In our experience very often when organisations run RFI or RFP tenders for embedding a Data Grid or Data Caching into their Enterprise or Applications they can easily overlook some of things that whilst not immediately important become important overtime. The following shopping list should give an indication of the kinds of questions to ask when considering a DataGrid, Distributed Cache for your applications:

-  What topologies / patterns does it support ?

- How does it support High Availability and Resilience ?

- What management and monitoring features does it have?

- Which languages and interfaces does the API support (.Net, C++, Map (JSR-107), JMS, JDBC)

- Does it support versioning of data items ?

- What is the transactional throughput speed and how does it perform on put/get actions?

- What is the proven and expected Scale at which it function before noticeable or significant degradation?

- Where is it rolled out in production, at what size and what function is it performing?

- Does it have a downloadable test framework available ?

- Does it connect with any third party applications (grid solutions for example), out of the box?

- Which replication strategies does it support?

- Are there sufficient authentication and security features (does it Integrate with Identity management systems ) ?

- Is there support for Multi-tenancy  ?

- What are the available data locking strategies

- What is the maximum number of simultaneous clients that can connect?

- What are Network requirements (for example does it have Unicast and multicast support)?

- Are you planning this to be a Read Mostly,  Read Write or Write Mostly cache ?

-  Think about the features you need now and the future

- Does it support Collections, Lease Management, SQL and Continuous queries.

- Is it Cloud Ready ? Does it Have SaaS cloud licensing ?

- What are the licensing prices ? Are there different prices for different editions ? Or for Adaptors ?

- Does the vendor charge on client connections or client libraries or agents ?

This list is not comprehensive, and certainly not specific to your application, but it does highlight key points to consider. We have this in an excel in which you can change the various weighted factors so that you can easily score a product which really helps when going through this type of evaluations.

Ari Braginsky has put together  a very comprehensive set of links and resources as a Google Doc for iPhone developers . There are Blogs, Twitter accounts, tutorials - lots of stuff. Well worth checking out, as is of course our own hosted resource - TheiPhoneDevPlace.

Firstly, it is assumed you have registered as an iPhone Developer and obtained your certificates etc. If not, there is an excellent article here on how to do that. If the link is down which we have noticed that it is from time to time you can access the cached version here.

When you make any changes, ensure you choose to Build -> Clean. This can make the difference between being succesful and not being successful.

When you application is ready to be put onto the phone you need to ensure you do the following:

Search for Info.plist and then edit the following properties:

1. Bundle Display Name: Enter the product name of your product

2. Executable File: Enter he name of the executable  file

3. Bundle Identifier: This should look as com.<registered name>.${PRODUCT_NAME:identifier}, with you filling in only your registered name

4. Bundle Name - Again enter the product name

Make sure you save the changes

Next you need to create  the file Entitlements.plist by selecting File ->New File ->Entitlements. Name it Entitlements.plist. Ensure you create it in the root directory. Once it is created then uncheck get-task-allow. Save changes.

Go to the project name and choose the info button and choose build and locate:

Code Signing Identity: Enter iPhone Developer: <iPhone developer name> - this is the name you registered with, and note the space after the colon

Code Signing Provisioning Profile: Choose Default Provisioning Profile for Code Signing Identity

Next go to the Target menu, choose the build and locate:

Code Signing Identity: Again enter  iPhone Developer: <iPhone developer name>

Code Signing Provisioning Profile: Again enter Default Provisioning Profile for Code Signing Identity

Ensure you do this for Debug and Release on both the target build and Project Name. If you do this correctly then when you choose to deploy to you device you should be fine. If you get an error go through the steps again and before you make any corrections remember to Build->Clean

Although the book covers a range of technologies it is a good read for anyone who wants a good concise overview of the HPC space, whoever they are

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The core proposition of SaaS is the delivery of multi-tenant servcies from a remote location over an Internet Protocol network via a subscription or outsourcing based contract.

Gartner states that the fastest growing markets for SaaS are office suites and digital content creation.

Gartner seems to be making a reasonable (no brainer) assumption. In an economic downturn one can expect organisations to turn to solutions that offer OpEx rather than CapEx expenditure as well as limting the liability they have by having an ability to turn services on/off on demand. Also the maturing of the market means that there is less risk now in using these services. For example Google now guarantess 99.9% uptime for its online Apps and Amazon has also now issues SLA’s for its S3 storage services.

The courses are incredibly focused and we have had great feedback so far. We have some more courses in the pipeline so watch this space !