my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Open-sourcing some of my project code: Freshcard and MemoEasy

Modern web development and software development in general for that matter wouldn't be possible without FOSS: free open source software. Whether it's web frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, frontend frameworks like AngularJS or enterprise toolkits as for instance Spring, open source software is the solid foundation most modern software is built upon. It's quite likely the technology-fuelled growth we've seen for the last decades wouldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for open source software. So, while saying that open ...

Sunday October 4th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Front End Development, Software, Web Applications

ng-admin: Create admin panels from REST APIs

ng-admin is a helpful AngularJS UI component that automatically creates an admin user interface for RESTful APIs. Such a component is particularly useful for instance with back end applications in enterprise contexts because it allows you to quickly implement and iterate basic user interfaces based on your current model and its API.

Sunday July 5th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Front End Development, Web Applications

Modern SQL (with PostgreSQL)

SQL expert Markus Winand some time ago posted an insightful presentation on Modern SQL (mostly PostgreSQL-focussed) at SlideShare. The 116 slides contain plenty of modern SQL idioms you likely haven't used before. Even if you're an experienced SQL developer the presentation is still worth checking out.

Sunday June 28th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Software, Web Applications

Everything you ever want to know about enterprise sales

This title sounds a bit like dirty secrets, doesn't it? When thinking of enterprise software sales most people think about arcane, lengthy, sometimes sleazy bureaucratic processes entailing: Vendors who are very secretive about pricing: If you have to ask for a price our product isn't for you! Lots of pointless meetings Obnoxious PowerPoint presentations A plethora of stakeholders A decision maker who won't be using the software product being bought and - of course - a user who doesn't have a say but has to use this ...

Sunday June 14th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship

JHipster: A Spring / AngularJS App Generator

You're a boring, hoary Java developer but secretly always wanted to belong to that hip JavaScript-Single-Page-Application crowd? Well, with JHipster now you can! On a more serious note, JHipster is a Yeoman generator that lets you bootstrap integrated Java (for the back-end server stuff) / AngularJS (for everything front-end and UI) web apps. JHipster makes use of proven technologies such as: Grunt Bower AngularJS Maven Spring Boot Spring Web MVC The project's goal is to provide the means for easily creating a beautiful state-of-the-art HTML5 / CSS3 / JavaScript ...

Sunday May 3rd, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Front End Development, Web Applications

FnordMetric and ChartSQL: Create Charts Directly From SQL

FnordMetric is an interesting new software package that allows you to create good-looking charts (in SVG format) directly from SQL using a query language called ChartSQL. The are quite a few examples available here. A typical ChartSQL query for a timeline series chart for instance looks like this: DRAW LINECHART WITH AXIS BOTTOM AXIS LEFT; SELECT 'data' AS series, FROM_TIMESTAMP(time) AS x, value2 * 1000 AS y FROM example_data WHERE series = "measurement2"; The software currently is ...

Sunday January 18th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software

EstiMate – Accurate Crowdsourced Software Development Estimates

Following up on last week's post I've launched a product site / MVP for EstiMate: Software development effort estimation probably is one of the more difficult tasks in software development. Even the most experienced engineers' estimates are off, too every now and then. Being a somewhat disliked task far too often effort estimation is neglected or done in a rather haphazard way. EstiMate tries to solve this problem with a measurable and reliable method for effort estimation that's based on actual data ...

Sunday January 11th, 2015 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Software

ZenQuery is now open source

Today I made ZenQuery available as open source (under the Apache License). ZenQuery is an 'Enterprise Backend as a Service' and allows you to easily access databases through a REST API without any programming knowledge required. Get SQL result sets as JSON, XML or CSV data, which can easily be processed by tools such as MS Excel or in your own applications. ZenQuery provides you with an instant REST API for your SQL queries. Anything that can be expressed by SELECT * FROM ...

Saturday December 20th, 2014 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Front End Development, Software, Web Applications

Spucke, Klebeband und COBOL

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Kürzlich brauchte ich eine Kopie eines bestimmten Kontoauszuges für mein Geschäftskonto. Naiv nahm ich an, dass dies einfach per Online Banking zu erledigen wäre. Leider fehlt eine entsprechende Option im Online Banking System meiner Bank, also rief ich bei der Telefon Hotline an. Dort wollte man mir dann auch in der Tat direkt weiter helfen, benötigte aber das Endsaldo des vorherigen Auszugs, das Anfangssaldo des folgenden Auszugs und den Monat des Auszugs, von dem ich ...

Sunday June 22nd, 2014 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software

ZenQuery 1.0 is available today!

A few weeks ago I wrote about a new product I'm currently developing: ZenQuery, an Enterprise Backend as a Service. I’m pleased to announce the first public version of ZenQuery today. Since the first public announcement regarding ZenQuery roughly 30 days ago we’ve been busy working on this release. Today, you’ll be able to try out ZenQuery 1.0 yourselves on your own server and environment. I really hope you like what we’ve got for you so far. For more information please have a ...

Wednesday May 21st, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Web Applications

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.