Do you keep up with your batteries? I usually don’t even think about that. However, a recent power outage got me thinking about batteries which if they are not kept up may result in more than an inconvenience. Laptop batteries are the ones of which I am usually more aware. I use my laptop away from my desk a lot […]

Today I wanted to open a conversation about one of the SOLILD principles, because I have observed that talented software developers do not often practice the Open/Closed principle. Overview of Solid S – Single Responsibility. A class does only one thing. O – Open / Closed. A class is open for modification but closed for changing the interface. L – […]

How are you with Database Connectivity protocols? There have been quite a few over the years. Banyan Vines and IPX/SPX (Novell) have dropped off the radar as their popularity diminished, and the rise of TCP/IP grew. Even still there are other protocols you can use than TCP/IP. If your database is on the same machine as the client you can […]

Do you need an attack plan? I am not sure EBay had one recently. They had intrusion into their database containing user information. They are trying to play down the impact of the breech by saying you only need to change your password. This is something you should do anyway. However, they say your user name, password, name, email addresses, […]

I recently had a conversation with people managing windows servers and we got to talking about how the environment has really changed in the last 4 years. The GUI version of Windows Server more closely resembles the Windows 8 look and feel. The Server Manger application is there to make things easier for managing multiple servers from a single endpoint. […]

Did you notice the free seminar on SQL Server Backup, Restore and failure options Stephen Wynkoop is presenting? I thought about this as I was writing a follow-up editorial to writing an attack plan. An attack plan is something you execute when some person or process they created are attempting to intrude into your software and steal it or disrupt […]

Have you ever had your computer systems attacked from the outside? I have had this happen twice; both times through SQL Injection. Surprisingly this continues to be an issue for developers. The methods of attack are well known. The techniques to disable SQL Injection are well known. Still, systems are being developed enabling SQL Injection. A couple things to take […]

One of the things that making SQL (Structure Query Language) so popular is that it has become an ANSI standard for accessing data in relational databases. There are many different relational database engines available, yet the majority of them implement the core functionality of the ANSI SQL syntax. As No-SQL data engines continue to evolve, they generally do not support […]

In response to our earlier editorial on public clouds, Peter, a software engineer working for a European government, provides some perspective regarding the issues with hosting their resources on a multi-tenant cloud service. The factors for choosing a public host vs. a private hosting solution are changing. No longer are cost, performance, and scalability the primary issues. Some time ago […]

How well are the capabilities of Cloud resources really known? I recently spoke with an IT professional who builds custom applications for small businesses. These kinds of businesses represent the smallest business usually ignored by most service firms. They may purchase a server and it works for them for ten years or more. With that kind of longevity for hardware […]