Problem description

Articles about different patterns usually begin with pattern’s general scheme. Further, the author of article shows the particular usage of a pattern, as an example. Let me break this tradition and begin with a specific problem, which can be found in business applications very often.
Read the rest of this entry »

The article is based on the real experience in development of a certain mobile application which uses barcodes.

What are barcodes?

According to wikipedia.org, barcode – is " a sequence of black and white stripes, representing some of the information in a form, suitable for reading by technical means. There are several types: linear (conventional) – known as bar codes which are read in one direction (horizontally); 2 dimensional (2D barcodes) – known as symbols, designed to encode large amounts of information". The first can be seen on any product in the store, while the latter can be found in promotional flyers, business cards, magazines.
Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Dudarev Roman, Ph.D. of Engineering

Introduction

The article doesn’t pretend to absolute strict mathematical justification and completeness of the suggested algorithm. The article is a description of the solution Enterra Company got when developing cartographical system Enterra GIS for signing cartographical objects (i.e. buildings, constructions). The method can also be used for signing other objects.
Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

Clients often contact us with they need a Corporate Portal or Website. Use of Microsoft SharePoint platform is one of the easiest and convenient ways to solve their tasks. In this article, I’ll try to briefly describe the powerful tool for creating similar solutions.

Microsoft SharePoint is a web-oriented platform for collaboration and document management. The solution can be used to create various web-sites with shared documents or dedicated applications (i.e. Wiki, blogs, and forums). SharePoint functionality is presented to the User through editable control elements that display data. Such web parts are placed on pages which in their turn are placed on the Portal and are available to the User via the browser.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Dudarev Roman, Ph.D. of Engineering

Introduction

Due to the wide spreading of computer technologies, which give an option to position objects on the Earth surface (i.e. GPS, GLONASS), there is a unique possibility to create computer systems that can be used in day-to-day functioning of an organization without considerable expenses. There are vehicle tracking systems of public transport and medical organizations and also navigators for private cars. All these systems have the same feature: there is a cartographical module on the basis. The module displays an interactive map and gives an option to track the set object. Our company has also developed the vehicle control system for organizations. The system consists of the several parts. Client module (developed in C# .Net 3.5 WPF) displays the map and the vehicles. Look&Feel of the Client Module is given in the picture below.

Read the rest of this entry »

In software outsourcing not every thing is as it seems…

Magicians are a wonder to watch; even when you know what they are doing. Perhaps the most impressive thing is how easy they make it look. The reason it looks easy is they have practiced;they made all the mistakes before they got it right. You just don’t get to see the mistake, if you are lucky.
Magicians make magic appear so easy. Competent outsourcing partners make outsourcing seem easy. So easy, in fact, you may even want to give it a try. Just like trying to do magic, it doesn’t take long to figure out it is easy only when you know what you are doing.
Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Yakov Zhdanov

Many systems support video upload and viewing functionality. Of course, all video files uploaded by users shall be converted to some common format (flv format as usual) to make playback easier, probably scaled to common resolution, or watermarks are required on the site, etc. Therefore, developers have to solve the problem of video conversion very often and use various approaches.
Read the rest of this entry »

The purpose of this report is to view a hypothetical retail environment and a RFID potential solution. We have addressed the application of RFID in the broadest possible way to provide for acceptance including most common offerings available currently. Of course certain elements are addressed as to ROI, price performance of tags and equipment and we have done so for the US retail market for applications in general retail.
Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Vladimir Tarassyuk

iPhone contains many useful features. One of them is build-in camera and Camera application system for making photos. It looks great but what about camera usage with native applications? iPhone SDK provides the capability of using camera through UIImagePickerController class. That’s great but there is a small disadvantage – you cannot create a full-screen persistent “live” camera view like the Camera application does. Instead of that you should use UIImagePickerController only in modal mode – show the pop-up modal view when you need a photo and close the view after the photo is made. You have to reopen this view again to take the next one.
Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Alexander Tretyakevich

Architectural Goals

The application architecture should address the following goals:

• Provide for sufficient level of the performance for a specific subsystem/business feature
• Be scalable to meet the needs for different lifecycles of the application (small at the start/growing as the popularity of the system will grow)
• Be effective (scaling of a specific feature shouldn’t require scaling of the entire system/global change of the application deployment environment)
• Be maintainable

Read the rest of this entry »