EAI Blog

Not a great week.  I've got too much to do and not enough time.  Actually my internship was a bit of a snooze this week as well.  I spent the better part of two days just reading C# code.  In the end it was a useful thing to do, but boring!

It seems one of the programmers had updated a piece of the program and it messed up one of the tables so that a lot of users could not log in.  I think an intern is not a very useful accessory in such a situation.  Oh, well, it seems that one can never get away from moments of crisis.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/aa480028.aspx

This is an interesting article that discusses the possible disconect between developers of Web Services and users of WS.  It outlines the different goals and needs of each and some possible solutions.

I learned an important lesson this week: Never navigate away from your blog page while your adding an entry!  I learned that lesson the hard way last Thursday.  Anyway, I had an interesting 2 days at my internship.  I was "snooping" around and found the UDDI directory for the company.  I did not have a chance to explore too much, but I am hoping to look around more tomorrow.  I am very curious to see how these services are being utilized in the development process. 

Speaking of my internship, I am still learning the system and getting more familiar with the development architecture, but I am finding that I have one real frustration.  Although (surprise, surprise!!) I have actually been able to contribute to the programming projects I have been involved with I think that I've figured out why things have been so difficult.

In the academic setting projects are worked on from the ground up.  That is planning, implementing, etc. is done from beginning to the end by the student.  Now I am faced with a rather extensive application that has already been in production for years.  The projects I have worked on have really only been small modifications to existing applications.  The frustration comes from me not really knowing what the project I am working on is ultimately supposed to do.  In the end I have to realize that my understanding of the "big picture" probably doesn't matter a whole lot.  All I have to do is make my little piece work, so the project manager can fit it into place.

Just an observation I had.  At any rate, I am just happy to be working with the knowledge that I have gained through school!

I seem to be having a difficult time keeping up with the blog.  Actually this is not the only class in which it is necassary to participate in a blog or discussion.  I'm not doing very well with those either. 

I started an internship at a company called Zywave this week, and I really think that it is going to help bring a real world view of exactly what we've been studying.  To me that's a great thing since I sometimes get frustrated by thinking that the academic environment and the business environment are worlds apart.  In any event, Zywave provides product management tools, client management tools, and research to the insurance industry.  All of there applications are delivered via the web, and they recently began converting there developement model to a web services architecture.  I think that the discussion in class provided a good base for me to build my experience upon.

Also I was able this week to complete the XML exercise.  I can see that XML is a great way to organize data for processing and display, however I've never seen how to utilize it in an actual application.  I am looking forward to that.

Hi.  I'm actually very excited to be in this class this semester.  (Although I think I may have screwed myself with a very heavy load this semester!)  This seems like a subject that will be very useful in the 'real world' which I some day hope to be invited to join.