IBM Developer Works Days 2012.

IBM Developer Works Days 2012.
14 -15 Nov 2012

General Trends in Development

• The term “GUI” is promoted to “User Experience” !
• IDE’s and Technologies are trying to prove all the time that they are Agile oriented.
• Applications Should be seen as a Service not a product.
• Domain Specific Languages (DSL) are languages meant for non-developer application users to be able to perform activities on the system without developer involvement. I see it as one step forward from API’s but for users not developers. (just like how SQL was meant to be for databases).
• Mixed Environments , more that one technology (or programming language) in one application to provide a service.
• Mobile development is gaining ground and attention for accessing mobile B2C and B2B.
• Office-Automation using mobile applications for the corporate employees.
• BIG Data.
• There is still a lot of work for developers to do.

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Web Development: Using WURFL to identify the Clients’s device

Sometimes in web-development, it is needed to identify the connecting device, if it is a mobile phone, a tablet or a normal desktop browser.

This is possible by inspecting the HTTP_USER_AGENT parameter -part of the HTTP header- which has some information about the client’s browser, connecting device and operating system.

Anyway; the HTTP_USER_AGENT parameter is a mess, there are no specifications about how the browser should formulate the HTTP_USER_AGENT string and you can never tell from the string signature the supported features on the connecting device. Sometimes it is needed to know if  the connecting device support HTML5 and J2ME? , does this device have a QWERTY keyboard …etc.

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