Atom (standard)

The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.

Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a web site. To provide a web feed, a site owner may use specialized software (such as a content management system) that publishes a list (or "feed") of recent articles or content in a standardized, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by web sites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow Internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content.

A feed contains entries, which may be headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries, and/or links to content on a web site, along with various metadata.

Partition (database)

A partition is a division of a logical database or its constituting elements into distinct independent parts. Database partitioning is normally done for manageability, performance or availability reasons.

A popular and favourable application of partitioning is in a distributed database management system. Each partition may be spread over multiple nodes, and users at the node can perform local transactions on the partition. This increases performance for sites that have regular transactions involving certain views of data, whilst maintaining availability and security.

The partitioning can be done by either building separate smaller databases (each with its own tables, indices, and transaction logs), or by splitting selected elements, for example just one table.

Term sheet

A term sheet is a bullet-point document outlining the material terms and conditions of a business agreement. After a Term Sheet has been "executed", it guides legal counsel in the preparation of a proposed "final agreement". It then guides, but is not necessarily binding, as the signatories negotiate, usually with legal counsel, the final terms of their agreement.

Term sheets are very similar to "letters of intent" (LOI) in that they are both preliminary, mostly non-binding documents meant to record two or more parties' intentions to enter into a future agreement based on specified (but incomplete or preliminary) terms. The difference between the two is slight and mostly a matter of style: an LOI is typically written in letter form and focuses on the parties intentions; a term sheet skips most of the formalities and lists deal terms in bullet-point or similar format. There is an implication that an LOI only refers to the final form. A term sheet may be a proposal, not an agreed-to document.

Cowboy coding

Cowboy Coding is a term used to describe software development where the developers have autonomy over the development process. This includes control of the project's schedule, algorithms, tools, and coding style.

A Cowboy Coder can be a lone developer or part of a group of developers with either no external management or management that controls only non-development aspects of the project, such as its nature, scope, and feature set. (The "what", but not the "how").

Cowboy Coding can have positive or negative connotations, depending on one's opinions on the role of management and formal process in software development; "Cowboy Coding" is often used as a pejorative term by supporters of software development methodologies, such as Agile.

30 Useful PHP Classes and Components « PHP::Impact ( [str Blog] )

Simplicity and extensibility are the main reasons why PHP became the favourite dynamic language of the Web. In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale Web systems.

Below I present 30 useful PHP classes and components that you can use to test, develop, debug and deploy your PHP applications. Let me know if I missed anything or if you have something to add.

Database

Creole

Creole is a database abstraction layer for PHP5. It abstracts PHP’s native db-specific API to create more portable code while also providing developers with a clean fully object-oriented interface based loosely on the API for Java’s JDBC. Creole was originally created as a sub-project of Propel to meet specific needs that none of the available abstraction la ...

Reactor pattern

The reactor design pattern is a concurrent programming pattern for handling service requests delivered concurrently to a service handler by one or more inputs. The service handler then demultiplexes the incoming requests and dispatches them synchronously to the associated request handlers.

Scrum (development)

Scrum is an iterative incremental process of software development commonly used with agile software development. Despite the fact that "Scrum" is not an acronym, some companies implementing the process have been known to adhere to an all capital letter expression of the word, i.e. SCRUM. This may be due to one of Ken Schwaber's early papers capitalizing SCRUM in the title.^[1]

Although Scrum was intended to be for management of software development projects, it can be used in running software maintenance teams, or as a program management approach.

How to successfully launch a social networking development platform. « You’ve gotta be kidding me

I decided to jot down some observations and thoughts on launching successful social networking development platforms… like the one facebook launched at f8, Bebo’s clone of facebook’s, or the one MySpace will be launching, etc.  This is a list of some observations of what facebook (and Bebo) did well pre-, at, and post-launch.

1. Create a feeling of technological openness. Top-notch developers love to know the ins and outs early - seeing the early bugs, unfinished features, etc. Visiting and engaging the CTOs of pre-launch partner companies will create instant camaraderie between the platform development team and the developer community.

2. Treat developers equally, but leverage the best ones by letting them closer in. After launch, quickly giving the technically superior developers direct access to members of the platform team (via a special email address and IM), will allow them to report and help debug real-time performance problems, and further ...