Engineering vs Software Engineering

In the last issue of 'Engineering and Technology' magazine by the IET, I read a small article (I forgot the name of the author but I remember the topic). It was about the usage of the job title 'Engineer' within the software industry. The author had said that an Engineer should be a person who is involved in hardware design and manufacturing activities. In all the other industries such as 'Civil', 'Electronics', 'Mechanics', 'Aeronaughtics' etc. the tasks of an Engineer is related to designing hardware components. In contrast, the software industry has been mis-using the job title 'Engineer' for people who design software, which difers a lot from usual engineering processes. Hence, they should be called 'Software Designers' instead, he had further added.

I have been hearing these kinds of arguements time to time from various people I meet. The reasons I think for all these mis-understandings are;

1. Software industry has not matured enough or it has not aged well to define its standards.
2. Software Engineering is a totally different aspect of Engineering where people are new to the intangible properties of the product and its capabilities.

Because of its immatured nature, the people in this industry have started using many different job titles without standardizing/defining them in a proper way. This has lead to many problems and mis-understanding. However, I believe that the 'software engineering' would soon come under the 'umbrella of engineering' as the community become more aware about the issues nowadays.

Multiple web sites in IIS 5.1

Last few weeks I had been working with one web based CMS (Content Management System) software called Umbraco. The system has a limitation which does not allow it to be hosted inside a virtual directory within IIS. It has to be installed in the web server root in order for it to work properly.

I wanted to install and try the software at any cost. However, I didn't want to mess up my existing web server as I have already configured many virtual directories in it. I could not create a new web site instance through IIS also because, its not possible with Windows XP Professional and IIS 5.1. I had to find a solution for the problem because I couldn't just find a machine to install the new software only. So, as usual I googled the net and I could find some cool tools available to do the trick. Here I share the tool which I still use in my machine.

IIsAdmin.NET: Create Multiple Web Sites Under Windows XP

The only limitation with the tool is that only one web site can be active at one time. Since I use my machine for development purposes I feel it is tolerable.

Open source Content Management Systems

There was a need for me to investigate about several open source Content Management Systems (CMS) for a personal project. It was a big list where I had to choose the better one which suit my requirements. Three systems were in my short-list.

I had already worked with a commercial Enterprise CMS, called Tridion in my company. So, I didn't have any problems when evaluating the functionalities in each system in my short list.

Here I talk about the system which I have chosen to be the best within the short listed candidates.

Umbraco (http://www.umbraco.org/)

This is an ASP.NET based CMS, uses Microsoft Sql Server as the backend. Currently the latest stable version is 3.0.1.

It took more than half-a-day for me to install because there were lots of problems I had to solve during the installation. I found out that, when it is installed in IIS web server, it should be the root application. It cannot be installed in a virtual directory. I used the Sql Server Express 2005 which I installed as an instance (not the default option). It raised a lots of error messages when I tried to access the application saying that it could not get the database connection (even after I configured it properly). Then I had to re-install the database with the default option.

I write this small review with my usage of few hours of the software, so I might have missed a good feature altogether. So, please bear with me. I'll update my blog with my experience later. This is the only CMS which is similar atleast in few features of the standard Tridion software. This has the flexibility of making the building blocks of the web site from scratch. When it is installed fresh, there is no predefined settings, even for the member groups. It is possible to create a simple web site without using the .Net programming knowledge at all. But it is necessary to have enough programming skills to build a sophisticated web site. Developers have the option of utilising the .Net web/user controls or the XSLT style sheet to define the layout and contents.


Other options in my list were Mambo and Cuyahoga. I didn't go deep into the features of Mambo as it has used PHP for its front end which is not suitable for my purpose. The laster has used ASP.Net for front-end and Sql server, MySql or PostgreSql for the back-end. Though this offers flexibility in database, the features were not useful. I can say it has limited range of usage.

Web Browsers - timeline

The timeline of web browsers shown here seems to be very useful. I can think about the following ways, the information can be utilized.

1. Details of all the existing / non-existing web browsers and their version release periods
   
2. The ways in which different web browsers have evolved and their ancestors
3. Maturity levels of the browsers
4. etc. (there may be more)
   

I couldn't find the famous text based 'lynx' browser (found in Linux OS) in the timeline. May be it was not considered as a web browser?

Opera Mini - mobile browser

While I was in Sweden, I met Ms. Malin Rundberg, Project Manager of Opera Mini software, at Graziela's (our Development Manager) birthday party. We had a good chat about various things for some time. One of the topics was about the Opera Mini, the free mobile browser.

I use Nokia 6230 and I had been using its default browser to access the internet over GPRS. At the party Malin recommended me to use the Opera Mini, not just because she is the Project Manager of it, but it has got some nice features. When she was telling the features of the software, I was thinking like, 'how did I miss this nice piece of software?'. I decided to try this when I'm back home.

I downloaded the software and I have been using it for a while. It's amazing! If I say the truth, now I don't like to open my phone's default browser at all. I recommend this software for everybody around and I should thank Malin for introducing me to this application.
This is how you install the product (phone should support java applications):

1. Open the default mobile browser and connect to the internet
2. Access the site www.operamini.com
3. Download the software by clicking the appropriate link
4. Allow the phone to install the java application
5. Exit your phone browser, now the application has been installed.

Opening the browser is as easy as running a java application in the phone. Just select the 'Opera Mini' from the phone's applications collection and let it to connect to the internet (you will be prompted to allow network access). Now you can play with it.