WordPress or Drupal - Think before you decide

In the world of online content management system, WordPress and Drupal are quite popular. Both are open source, built on MySQL+PHP. Both the systems have plenty of features which make them so popular amongst developers. Often, when a developer is new in this field, he or she feels confused about which one to use, which system would give the maximum benefit with the least amount of fuss. So here are the advantages and disadvantages of both the systems to help you determine which one suits your needs better.

WordPress

WordPress is much preferred by those who are in publishing or news business. 68 million or even more websites use this platform which makes it the favorite blogging software of the world. Its flexible nature allows enough power for the sporadic updating of personal journals along with blogs of fortune 500 companies.

Advantages

Plugin library- Being a favorite in open-source developer community, it has a huge plugin library with hundreds of thousands developed plugins.

Multiple authors- The build of WordPress is such that multiple authors can be accommodated easily which is a very important feature in serious publications.

Strong SEO capabilities- It has plugins such as All in One SEO which helps you begin blogging immediately after installation, without any worries regarding on-page SEO.

User-friendly- The UI of WordPress is extremely user-friendly as well as intuitive, so much so that even first-time bloggers will not feel awkward while using it. Installing as well as setting up of WordPress Blog is very easy thing to do. Just drop a theme, then add some plugins to start blogging. There is no need of technical experience.

Flexibility- Virtually anything can be done here- all thanks to customized themes as well as plugins.

Disadvantages

Limited capabilities- The original purpose of the platform was to aid in blogging. This affects the ability of handling large amounts of content. When the volume of content is high in case of large publishers, then the default backend may turn out to be underwhelming.

Incompatibility with old plugins- New updates are constantly released by the development team so that patch problems or security loopholes can be fixed. However, the problem arises when they often turn out to be incompatible with old ones.

Security- It is often targeted by hackers since the software it not very secure one; third-party plugins must be installed so that the security can be boosted.

Drupal

Released in 2001, it has a long legacy. It is quite powerful but developer-friendly, making it popular for data-intensive, feature-rich websites.

Advantages

Flexibility- Whether it is a simple blogging forum or a powerful backend supporting thousands of pages along with millions of users, Drupal can handle all. It is powerful as well as flexible.

Developer-friendly- It is quite simple to conduct basic installation which encourages developers to create solutions which gives them a huge range of possibilities.

Stability- Scaling of the platform is effortless with plenty of stability. It has strong ACL capabilities as well as version control, aiding it to handle a huge amount of content easily.

Disadvantages

Lack of themes and plugins- Plugins, known as modules in Drupal are mostly not available for free. In fact, there are very few themes which makes the website after normal installation look absolutely bare.

Difficult to learn- When you move to Drupal from WordPress, things really seem to be complicated. Without reading thoroughly and strong coding capabilities people might feel at loss.

While choosing either of the two, the main thing to be kept in mind is the nature of business. You have to remember that there are different priorities for different businesses. When deciding you have to understand your requirements and how can they be served by whichever application is chosen by you. Neither is perfect but there are redeeming features which will aid you. Drupal web application development teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide Drupal development services. If you would like to hire Drupal developers from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.

Why Should You Care About Security Issues In Software Development?

The most effective methodology that is followed during the process of software development involves the following stages:

• A thorough analysis of the problem.
• Detailed market research.
• Taking stock of requirements for a particular business solution that is proposed.
• Designing a definite plan, mechanism or design for coming out with a SW-based solution.
• Implementing the SW.
• Testing or evaluating the SW.
• Deployment of the SW.
• Post-installation, maintenance along with debugging of the SW.

These stages are often collectively referred to as Software Development Lifecycle, or SDLC. However, this process of SW development is not without the blues. The process is quite often plagued by a lot of issues that include safety threats of different types.

At this juncture, it perhaps will not be immaterial to discuss about a SSLP or a Software Lifecycle Professional. A SSLP is a professional who has the responsibility of building a SW package and ensure that it is not prone to any kind of security breaches. There is no software in the world that is 100 per cent safe as well as secured. However, a SW can always be designed, developed, as well as deployed with a well protected mindset along with various necessary safety controls that will readily minimize the probability of the system getting exposed to any security threat and get exploited. The responsibility of the SSLPs is also to make sure that if by any chance the package is exposed to any security threat, the impact is minimal.

Furthermore, when we discuss about the issue of safety in SW development, there are certain issues one should care about, when developing a particular software. The issues are:

• Maintenance of confidentiality, which provides protection from disclosure.
• Maintenance of integrity, to provide protection from alteration.
• Ready availability, that provides protection from destruction.
• Authentication, which helps detect the individual who has made the authorized request for using the package, evaluation of the rights as well as privileges that the requestor enjoys.
• Able management of sessions, exceptions and configuration

A thorough knowledge of all these fundamental tenets, along with proper implementation of the same in the package is extremely important, especially when it comes to taking care of the safety issues at the time of development.

Taking care of security issues at the time of software development also helps in identification the sensitivity of a few types of data elements, that may include health records, or information regarding credit card or bank accounts and so on.

The knowledge about software security also includes determination as well as demarcation of issues that are sensitive for the stakeholders, who are involved in the business process. SW systems that are involved in transportation, processing, storing sensitive information must involve SSLP who have a thorough understanding of the security issues that are pertinent to the package that is being developed.

A SSLP needs to be thoroughly acquainted with the process of data classification along with protection mechanisms against divulging or disclosing any information whatsoever. At this point, the issue of data classification can be mentioned. Data classification can be defined as a conscious decision to assign a particular level of data sensitivity that is being created, altered, stored, transmitted, as well as enhanced for the sake of providing maximum safety as well as security to the software in question.

Hence, design as well as development of security features in a package is absolutely imperative. However, designing the security will be absolutely fruitless unless and until there is a definite plan to work on the design and incorporate the required security controls while developing the software development lifecycle.

The need of the hour is hence to plan, develop, as well as deploy a safe as well as secured software. This is clearly evident from various incidents of security breach that have taken place in the industry and the wide range of regulations as well as privacy requirements that one needs to maintain to keep these incidents at bay. To get maximum benefits of software development, you may consider hiring services of a certified software development company India.

We provide software development services. If you would like to hire offshore developers from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.

Making It Easy to Add Jasper Reports Functionality

JasperReports can be defined as an open source reporting tool designed for Java. The tool is specifically designed to write for a wide range of targets that include screen, printers, PDF, MS Excel, HTML, ODT, XML files, RTF, values separated by commas and so on. The tool can also be utilized in various applications that are enabled by Java. The apps may also include Java EE or other web applications, for generation of dynamic contents. It also has the ability to read instructions from .jasper or XML files.

As JR is not a standalone tool, it is not possible to install it all by itself. Instead, you will have to embed it into any specific Java application, by the process of including the application library in its CLASSPATH.

Before going through the process of adding functionalities of the JR, let us go through the features thereof. The principle features that JasperReports come ups with include:

• Flexible layouts of reports.
• Ability of textual and graphical representation of data.
• Ability to help developers to supply data in a number of ways.
• Ability to accept data from a wide range of data sources.
• Ability to generate watermarks, which is like a secondary image that a primary image is covered by.
• Ability to generate subreports.
• The capability of exporting a wide variety of reports to different formats.

Report Generation

Generation of reports is pretty common, though it may be a tedious and at times, a time consuming task for the programmers. In the past, generation of reports has chiefly been restricted to the realm of large scale commercial products like Crystal Reports. However, at present, with the availability of open source report generating tools like JR, developers of Java get a credible alternative option, other than any commercial software.

Adding JasperReports functionalities

When it comes to adding JR functionalities, the first thing that needs to be understood is the objects that the tool uses for representing the process of reporting on its way to report generation from report designing.

JasperDesign: It represents the definition of a report. In most of the cases, Jasper Design can be created from an XML report template, although it can be created from the programmer's perspective.

JasperReports: It represents a compiled or collated JasperDesign. The process of collation itself verifies the report design and compilation of the same into a specific JasperReports object.

JasperPrint: It represents a generated report and can be created from JasperReports that can be populated with the data obtained from data source.

The flexibility of the API in JasperReports helps the user in loading objects of JasperDesign, JasperReports, as well as JasperPrint from a specific file or stream and create these objects programmatically. It is also possible to print reports to printers, images, as well as PDF files. The library comes up with a façade class, dori.jasper.engine.JasperManager along with various methods of filling, loading, compiling, as well as methods of printing reports.

Again, so far as printing reports is concerned, documents generated by JasperReports library can be printed out with the use of the net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperPrintManager class. Users can export the generated reports to other formats that may include PDF, HTML as well as XLS. Facade classnet.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperExportManager is there to help users achieve this particular functionality. Exporting here denotes transforming the JasperPrint object (.jrprint file) into a different format.

In case of any real-world application, it is virtually not practicable to load or compile JasperDesign whenever there is any need of report generation. As the designs of these reports are mainly static, in the majority of instances, the users would require precompiling of the JasperDesign files, for increasing the speed. However, the speed of even larger reports can be increased by generating as well as saving objects of JasperPrint.

Open source JasperReports can, therefore, meet the demands and the needs of Java reporting in a great way. That is why, when it comes to building any reporting application or adding reporting capability to any existing application, JasperReports comes in extremely handy. Outsource reports Development to a company that has years of experince in Reporting services.

We provide Jasper reports software development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified Jasper reports developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Helping end user do more with Crystal Reports

Crystal reports helps in the design, visualization, exploration and delivery of report through web or integrated with enterprise applications. The design of the report is aimed to make the process of simple report creation easy. The comprehensive tools that it has helps you produce specialized or complex reports. Information stored in common database formats along with other uncommon formats may be accessed by it and reports are produced on the data. The aim is a very old one, very necessary and common. The design of this system makes the task quite easy, more powerful and less time-consuming.

Crystal Reports may be able to access information of 6 common categories- ODBC data sources, direct access database files, crystal dictionary files, crystal SQL designer files, business and OLE DB. Every information type has to be accessed through particular DLL or Dynamic Link Library sets as well as other files that are information access related. There are many ways in which the end user may benefit from using this.

Licensing and redistribution- The latest versions do not have a runtime engine and SAP Crystal Report designer may be used for the creation of application studies; the report may be used to integrate applications along with reports. Java along with .net runtime engines can be considered component engines since in-process is run with hosting applications.

Data access- There are broad provisions of information connectivity options that makes accessing of enterprise data very easy so that the information requirements of end user can be satisfied. Access to files, databases, logs, program elements or application systems can be done. 35 data drivers or more may be used for access of any virtual information from nearly any information source having almost any connectivity. In-memory or user-defined application information can be accessed through connection with COM, JavaBeans as well as ADO.NET Data Providers. The end user may also write their very own SQL commands as well as use the reports for the capabilities for proven query generation so that a more flexible control can be had over database connectivity. Unique information source may be connected to or a single report can combine multiple sources of information. The reports can even be integrated with B2C or B2B applications through XML data export or access.

Design and formatting- The presentation and formatting of information can be done with this, that too with a lot of control as well as flexibility. Object-oriented explorers as well as drag-and-drop, intuitive interface may be used for quick design of interactive reports. Common reporting tasks like connecting to data source, grouping, selecting sorting as well as summarizing information can be done by using of optional wizards as well as experts. Any kind of report needed can be virtually created, including conditional, cross-tab, bottom N/top N, drill-down/summary, mailing label, form, subreport as well as OLAP. Your reports' graphical impact may be increased by selecting from a huge variety of chart as well as map types that include 3D bar/bar, doughnut/pie, Gantt, line, funnel, gauge, ranged map, XY scatter, dot density map, etc.

Interaction as well as report viewing- End users are endowed with flexible options so that interaction as well as viewing of information can be done via familiar environments as well as familiar formats. End users can have the reports in whichever format they want simply by exporting them to popular formats like RTF, HTML, PDF, XML, Excel etc. The users can view same data in various ways without the need for creation of multiple reports. Predefined parameters can be selected in single reports so that customized data's subset can be received.

The fastest as well as most convenient way of reading data is by database access. Through Crystal Reports, single layer of data access is used which contacts with data. Despite system environments, report results may be quickly obtained, simplifying data access. Database files of direct access are data sources that are point-and-click. Simply the specific database files have to be selected; all stored data will be read by the application. Outsource crystal reports programming to a company that has years of experince in Reporting services.

We provide Crystal reports application development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified Crystal reports developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Top 3 PHP frameworks to develop applications

PHP frameworks are highly effective tools so far as clean and structured web development is concerned. These help in speeding up the creation as well as maintenance of your PHP web applications. PHP is technically an open source server scripting language and it is widely used for the development of online properties. In the web world, it is the most popular web development tool. Lately, it has introduced a revolution in terms of creating websites with instant page designing. It makes understanding of presentation code, interactive functions and database connection simpler and quicker and hence beginners consider it as a boon.

Moreover, PHP frameworks help to write reusable code. Most of the PHP frameworks follow the MVC or model-view-controller pattern. The MVC pattern ensures separation of presentation and logic.

Here is a discussion about the top 3 PHP frameworks that are based on the MVC design pattern:

1. Yii

Yii is a high-performance component-based PHP framework for building large-scale web applications. It is written in strict OOP and comes with comprehensive tutorials or complete class reference. From DAO/ActiveRecord, MVC, widgets, caching, Web services, hierarchical RBAC to I18N, L10N and theming, Yii provides almost every feature required for advanced Web 2.0 application development of recent times. Yii is one of the best PHP platforms around.

It is an incredibly nimble platform that appeals to the PHP developer willing to develop social applications. It takes care of sql injection, input validation along with other mundane security tasks that are so important for a healthy app. Yii is also a friendly on cross platform development, so if you are moving some code over something that has relied on the Zend or PEAR framework, you will be just fine with it.

2. Symfony

It is one of the most efficient web application frameworks. Symfony intends to accelerate the development as well as maintenance of web applications while replacing the repetitive coding tasks by control, power and pleasure. The very small number of prerequisites makes it easy to install on any configuration and you just need to get Windows or Unix with a web server as well as PHP 5 installed. It is compatible with nearly every database system. Additionally, it comes without incurring much overhead. As a matter of fact, the benefits of the framework do not come at the cost of an increase of hosting prices.

Using this platform is quite natural and easy for emerging web developers, as the learning curve is reduced to less than a day. The code readability as well as clean design will keep your delays short. Developers can use agile development principles like KISS, DRY or the XP philosophy to focus on applicable logic without losing time for writing endless XML configuration files.

In an enterprise context, Symfony is intended to develop robust applications. And, it means that you have complete control over the configuration; from the foreign libraries to the directory structure, almost everything can be customized. For the purpose of matching the development guidelines of your enterprise, symfony is bundled with additional tools. It helps you efficiently test, document or debug your project.

3. Zend

For businesses, the Zend Framework is the best platform as its enterprise support is preferred by companies as well as individuals all around the world. Apart from being a PFP model, Zend also provides several tools for easing the development process, like its own flavor of PHP that is very similar to the open source version, except with more support. Furthermore, it contains a custom server so that you can start having a quick look at your applications, and without too much configuration across various platforms.

There is one more big thing to be excited about this platform. Zend studio offers a perfectly integrated development platform which lets you experience full potentials of the services mentioned above. Zend can be a bit costly, especially if you are an independent developer working on a restricted budget. You can certainly give it a try, in case you aim at investing in one of the best PHP frameworks available in today's market.

In the contemporary business scenario, these top PHP frameworks offer compact features that help PHP scripting gain recognition as well as appreciation among web developers. Several PHP frameworks meet number of requirements for various web-based application development. PHP tools are increasingly being developed to enhance programs making web development simpler, faster and easier. Ultimately, the choice is yours, but hopefully this discussion will help you choose and enjoy the best framework that will make your professional life more organized and more efficient. To get maximum benefits of PHP frameworks, you may consider hiring services of a PHP web development company India.

We provide PHP web development services. If you would like to hire PHP programmer from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.