Moving on to New Technologies

Ok so I got a new buddy that I've been working with on a couple of projects now. And I wanted to touch a little on what we're using and doing now. Pretty solid project description... So there's a company that we're doing some consulting for, and they are really in need of a good system that can help them cut back on redundancy.

Currently, the systems in place are older and running on primarily mainframe technologies still and on a daily basis, client information is needing to be updated and retrieved. There are around 8 different systems that all run independently but hold some of the same information. The goal is to build a SOA application, that will funnel updates to all of the systems and cut back significantly on the time it takes to manage and retrieve that data.

The project will be a web based app coded using Java. SpringSource is a free tool that we are using to develop with. One good thing about the project, is that there are a set of functional specifications for each page that is being built. That is helping us to keep an eye on the tasks at hand and the progress we're making.

It is also a good way to get the business users involved in the project to give them a good feel of ownership. After all, the end product is for them.

So the functional specifications define everything from the data on the screen to the colors that should be used to the names on each button. This gives us an exact scope of what we have to do. It's also a good part of the SCRUM project methodology.

Developmentwise, I am learning some old stuff again. I haven't written code in java in a while but it is refreshing to get back into something else different from what I'm currently overloaded with.

A few terms I still need to get familiar with are Hibernation and creating DOAs. It sounds like database wise, those make more sense for me to head that way in the future.

Once I get more involved with the project, I will post an update on new stuff, issues and our progress.