Microsoft Technologies

And when you think Sun's Java is cool, there is also Microsoft's range of products.

Windows Presentation Framework

And also this site: WPF MSDN site

Windows Communication Framework

A framework to manage Web Services. For those that was born in my era where we have to go through numerous procedures to create a Web Service, would definitely agree with me that the process to create Web Services these days are over-simplified (which is a good thing).

I also have the opportunity to explore the ASP .NET 2.0 Membership and Roles Management technologies for access control. Here is another link on Roles Management and a How-to guide on membership. This also leads me to Windows Authentication.   

Unlike Java, which is true object-oriented, Microsoft's C# is more towards procedural although it claims to be object-oriented.

One of the strategy I adopt for Microsoft' technologies is to understand the concepts (through their MSDN sites and basic tutorial) first. This is crucial. Microsoft's technology tends to bombard you with lots of similarly different technologies.

Rich Client Application War

3 big companies, 3 fantastic technologies:

JavaFX
From Sun Microsystem

Silverlight
From Microsoft

Adobe RIA
From Adobe

SQL Databases

MySQL
Bought over by Sun Microsystem

PostgreSQL

Oracle SQL Database

HSQLDB

JDBC connectors can be used to connect to all these databases

Reports Generation Tools

These software enable users to pull data from various data sources, from flat files to databases, to generate reports for almost all purposes. However, in my humble opinion, usability is the key. Do you want a developer to create a report? Or do you want your business analyst to churn out the report? Or with a more ambitious goal, the Management?

Jasper Reports
Open-source: GNU Public License
Designer: iReports

OpenReports
Open-source: GNU Public License

DataVision
Open-source: Apache Version 2.0 License

Eclipse Business Reporting and Intelligent Tool (BIRT)
Open-source: Eclipse License

jFreeReport
Now known as Pentaho Reporting

jXLS

Crystal Report
Proprietary (SAP)

Java Reflection, Java Beans and Serialization

Java Technologies are really fascinating.

Java Reflection API
Used to modify or examine runtime behaviour of applications running in JVM.

Java Beans
JavaBeans™ is:
portable
platform-independent component model.

Serialization
To quote from JavaBeans tutorial, "object serialization means converting an object into a data stream and writing it to storage. Any applet, application, or tool that uses that bean can then "reconstitute" it by deserialization. The object is then restored to its original state."

XML DB

As XML is gaining traction in the software industry, using an XML repository to support XML transactions and queries seems logical to improve performance and scalability.

eXist is an open source XML database management system. By storing XML data as XML data model, it uses XQuery and XPath technologies for indexing and querying.

There are two modes of running this eXist: remote and embedded. In embedded mode, the application runs in the same Java Virtual Machine as the client application. Besides using XML:DB APIs, I found out that several other technologies are used to enabled one to embed applications onto another:

jGroups
JGroups is a toolkit for reliable multicast communication.

jLine
JLine is a Java library for handling console input.

XACML
An access control policy evaluation engine written entirely in the Java(tm) programming language.

Quartz
A fully-featured, open-source job scheduling system that can be integrated with or used together with any J2EE or J2SE application virtually.

XML-RPC
It's a specification and a set of implementations that allow software running on disparate operating systems, running in different environments to make procedure calls over the WWW using HTTP as the transport and XML as the encoding.

Commons Pool
Enables pooing of objects

ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition)
A language tool that provides a framework to construct recognizers, interpreters, compilers and translators from grammatical descriptions specified in various target languages.

About minskytecharena

In my journey to realise my dream to be a CTO/CIO of my own global conglomerate, I would like to note down the various technologies that I have come across and highlight those that I find them notable.

It also serves as my own repository of technologies at my disposal.