Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Latente Steuern im externen Rechnungwesen unter Berücksichtigung von BilMoG

Belegarbeit zum Thema Latente Steuern unter Berücksichtigung von BilMoG & IFRS.
 
Download Paper (PDF)
Hosted on GoogleDocs

Download Slides (PDF)
Hosted on GoogleDocs

cheers Alex

Friday, November 4, 2011

SAP: Einsatz und Entwicklung innerhalb von SAP ERP Systemen auf Basis der SAP NetWeaver-Plattform

Usage and development within SAP ERP applications based on the SAP NetWeaver platform
I wrote a paper about SAP. The paper includes SAP SaaS, SAP PaaS, NetWeaver Architecture, SAP Frontend Technologies, Development within SAP (ABAP & Co.) and describes the Commercial and OpenSource competitors of SAP. The paper is written in german and is a good introduction into SAP especially for SAP beginners.

Download Paper (PDF)
Hosted on GoogleDocs

Cheers Alex

Abstract
In dieser Projektarbeit wird das SAP ERP System auf Basis der SAP NetWeaver-Plattform evaluiert.Die Evaluierung soll einem Unternehmen dienen, dass eine ERP Software im Betrieb zu implementieren plant. Aus diesem Grund werden sowohl die fachlichen Funktionen als auch die technischen Grundlagen eines SAP Systems dargestellt. So kann das Unternehmen seine Anforderungen mit den gegebenen SAP Funktionalitäten abgleichen und überprüfen ob ein SAP System in die technische Systemlandschaft integriert werden kann. Zudem wird auf die Entwicklung und weitere Technologien eingegangen um die Anpassungsfähigkeit eines SAP Systems an die unternehmensspezifischen Eigenheiten zu zeigen. Alternative ERP Systeme sind ein weiterer Bestandteil dieser Projektarbeit. Als Ergebnis der Evaluierung dient diese Ausarbeitung auf deren Grundlage das Unternehmen die Entscheidung für ein SAP ERP System oder für eine der genannten Alternativen trifft.
The following project assignment evaluates the SAP ERP systems based on the SAP NetWeaver platform. The evaluation will serve as an overview for a company which wants to implement an ERP system. For that reason the business functionality as well as the technical basis of a SAP system are shown. Afterwards the company will be able to compare its requirements to the given SAP functionality and check whether the SAP system can be integrated into the existing IT landscape.
Furthermore, the development and additional technologies are described to show the adaptability of a SAP system to company-specific issues. Alternative ERP possibilities are shown as well. This paper can help a company to determine whether to implement a SAP ERP system or whether to implement an alternative ERP system.


Tuesday, October 25, 2011

((Ceylon vs. Kotlin) vs. Scala) vs. The Rest of the World

The blog title sounds a bit like buzzword bingo, doesn't it? Damn, I forgot to mention Gosu.

There are quite many new brand-new-must-have-technologies these days.
There are Android, HTML5, PhoneGap, CoffeeScript, node.js, Websockets, Flex, Adobe Air, REST, JSON, BSON, AMQP, RabbitMQ, JEE6/7, Cloud (you know, everything is in the cloud today), NoSQL, SaaS/PaaS/IaaS, and of course, Ceylon, Kotlin, Gosu, Clojure, Scala, Groovy, JRuby and all the other JVM based programming languages.
So, how should look a really, really cool application? Android Mobile Frontend written in Scala, REST Interface to get some data from a server which is written in Ceylon which access a NoSQL HBase Database via Map/Reduce to read&write Big Data. Our server is hosted on AWS (plain Tomcat, Glassfish or JBoss AS on AWS or should we use OpenShift from RedHat rather than Amazon?), of course. Oops, I forgot a non-smart-phone client. Ok, web-based client written in... hmmm... JSF? GWT? Wicket? JavaFX 2.0? Flex? Silverlight? or just plain HTML5 with a ass kickin' Websocket connection to our server? Ok we pick HTML5. But when I wanna pick HTML5 and I do not wanna write so much JavaScript by myself (even if the new JavaScript API is pretty cool in HTML5) I am gonna need a full-fledged JavaScript Library/Toolkit. No problem at all. What do you want? jQuery, dojo, ExJS, MooTools, scriptaculous or YUI? Whatever... just pick jQuery as everybody does... (BTW I did not mention AJAX because it is not buzzword-noteworthy anymore. Even Comet/Bayeux got the kiss of death from Websockets...)

Puhhh, buzzword scrabble finished and application architecture defined. Nope. We have made a mistake. There isn't a compiler for Ceylon yet. Someone told me Ceylon is a vaporware until now. Ok, replace Ceylon with Kotlin. Ops, there isn't a compiler for Kotlin as well. Doesn't matter let's assume that I can run my Ceylon/Kotlin code (instead of just write them down on some slides). What should we choose? Ceylon or Kotlin? In the following you will find a short feature comparison. It is a non-offical and subjective comparison from my point of view. It relies on the information which is available until now. Found any mistakes? Just leave a comment!

Enough said. Here is the comparison. BTW I did not include Scala because it is "to academic/function/not functional enough/..." ;-)

Comparison is not finished yet. I will update it from time to time.


Ceylon
Kotlin
Source Code organization (Java's packages)
derived from the file path of the source code file e.g. Class Person in package org.j4fry.mypkg must be in directory org/j4fry/mypkg/Person.ceylon
import org.j4fry.mypkg { Person }
uses namespaces e.g.
namespace org.j4fry.Person
with import statement
import org.j4fry.Person
Semicolons
mandatory
optional
Return types (Java's void)
uses void keyword which is, in fact, a return type named Void
shared abstract class Void() of Object|Nothing {}
uses Unit
Unit is a tuple of zero components (Tuple0) e.g.
fun myFunc( ) : Unit {… }
String interpolation
shared variable Natural c := 10
writeLine("Value of c " c "!");
var c = 10
print("Value of c ${c} !")
Using types and type inference
like Java
String s = "Ceylon"
With type inference
local s = "Ceylon"
Like Scala:
val c : Int
With type inference
val c = 10
Mutable and Immutable
Mutable: local, variable (with := assignment)
class C { shared variable Natural c := 10 }
Immutable: without variable
class C { shared Natural c = 10; }
Mutable: var
public class C(){private var c : Int = 0;}
Immutable: val
public class C(){private val c : Int = 0;}
Fields and Properties (Java's Getter&Setter Freak-Show)
Actually there are only properties (like in C#)
public class C() {
public val mutable_name : String
public var immutable_name : String
get() = …
set(value) { $immutable_name = value }
}
Accessability, Visibility & Modifiers (Java's public, protected, private and default scope)
Doesn't know the usual modifiers. Uses instead the shared keyword which controls the visibility of attributes, methods, classes, etc. depending on the context e.g.
non-shared class à class only visible to classes in the same package
shared class à class visible to other packages
shared class C( ) { … }
Uses Java's access modifiers private, protected and public. Additionally internal modifier. Probably internal works like the C# internal modifier e.g. visible in same namespace?
Enums (Java's enum)
Not included. Use of clause (mention subtypes in the base-class signature) in combination with anonymous classes.
Like Java enums on steroids. You can subclass enums in Kotlin and there are some other enum features in Kotlin e.g. member overriding, enum pattern-matchin, etc.
Inheritance
Uses the extends clause in class signature but different annotations to declare overridable and overridden methods.
class Base( ) {
shared default String doSth() {…}
}
class Subclass() extends Base() {
shared actual String doSth() {…}
}
Overloading
Not supported. Use optional parameters instead. Comment of Kotlin FAQ: "Ceylon is Java-incompatible, because it does not support overloading"
Interfaces


There are some heated discussions about Ceylon and Kotline already.

Pro Ceylon

Contra Ceylon


On the following websites you could find the resources which I have used to create the above mentioned comparison:

Resources Ceylon

Resources Kotlin

Hopefully you have learnt to understand the irony and sarcasm at the beginning of this blog post. It doesn't matter which programming language you choose. It is only important to try out new things because "Standstill".means("Falling Behind")

cheers Alex