Can Windows and IBM i live in application development harmony?

Written by David Brault

Editor's note: This article is an extract from the white paper titled "Using Microsoft .NET to Build Scalable Enterprise IBM i Applications" available free at the MC Press White Paper Center.

Over the last decade, we've watched Microsoft technology shift from running on the fringe of our IBM i enterprise to being intertwined, creating a ripple effect across what we need to integrate with, synchronize with, and monitor on a daily business. As the number of companies running both IBM i and Microsoft hardware continues to grow, so does the number of IT shops struggling to integrate these disparate platforms. In a world of synchronized data, data conflicts and unprotected access to DB2 from Windows applications can make us feel like we are losing control.

Mashups offer enormous potential for new business functionality by consolidating disparate information into a single interface and streamlining the manner in which enterprise data and applications are used.

Written by David Brault

Editor's Note: This article contains excerpts from "Bringing Mashups to Your Enterprise Business Applications," a free white paper that you can download from the MC White Paper Center.

Since its roots in the music scene, where songs from different artists got blended into new versions, the term "mashup" has now morphed into an exciting new way to build Web applications.  Mashup technology has garnered a lot of excitement over the last five years because mashups provide a better end-user experience, allow us to look at existing information in a new light, and are easy to create. In fact, some analysts view mashups as a way to offload a portion of a company's development and design work to their users since mashups are so easy to put together that they can be created without possessing any application development skills.

How can you keep "scope creep" and "feature creep" under control?

By Colleen Garton

Editor's note: This article is an excerpt from Fundamentals of Technology Project Management published by MC Press.

As managers, project management might be one of the most difficult things we do. If you came to management from a developer's role, managing a project that is being developed by others on your staff can be a daunting challenge. This article will give you some direction on best practices in managing project scope.

An ungoverned SOA project can lead to unintended consequences, reversing the cycle and causing SOA to add cost and disrupt processes.

By Alex Nubla

The year was 2004. John was a CTO for an IBM ISV that piloted a supply chain application. The company used a SOAP engine inside the IBM Websphere Application Server (WAS) with Enterprise JavaBeans for the front-end and connections to an i5/OS RPG application using WSDL.