SmarterSoftware Blog

Category: English

  • Steuer V0.2 – making progress with my iPhone app

    Over my last few train rides I’ve managed to make some progress in making my app a bit nicer. This is what the old version looked like: Apart from a few “under the hood” things (like moving to a new version of XCode and the SDK, so the simulator looks like an iPhone 4 now),…

  • Unit Testing an iPhone App – Not important to Apple?

    After the base functionality of my iPhone app was in place, I wanted to have a closer look into unit testing. I try to use unit testing where it makes sense when developing for my customers, so I wanted to do that for my own app as well. I was encouraged that there was some…

  • Calculating tax owed – My First iPhone App

    As indicated in my latest blog posts, I’ve started to dabble in iPhone development. As a starting point, I have programmed a little app that calculates income tax owed based on money earned. Use Case The use case for this app is based on my personal situation as a freelancer in Germany. The situation is…

  • Discussing an iPhone App: Settlers of Catan

    Over the last weeks, I’ve been thinking about starting some development for the iPhone. There are some ideas in my head of what I could do, but nothing specific yet. Only thing that I’m sure is that I don’t want to do another “me too” program, but something that really uses the iPhone’s strengths. For…

  • Have you built your DQ trust today?

    For German readers: Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Blogeintrags. In the last time, there have been quite a few posts on using “shame” as a tool for improving data quality. Here are just three from the top of my head: A Data Quality Riot Act by Rob Paller The Poor Data Quality Jar The…

  • Assessing Data Quality – Improve vs. Maintain

    For German readers: Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Blogeintrags. Last week, I was discussing measuring Data Quality with a customer. For a while it seemed we couldn’t agree on anything, until we realized that we were talking about different types of DQ projects: A project geared at improving data quality in a specific area…

  • The DQ Cycle – a Procedure for dealing with Data Quality issues

    For German readers: Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Blogeintrags. In the past, I have outlined elements to take into account when starting a DQ initiative. This post describes how to deal with Data Quality issues. Some Background The Deming Cycle is an established iterative four-step problem-solving process typically used in business process improvement. It…

  • 5 Elements of Building a Data Quality Fire Department

    For German readers: Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Blogeintrags. In one of my last posts, I painted a picture of the Data Quality Middle Ages and the resulting fire storms. This post explores the elements on how to move from the Middle Ages into modern times, using a Fire Department as a metaphor. Photo…

  • Wild stuff: Nines complement date format

    For German readers: Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Blogeintrags.   Photo from Picture Taker 2 at flickr.com This is the first in what I hope to be a series of some wild stuff I have to deal with: Strange formats, encodings and data modeling decisions that I or others come across.  This post is…

  • Preventing the “Great DQM Fire”

    For German readers: Es gibt eine deutsche Version dieses Blogeintrags. When dealing with the Middle Ages, there are a lot massive fires that destroy entire cities. An example is the "Great Fire of London" (see Wikipedia article). It lasted four full days in September 1666 and destroyed four fifths of the City of London, including…