brochure for RSP.  Enjoy!