1. What is the software architecture and platforms for product? Please look for answers in
following things.
I basically follow ERP project life cycle and project induction mechanisms while working
on a big software product which may involve SQL Server 2014, BI, Oracle 12c, Java 8
MVC , business integration, business reliable messaging, ESB Enterprise Architecture or
application server based deployment or .net MVC pages or IIS proxy servers. To my
knowledge, it may take 1 or 1.5 month to induct somebody in the project. Person has to
play with the product, play with software development process, attend technical sessions
and also practice on new syntax immediately. Practice on content management databases
like MONGO db or practice on authentications using LDAP.
Sorry my linked in profile is a mess. Its just a profile. However I am a s trong consultant
who believes in actual hands-on different things. I believe in s upporting legacy
architecture and also help customers migrate to new architecture. I believe in knowing
and showing actual development work on dashboards, portals, work flows, hierarchical
databases, rule engines, SOA services, widgets, BI portal. I believe release and product
development versions and also specific technical versions used from open source
s oftwares to build a large product.
INDUCTION FOR A TECHNICAL CONSULTANT:
1) I believe in product documentation, technical documentations from usage and
administration perspectives. I als o believe in lots of technical documentations and
technical sessions from YouTube for technical open source versions and code
development re-factoring guidelines. Ibelieve in software standards and software review
process as well and as a matter of fact starts with me as the first step towards a building
block. Believe in dependency component loading mechanism when time comes to add a
s pecific customer extension.
Its more about knowing product tools, various pieces, development tools, monitoring
tools, security architecture, deployment architecture. Later its more about working with
custom fields, custom tables, custom services, custom routines, custom database objects,
c ustom screens , custom process maps, custom dashboards.
2) Offer a tool to design screens. May be a technical specific version and syntax.
Go through different type of screens and portals and securities . Browser compatibility
can be checked by using specific plugins, available from the browsers. Support new
2. ECMA Scripting standards. Product also provides error handling mechanism and lots of
standard errors getting generated from the product itself.
3) Try to study existing modules and its tables designs . Now add the custom fields
necessary for data changes with naming conventions. Also create data retrieval
routines and queries which will help to retrieve data.
4) Use Oracle12c and SQL Server 2014 to build databases, may be hierarchical for
certain entities.
5) Using tool like user interface builder, build multiple sections, multiple pages, and
databases behind the scene. Use generic questionnaire module and wizard/process UI
flow module to develop faster. Certain flows and steps can be enabled or disabled.
Locate all the necessary fields and also UDAs for each step and screen.
Follow Step 2.
6) Expose and Enable Product services. Expose Security interfaces and its custom
authentications, and new custom services will follow registration like existing services
and then probably be used from the existing main screens or custom screens …. This
might take care of XSS and CSRF security tokens too, and maintain dashboard
authenticated session.
7) Lot of stuff like translations, label keys will come from the database or from
resources. This follows I18N standards and internalization process. There might be a
database translation generator which generates all translations and caching services.
There might be a UI component , now-a-days even browsers need components which
can be plugged into product widgets to enable translator and translation services.
8) There can be a lot of security rules, meta data security groups , exclusion, inclusion
rules which can come from the database. This also means user interface menus and
responsibilities.
9) Most of the UI data can be cached with the help of caching services.
10) Use Hierarchical data representations for different things like entity1, entity2, etc.
Typical Entities which follow these HDR(hierarchical data representations) are
Structural Units, Business Units, Assets, Chart of Accounts, Locations, Purchase Stores,
Departments, Employees.
3. 11) Build Report Services, Use Cognos Portal or Cognos BI tools , Crystal Reports or
Data Warehousing Report Designer or Jasper Reports or custom code.
Finally product has report wizards, and offers usage of secured dynamic charts and
grids and field selection. User can select basic entity to the particular report belongs to.
12) Every Entity has extensions like UDAs, also known as user defined fields.
Sometimes user defined fields can be added to screen and sometimes to a entity. There
can be a Catalog Service which can retrieve such user defined fields from the databases.
There can be rendering component in product and JavaScript which can render
correctly the user defined fields in a existing screen/panel or new panel.
13) Interface and Integration team - works on importing data from xml csv repository
3rd
party app like SAP or Oracle , Use ETL Mapping tools .
14) Follow Microsoft project while implementation of platforms, and also suggested jira
tracking tools or Issue trackers, Enhancement and Change Request Management,
Estimations Tracker, Agile and Scrum. Agile Certifications and Programming(ACP).
15) Integrate with Oracle Ebusiness Financial Data or say any ERP or 3rd
party product
which has solved the organization problems and earned reputation of long term flexible
functional product. Such ERP products can be Oracle CRM , payroll, HRMS, employees,
service management, customer service, or Microsoft CRM, or SAP HR/Real
Estate/Mortgaging or Kronos Time Management etc…
16) Product has well orchestrated work-flow Engines and escalation mechanisms.
Supports calendars and proxy management, configuring work-flows from template
work-flows , work flow process definitions, either per entity or per scenario, and may
be triggering sub work-flows, and also do a work-list management.
17) Product provides Web services and secured rest services and required client code
interceptors or product side interceptors.
18) Product provides web various data formats like JSON , XML.
19) Product provides Portal and dashboard design.
4. 20) Product provides Mobile Reach applications. Use BootStrap 3 featues, Media
Queries, IPAD applications, Simply Awesome Style-Sheets to style the product.
21) Product handles Batch Jobs, Scheduling, and Data Export/ Import. Product plans for
daily, monthly and financial year jobs. Product offers tool for development, wherein one
can code/configure each step for a particular batch job.
22) Product handles Polling and Email Services, may be create a new email and
escalation server for email rules.
23) Product indicates process completion stages especially when running wizards or
specific business process.
24) Product uses database triggers and stored procedures. This can lead to further
customization for specific customers site
25) Product provides various Hosting Services and client customisation needs on
on-going basis.
26) Product provides cloud service management, may use Amazon or Azure Cloud
technologies and also use a specific server/CPU/memory/database configuration.
27) Provides document management, WCM - web content management
28) Integrate with other content management tools or other 3rd
party templating tools
and databases like MONGO db
29) Provides Farm Architecture, Infrastructure diagram with routers/switches/IP
transports, indicating hardware and redundancy, clustering and load balancing
30) Product may use other databases like BigData if required.
31) Product provide interfaces with new types of javascript based portals like angular
or ext/sencha or kanoi
32) Product provides alert engines - may be Login alerts…
5. 33) Product provides auditing mechanisms
34) Product provides Analytics, and dimensions design and drill down, drill up facilities
35) Product provides testing frameworks in all above aspects and for all types of
products and layers
36) Product provides play, demo, release specific deployed instances , and opportunity
to enhance deployment architecture.
37) Product provides SSO , SAML , LDAP , custom authentications for organisation.
38) Product provides data partitioning approach and data backup approach. Estimate
volume of data for particular customers . Provide tuning aspects, composite keys and
indices. Provide effective dated queries.
39) Product provides organisation role based process design, process maps, and
workflows.
40) Product provides opportunity to study lot of other modules for the business process
behavior and develop new modules easily
’
41) Product provides setup, General rules, User and Admin Settings, Customer
Settings, System Administrations, Tuning, Linux and Windows 10
42) Product provides customer implementation rules and processes, may vary slightly
for specific customer. May believe in dependency component loading mechanism when
time comes to add a specific customer extension.