recent meetings
07/16/08: "The Productive Programmer" by Neal Ford
06/24/08: "Groovy and Grails" by Sonny To
03/26/08: "Monitoring Software Quality With Continuous Integration" by Andrew Glover
"Mapping the Architecture of Applications, Frameworks, and Databases with a Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM)" by Neeraj Sangal
Sponsored by Lattix
Abstract
The use of DSMs in development organizations is quickly replacing many other methods of visualization and development. With the increasing complexities of development and the time pressures associated with deadlines, developers and architects need to do more (accurately) with less time. You will learn a new and highly scalable approach that utilizes inter-module dependencies to represent your system. Created at MIT, a DSM is used to map not just individual applications but also how they relate to databases and frameworks like Spring and Hibernate. You will learn how to apply a DSM to identify patterns and weaknesses in your software, how you can make it part of your development process to track architectural evolution, and how you can use it to plan for refactoring. We will use real examples of Java applications to show how systems become tangles and couples without visibility and how to avoid development problems before they become issues at test.
DSMs have a broad appeal. Uses include: software design and visualization, reverse engineering, refactoring, dependency management, impact analysis (even into the database) and architecture management. Many organizations have used DSMs to instantly identify negative cyclical dependencies that break systems. One large team was able to use the impact analysis to shorten the time to respond to change requests from days to minutes. Others have used it to define the architecture and let the development team use the DSM as a blueprint. Stay ahead of the curve and learn about this fast growing technology.

Speaker Bio
Neeraj Sangal is President and CTO of Lattix, a company specializing in Software Architecture Management solutions and services. He has analyzed the architecture of many large software systems. Over the last few years, Neeraj has pioneered the use of Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) in software architecture. This new approach utilizes dependencies for the creation of highly scalable models that permit a precise specification and enforcement of the architecture. Prior to Lattix, Neeraj was President of Tendril Software, a leader in model-driven development and synchronized UML™ models. Tendril was acquired by BEA/WebGain. Prior to Tendril, Neeraj managed a distributed development organization at HP. Neeraj is a regular speaker at technical conferences, user groups and industry events including JavaOne where he received a top 10% rating as a presenter granting him a “Java Rock Star” status.
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