To quote from the SharePoint Saturday website: “SharePoint Saturday is an educational, informative and lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals and MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics. SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!”

 SharePoint Saturday takes place in local regions all across the globe, from Boston, to Holland, to Sri Lanka. I’ve had the privilege of attending two of these events in different parts of the New England area (Hartford and Boston). Attendees rage from end-users to highly-technical people, and the sessions are designed to accommodate the attending demographic. Classes are taught by professionals in the SharePoint arena, most with many years of experience as users and instructors of the platform. Each session focuses on a specific topic within SharePoint. Some explain the platform’s features, while others are about integrating it with different technologies. I prefer the technical discussions, but many people are happy just learning about what SharePoint is, and how it can help them or their business or organization. Whoever you are, if you interact with SharePoint in some way, there is likely a session at these events to benefit you.

==  Can what you learned be used in “real-world” applications?

 Absolutely. Instructors are not only knowledgeable, but they’re typically speaking on a topic they have lots of first-hand experience with. So when you sit in on a talk about governance, you’re not just hearing what you could have read in a book somewhere, you’re hearing real problems, and real solutions.

 ==  What did you learn about SharePoint at the last event that you didn’t know before attending?

 The extent to which Microsoft supports developers in SharePoint. I was already familiar with how to create features, and package them into solutions. However, I learned more about how beneficial solution packages are to developers, and how things like “feature stapling” help developers to do cool stuff, without “hacking” things together. One of the instructors managed a team of SharePoint developers, and I was amazed to hear how precise their development and deployment strategies are.  He reiterated how important it was to treat SharePoint like any other technology, and develop best practices and processes to do things right.

 == What was one of your favorite experiences at a SharePoint Saturday event?

 I’m not sure that I have a single favorite moment.  My personal experiences at these events have been very positive. It is a fun, interactive environment, and people are there not only to learn from the instructors, but also to learn from each other. I really enjoy talking with other people about their personal experiences, and gaining insights you would be hard-pressed to find in a book or on the internet. It’s a great way to discover new tools, best practices, or solutions to common problems. The classes are only one part of the SharePoint Saturday experience.

My goal for the summer was this: find full-time employment at a small sized web development company, and either learn about new technologies, or deepen my knowledge of ones I’ve already worked with. After a handful of interviews, and a few weeks of nail-biting, I was fortunate enough to find myself here at Data Based Development Systems, an established IT consulting company in Manchester, Connecticut.

Being a consulting firm, DBDS employees have a lot of experience with a wide range of technologies. That flexibility alows them to adapt to customer requirements, while also leveraging different tools to get a job done. I found a wealth of knowledge in my fellow employees, and I was able to learn from them while being tasked on different projects. Working alongside smart, motivated people has a big impact on how you develop your own skills.

Another way DBDS helped me was by bridging the gap between my academic education, and the practical uses of that knowledge. I seen this most prominently in the area of design patterns.

Now, you can only learn so much about design patterns through reading. Here, I actually used them in practice (on some well architected applications, too). Although I spent a semester in school building a multiplayer Checkers game client using the MVC pattern (or trying to), it wasn’t until this summer that I really began to grasp the concept, and how such an architecture can help ease the development process. From TOs to DAOs, Builders to Factories, I saw these patterns implemented and best-practices adhered to, which is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to expose myself to as a student, since it complemented my academic education quite well.

I was also exposed to some new technologies, like Struts (1 and 2), YUI, and Oracle RDBMS. Granted, these widely used tools aren’t “new,” but they will be new to my resume, which is a very good thing.

So what has this summer meant for me? A chance to extend my Java experience? A shorter commute? Free pens? Yes, yes, and yes, but more importantly, it meant that my goal was reached. As a student seeking temporary employment, my biggest fear was that I wouldn’t be challenged intellectually, and thus wouldn’t excel in my profession. I’ve heard fellow students speak of easy, laid-back jobs they’ve had, and they sound like a total waste of time. I was pleasantly surprised that DBDS had no intention of putting me to easy work, or under utilizing my skills. The work I’ve done this summer has helped equip me for my fast approaching entrance into the job market.

I love what I do, and DBDS has made me better at it.

This week’s topic for discussion is about recent college graduates entering the field. Post your tips in our group!

This week’s topic is: How do you control project costs without sacrificing quality?

Network with us on LinkedIn!

• Roger Cady
• Debbie Magoon
• Tom Cantara
• Jill Keane

Have a LinkedIn profile? Link to it in the comments below so that we can add you to our networks — especially if you live in Connecticut or New England!

Another concept that was hinted at in our last post was that “often, the documents in a database achieve some business need.  Almost always, documents are being stored as part of a business process.  If the documents were just stored and nothing else happened, they might not be as useful…”  At some level or other, everything is a business process and there must be some reason for storing the documents in the first place.  For example, a work instruction on how to degrease an engine would probably not be in the same database that describes the company’s dress code.  Notes documents embody some sort of business process by using a form that is specific to that process.  The document’s form is a collection of fields that hold certain information that is meaningful to that database and its users.  It can also contain fields that say who can modify the document and when.  Sometimes, people do a loose kind of document approval by forwarding a document through email and gathering approvals in that manner.  Notes takes a different approach in this situation: the document in question is located centrally on a server and access is granted (sometimes sequentially) to the document for each person’s approval.  Approval dates, opinions, etc. can all be captured as part of the workflow.

In brief, Notes presents opportunities for centralizing important or sensitive documents.  It also provides ways to grant access at a very granular level and also allows customized approval processes to be written to ensure accountability so that a corporate policy is not displayed as “official” until it has garnered all the right approvals.…(to be continued).

Struts was first introduced in May 2000 and it was an effort to provide a standard MVC framework for the Java community. There are 2 major versions of Struts, 1.x and 2.x. With the advent of Struts 2 there was significant effort to decouple the struts classes from the implementation classes. In version 1 of Struts for example, all the controllers had to extend the Struts Action class. In version 2, this was significantly changed so that a controller simply needs to implement the Action interface. Struts 2 codes heavily to interfaces rather than classes.

Another significant different between Struts 1 and Struts 2 is how threading is handled. In version 1, Action classes are singleton classes and therefore must be thread-safe since there will only ever be one instance of the class created, this was changed in Struts 2 so that Action objects are instantiated for each request, eliminating the need for thread-safety.

Struts utilizes to some extent XML configurations. The mappings, forms and with the advent of version 2, packages, are all described in XML. However, the majority of coding and object linking in still done in Java. This is where Spring comes in.

Spring implements IoC (Inversion of Control) to loosely couple objects. It is a significant different from Struts in that all the object relationships are described in XML rather than Java. The beans are defined, properties set and then injected into the target classes all via XML.

The IoC component of the Spring Framework addresses the enterprise concern of taking the classes, objects, and services that are to compose an application, by providing a formalized means of composing these various disparate components into a fully working application ready for use. The Spring Framework takes best practices that have been proven over the years in numerous applications and formalized as design patterns, and actually codifies these patterns as first class objects that you as an architect and developer can take away and integrate into your own application(s). This is a Very Good Thing Indeed as attested to by the numerous organizations and institutions that have used the Spring Framework to engineer robust, maintainable applications.

So which framework do I prefer? Hands down I prefer Struts. For a variety of reasons, but I have two main points of refute with Spring. First, configuration is much more difficult. Working through a maze of XML config files and properties is much more tedious than those of Struts. Secondly, I don’t like moving a big portion of coding (by that I mean object relationships, etc) into XML where it is much harder to type-check and debug. For that reason, I really prefer Struts 2 since I get the loosely coupled framework, but the strong-typed benefits of interfaces.

What do you think?  Struts or Spring?

Lotus Notes is a database program where each record is thought of as some type of “document.” At the most basic level, a Lotus Notes database is a collection of documents, often organized together for some purpose. The documents could be pages in a product catalog, a repair manual, recipes, an address list or a list of members to an organization. The key is that keeping all of these documents together makes some sort of sense for the people using them. And to that end, Lotus Notes ships with a series of “template” databases that can be used over and over to create databases that perform some sort of simple function like cataloging documents, discussion groups, and maintaining contact lists. So, a company can make one document library to store product recipes and another to store work procedures. Or, a non-profit organization could have one contact list for donors and one for other organizations to keep in touch with.

Often, the documents in a database achieve some business need. Almost always, documents are being stored as part of a business process. If the documents were just stored and nothing else happened, they might not be as useful…(to be continued).

This week’s question is:

What are the pros and cons and compatibility issues of Visual Basic 2007? »

Feel free to post your own questions, and to invite your IT colleagues. We hope to see you there!

 Seven of us were gathered for a  training session in the principles of our Quality program.  We reviewed the presentation together and shared ideas on how to address quality issues in our daily work.  Lunches were eaten, dessert provided, and schedules were adjusted to accommodate this learning opportunity.  The six attendees, and one presenter, represented 7 different areas of expertise and 3 customer business units –  MS Access, Business Warehouse (BW), SAP, Oracle, VB, MS Project/Visio, Unix/Perl  – in Business Finance, Engine Maintenance Applications and Technical Publications. Two have worked with us for over 10 years, two for over 2 years, and 3 people have joined in the past year. This cross-section is typical of who we are, and the act of gathering and sharing is one our founding practices.

When asked to describe themselves in two words, their responses gave some insight into our diversity.  In no particular order they are: diligent, flexible, get the job done, easy-going, multi-faceted, overview-seeing, detail-oriented, creative, communicators, systematic, business-oriented, dogged, supportive, problem-solvers, explorers, developers and analysts.  They are men and women, younger and older, with interests from social work to camping to dancing.  What one can see from their descriptions is that they share the expectation of being effective, and successful.  If you put all these qualities to work toward a goal, it’s hard to imagine anything short of success!

An hour together was not nearly enough to get below the surface of what makes each one of these people special, but this begins the story of why we succeed at delivering quality products.  We come together to get the job done, we help each other and share our experience, and we take the time to talk about quality.  While doing it, we enjoy each other, we appreciate our diversity, and we are stimulated by the challenges we face.  We know we are in good company.

Look  for future profiles of DBDS consultants in our blog!

Responsibilities

• Creates and coordinates complex information and statistical reports as requested
• Work with application users, HR departments and business managers to coordinate areas of HR information reporting
• Manages data gathering, queries and report writing for various projects and produces documentation and data analysis on request
• Provide ongoing support to the HR organization globally with reporting and analysis needs including design and implementation of enhanced analytical tools and processes
• Provide Business Intelligence consulting
• Work with metric owners to gather and prioritize business requirements for various BI projects across the enterprise – including the presentation, rules and data required to deliver top notch metrics
• Participate in the implementation of the business intelligence vision
• Monitor and track HR metrics including preparation of monthly, quarterly and annual summary data for business review
• Identify root cause for data integrity issues and provide standard work for resolutions
• Identify appropriate governance for employee data access
• Develop common dictionary of employee data and metric definitions

Experience / Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
• Experience with analytic modeling, conceptualization and construction sills (i.e. predictive modeling, efficiency modeling, financial modeling, etc.) preferred
• Experience working with raw data, utilizing various tools, such as Crystal, Report Smith, MicroStrategy, MS Performance Point
• Strong teamwork skills required including ability to work effectively across all organizational levels, cultures and regions
• Excellent communication skills (written, verbal, and presentation) and the ability to prioritize and simultaneously manage multiple projects
• Strong attention to detail ensuring data integrity
• Candidates must have excellent decision-making skills and ability to maintain confidentiality
• Applicants should have 5+ years of information analysis, reporting and developing dashboard products (Microsoft suite preferred)
• Ability to transform business requirements into reports and Business Intelligence components
• Experience with data integrity projects
• Experience with implementation of access governance in a global context
• Strong data management skills (e.g. data modeling)

For more information, see our Senior Business Intelligence Analyst listing online. Applicants must be legal US citizens and should live in the Hartford, CT area. Please call us at 860-646-5580 with any questions.

View all DBDS career opportunities »