Best Practices for Building Cloud-based Applications

Choosing a cloud platform, or building an application that you plan to deploy in the cloud? Here are a few best practices to make the process easier.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been dominating the enterprise IT world for the past few years by promoting the idea of loosely coupled services. Cloud computing is the latest IT trend that is changing how enterprise applications are deployed and delivered to consumers.

Visit any software vendor's website and you will notice that it is decorated with clouds. If you have recently interviewed for a job, your prospective employer would be shocked if you had not heard of this jargon. This article provides an introduction to cloud computing and offers a few best practices for building an application that you plan to deploy in the cloud.

Several characteristics of cloud computing benefit IT organizations. Some of the main characteristics and benefits are:

1. Pay per use -- One of the most important characteristics of cloud computing is its rental and pay-as-you-go model. This greatly lowers startup costs and total cost of ownership. You do not have to worry about purchasing expensive hardware and software licenses nor worry about availability, scalability, reliability and security aspects of your infrastructure, platform or application. You will be charged by the cloud vendor based on the actual usage of resources. This helps companies to focus on innovation and greatly reduces the time required to launch new products.

2. Computing resources available on the Internet -- The hardware and software resources are available on the Internet. These can be accessed by either developers to build and deploy applications or end users to perform their regular work.

3. On-demand and self-service -- The services are available on-demand and users can provision their services themselves. For instance, if you are a developer and you need an application server instance such as WebLogic Server for building and deploying your Java application, you can start a virtual machine running WebLogic Server from a self-service portal within a few minutes. You do not have to worry about locating hardware and installing software. This greatly improves productivity and leads to customer satisfaction.

Source: http://cloudcomputing.internet.com/developer/article.php/425130

Application Architecture!!!

How LinkedIn Is Taking Care of Business!

LinkedIn recently passed 100 million users, meaning its population is bigger than most countries. But what kind of country would LinkedInLand be? An old, rich, well-educated one.

According to the infographic below, created by Online MBA, 68% of LinkedIn users are 35 or older, 74% have a college degree or better and 39% make more than $100,000 a year. As those stats illustrate, although LinkedIn may not have the buzz of Facebook or Twitter right now, it has an enviable demographic base. The company also is profitable, fast-growing and expanding into new lines of business like news aggregation. As LinkedIn prepares to go public this year, here’s an overview of the phenomenon that Reid Hoffman created 8 years ago.



Source: http://mashable.com/2011/03/24/linkedin-overview-infographic/

Google removes 58 malicious apps from Android Market, uninstalls them from phones remotely too

Google was just faced with one of the bad sides of being as open as it is with its Android platform. Apparently some 58 malicious apps have infiltrated the Android Market and have managed to register 260 000 downloads before the security team axed them.






The nasty apps were uploading information about the hardware of the devices plus the Android version it was using without the user’s content. What’s worse, they were creating backdoors so more sensitive data could be downloaded in the future.

That’s why Google devs stepped in and remotely wiped the apps from the affected handsets and closed the exploits. Users of the affected handsets should receive an email soon that contains the report of the actions taken to nullify the threat.

The exploits existed only in older versons of the OS (prior to ver. 2.2.2). That’s why Google has also released a security patch through the Market to prevent similar apps from reusing those holes in the future.

Now we really hope Google learns its lesson and starts checking the apps in the Market more carefully. No one got hurt this time, but it would be in everyone’s best interest if there is no next time.


Source: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/03/update-on-android-market-security.html

SofTeC 2011: Meet testing leaders from Microsoft,Oracle,Applabs and others on Mar 26, Hyd

After the successful earlier editions, SiliconIndia is organizing Software Testing Conference (SofTec 2011), a leading event for the Software Test and QA Community on March 26th, 2011 (Saturday) this time in Hyderabad.

SofTeC 2011's agenda reflects the challenges organizations face today in order to address different testing projects. It also explores new challenges such as Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Web 2.0 and the increasing take up of Open Source tools. The conference provides clear guidance to the delegates and helps them understand the challenges and issues faced in testing today, how best to address them and how to cope with changing conditions and the need to optimize every effort.

TOPICS:
An optimum approach to n-tier architectured application testing
Building an Automation Framework around Open Source Technologies
Commercial Test Automation Tools and its real benefit
Software Security Testing
Mobile/Infotainment Apps testing
Cloud Testing: The future of software testing
The Case for a Standard Uniform Test Modeling Language
Protocol Testing
Globalization testing- Getting your software World-ready
Avionics Testing

Who Should Attend:
This Conference is designed for organizations and individuals who have technical proficiencies and leadership responsibilities within their respective discipline areas and are actively involved in the testing and quality process, development, and group dynamics.

This includes:
Vice Presidents, Directors, Heads — Quality & Testing and Project Management
Senior Testing Leaders: Head-Test CoE, Head - Testing, IT Directors, CT's, CIO, CFO, Senior Test Managers, Test Managers, Test Practitioners and Engineers, QA Managers, Analysts..
Test Management Professionals — Managers, Architects, Test Leads, Software Test Engineers
Quality / SEPG Management Professionals — Managers, QA Leads, Software QA Engineers
Project Management Professionals — Managers, Leads, Software Engineers

DATE: March 26th, 2011 (Saturday)
TIME: 8.00 AM to 5:00 PM
VENUE: Will Be Announced Shortly

REGISTER NOW:
We have limited Seats. Registration for this Conference is by invitation only. Attendance is limited to maintain an intimate setting and foster dialogue among all participants.

To request an invitation, please visit: http://www.siliconindia.com/events-overview/SofTeCHYDERABAD-Hyderabad-SofTeCHYDERABAD.html
and complete the form . There will be a registration fee of Rs 500 only. This is towards: Access to Sessions, Tea/ Coffee & Refreshments and Lunch.
Don’t miss this opportunity. Meet testing experts!

Progress Responsive Business Integration (RBI) | Progress Software

Progress Responsive Business Integration (RBI) | Progress Software

SOA Testing -Challenges

SOA Testing

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) brings new testing challenges that will require changes to your existing company test strategy if the key benefits of SOA are to be realised.


The following are examples of the new challenges:

* Many services will not have a user interface that will require a new breed of tools to assist with the testing
* Infinite 'service' consumers and users are possible
* Interoperability
* SOA can be boundless! Services may be used by applications yet to be developed or by consumers outside the enterprise
* 'Loosely-coupled' connections that allow unforeseen applications to take advantage of ever-expanding capabilities
* SOA is driven by business processes that not only cross technologies but span organizations. Test teams will require a broader set of domain and technical knowledge.