Welcome to the Marand Custom Solutions Wiki.

This wiki is a TECHNICAL PORTAL to aggregrate and share information related to technical areas of the company's interest. Information can be added by any interested person. If you would like to add information contact mpecher to obtain an account.
The right hand menu also has a list of common tasks. (see index for full list of topics)

Popular topics: Java & J2EE | Linux | Books

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MacBook Pro

Been wanting to get a Mac for a long time now, and finally convert from a PC.

Its now been a week since I've had my MacBook Pro 15". First impressions:

• sleek both the hardware, but also the OS itself
• things "just" work
• things seem to be rendered much nicer.
• iLive 08 really nice so far.
• too MANY good things to point out....its just a different way of operating.

Main things to get used to:

• Mac keyboard shortcuts (particularly with apps that I am used to)
• Still needing to run some Windows apps (due to unavailability in MacOS). Currently using VMWare Fusion. Seem pretty cool, particularly since I've not got my old laptop image to use. Will also try Parallel.
• Mail client is a little dodgy. Being used to Outlook (mail, contacts, calendar) Entourage (Mac's outlook is a little backward). Entourage also doesn't allow importing of Outlook .pst (annoying).
• newish keyboard has a more plasticy feel than I am used to. Will wear in I am told.
• Wireless mouse is awesome.

Over all very happy, don't think I'll be able to use it to replace current work computer a client, since they make use of to many build in Windows options (auto login etc)

This will be the computer or me for home/MCS use though. Will need to start developing on it.

More to come.

Appfuse

www.bidzforit.com.au has now been in production for about 3 months!!

This reverse auction web application was created with the aidg the Appfuse framework. The entire site was developed within about a 2.5 month timeframe, (including requirements gathering, testing, enhancements etc).

This turn around could only have been achieved through the use of a framework such as Appfuse.....it also meant that the project could be quite agile, since a lot of the supporting infrastructure that normally would need to be build was already there, allowing us to concentrate on developing the business requirements.

The beauty about Appfuse is definitely that it allows rapid development of a website using the full MVC approach. Not only does it give the basic structure required for a MVC site (security, build scripts, tests), but since most sites really just expose data in CRUD screens, allows the easy creation of all the "plumbing glue code", such as creating the basic controllers, views, DAO, configuration files, i18n etc.

Given Rails, Grails and other are rapid, but they require a learning curve (appfuse allows usage of familiar J2EE technologies...the site used Spring-MVC and hibernate) and also generally require a user to follow the "Code Convention Pattern".

Appfuse is not perfect, but its rapid development of new screens based on data (along with test and security) is great. Most simple web sites would probably leave it at that, but since its all standard MVC, its easy to put complex screens together (such as uploading files, streaming back dynamic images etc).