I am assessing some tools to manage software develpment projects. Dotproject seems a good one, but i would like to learn of other's experinces using it for software development.
Thanks.
I've been using Assembla for a small team and loving it. The web interface is very elegant, and it gives me power and simplicity at the same time.
My favorite feature is the strong ticketing system which allows me to create tickets on the web, assign them to developers, associate them with other tickets, estimate the time it takes to close the ticket, and aggregate those times graphically. It really shines, though, with its version control and ticket integration. Being able to specify that this commit is related to ticket #45, fixes bug #78, and closes ticket #32 is very nice.
They offer version control hosting for multiple version control systems - including SVN and GIT.
They offer free and paid packages.
For more information, check out their usage videos here.
Oh, and do let us know what you decide and why :)
An old post, I know...
I used to be a core member of the dotproject team and used it for years and set up many organizations on it... ranging from small non-profits and software shops to major government projects. It tended to work relatively well. Unfortunately, due to the crawl of development, half the dotproject team split to form web2project and we've been there almost two years.
At present, we (web2project) does a quarterly release and have done major work on the code. We've closed ~100+ bugs, added dozens of features like iCal feeds, and improved performance by 95% and cut about 1/3 of the code overall. And yes, we have an upgrade path from dotProject.
Related
We have an application with 10 millions lines of code in 4GL(Progress) and a database also OpenEdge with 300 Tables. My Boss says we should migrate it to a new Programming language and a new Database Management system.
My questions are:
Do you think we should migrate it? Do you think Progress has a "future"?
If we should migrate it, how, are there any tools? Or should we begin with programming from scratch?
Thank you for the help.
Ablo
Unless your boss has access to an unlimited budget, endless user patience and a thirst for frustration and agony you should not waste any time thinking about rewrites.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Yes, Progress has a future. They probably will never be as sexy an option as Microsoft or Oracle or whatever the cool kids are using this week. But they have been around for 30 years and they will still be here when you and your boss retire.
There are those who will rain down scorn on Progress because it isn't X or it doesn't have Y. Maybe they can rewrite your 10 million lines of code next weekend and prove just how right they are. I would not, however, pay them for those efforts until after the user acceptance tests are passed and the implementation is completed.
A couple of years later (the original post being from 2014 and the answers being from 2014 to 2015) :
The post, which has gotten the most votes is argumenting basically two fold :
a. Progress (Openedge) has been around for a long time and is not going anywhere soon
b. Unless your boss has access to an unlimited budget, endless user patience and a thirst for frustration and agony you should not waste any time thinking about rewrites: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
With regard to a:
Yes, the Progress OpenEdge Stack is still around. But from my experience the difficulty to find experienced and skilled Openedge has gotten even more difficult.
But also an important factor here, which i think has evolved to much greater importance, since this discussion started:
The available Open Source Stacks for application development have gotten by factors better, both in terms of out-of-box functionality and quality and have decisively moved in direction of RAD.
I am thinking for instance of Spring Boot, but not only, see https://stackshare.io/spring-boot/alternatives. In the Java realm Spring Boot is certainly unique. Also for the development of rich Webui's many very valid options have emerged, which certainly are addressing RAD requirements, just some "arbitrary" examples https://vaadin.com for Java, but also https://www.polymer-project.org for Javascript, which are interestingly converging both with https://vaadin.com/flow.
Many of the available stacks are still evolving strongly, but all have making life easier for the developer as strong driver. Also in terms of architectures you will find a convergence of many of this stacks with regard basic building blocks and principles: Separation of Interfaces from Implementation, REST API's for remote communication, Object Relational Mapping Technologies, NoSql / Json approaches etc etc.
So yes the Open Source Stack are getting very efficient in terms of Development. And what must also be mentioned, that the scope of these stacks do not stop with development: Deployment, Operational Aspects and naturally also Testing are a strong ,which in the end also make the developers life easier.
Generally one can say the a well choosen Mix and Match of Open Source Stacks have a very strong value proposition, also on the background of RAD requirements, which a proprietary Stack, will have in the long run difficulty to match - at least from my point of view.
With regard to b:
Interestingly enough i was just recently with a customer, who is looking to do exactly this: rewrite their application. The irony: they are migrating from Progress to Progress OpenEdge, with several additional Open Edge compliant Tools. The reason two fold: Their code is getting very difficult to maintain and would refactoring in order to address requirements coming from Web Frontends. Also interesting, they are not finding enough qualified developers.
Basically: Code is sound and lives , when it can be refactored and when it can evolve with new requirements. Unfortunately there many examples - at least from my experience - to contrary.
Additionally End-of-Lifecyle of Software can force a company, to "rewrite" at least layers of their software. And this doesn't necessarily have to bad and impossible. I worked on a Project, which migrated over 300 Oracle Forms forms to a Java based UI within less then two years. This migration from a 2 tier to a 3 tier architecture actually positioned the company to evolve their architecture to address the needs of Web Ui's. So actually in the end this "rewrite" and a strong return of value also from the business perspective.
So to cut a (very;-)) long story short:
One way or another, it is easy to go wrong with generalizations.
You need not begin programming from scratch. There is help available online and yes, you can contact Progress Technical Support if you find difficulties. Generally, ABL code from previous version should work with only little changes. Here are few things that you need to do in order to migrate your application:
Backup databases
Backup source code and .r files
Truncate DB bi files
Convert your databases
Recompile ABL code and test
http://knowledgebase.progress.com articles will help you in this. If you are migrating from some older versions like 9, you can find a good set of new features. You can try them but only after you are done with your conversion.
If you are migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit and if you are using 32-bit libraries, you need to replace them with 64-bit
The first question I'd come back with is 'why'? If the application is not measuring up that's one thing, and the question needs to be looked at from that perspective.
If the perception is that Progress is somehow a "lesser" application development and operating environment, and the desire is only to move to a different development and operating environment - you'll end up with a lot of resources in time, effort, and money invested - not to mention the opportunity cost - and for what? To run on a different database platform? Will migrating result in a lower TCO? Faster development turn-around time? Quicker time to market? What's expected advantage in moving from Progress, and how long will it take to recover the migration cost - if ever?
Somewhere out there is a company who had similar thoughts and tried to move off of Progress and the ABL. The effort failed to meet their target performance and functionality metrics, so they eventually gave up on the migration, threw in the towel, and stayed with Progress - after spending $25M on the project.
Can your company afford that kind of risk / reward ratio?
Progress (Openedge) has been around for a long time and is not going anywhere soon. And rewriting 10 Million lines of code in any language just to use the current flavor of the month would never be worth it unless your current application is not doing what you need. Even then bringing it up to current needs would normally be a better solution.
If you need to migrate your current application to the latest version of Openedge (Progress) you would normally just make a copy of your database(s) and convert it/them to the new version of Openedge and compile your your code against the new databases and shake the bugs out. You may have some keyword issues, but this is usually pretty minor.
If you need help with programming I would suggest contacting Progress Software and attending the yearly trade show or going to https://community.progress.com/ and asking/looking for local user groups. The local user groups would be a stellar place to find local programming talent.
Hope this helps.....
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Is It possible to perform a system analysis and design for a Website ( particularly a social Network ) ?
What are the Expected contents will be , In the document ?
can u provide an example , please ?
{ I made a social network (www.sy-stu.com) as to be my graduation project and I want to add a full analysis study to the graduation document , I do have experience in UML and Usecases just the Idea of an analysis of a website is not clear and never perform one before }
thanx in advance
This sounds very ambitious, but I'm sure it's possible. Unfortunately, I've forgotten a bit of System Analysis, but do adhere to many of its guiding principles for my own projects. In fact, I would say that most data-driven Web sites are excellent candidates for Systems Analysis and should be used always during Web planning for any project you plan on putting into production.
Straight from the wiki:
The development of a feasibility
study, involving determining whether
a project is economically, socially,
technologically and organizationally
feasible.
Conducting fact-finding
measures, designed to ascertain the
requirements of the system's
end-users. These typically span
interviews, questionnaires, or
visual observations of work on the
existing system.
Gauging how the
end-users would operate the system
(in terms of general experience in
using computer hardware or
software), what the system would be
used for etc.
For the first point, I would analyze different technologies such as ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails and PHP. Each technology has its strengths and weaknesses. One key thing to keep in mind is if you plan on making your social network free, you may consider open source technologies over proprietary - as many servers and application frameworks for proprietary projects are costly. I would also consider Web startup and hosting fees. If you plan on getting a reseller account with Host Gator, then you would need to factor in monthly billing costs. If you plan to host your own servers, you may be amazed at the cost of doing so. For a truly stable system, you would need to put a lot of work and cash into managing your own Web servers.
For the second point, you could probably locate plenty of information on user requirements from similar sites - just check out forums for DIY social networks and see what people are having issues with in the Technical Support section. Obviously, looking into technology based articles and magazines would be a good place to search on end user expectations - or even just joining Facebook and Twitter - see what they are doing since people seem content.
For the third point, again you can consult your competition and see how the user interface works out. Is it easy to use? Is it difficult in some aspects? If you had to use their system for 8 hours a day at least 5 days a week, what would drive you mad and how would you do it better? And keep in mind logical work flow as well. Knowing your user base is important too. In some systems, you may be developing for other programmers. Using strong jargon may be fine, but for a social network you must remember that they aren't familiar with Web site data flow and terminology. So your controls should still make sense to a computer novice and still work securely (don't forget system security too!) and in an organized fashion.
Finally, remember that things happen. I recently created a back-end site for a client of mine. I though the system worked very well - and they were very pleased, but I just got an email today that they want the way order items are stored to work differently. This is why there's a maintenance aspect to the System Development Life Cycle - things change after you finish deploying. It could also be said that if I had communicated with my client's needs more closely, this could have been resolved. Fortunately, the change is relatively minor, and we do live in a real world where things don't always work as we expect. We just do our best :)
As I said earlier, Systems Analysis is a lot of work and should be. The point of it is to determine that what you are trying to accomplish is feasible and practical without committing to a long term project that could span years. And always remember that no plan is perfect. If there were perfect plans, we wouldn't need new systems :).
I want to power a very simple shopping-cart where I will be selling software. I've checked a bunch of them already and still can't find what I need. Most of shopping-carts don't have "virtual product" functionality. Among those that have this feature are PrestaShop and Magento.
Presta doesn't have this feature implemented very well. I don't remember details about what I didn't like in Presta but as far as I remember the feature was not very well implemented: no ability to disable shipping, not possible to specify that people must be able to buy one item only (which is software license), no ability to set endless quantity for the products, etc.
Then I checked Magento, it has this feature implemented almost perfectly (still have to figure out how to disable quantity). However I heard that Magento is rather slow and frankly speaking this software looks like overkill. It has huge number of features and there are many many lines of code while I simply need the ability to register users, let them log in to the customer area and provide them with either download link to the already purchased software or the "buy now" link.
Do you by chances know of such software?
decided to use zen cart after all
Do you use a wiki in your company? Who uses it and what for. Do you share information between projects / teams / departments or not?
We use ours to store
Coding Style docs
Setup and Deployment procedures for web servers and sites
Network diagrams (what are all the servers in Dev, Staging, QA and Production called etc.)
Project docs (pdfs, visios, excel, docs, etc.) are stored in SVN. For the non-techies we have links to those docs in the wiki that point to an up-to-date share on my box. (tip: some wikis provide source control integration but ours doesn't)
Installation and Setup procedures for development tools
Howto's on things like using our bug tracking system, our unit testing philosophy
When doing research on a topic I often capture the important information in a wiki page for others to learn from
I've seen them used to keep seating charts in medium to large size organizations for the new people
At my previous company all of the emergency contacts and procedures for handling a critical outage where available on the front page of the wiki
The best part about a wiki is that it's searchable. Some wiki's support searching inside uploaded or linked docs as well.
If you setup a wiki and encourage or even require people to use it the amount of information that will accumulate can be amazing. It's definately worth the effort especially if you have someone in IT with some spare time on their hands to set it up.
Do you use a wiki in your company?
= We use it for the purpose of a Knowlede Based. Basically it is a wiki but many more functionalities intagrated.
Who uses it and what for
= Employees. Knowledge Sharing, Preparation of collaborative-documents, etc.
Do you share information between projects / teams / departments or not?
= Depends on the requirements. It is possible to set permissions between users.
We use a wiki, for documenting our systems. It's updated gradually as things update and evolve. It should go without saying that there's benefit in that, however whether you use a wiki or other methods is worth thinking about.
A wiki is great for collarborative editing. The information shouldn't go stale in theory, because as people use the systems they have the opportunity to keep it up to date.
However we have found in our organisation that people struggle a little with wiki markup. Especially tables. I think a solution that has wysiwyg editing would be better if you have non-highly-technical people editing it. Sharepoint springs to mind, but it's expensive.
I use a wiki as my virtual "story wall" for agile development. All of my stories are written and organized in the wiki. While my customers are reasonably local (we can have face-to-face meetings), they aren't co-located. To enable better customer interaction I've resorted to a wiki instead of a wall-based story tracking mechanism. It also works a little better for me due to the fact that I often have multiple, concurrent projects and limited wall space in my cube. In a larger team with more focused projects and more wall area, I'm not sure I'd make the same choice.
My company uses a wiki for project-planing but also for storing documentation and ideas.
I have found that a wiki is a great way to link the programmers in the company with the business-people.
When someone who are not on the programming-team comes up with an idea or finds a bug, it's a loot simpler to let that person document it in the wiki.
I think it's an important aspect for a small company like mine to easily synchronize the business-team with the development-team. A wiki helps with that, since it gives the feeling of being a part of the development process, instead of having to ask the programmer directly about every little detail.
we have MediaWiki to store technical information that is not ready to be published in other formats - specification drafts, diagrams (via GraphViz extension), results of short investigations, etc.
I also think this question is a wiki too :)
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I was recently put in charge of the wiki for the development team. The wiki is still in its infancy, so I have a lot of room to work with. It goal is to house internal to the development team. Currently, the main piece of information that the wiki holds is Coding Standards.
What are some best practices your dev team uses for its internal wiki?
What information is important to have on a dev wiki?
If you were to go to the wiki for your dev team what information would you expect to see?
Is there some information that shouldn't go on the wiki even though it seems like a good idea?
-- edit --
Also, is there a good way to organize the information? ( such as by layer ( data, ui), by porject, or other)
Introduction to the source base for new programmers
General documentation (not the API documentation per-se, but more tutorial like things)
Lists of staff / who's doing what and how to reach them
Notes / resources / articles that explain concepts used in the software
Documentation of the build process and the filesystem layout of the codebase
Other things I usually put up there are
Planning / todo lists
Information that is interesting for others to read
Everything else that I feel should be shared
We had a development wiki and it was a great tool. We used it for everything!
When brainstorming new ideas, we'd capture them on the wiki. The low friction nature of the wiki made it easy for anyone in the organization (we were a small startup) to add ideas as they thought of them. We had a high level "brainstorming" page which linked to detailed pages containing a thorough description of each idea.
For each iteration, we'd "move" feature idea items from the "brainstorming" list to the feature list for that iteration. The details of the feature were flushed out to include design and implementation details.
As features were completed, the iteration page became our release notes page - which also included the release tag from our version control system.
We had a bug page that worked very similar to the feature pages. Bug fixes were added to the iteration/release pages as they were worked on/complete.
We also created our user documentation on the wiki and exported those pages it with the release.
As time went on. This tool was viewed more and more valuable. We wound up creating new wikis for different the products the company was working on.
I hope you find your development wiki as useful as we did!
Wikipatterns is a website dedicated to documenting best wiki practices. They also describe anti-patterns and talk about ways to deal with them. I read their book and it was a great asset for me to get a wiki off the ground in a 150+ person organization.
One thing that we stress on our dev wiki is that it is updated when things change.
We don't want our wiki that is intended to provide information and be a central source of collected knowledge to become so out of date that it is useless. As the code is updated, developers are requested to update any related information on the wiki.
Other than Coding Standards, we keep tips and tricks for working with our code base, setup information for new hires, and general environment information.
The hardest part is getting developers to use your wiki. I have some long standing suggestions here: http://possibility.com/wiki/index.php?title=GettingYourWikiAdopted
Getting a Wiki Adopted is Tough
Have a Champion
Remove Objections
Create Content
Enmesh the Wiki In Company Processes
Evangelize
Don't Give Up
Consider Not Using Wiki For Conversations
Just Do It! Don't Wait For a Budget
Have a Transition Plan
Promoting Your Wiki
One good practice is to have the entire documentation and source code for each build available through your wiki. Then developers will go to wiki to access build info and that makes it invaluable.
Wikis can be a valuable resource for software development teams but they are not a silver bullet. It is all too easy to create a Wiki that would rapidly fall into disuse or become grossly outdated.
In my opinion, the key to a successful Wiki is getting the entire team on board. That means getting people away from other resources (and in particular email archives) as knowledge repositories, and offering some incentive for people to contribute.
However, it's also important to not be a format czar: If you have a lot of documents that you generate in, say, MS WORD, it may be ideal to do them all in Wiki format but that takes time and may be annoying if you have diagrams, documents, etc. In those cases, it's better to compromise and let people keep it in word format, as long as the only way to access the newest version is through the Wiki.
If you're not a manager, you need to get a manager on board because it would require some "enforcement".
There has been accumulating research and experience on Wikis and their use in software engineering. You can search the ACM digital library, for example. I am a coorganizer of an annual workshop on wikis for SE and we had several interesting experience reports and there are additional materials in the international symposium on Wikis.
Burndown charts
common setup information for development environments (nice for when new people start)
Specs
Known issues and workarounds with development tools
Come up with some kind of style guide, and teach others how to style stuff. When I was in charge of a corporate wiki, all of the other developers would just write crummy prose that was barely formatted, and looked terrible.
Keep away from things that require discussion. I tried shoehorn in a book review section, but it was too difficult to have others comment on things.
Examples of in house libraries are good. And/or "storyboards" walking a user through a process when MethodX is called.
What are some best practices your dev team uses for its internal wiki?
Make it look nice. I know it doesn't sound important, but if you spend a little time branding it pays off in terms of people actually using it. And uptake is key, or it will just wither and die.
What information is important to have on a dev wiki?
General information about a Project, milestones, delivery dates etc.
Summaries of design decisions/meetings. Important so that you don't re-visit the same areas time and time again.
HowTo guides for general development of current projects (for example, how to develop a new Plugin)
If you were to go to the wiki for your dev team what information would you expect to see?
Project information, who is working on what etc. Design decisions. Also best practices and links to useful sites.
Is there some information that shouldn't go on the wiki even though it seems like a good idea?
Low-level task lists tend to fluctuate and not be kept up-to-date, and can be misleading.
Also, critical communications between departments are better suited to e-mail, THEN the conversation can be copied to the wiki. It's too easy to ignore it otherwise!
Remember that a wiki is interactive. If you're thinking about publishing, as in publishing burndown charts, then you're not thinking far enough. Distributing that information is only part of it.
For instance, rather than having a "Current Burndown Chart" page, create a page for "Burndown Chart for Week of 10-27-2008" and then encourage people to comment on the chart, and what it means, and why you did so poorly that week.
We house and inhouse team wiki. And there we put all the necessary information for each project we are developing:
repositories
addresses for virtual machines
passwords
project documentations
project overview
project status
and anything else we fill needs to be written on a project. And it is the most useful web application we are running (besides Mantis) . On more general pages we put a definition of every taxonomy we are using, general project guidelines, polices, coding and developing practices we use.
It is there, it is simple and effective and I think every team should have one of those.