It has been a while since our last update, so here is what we have been up to lately with Mongosis; our component for integrating MongoDB and Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. Version 1.5 Enhanced the collection editor so that it functions when it is enclosed in a sequence, for or foreach container. Version 1.6 Improved handling of BSON ObjectId and BSON … Continue reading
Saving Your Bacon!
It’s only a handful of days to go before the awesome Devs Love Bacon conference opens it’s doors. We’re proudly sponsoring this two-day event which starts this Friday, centered around ‘things developers love.’ Topics this year, amongst others, range from Lego to data visualisation, from API’s to rockets and from Raspberry PI to, of course, bacon! Grab yourself a ticket … Continue reading
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"Install All The Things!": a Capistrano extension to run Puppet
If you use Capistrano to deploy applications onto Unix systems you may find our new tool Capistrano-ext-puppetize useful. Now instead of having to prepare your deployment host beforehand with all the third party libraries and tools it might need (Ruby interpreter, databases, development libraries, ImageMagick, redis, etc) you can keep a Puppet manifest alongside your codebase in a Git repository, and … Continue reading
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On Desire Paths
When we talk about ‘understanding users’ and providing a ‘frictionless experience’, we are talking about alignment to a user’s desire path. A desire path is the route which most people do or wish to take, regardless of how the current landscape has been intended to be navigated. You see manifestations of desire paths every day in the physical world (see … Continue reading
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JavaScript is difficult to test?
JavaScript is difficult to test? Well that is what I thought, until someone introduced me to Jasmine, no not Aladdin’s girlfriend, Jasmine Testing Framework. Intro Firstly, I’m no JavaScript guru, my knowledge level is VERY basic. I do work with JavaScript and jQuery, but previously have not really tried to write tests for it. Instead I have usually copied code … Continue reading
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Beware of GitHub File Caching
As we released our latest version of Mongosis today we found a slight quirk with GitHub downloads where it appears to be caching files by name and size. For performance it’s not necessarily a bad thing but it’s important to be aware of; particularly in the following case: In order to create a consistent URL to download the latest version of Mongosis (without … Continue reading
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Mongosis Updates
Over the past few months we’ve been making some updates to Mongosis; our component for integrating MongoDB and Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. Here’s a quick summary of the recent changes: Version 1.1 We added the ability to read data from the slave node of a MongoDB replica set. Version 1.2 We added support for the ‘_id’ field. Version 1.3 We … Continue reading
Summer with Simply Business: Reflections of a Tech Intern
London for the summer! The opportunity was too good to pass up — I’d never been to Europe, and finding a tech-related position abroad (with time blocked off at the end for Euro-tripping, of course) seemed like the perfect way to spend a summer. I had no idea what to expect from an insurance company or the country, and I … Continue reading
Hackunamatata: The Results!
On the days leading up to the 28th/29th June we made a lot of noise about #hackunamatata. Our two hack-days have since passed and as the dust has settled, we’ve been left with some remarkably impressive projects. On Monday morning we tied it all up with the project demonstrations, voting and the final results. For a bit of background, see the project pitches and … Continue reading
Life’s a pitch.
And we’re off! Everyone’s gathered into the big meeting room, ready to either give or vote on those daring to put forward their pitch for the hack day next week! Watch here for live updates: 11:33am – Arvi is pitching his idea for a tool to regain control of the data that other people hold about you. 11:40am – Next … Continue reading
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