Web development in Scotland – we use DNN

The web development package we use is the unlikely named DotNetNuke – DNN. It’s written in .Net and as we are very experienced in Microsoft .Net development it made good sense. We have extended it significantly to add in lots and lots of extra functionality and capability.

Although a Microsoft based CMS it’s an open source package – BSD. That makes it a great platform to use are there are lots of experts out there.

Sharepoint support in Scotland for form creation and reliable data

Sharepoint provides the capability to create web based form to let your business gather information effectively. Forms can check data on entry to ensure that the data is valid before being stored in your databases.

Biztalk in Scotland – what is the Biztalk Orchestration Designer

The Biztalk Orchestration Designer is a visual designer to let you build simple flows to control activity based on the content of the messages passing through Biztalk. Because of its visual nature it allows designers and business analysts to discuss things easily.

Web developers in Scotland – choosing a CMS

You can shell out good cash and buy a CMS – not a bad idea but often Open Source CMS packages are a better deal. Maintained by legions of dedicated coders they can offer better support in some cases than commercially available packages.

Some CMS packages are tailored toward specific target markets – photographers for example. However it better to choose a more open and generic CMS as it is almost bound to have a richer feature set and will therefore be better when it comes to web development.

Sharepoint support in Scotland for enterprise content management

Enterprise Content Management within Sharepoint provides the content management you would expect but also embraces content other than website content such as documents and files. It also provides management control facilities to ensure that information is preapproved before going live.

Biztalk in Scotland – what is a Biztalk orchestration

In some cases it is important to do more than simply change the structure of a message as it passes through Biztalk. In those situations you can influence what should happen – ie you can orchestrate an activity such as a simple go/no go rule. To create the rules you use the Biztalk Orchestration Designer.

Web development in Scotland – get a CMS

CMS or Content Management Systems allow you to develop and maintain websites in a much more easy way than hacking around inside pages and pages of html. However, not all CMS packages are the same. To get the most out of any CMS package you will need some basic HTML coding skills and some CMS’s are better than others than providing this. So shop around and seek opinion. Make sure you can edit Metadata including image tag and description metadata. Almost all web developers will use a preferred CMS or work with a couple.

Sharepoint support in Scotland for portal creation

The word Portal now sounds sort of old fashioned and it’s better to simply say that Sharepoint allows enterprises to create websites whether internally or externally facing that are highly personalized based on the user/visitor and their permissions.

Biztalk in Scotland – what is a Biztalk pipeline

Once accepted incoming messages are passed along pipelines which, if required, can perform transformations on your data to ensure the outgoing message is compatible with the receiving system. The result is a highly efficient data transformation process allowing your systems to communicate effectively.

Web developers in Scotland – some guidelines

As web developers Web Wise Business are often put in a position of trust by our customers who look to us as the experts. So as a way to share some of our thoughts and to help explain what we do we thought we should document a few of what we believe are important web development guidelines.

Biztalk in Scotland – what is a Biztalk adapter

Biztalk accepts messages using a wide range of available adapters which are specific to the message in question, and as you would expect bespoke or custom adapters can be created. Your adapters can, therefore, be set up to cope with Web Services, SAP, Siebel, Oracle or IBM Webshere for example.

Sharepoint support in Scotland for collaboration

The key benefit around Sharepoint is Collaboration. Or in simpler language that means “working together”.

Teams of any size can benefit from the Sharepoint platform as it allows information to be shared easily – whether that is through it’s ability to assist in the sharing of documents or via blogs and wikis to keep information flowing around the enterprise.

Biztalk support in Scotland – what is Biztalk

We have added Biztalk to the range of services we offer as think the need for the product is now either at or just beyond the tipping point.

Biztalk allows disparate applications to communicate with each other regardless of the message types.

Because of that systems of differing types can communicate effectively. In addition Biztalk also provides the user with a Business Rules Engine in order that decisions can be taken based on the data being transferred.

Sharepoint support in Scotland

As software developers Objective Associates based in Stirling, Scotland have long used a wide range of Microsoft products. Now we have started to promote our services for businesses using Microsoft Sharepoint but have came to that point through an odd route.

For a good while we have been using the Open Source Dot Net Nuke product and have now extended the DNN CMS product so much we felt we should be offering our customers something complimentary.

Our extensive dot net skills and DNN developers allow us to tackle the most challenging projects and we have cracked a good many using DNN. So why the addition of Sharepoint to our portfolio?

Well it's not that DNN has failings or issues that we can't resolve it’s just that we know that customers like to be given a choice and often have their own views on what platforms they would prefer to use. So we have added Sharepoint to the portfolio and will be supporting Sharepoint in Scotland from now on. So from Open Source to Sharepoint - interesting route to get there.

Software Scotland – Z is for ZX Spectrum

Aaaah the ZX spectrum the seed that created countless Software Developers in Scotland. Now that was an operating system.

Software Scotland – Y is for Y2K

Who can forget those anxiety ridden days as countless software developers in Scotland counted up to 2000 for inflated salaries.

Software Scotland – X is for XML

Extensible Mark Up language has provided the structure to the HTML internet world that was badly needed. Back in 2000 we used XML to create an n-tier internet system to provide e-commerce on NCR ATMs (using Java on os/2) as software programmers in Scotland we were leading edge.

Software Scotland – W is for Wolfson Microelectronics

Darlings of the Scottish Investment community Wolfson house a number of highly talented software developers in Scotland. Creating the embedded software required by their integrated circuits.

Software Scotland – V is for VB

Visual Basic was a revelation it allowed software developers in Scotland to create intuitive software systems quickly and easily. Now VB is a staple of the .Net world.

Software Scotland – U is for Use Case

Use Case is all about specifying software systems. For software developers in Scotland in the past it was a rare treat to be able to use “Use Case” on a green field site. Often it was the reverse engineering talents that were more important.

Software Scotland – T is for Tape Back Up

For software developers in Scotland its just a matter of time before Software backups using Tape becomes a thing of the past. Remote backup for Software if secure is much more sensible and reliable – Tape Backup will soon be a thing of the past.

Software Scotland – S is for Silicon Glen

Silicon Glen was the marketing folks attempt at promoting Scotland as Silicon Valley.

For software developers in Scotland it did not last long as Silicon Valley was typically populated by overseas assembly plants that shipped out when the economic situation changed.

Software Scotland – R is for RMX

RMX simple but rock solid. Used on Intel platforms by many software developers in Scotland RMX was predictable and as I recall completely defect free.

Software Scotland – Q is for QOS

With all this Voice Over IP telephony stuff we need to remember that Quality counts. Quality of Service measures the quality of the traffice (voice or otherwise that you get down your internet line).

Software developers in Scotland don’t always have access to the same speed of access as our counterparts in the USA which can be frustrating. So as we roll out more and more VoIP systems expect QoS to drop.

Software Scotland – P is for PLM

PLM a realtime language used in industry and by Software developers in Scotland for many years. Similar in structure to PASCAL it was simple to understand if perhaps limited in syntax.

Software Scotland – O is for Operating System

A good operating system makes all the difference but sometimes the best ones don’t win through. For many years programmers in Scotland used os/2 – complex but rock solid. With Windows coming along os/2 faded, but it took many years for Windows to catch up with the capability of os/2.

Software Scotland – N is for NCR

A software company of renown in Scotland NCR produced countless talented software engineers in Scotland with real-time, Os/2 and windows expertise. A shadow of their former self now in Scotland they still dominated the ATM market in the UK and overseas.

Software Scotland – M is for Microsoft

Where would we be without Microsoft…. Software developers in Scotland rely on the systems day in day out. Without Microsoft we’d probably all be using Apple Macs and our offices would be prettier.

Software Scotland – L is for Laptop

Laptops have become the essential tool for all of us – not just software developers in Scotland. Not so long ago (20 years ago) 1 PC per desk was only starting to become a reality – now it’s a PC with huge power that gets lugged around on the shoulder. Not bad.

Software Scotland – K is for KiloByte

Do you remember when hard disk space was measured in KiloBytes – hard to believe now. Programmers now expect endless disk space and memory availability making us all (even software developers in Scotland) a lot more lazy than we should be.