NServiceBus
As part of Opp Link’s commitment to staff training I was recently allowed to go along to a course all about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) at Skills Matter in London. The full name of the course was “Udi Dahan’s Enterprise Development with NServiceBus“. The really cool thing is that the course is run by the chap who actually wrote NServiceBus. Which meant he really knew what he was talking about.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with Course, developmentteam.
It is now three weeks since David Cameron became Prime Minister. During this time we have seen the publication of the Government’s Coalition Agreement, the announcement of £6.2 billion of spending cuts and the Queen’s Speech, setting out the proposed legislative programme for the next 18 months. The focus has inevitably been on the plans to reduce the budget deficit, alongside reforms to the political system, schools and welfare. However, both of Opportunity Links’ current priority areas - families and adult social care - have also received some attention.
The Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow has been appointed as a Minister within the Department of Health, with specific responsiblity for social care. He has stated that “urgent reform of the social care system is at the top of our agenda” - a comment reinforced by the confirmation within the Queen’s Speech that a Commission on long-term care will be established and report within a year. In addition, the Coalition Agreement sets out the Government’s intention to support elderly people to live at home for longer, re-establish the link between earnings and the state pension, extend the rollout of personal budgets and priorise dementia research - all signs that the Government recognises the urgent need to address the issues raised by our ageing population. Realistically, we can not expect social care to be immune to spending cuts. However, with reports also emerging that the final year of the Social Care Reform Grant will remain ringfenced (although possibly reduced) it appears that this area at least remains firmly on the Government’s agenda.
The situation is less clear for families. The change from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to the Department for Education could be read as a sign that families will have a lower priority under the new regime - particularly when coupled with the Secretary of State, Michael Gove’s, comment that the Department will refocus on “its core purpose of supporting teaching and learning”.
However, this is not an area which has been abandonned completely. We have both a Minister for Children and Families (Sarah Teather - interestingly also a Liberal Democrat) and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Tim Loughton). Equally, a chapter of the Coalition Agreement is dedicated to families and children. This sets out a commitment to keep the goal to end child poverty by 2020, retain both Sure Start and tax credits (although with some reshaping) and support the provision of free nursery care. In addition, a system of flexible parental leave may be introduced and greater access rights for non-resident parents and grandparents are to be explored. Whilst this may not represent the levels of investment we have seen over the last decade, it does at least avoid the full-scale cuts of initiatives such as Sure Start and tax credits that had been predicted a year or so ago.
However, whilst we can be tentatively positive about these initial signs, it is the detail that will be important. The decisions about which aspects of support for families and social care will be prioritised, which programmes discontinued, which agencies scrapped and which grants cut should emerge over coming weeks and months. With first an emergency budget on 22 June and then the Comprehensive Spending Review in the autumn, there is still much left to confirm about the future for families and adult social care under this Government.
Posted in News, Uncategorized.
Tagged with Adult Social Care, coalition government, families, spending cuts.
Uk Tech days
Here are the thoughts of 3 of our developers who were lucky enough to go along to
the Microsoft tech-days 2010 event.
Day 1 - Visual Studio 2010 Launch Day
“The First day of the event introduced the long awaited Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
(VS 2010) and some of its new features. Microsoft have been working hard to bring
together the development and testing by adding “MS Test and Lab Manager” this allows
testers to record and log their actions so developer can see exactly how the bug
was created. Other useful user interface features included code zoom and the ability
to use VS 2010 across two monitors, speeding up development. They have also made
it much easier to write applications for multi core processor, unleashing the processing
power of most modern computers.”
Mark Few – Web Developer
Continued…
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with developmentteam, Events, microsoft, uktechdays.
Chief Executives of Councils in England have now been notified of their allocation of the final year of the Social Care Reform Grant. The purpose of this grant is to support local authorities (LA) and their partners to deliver the transformation of adult social care (ASC) originally set out in 2007 in Putting People First. The funding allocated is substantial: in addition to a £237 million revenue grant, a further £33.5 million capital funding has been allocated to help LA with infrastructure costs which underpin the required change.
As both Putting People First and the recent Local Authority Circular make clear, the outcomes of this transformation are not limited to public services targeted at those eligible for state funding. Rather, future social care should also encompass self-funders, those who might need services in the future and those with lower level and preventative social care needs as well as families and carers. In addition, support needs to be shaped around individuals, enabling them to help themselves and each other.
It is therefore unsurprising that access to universal, joined up information and advice (I&A) has been identified as one of the five priority areas for this first stage of the transformation, and as such is an area for which LAs should use this year’s Social Care Reform Grant funding.
To view information on Opportunity Links work within this area go to our website.
Chief
Posted in Uncategorized.
Yesterday we submitted our response to the Families and Relationships Green Paper: Support for All.
Overall, Opportunity Links welcomes the value given to families by the Green Paper, and particularly its recognition of the important role of high quality, accessible information and advice. We also agreed with the Green Paper that the role played by family members other than mothers - including grandparents, kinship carers and fathers - should be acknowledged and supported.
Our response focussed primarily on the proposals put forward around information and advice for families, and specifically addressed consultation question 6, which asked: “Would a comprehensive advice service on family issues based on successful models like NHS Direct and the NHS Carers Direct service make it easier for families to find the help they need? This could consist of a national online service coupled with a single telephone number.”
In responding to this question, we reviewed priorities that our work in this area over the past 15 years has shown are critical for information and advice to reach and be of value to those who need it. We also took into account feedback from Families Information Services, and other key stakeholders, gained through discussion and consultation at a number of regional sessions.
We concluded that a national comprehensive advice service could help families to find the help that they need. However, we believe that this should complement, rather than replace or duplicate, existing information and advice provision such as FIS and is likely to require significant investment to be successful.
We see potential benefits as including:
- Increased public awareness and access to information, assuming a strong brand and marketing approach similar to NHS Direct
- Simplicity of a single number / website, linked to the specialist and local support required, through which to direct all enquiries about family issues
- Extended access, ideally through a 24/7 phone line and website
- Increased integration across the current range of services and delivery points, leading to efficiencies and reducing duplications.
Our response also included a number of specific recommendations covering points which we believe are required to ensure such a service truly supports the needs of parents and families. These include a clearly defined brand and scope (also incorporating local and specialist services); integrated service delivery; and recommendations for ensuring needs are understood and met, such as training and experience of staff responding to phone enquiries.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Opportunity Links Web Developer, Hans Keller, is taking part in two marathons with just over a month apart.
On Sunday 7th March he completed the Cambridge Marathon in 3 hours 46 minutes, and in just under a months time on Sunday 11th April, Hans will be joining 40,000 other runners in the Marathon de Paris.
Hans is raising money for UNICEF, the world’s leading organisation working for children and their rights in more than 190 countries.
Commenting on his fundraising efforts, Hans said: “I really enjoyed taking part in the Cambridge Marathon and I am now training hard to beat my time in the Marathon de Paris. I’m also pleased to be raising money for such a good cause”.
Anyone wishing to donate money should go to www.justgiving.com/cambridge-paris.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Introduction
Working in the development team at Opportunity Links has its benefits:
- Membership to the Cambridge
NxtGenUG.
- Yearly visits to development conferences such as:
- Regular Hack days
- MSDN Subscriptions
- Technical books when ever you want
Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework
This year we were lucky enough to get 2 days of
Steven Standerson’s time to help
us kick start a new Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 project. I saw Steven presenting at
the Stackoverflow conference in Cambridge last year and was very impressed with
how much information he managed to cram into a 1 hour slot. I spoke to him after
his talk and asked him if he had any tips on getting started with MVC on
something a little more “enterprise size” and he had lots of say on the matter. So
when we were asked to start “Project X”, we were very keen to get our
hands dirty with Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2. Mainly because of how free you are
with the mark up and how much that will help us utilize jQuery.
Steven was the obvious choice of consultant to help us kick start the project as
he’s been doing regular screen casts for the
TekPub series on MVC 2. Myself and
the other 2 Senior Web Developers (Jez and Mark) locked ourselves away for 2 days to grill
Steven on all things MVC 2.
Day 1
After initial introductions and a bit of background Steven was able to get going
with a potential solution right away. The things we covered in day 1 were:
- Picking an IoC library and getting that into the project. In the end we opted
for Ninject.
- Deciding that we were going to use the view model approach and putting the
architecture in place for that.
- Getting started with JQGrid and
jQuery in MVC 2.
- Using the new Strongly typed Helpers in the view model
- Using EditorTemplates
- Linking the MVC Validation to our own business rules.
Day 2
Day 2 was all about creating a working POC. It included the following things:
- Dropping in AutoMapper for the left right code.
- Creating a full editor page with Lists/Popups and all done client side for a
rich user experience.
- Decision about how to handle state.
Conclusion
Development Team with Steven Sanderson
The 2 days were really useful for us and we learnt a hell of a lot. Mainly how
much javascript and jQuery we are going to be using in this new project. This
will hopefully provide our customers with a very rich user experience and will
get as close as we can get to working on a desktop application. After the
meeting i quickly ordered jQuery in action as I think it’s going to be a major
requirement of this new project.
You can hire Steven your self through his
web site.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with asp.net, developmentteam, jobs, mvc.