Best of this Week Summary 16 March - 22 March 2009

• Great article by Dion Hinchcliffe with 10 emerging technologies every software architect has to know about. In short:
  
  
  1. Cloud computing
     
  
  
  2. Non-relational databases
     
  
  
  3. Next-generation distributed computing
     
  
  
  4. Web-oriented architecture (WOA)
     
  
  
  5. Mashups
     
  
  
  6. Open supply chains via APIs
     
  
  
  7. Dynamic languages (e.g Rails, PHP compared to Java/.Net)
     
  
  
  8. Social computing
     
  
  
  9. Crowdsourcing and peer production architectures
     
  
  
  10. New Application Models (e.g the symantic web, opensocial, widgets)
      


• Elaborate explanation of managing boilerplate text (e.g. titles, button labels, prompt, error messages, tool tips) in JSF applications. This includes more advanced locale requirements, like certain text that needs to be different when shown to junior and senior users.
  


• Here's a nice diagram with an overview of what activities are needed to create a website, from idea to support and everything in between.
  
  


• Always annoyed that you have to manually close a resource like InputStreams, Connections etc? And that the first exception might be surpressed by the second in the finally block? Here's a suggested solution: the Automatic Resource Management pattern by Joshua Bloch.
  


• Ten more Eclipse shortcuts you maybe didn't know...
  


• Of course you've heard/read that Microsoft has released IE8 last week. Here's a bunch of tips when migrating your site from IE7 to IE8.
  


• Ever need to create a UUID/GUID? Here's a few offline generators compared. uuidgen is an online UUID generator supporting version 1 and 4. A handy FAQ on UUIDs with some more depth can be found here.