Batch Process Best Practices

batch process

Writing production ready batch processes is not typically viewed as the glamorous side of software development. It’s often grouped with acceptance testing and documentation as tasks to be avoided during the development process. However, solid batch production code will perform well, handle disruptions well, and allow staff to enjoy their time outside of office hours.…

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Agile flaws worth considering

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I read an article recently concerning flaws of the agile development methodology.  While I do believe agile has merits, I have always felt that there are shortcomings to this process.  I’m especially concerned about how well agile works with IT projects that involve a long data development time period with much data movement and transformation…

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UC Visualization Day

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Earlier this year I attended Visualization Day at the University of Cincinnati. Speakers this day focused their talks on how to make graphs, charts and other visual representations of data easier to read, interpret and act upon. The keynote speaker was Stephen Few, author of Information Dashboard Design, widely considered the bible of good dashboard and visualization design techniques.

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Small number of companies actually have big data

developers

Last week at the TDWI Big Data conference in San Diego I learned that there are relatively few companies that actually have big data.  Yes there are eBay (keynote address), Google, Facebook and other similar companies that have a large web presence who are actively utilizing big data solutions such as Hadoop.  However, many speakers and…

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