EC
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Wise
SOFTWARE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
- Take a deeper look into the thinking that drives our
work.
Insights
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White Papers
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Click the
icons
below, to read a summary of each paper.
Click titles to access each white paper directly.
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Agile Database Development
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Summary
In our experience, an emphasis on built-in testing and extensive
automation can greatly reduce the labor required to complete a project. Clean database
instances, fully tested and with sample data, often take a week to build using traditional
methods. We have developed practices that enable production of several new instances
a day, or whenever needed. On a larger scale, rather than taking weeks to make several
changes to the database structure, with attendant changes to referential integrity,
stored procedures, and sample data, these changes can be released in a daily cycle.
This paper discusses some of the techniques we use to ensure that database changes
are propogated reliably and without impacting applications.
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Integrating Design into Agile Development Processes
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Summary
In traditional development models, teams often struggle to
coordinate specification, design, and built assets. Accurately representing a stable
design in the multiple forms necessary for a comprehensive specification, and coping
with the usual requirement changes can create headaches for designers and developers
alike. To deal with these challenges we have developed a process that applies the
principles of agile development methodologies across the entire set of disciplines
required to build quality software applications. This white paper discusses how
we undertake agile design and development in tandem with one another.
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Self-Testing Code
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Summary
This white paper presents an overview of the benefits of self-testing
code, and discusses some of the techniques that we use to create such code. These
include inclusion of assertions, unit tests, and invariant conditions.
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The EC Wise Approach to Heuristic Evaluation
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Summary
The EC Wise heuristic evaluation methodology is based on an
analysis of the source of usability errors and how to prevent them. In performing
a heuristic evaluation, we consider the users for whom the user interface is intended,
and the tasks that the designer intends them to perform. This paper provides an
analysis of how much the three aspects of a user interface ?the information model,
the idiom model, and the presentation model ?contribute to the creation of usability
problems. This knowledge allows us to focus our evaluation on those parts of the
user interface that contribute most to the usability of a system. We discuss those
user interface development issues that impact creation of the information model,
the idiom model and the presentation model.
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The Road to .NET: The EC Wise Experience
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Summary
EC Wise started developing solutions with .NET during the beta
cycle. We initially identified C# as a language with a structure and a set of features
that could maximize our development productivity and enhance our ability to provide
effective solutions to our clients. In this white paper, we discuss how .NET programming
leverages programmer time, how it enables development work to become more responsive
to customer requirements, and the advantages of managing .NET development projects.
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Articles
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Click the icons for article overviews.
Click titles to access each article directly.
- The
Oracle Way and
Oracle Drill Down (Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
These articles have a good perspective on Oracle's business
intelligence capabilities. We cover issues associated with the all-Oracle solution
and we have some thoughts about whether Oracle offers you a credible migration path
to the future possibilities of business analytics.
- The Eyes
to See (Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
Today it is possible to easily integrate all sorts of data
for analysis of your performance in a wide range of areas, like marketing campaigns,
oil usage, drug discovery, defects and fraud detection - the list is endless. The
challenge becomes providing ways to present information in a meaningful way. We
found Spotfire's DecisionSite to be a powerful tool that provides customizable lenses
for visual data mining.
- Local Insight
(Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
We review EBizinsight XL 3.0, Visual Insight's visual WEb-site
performance analysis tool.
- Balanced
Performance (Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
- Balancing Act
(Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
In this article, we had a chance to present our just-in-time
requirements and project planning process.
- Time Bandits
(Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
A round table discussion with Steve McConnell, a well-known
consultant and the author of several highly regarded books, which include Rapid
Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules (Microsoft Press, 1996) and
After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering (Best Practices)
(Microsoft Press, 1999). The interview focused on time and quality trade-offs in
the develoment cycle.
- The Why and
How of UI Specification (Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
The advantages of, and needed XML standards changes behind,
flexible UI definition languages. A follow-up article, "Anatomy of an XML UI Description"
(Intelligent Enterprise), described WAP, UIML, and XUL in depth.
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EBusiness Makeover (Intelligent Enterprise)
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Overview
How one company transformed itself from a brick and mortar
parts distributor to a full fledged e-business, built on Microsoft's Commerce Server
platform.
- Forms, Workflow, and
the Web (Web Techniques)
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Overview
The history of electronic forms and workflow systems and the
role they are playing in the evolution of Web services.
- Delivering Enterprise
Javabeans (Web Techniques)
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Overview
The mechanics of packaging business logic and database processing
into Enterprise Javabeans and installing EJBs on an application server like Weblogic
or Websphere.
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[Go to Top]
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More Resources
- Business Intelligence
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Business Intelligence in SQL Server 2004: A First Look Training
Program
Definitions of Common BI Terms
Intelligent Enterprise Magazine Business Intelligence
Center
American Association for Artificial Intelligence
Data-mining-resources.com
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[Go to Top]
- Design, Usability and
Human Factors
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ACM SIGCHI's Links
BAYCHI local chapter
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
NCI Usability Standards
NIST tools
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[Go to Top]
- Technology
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Association for Computing Machinery
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[Go to Top]
- Inside:
- WatchIT.com features EC Wise-developed training program
on SQL Server 2005 BI
- WatchIT, the leading provider of on-demand interactive learning
programs, has released a title developed by EC Wise. The program, Business Intelligence
in SQL Server 2005: A first Look, is available on the
EC Wise Resources page.
Copyright © 2008, EC Wise, Inc. All Rights Reserved.