Xebia Blog

I like to share some FitNesse refactorings which I think are quite useful. These refactorings will help you prepare your tests for those eternally changing requirements. This is the scenario:

(more...)

Filed under: Agile, Java, Testing
2 Comments

Yes we have finally reached to numbers 2 and 1 in this Performance Top 10 by Vincent Partington and Jeroen Borgers.

Discussed are numbers 2-Unnecessary remoting.
More information about number 2 can be found here.
and for number 1-Incorrect database usage see; here.

So download the podcast here or better yet! subscribe to one of our rss feeds on podcast.xebia.com

Filed under: Java, Performance, Podcast
No Comments

And walks and talks like XML, it surely must be XML. Yes, well how wrong you can be about assumptions is once more shown in this blog.

One of our clients has an application through which videos are streamed. They do this by providing a browser embedded player, or your stand-alone Windows Media Player with an ASX file. The ASX file tends to look like this:

 
<ASX Version="3">
  <ENTRY>
    <REF HREF="http://www.somecompany.com/videos/video.wmv"/>
  </ENTRY>
</ASX>
 

(more...)

Filed under: XML
3 Comments

We have had a number of very interesting discussions on our techlist in the last week or so, so I thought it best to get started as soon as possible. The reason I choose this particular thread is that it is a very technical thread, but it's very hard to find any information about it online. Oh, and it's not about Java or Agile for a change!

This thread quickly rose to about 20 mails, so I have made a selection to keep it readable. (more...)

Filed under: Techlist
No Comments

Oh yes, I remember why you should never directly translate sayings from one language to another. The non-Dutch speakers will have to take my word for it that "Haastige spoed is zelden goed" has a lot better ring to it. The meaning of the saying is fairly obvious of course "Don't rush things, they usually come back to haunt you."

We all know this and it's even more true in IT, where small mistakes can have dire consequences. But we too often fall for it because with today's complex systems it is hard to oversee what can go wrong. And it is even harder to estimate what it will cost you if things do go wrong. I would like to share a case with you in which I will explain what went wrong and try to give an overview at what it has cost us and our client. (more...)

Filed under: General
3 Comments

I ran into some interesting problems when implementing some Scrummaging practices. One problem that I faced had to do with idle time of projects members.

The company I'm currently working for does its projects using the waterfall approach. The structure of the company supports the waterfall, the way of working of
the individual departments, their geographical locations, the strict separation of roles etc are all optimized for the 'throw over the wall' culture.
After some evangelism some managers got convinced to give Scrum a try on their projects. The projects had started about a year ago, but in that year they
had been working on architecture and requirement documents. So everything up till now was waterfall oriented. Funding was 'fixed', functionality was 'fixed', release date was 'fixed' etc. Now that we had the architecture and requirements we 'only' needed to build the system.

(more...)

Filed under: Agile
2 Comments

Well we have a new addition to our podcasts! Video! and we start off with Serge giving you an Eclipse tip; Links directory.

Serge shows how to use a "links directory" in Eclipse and how to easily manage plugins across installations.

So head on over to our podcast page here or download or subscribe to our new podcast.xebia.com.

Filed under: Eclipse, Podcast
No Comments

At Xebia we have an internal mailing list where a lot of interesting technical discussions take place. Because we have a passion for knowledge sharing, we thought we'd give you a glimpse of some recent topics. This is the first of a series we plan to do.

We choose this particular mail thread because it answers a technical question a lot of people might have. And it also introduces a little known feature of Java 5.

(more...)

Filed under: Java, Techlist
No Comments