Follow the red brick path

Ruby on Rails opened a path that other languages didn`t take long to follow: an open-source framework for web applications, whose goal is to improve the productivity and happiness of the developer. Its motto: “Web development that does not hurt”. A framework that is fun to use. A framework that avoids unnecessary configurations. Why do we need them so much? We all know that at the end you end up configuring pretty much always the same things. Following the precepts of convention over configuration, leaving only what s “fun” in hands of the developer and avoiding the “tedious” part of the configuration by accepting the defaults the framework provides.
The Java community was slow to react, Ruby has been around for more than five years, but it slowly began to respond, and many frameworks of the same principle sprung up. These frameworks have the same premise that made the 4th generation languages strong in the nineties: Devote themselves fully to commercial software development, improving developer productivity. But where the 4GL languages focused on abstracting the developer from “low level” issues, these frameworks seek to free the developer from all the configuration responsibilities and make him deal directly with the juicy stuff: the business model, always within the confines of a 3GL language.

The Last Crusade

Grails is a clear example of one of these frameworks, inspired even in the name by Ruby on Rails. Grails is a framework created by the springsource folks for groovy, a dynamic language that runs on the java virtual machine. Grails is a “quick” framework, dynamic and robust. “The search is over” they promise, a clear reference to the crusades and the Holy Grail, and, at the same time, to our search for the framework that allows us to do a web application in just a few minutes.

Jump, little kangaroo!

But Grails still wasn’t Java. It was Groovy. So springsource, once again, came up with a new solution: Spring Roo. What is Roo? Not a framework, not an IDE, but something in between. Spring Roo is a tool that promises quick and easy results when developing web applications. And the most important part: it is pure Java. “Making Java fun” is its motto, prioritizing once again the happiness of the developer. Were we having such a bad time?
Roo allows us to have a running web application written in Java in just a few minutes. Everything is done by working inside an interactive console, with autocomplete and a handy “hint” option, just in case we get lost on how to proceed. As if this wasn’t enough, Roo gives us an offer that is hard to refuse: if at any moment we don´t want to use Roo anymore, we can completely remove it from our application following a few simple steps and everything will keep on working as before. “No lock in” they say, “not married” we would add.
At first sight Roo can scare more than one, too many files are created for each class and it makes extensive use of (for not saying abuse) of aspects. I could even say that it is essential to understand aspects in order to work with Roo, but I wouldn’t go that far. An IDE exists called SpringSource Tool Suite, or STS, that is based on Eclipse and that perfectly integrates with Roo. The STS almost makes us forget about the number of files and the usage of aspects, but sadly it is remarkably slow and that may cause some frustration.
Roo integrates and supports a big amount of technologies, and this list grows every day. Just to give a few examples we can mention Google Web Toolkit, the Google App Engine and several of the Apache and Spring projects. Could this be the main strength of Spring Roo? Could this distinguish it from all the other tools?

Won’t you come out to PLAY?

Looming on the horizon is Play Framework, with a completely different approach, but with the same goal. Play also allows us to code in Java (and pretty soon in Scala) and to forget about the tedious “initial configuration” of every project, but Play is not just another development framework. Play’s strength lies in the fact that it is also an application server, and one made with the idea of developing while having the application deployed. Play provides instant code replacement with no need to restart the server, and it shows errors and stack traces in the browser, so you can see them easily. This feature helps the job of the developer as it prevents losing valuable time while debugging and bugfixing. Something to consider is that Play has some “eccentricities” that will bring headaches to the more “traditional” Java developers, for example the large number of static methods, or the need for public attributes. A different solution for the same problem.

But what if I dislike something about the framework?

What should I do? Each framework has, obviously, its limitations. What would happen if I need to have a service layer? And what if the framework does not encourage it but I really, really, want to use DAO´s? The question we should ask ourselves is: what concessions am I willing to make? Every framework allow us to change something, but not everything can be changed. And that’s when we should make a pause and decide whether we are willing to give up some control of the architecture to the application framework in order to benefit from its advantage, or not. As always, it depends mostly on the problem we are trying to solve.

I consider that, thinking of performance, we should not turn into using many extensions. Below we will recommend ten free and useful plugins for Visual Studio, leaving out the classical plugins or commercial multi-tools such as Resharper, Devexpress Coderush and Visual Asist X.

Documentation: GhostDoc. A widely used extension, documents in XML format, in semi automatic way, facilitating and simplifying this task.

Improvements in the IDE:  VSCommands 2010 provides code navigation and generation improvements which will make your coding tasks faster, together with essentials IDE enhancements, it will take your productivity to another level.

These other extensions had been developed by the Visual Studio team and they are also really useful:

PowerCommands is very light. Adds different funtionalities/ contextual menus, saving time and clicks such as open a Command prompt or the containing folder where one of the files from the solution is located (through a contextual menu) and “Format document on save” that performs the command of “format document” automatically. It has a smart copied of classes and references and, among many others, my favorite command: undo close

Productivity Power Tools: incorporates a series of new functions in Visual Studio such as: improved search, many improvements in the navigation and visualization of the code, adds a better “solution explorer” called Solution Navigator and has lots of changes (several are very useful) in the tabs/navigation of documents.

Code Versioning with SVN: it´s true that we are used to the Visual Studio-Team Foundation Server couple for the versioning of the code, but clearly SVN also is an option and AnkhSVN CollabNET is a fine free tool.

Useless but fun: the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor will not improve any technical aspect, but it allows using predefined graphic themes, changing the whole aspect of visual studio.

Tools for the IDE: we know that sometimes the creation of regular expressions can be an unpleasant job. This tool lets you to perform them in an integrated way in the IDE, simplifying its creation.

Code Comparison: although the beyondcompare is superior, the codecompare is free and tends to be better than the IDEs default tool.

The power of examples: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: a code library that provides examples for typical development tasks. Strongly recommended (also has content for VS 2008).

Uses of TFS: for those that use TFS beyond its functionality standard, the TFS power tools 2010 it is already a classic.

Do you have some plugin you would like to recommend? Comment below the post and let  us know!

In this context GIS Systems have been improved in the course of time and they now count with a wide variety of functionalities and complementary tools that make them very powerful. This new capabilities open a new area for their use in applications, though now a days they are not exploited. This lack of use of the new capabilities of GIS Systems is related to the lack of knowledge about the real potential of this systems and the added value they can provide.

From this boom different alternatives emerge, both local and public, from where the developer has to analyze which is the more convenient for the system to be implemented.

Possible uses

Nowadays there are many possible uses for these systems such as:

• Environmental impact

• Addressing to get from one point to another

• Calculations on different terrain elevation

• Mastery of agronomy to maximize the yield of the land

• Support for mobile devices

• Calculate distances and times between points

• Sampling of real-time traffic

• Support for user interaction with the maps

• 3D Views

•Dividing the maps into regions to associate each one with a special behavior. For example, to define regions of the city of Buenos Aires and show the responsible for garbage collection in the different regions of the city.

• Criminology (may be taken as an example the map of insecurity in the province of Buenos Aires)

• etc etc

These are some of the possible uses for which you can use a GIS system and optimize the interaction between the user and the application. To this uses we can add others that meet specific user requirements.

Different Alternatives

Early in this post we mentioned that there are several alternatives in terms of GIS systems. Probably the most known is Google Maps, but also there are other tools that provide a similar service or software packages to have our own GIS server. But…Why having our own GIS server when we have tools that provide the same service such as Google Maps? Basically the answer lies in fact that, if we use our own server, we have complete control of our data (create them, eliminate them and modify them), the services that we can provide and of the maintenance, while with an existing tool we are “limited” to the API they provide for users.

Among the most popular GIS systems we find:

• Google Maps, of Google Inc.
• Bing Maps, la apuesta de Microsoft`s bid
• PostGIS + MapServer + OpenLayers (OpenSource software package that work together to provide a GIS solution)
• SQL Server Spatial

We won’t go into depth in each of these solutions because the objective of this post is to introduce the GIS subject and its benefits when used in commercial applications. Later we will delve into each of these alternatives to present them and provide examples along with the appropriate code to learn more of the potential of each system.

In this way, the national demand for Blackberry equipment will be supplied at first in a 70% by devices produced in Argentina and then will rise to 80% with the incorporation of other models. Blackberry smartphones has the 31% of the local smartphones sales in 2010.
We hope that this fact ends up having positive results since our country makes a big use of mobile devices, especially Blackberry. Considering that the production will be done in Tierra del Fuego, we expect a substantial reduction in the selling price, which makes it much more attractive and also opens the opportunity to export the products to other countries in the south cone.
The global trend indicates that it is important that big mobile companies are encouraged to invest in countries where a good sales strategy is predicted, given that prices for sure will be lower, incrementing in this way the sales. RIM already did this in Malaysia and Brazil so as to open new production routes and now it lands in Argentina with the same purpose and through Brightstar Corporation.
By the end of October we will see the first devices “made in Argentina”. RIM is now part of a group of companies that already installed in Tierra del Fuego such as Sony Ericsson, Alcatel, Motorola, Samsung, LG and Nokia.

What does e-Government means?
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to redefine the relationship between government and citizens, improve the management and services, facilitate access to public information and support the integration and development of different sectors.
What is the National Electronic Government?
On April 27th 2005 the Decree 378/2005 approved the strategic guidelines that govern the National e-Government and Sectoral Plans for the intensive use of ICT in the bodies of the National Public Administration (APN ).
To this end, the National Office of Information Technology (ONTI) was created. The ONTI is the governing body for the use of information technology in Public Administration. It is formed by a multidisciplinary group of professionals and specialists in the field. It aims to formulate policies for technological innovation for the transformation and modernization of procedures, as well as promoting the integration of new technologies in the public sector, compatibility, interoperability and promoting technology standardization.

Despite this facts electronic vote is pending. There is still a very poor performance in the process of incorporating electronically to people in decision-making processes. In this, Argentina is far away from the best experiences. Electronic voting is an electoral system based on computers and marketed as E-Democracy. United States was the first to implement it in the late 80′s. Almost twenty years away from this it is nationally implemented by only four countries: Brazil, India, Venezuela and the United States.

In Argentina there is a clear purpose to migrate to e-vote: 27 bills have been presented to change the ballots by computer and no one yet has succeeded. Local experiences of e-voting took place at the municipal level: Berisso, General San Martín, San Isidro and Vicente Lopez in the general election of October 28th 2007.

The future prospects are encouraging: the increase in the number of computers, internet connections, cell phone users and smartphones in the market is significant. This fact changes the location of Argentina among the countries of the region. Another key element was the performance of official portal www.argentina.gov.ar . It  has developed a number of applications and tools that support e-participation, but still is below Brazil Peru and Chile.

A cultural shift to a virtual all-day-long connected society, industry innovation and new technologies fueled by growth in emerging economies have made this industry economic-tsunamis proved.
Many Latin-American software development companies are riding the wave by focusing their expertise in telecom´s software niches. Especially those in the mobile space are seen their services demand rising into the sky.
Some worth-sharing remarkable facts and insights found on the ITU website “The Word in 2010” free report named “The rise of 3G” are:

By the end of 2010, there will be an estimated 5.3 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide, including 940 million subscriptions to 3G services.
- Access to mobile networks is now available to 90% of the world population and 80% of the population living in rural areas.
- People are moving rapidly from 2G to 3G platforms, in both developed and developing countries. In 2010, 143 countries were offering 3G services commercially, compared to 95 in 2007.
- Towards 4G: a number of countries have started to offer services at even higher broadband speeds, moving to next generation wireless platforms.
- Mobile cellular growth is slowing worldwide. In developed countries, the mobile market is reaching saturation levels with on average 116 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants at the end of 2010 and a marginal growth of 1.6% from 2009-2010.
- At the same time, the developing world is increasing its share of mobile subscriptions from 53% of total mobile subscriptions at the end of 2005 to 73% at the end of 2010.
- In the developing world, mobile cellular penetration rates will reach 68% at the end of 2010 – mainly driven by the Asia and Pacific region. India and China alone are expected to add over 300 million mobile subscriptions in 2010.
- The total number of SMS sent globally tripled between 2007 and 2010, from an estimated 1.8 trillion to a staggering 6.1 trillion. In other words, close to 200 000 text messages are sent every second.
- In 2010, the number of Internet users will surpass the two billion mark, of which 1.2 billion will be in developing countries.
- Fixed (wired) broadband prices dropped by 42% between 2008 and 2009 but there are huge differences among countries when it comes to the affordability of broadband. This has significant implications for the uptake of ICT services, which is much higher for lower-cost mobile cellular compared to higher-priced fixed broadband.

By Ricardo Farias

More about ITU
ITU was founded in Paris in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union. It took its present name in 1934, and in 1947 became a specialized agency of the United Nations. Although its first area of expertise was the telegraph, the work of ITU now covers the whole ICT sector, from digital broadcasting to the Internet, and from mobile technologies to 3D TV. An organization of public-private partnership since its inception, ITU currently has a membership of 192 countries and some 700 private-sector entities. ITU is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has twelve regional and area offices around the world.

By Ricardo Farias