Uwe Hansmann

Software Development is moving towards a more agile and more flexible approach. It turns out that the traditional "waterfall" model is not supportive in an environment where technical, financial and strategic constraints are changing almost every day. But what is agility? What are today’s major approaches? And especially: What is the impact of agile development principles on the development teams, on project management and on software architects? How can large enterprises become more agile and improve their business processes, which have been existing since many, many years? What are the limitations of Agility? And what is the right balance between reliable structures and flexibility? This book will give answers to these questions. A strong emphasis will be on real life project examples, which describe how development teams have moved from a waterfall model towards an Agile Software Development approach.

This book describes a new class of computing devices which are becoming omnipresent in everyday life. They make information access and processing easily available for everyone from anywhere at any time. Mobility, wireless connectivity, diversity, and ease-of-use are the magic keywords of Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. Devices include handheld computers, mobile phones, interactive television, smart cards, household appliances as well as intelligent automotive equipment. The book covers these front-end devices as well as their operating systems and the back-end infrastructure which integrate these pervasive components into a seamless IT world. A strong emphasis is placed on the underlying technologies and standards applied when building up pervasive solutions. These fundamental topics include commonly used terms such as XML, WAP, UMTS, GPRS, Bluetooth, Jini, transcoding, and cryptography, to mention just a few. Voice, Web Application Servers, Portals, Web Services, and Synchronized and Device Management are new in the second edition.

Software Development is moving towards a more agile and more flexible approach. It turns out that the traditional "waterfall" model is not supportive in an environment where technical, financial and strategic constraints are changing almost every day. But what is agility? What are today’s major approaches? And especially: What is the impact of agile development principles on the development teams, on project management and on software architects? How can large enterprises become more agile and improve their business processes, which have been existing since many, many years? What are the limitations of Agility? And what is the right balance between reliable structures and flexibility? This book will give answers to these questions. A strong emphasis will be on real life project examples, which describe how development teams have moved from a waterfall model towards an Agile Software Development approach.

This book describes a new class of computing devices which are becoming omnipresent in everyday life. They make information access and processing easily available for everyone from anywhere at any time. Mobility, wireless connectivity, diversity, and ease-of-use are the magic keywords of Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. Devices include handheld computers, mobile phones, interactive television, smart cards, household appliances as well as intelligent automotive equipment. The book covers these front-end devices as well as their operating systems and the back-end infrastructure which integrate these pervasive components into a seamless IT world. A strong emphasis is placed on the underlying technologies and standards applied when building up pervasive solutions. These fundamental topics include commonly used terms such as XML, WAP, UMTS, GPRS, Bluetooth, Jini, transcoding, and cryptography, to mention just a few. Voice, Web Application Servers, Portals, Web Services, and Synchronized and Device Management are new in the second edition.

In today's world, smart cards play an increasingly important role in everyday life. We encounter them as credit cards, loyalty cards, electronic purses, health cards, and as secure tokens for authentication or digital signature. Their small size and the compatibility of their form with the magnetic stripe card make them ideal carriers of personal information such as secret keys, passwords, customization profiles, and medical emergency information. This book provides a guide for the rapid development of smart card applications using Java and the OpenCard Framework. It gives you the basic information you need about smart cards and how they work. It shows in detail how to develop applications that use smart cards by guiding you through examples step by step. A smart card provided with the book will help you to quickly get some first hands-on experience.