Since after the publication of our previous articles on SAP-related technologies, readers have suggested that a short introduction into the SAP environment would be very welcome, we have decided to take the advice and start a series of articles that will provide some insights into the SAP world. Consequently, in this article we start off by analyzing several aspects of the SAP products and technologies, answering questions such as: Who or what is SAP? What solutions does SAP provide? What is different about SAP technologies and what does software development in the SAP environment imply?

When it comes to .Net family of client applications, Windows Presentation Foundation is a name that is frequently found. WPF is no longer a novelty, being introduced from. Net Framework 3.0 but brings out graphical interface advantages that still make it competitive. The temptation whenever there’s something new, is to make it the ideal solution for everything. There is an ongoing discussion when it comes to choosing a Microsoft client technology, but if you don’t use the advantages brought by WPF (data-binding, dynamic styling, media services, animations) for performance reasons a lot of developers still choose WinForms.

In this article we continue to give the account of ICT Spring Europe, which I had the pleasure to take part in, together with my colleague Marius Mornea. It was the first TSM delegation abroad and we had the opportunity to connect to the pulse of the European IT world. The future looks good and it wouldn’t surprise me to assist to a redefinition of the old continent’s importance in the development of tomorrow’s applications.

According to human resources specialists, IT in Romania is one of the few domains in which the number of available jobs has raised after the beginning of the economical crises and one in which companies compete for the best specialists. The idea that keeps coming up is that in the competition with the low costs of the employees of other geographic areas (such as, for example, Asia), the solution is to migrate from outsourcing to one’s own products, or, in a less radical process, to change the relationship with the clients and turn the status of mere executant (such as it could be induced by the outsourcing model) into a status of consultant (which would turn the IT companies into partners for their customers).

We know from the experience of the industry that the techniques promoted by the Software Craftsmanship movement have the potential to increase the productivity of the development teams. Test Driven Development helps obtaining solutions with better design and more stable in a shorter period of time. Pair Programming helps eliminating the mistakes while the code is produced, fast knowledge dissemination in a team and finding simpler solutions. Continuous Integration helps solving integration issues between components fast and without stress. Continuous refactoring helps keeping the code flexibility, so that when the customers ask for unforeseen functionalities, the team can add them very fast.

Java Messaging Service and associated architectures are an alternative to traditional communication methods and associated architectures such as RPC and distributed systems. The level of trust, flexibility, extensibility and modularity of an application are much higher when using these architectures instead of the classic ways, previously mentioned.

If we think of the most important influence any protocol had over computer communications, it has to be HTTP. This protocol made possible the web we use daily which itself spawned revolution after revolution in these last years. The first web pages were mostly static, few having modest multimedia content. But after a while, complex applications started to emerge prompting developers to hunt and discover the new possibilities as well as the limits of the Internet at that time.

The first TSM delegation abroad took part in the ICT SPRING EUROPE 2013, event that took place in Luxembourg and lasted for two days. The public was numerous and, as partners, we had the opportunity to share our magazine within the event. The stars of the event were Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts. Let us begin with the story of the event. From Cluj, Luxembourg is not very far away, a flight to Charloi (Belgium), and from here, a shuttle directly to our final destination.

The conference I T.A.K.E. UNCONFERENCE happened in Bucharest on 30-31 of May and it was more than just a conference. The speaking part was about code and new techniques for programmers, testers, architects, technical managers. Over these two days a lot of interesting things happened.

In December 2012 I accepted a very interesting challenge: to become the programme manager of Springboard, one of the best (no modesty, I know, but that’s a fact) European accelerator programmes. The 2013 edition also brought an element of absolute novelty: it was the first European programme dedicated to hardware startups, a very interesting movement which followed a 2012 year full of news for the hardware developers.