Recently started looking into Metadata Registries and UDEF and related semantic technology.

The Wikipedia page lists a bunch of relevant Metadata Registry projects and commercial products. Very nice. Easy to follow the links and determine features and benefits.

However.

A client has IBM Cognos. Is there any easy to to …

Check out this picture.

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/12/27/what-5mb-of-storage-looked-like-in-1956/

Okay. This is seriously cool.

The Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) provides a controlled vocabulary that should be used to seed a project's data model.

See http://www.udef.com/

See http://www.opengroup.org//udef/

We're looking at applying UDEF retroactively to an existing schema.

What a pain in …

Just updated the Stingray Reader. There was an egregious error (and a missing test case). I fixed the error, but didn't add a test case to cover the problem. It's simple laziness. TDD is quite clear on how to tackle this kind of thing. Write the missing test case (which …

See this article: "The COBOL Brain Drain" in ComputerWorld. This article is very, very well written and repeats a number of common fallacies.

The fallacies lead to expensive, labor-intensive in-house software development and maintenance. Either there's a lot of effort poking at the COBOL code. Or there's a lot of …

I'm looking forward to this. I'll be talking about Python.

• A Python 3.2 tutorial. I did a dry run with the help of the 757 Python group. Made a bunch of changes based on their input.
• A more in-depth presentation on a good architecture of Database Schema Migration scripts …

Maybe it's the circle-R in the PMP® signature that put me off.

What's important is that the PMP-certified project manager is absolutely married to fixed-price software development. The idea of "Agile" was unthinkable. They were very clear that we had enough information to create a fixed price.

It's hard to …

Check out this post: "Why Quit? Because They Have Bigger Monitors".

Brilliant summary of a few small cost things that have a large impact. How many other signals are being sent?

Jim B. once pointed out that some organizations are entirely run by the accountants. You can have a good …

Read this on Gizmodo: "How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet" Compelling stuff: "Integration Is The Enemy of Innovation". "[Corporate Development milestones] often completely ignore what made the smaller target valuable in the first place." Lessons learned: it's hard to apply structured, formal, financial controls to innovation. As soon …