Testing is more and more turning into a core part of development and now testers turn to agile methods too. A short discussion of the last BWTest event at HdM and a try to combine formal, intuitive and random techniques into one approach for testing.

Some words on performance analysis, weak spots and a few pointers to where you can get help.

Logging and log analysis has plagued me frequently in the past. The excellent thesis by Michael Zender, supervised by my colleague Raju Varghese at UBS AG, offers an interesting and very usable solution to achieve a typed log statements and automatic report generation.

Our first developers day had its focus on agile development. Read on why this is not a new fad but has always existed. Still, it is getting more popular nowadays, perhaps due to the ever increasing weight of .NET and J2EE, Java and C++ etc. Learn alternative ways to program fast, agile solutions and have fun doing so. But perhaps you are a manager? Learn how agile methods might save your project. You don't have to be an expert developer to profit from this day. What agile people need , more.. Our development day showed why agile people need agile methods and languages. There is a tight connection between agility and tools. Read on why I think we lost the agility and what can be done about it.

A paper from Alan Kay et.al. on how to design a PC that enables the user (everything an object, scriptable, self-explaining, tractable, minimal and compact etc.). I did not understand everything (take a look at the bootstrapping section) but it sounds fascinating. Aand Richard Gabriel on reasons why the object approach failed in many cases. Gabriel argues for a multi-paradigm approach to software and I think he is right.

I have been looking for ways to represent so called User Conceptual Models (UCM) to capture specific user properties like attitudes, experience, cultural background etc. which all might have influence on how a user might behave with respect to security. This is important for programmers as well as end users. Obviously the UML actor is a poor choice here because it is only a generator of events and has no peculiar characteristics. When we discussed Taufan Zimmer's excellent thesis with SONY - where he used user centered analysis and design - I discovered that the usability people have actors which are much more complex and which could carry the UCM information.

Another workshop on the famous IBM Global Services Method. And again the topic is hot: digital media in the Fincancial Industry. And stay tuned for some top talks on current developments in the IT Industry by specialists from IBM and DaimlerChrysler.

What to read if you need to shape up in Java. On fat (sorry, "rich" books) and others.

Karl Klink - one of the fathers of Linux on Z/OS and a well known expert for reliable software - held a talk on software development on mainframes at HDM.

Find a collection of resources with hints and tips on the new naming service features and how they relate to clustering etc. And get yourself a tool that lets you browse the JNDI. websphere world has a nice article on WAS5 naming from where I took the diagram (which helped a lot).

Lessions learnt (again) from trying to solve a performance problem in a web application. The single bug causing the problem does not exist. .

Some hints on how to use the profiler from eclipse/WASD and some additional resources on performance of garbage collection and how it affects the way you should write Java code.

A few tips on how to talk to your bosses boss or how to keep review cycles short etc.