The Magnificent Silk8020 Blog

Google Gears Dead?

2009-12-01T19:38:00.002-05:00

For those that don't know what Google Gears does the below is from Google' Site:

Gears is a plug-in that extends your browser to create a richer platform for web applications. For example, webmasters can use Gears on their websites to let users access information offline or provide you with content based on your geographical location. To install Gears, visit http://gears.google.com

Google Gears has a

A Database module (powered by SQLite), which can store data locally.
A WorkerPool module, which provides parallel execution of JavaScript code.
A LocalServer module, which caches and serves application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc).
A Desktop module, which lets web applications interact more naturally with the desktop.
A Geolocation module, which lets web applications detect the geographical location of their users.

So this wonderful tool by Google hasn't really gotten any traction in the industry and is possibly going to be phased out or at least not developed too much anymore. There's speculation that Google is waitng for HTML5 before committing to offline

Source

Windows Live ID Secures ISO Certification

2009-11-17T16:28:00.003-05:00

So Windows is taking the security of their service very seriously. They are pitching that its one of the advantages of using Windows Live ID. This is definitely a reassuring measure by Microsoft.

Look Here for details

Open ID & Windows Live ID Presentation

2009-11-09T22:06:00.002-05:00

Below is an abstract of the topics that we will cover in the presentation. Also included are some good reading and viewing material.

Single Sign on vs Single ID
Open ID Benefits
Open ID Technical Implementation
Windows Live ID Overview
Windows Live ID Development Tools
Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication
Windows Live ID Federated Authentication

Articles to Read:

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq0R1Y1A2rE

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 DF Customer Spending

2009-10-18T19:25:00.016-04:00

An accountant who works as a private contractor aims to visualize for his clients their spending habits. The accountant has received access to his client's purchases and these purchases come in as a CSV feed at the end of each day from the client's credit card company. The accountant wants to differentiate himself from others, by giving the clients an on demand access to their spending habits. The on-demand access to this information will be provided by a website that the accountant has built for his client.

Google's Chart API is a perfect solution as an on demand provider of this data visualization. With some simple javascript work that accesses the credit card's CSV file and Google's Chart API, the accountant can provide to his client an on demand visualization of up to date spending habits. Below is an example of what that a client might see as his spending habbits. The graph is generated with Google's Chart API.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Spending+by+Category&chts=000000,10&chs=500x195&chf=bg,s,ffffff&cht=p3&chd=t:35.78,23.15,15.78,11.57,9.47,2.10,1.05,1.05&chl=Education|Business+Expenses|House|Shopping|Food+&+Dining|Auto+&+Transport|Bills+&+Utilities|Health+&+Fitness&chco=ff6633,00ff66,0066ff,99cccc,00ffff,ffcc33,9900ff,993366

The reason the accountant chose this API for implementation is because its easy to access and code. With some crafty coding the accountant can pull out the spending categories, dollars spent, and their percentages from the CSV file and plug them into the API URL. Since the CSV file will be updated on a daily basis, this allows the accountant to offer to his clients an up to date representation of spending habits without doing any additional work himself (other than setting up the service initially). This API works best because its fast, easy to use, and dependable.

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 MB Google Charts

2009-10-15T20:51:00.003-04:00

An international shipping company does a lot of business with the USA. Since it's based in the UK, it has funds in both Euro and British Pounds, and can use either to pay for shipment. Due to currency rate fluctuations, it may be more advantageous to pay in one currency over another at a particular point in time. In order to make the decision which currency to use, the company would like to visualize the data to help with the decision.

The company decided to use Google's Chart API for several reasons. Since it's web-based, charts can easily be embedded into dashboards and other reports. The charts are also dynamic, since it's possible to supply a currency rate data URL instead of static, hardcoded figures. Ideally, once set up, the business doesn't have anything else to configure, except refresh the page/dashboard to get an updated graph.

The Chart API was an ideal choice since the setup is straightforward, with minimal programming knowledge -- just plug parameters into the URL. Both the chart and the forex data are hosted and retrieved elsewhere for free, requiring the company minimal overhead to operate the functionality. This is essentially a turn-key solution with faster and cheaper deployment compared to proprietary and self-hosted charting packages.

Mashups Presentation Abstract & Articles

2009-10-05T23:52:00.003-04:00

Below is an abstract of the topics that we will cover in the presentation. Also included are some good reading and viewing material.

Topics:

Background of Mashups - webbased or server based apps that are unique but share charachterestics of the "mashed up" sources
Consumer Mashups - Data
Enterprise Mashups - Data and Processes
Technology behind Mashups - API, SOA, XML, Javascript, Java, .Net
Examples
Demo - Yahoo! Pipes

Good articles to read for about mashups.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=872
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6e7Jaz4FOc
http://www.programmableweb.com/apis
http://www.slideshare.net/jokay/mashups-presentation
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Mashups:_The_What_and_Why
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Mashups
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Api

Demo Google News + Yahoo! Maps Mashup

2009-09-27T17:44:00.004-04:00

We made this mashup using Google News and Yahoo! Maps APIs, put together with the Yahoo! Pipes mashup tool. Take a look and play with the tools yourself. We'll explain how this mashup was made during our presentation.

An Intro to Mashups

2009-09-27T12:31:00.004-04:00

This nice 7 minute video gives a really great intro to mashups. I as a newbie found it very helpful.

Enjoy

Data Integration (Looking for Ideas)

2009-09-01T20:14:00.001-04:00

I work for a transportation and logistics company based in Atlanta. Several years ago, I was involved in the design and development of a Data Warehouse (DW). The data warehouse was to become the data integration point which would serve as a global repository of the company’s customer and revenue data. It was built primarily to support Sales Compensation, but over time it has evolved to become the company’s main data source for managerial reporting systems. To date, there are about 30 reporting systems that rely on data sourced from the Data Warehouse.

The team that supports the ETL (Extract, Transform Load) processes that load and integrates data in the DW spend about 50% of their time resolving data integrity issues which occur frequently given the disparate and inconsistent data sources. The DW reflects the fragmented and semi-automated nature of our financial systems as they exist today. The company has aggressively pursued inorganic growth by acquiring smaller logistics and supply chain companies globally. As a result, we end up having 25+ financial systems (some manual) that load data into the DW.

We receive about 220 files in various formats through different transmission modes: from emailed EXCEL sheets and CSV files, to direct database to database connections, and FTPd flat files. Going forward, as we rationalize our billing systems and migrate them into strategic applications, the number of data feeds should decrease, and their quality and consistency should improve. But that’s in the future…

In the meantime, I am interested to listen to your ideas in the following areas:
1) Methodologies and technologies in integrating data from disparate data sources
2) Methodologies and technologies in ensuring data quality

Our topics

2009-09-01T19:10:00.003-04:00

So that everyone is on the same page. I will post our group's topics here. We will present and post on

October 6th - SoA and Web 2.0; mash-up, Web API, REST
November 3rd - Identity integration; Single Sign-On

Post, the first

2009-08-25T19:57:00.000-04:00

Revel in the glory that is this blog!