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From Our Eyepiece Kriyapedia In the Mirror
In the Mirror Kriyapedia From Our Eyepiece

Kriya Kaleidoscope
March 2020 | Issue 3

The wait was too long, isn’t it? But hey, here we are back again with some of the best scoops in this month’s Kriya Kaleidoscope. The impact of COVID 19 is acutely being felt in most parts of the world. With office closures happening all around the world and a shift to Work From Home concept, how do we ensure our employees remain productive when working from home? Check out how Exeter is tackling this situation. We also share our views on XML vs JSON in the Kriyapedia section and discuss how they’re used in the real world. Meanwhile, our organisation has been quite active the past few weeks in various engagement initiatives, check out In the Mirror to know more. We hope you have fun reading this newsletter and would be grateful for your feedback as well. 

Happy Reading! 

Click here for recent issues.

Message from Ravi

"I trust all of you are well and staying safe in the comfort of your own homes. The world has certainly been turned upside down in a matter of days. In Chennai, we have been in complete lockdown since March 24th. We cannot step out of the house except to buy groceries or medicines and that too only at specified times. The lockdown is expected to last till April 14th. We hope that happens as per schedule.

At Exeter, we started working 100% from home from March 20th. It has been an interesting experience for us. All our people settled down quickly into working on their tasks and meeting their deadlines. While we have had a minor decrease in productivity, we have noticed a significant improvement in the way our teams communicate. Information is shared readily and people put their hands up right away when stuck. Reports are being sent out regularly and we have more data being shared than ever before. We do have more web conferences but they invariably lead to decisions being made quickly. Funny how introducing some constraints presents some pleasant surprises :-)

We at Exeter are doing our best to meet the needs of our community at this time. We are actively monitoring all our servers and systems to make sure you get the best experience possible. We hope and pray that the situation improves across the world relatively soon and some degree of normalcy returns. Meanwhile, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us for any requirements you may have. We do have some spare resources and will do our best to address any additional needs you may have."

From Our Eyepiece

Succeeding as a remote company
(By Sowmya Mahadevan)

In a matter of a few weeks, businesses around the world have been forced to stress-test their business continuity plans. Large scale lockdowns across the entire globe have made work from home the new way of life. Given that even world leaders don’t really know when the situation will go back to normal or even what the new normal would look like, I think it is safe to say we are in this mode of working at least for a good part of the near future. 

  • Video conferences have taken over meeting rooms 

  • Chat channels are teeming with messages

  • Kids have suddenly figured out that the best way to earn additional TV time is to ask for it when the parent is on an important conference call

At Exeter, we have always had a robust Business Continuity Plan (BCP) as part of our ISO processes. This BCP plan was also stress-tested during the Chennai floods of 2015 when several parts of the city were inundated. Even in that situation, we had a skeletal team that was able to come into the office to keep key services up and running. However, in today’s lockdown situation, we have had to turn into a 100% remote company and that too within a week's time. 

We are constantly learning and evolving as we go along. Here are some of the remote working strategies that seem to have worked for us -  

  1. Morning Check-in ritual: All team members check-in online on our company intranet at the start of the day. This daily morning ritual has enabled us to keep nurturing the team spirit and help employees feel connected. 

  2. Online video team meetings: Team meetings are conducted via video chats so that some sort of a personal connection is established between different team members. 

  3. Clear EOD Reports: Remote working is plagued by communication challenges. In order to get a handle on who is doing what, we have established a clear end of the day reports that are reported to managers. This discipline has been instilled in all the team members through proper communication and follow-ups and has helped managers tremendously. 

  4. Escalation Board: Every morning the management team gets together to discuss the remote working challenges they have seen or heard from their team members. This list is maintained on an escalation board and is worked through in the order of priority to ensure that anyone who is blocked from being able to get their work done is attended to immediately. 

  5. Global Priority List: Establishing a clear understanding of priorities with our customers has ensured that focus on what is important to our customers.

  6. Remote town hall meetings: We usually have a monthly town hall meeting where the CEO addresses the entire company. Not wanting to give up this tradition, we experimented with a remote town hall system and it turned out to be a huge success. 

Turning into a complete remote company with a week is a challenge for any business. Discipline through established processes and effective communication are key to becoming successful at remote working.  

We would love to hear from you about the techniques that have worked for you.

Kriyapedia

The clash between XML and JSON
(By Jaishankar)

Freedom of choice can sometimes also result in great confusion especially when there are too many options to choose from. From choosing a dress to choosing a restaurant, what matters is the quality, quantity, cost, and accuracy of the product and service.

 

Likewise, whenever a new software project is started, there are a lot of technical questions that pop up. From which technology platform to use to that of databases and APIs, it's a confusing call! 

XML or JSON - the never-ending comparison

When we want to store data in a structured way, both XML and JSON compete with each other. But the question that arises here is why is there a clash between the two? Probably because these are the most widely used formats.

Why should we use XML and JSON?

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) has been in use for many decades, has many ways to validate and follows a defined schema. It has helped in defining a process in a structured way for many companies and has streamlined their technologies. There is Xquery, Xpath that allows us to do a web search in:

  • Metadata applications

On the other hand, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a structured syntax which is a key, value paired data. It can be parsed in almost all programming languages easily. There are a lot of databases that use JSON as their data structure in order to retrieve data at a great speed. It has gained popularity and attention in many areas. JSON is mostly used in:

  • Database

  • Configurations

  • Transferring data

As mentioned above, XML’s purpose is document markup, handling large and complex data. It gives semantic meaning to text through its tree-like structure and can represent mixed content. Having XML as your APIs response or as a configuration can be still done but that is not its purpose. JSON’s purpose is structured data interchange. It serves this purpose by directly representing objects, arrays, numbers, strings, and booleans. Its purpose is distinctly not document markup. Moreover, JSON does not have a natural way to represent mixed content.

Companies use XML or JSON for their APIs and some use both. Many desktop applications use XML only. Major databases which support XML (IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, PostgresQL, BaseX, eXistDB, MarkLogic, MySQL) and major databases that support JSON (MongoDB, CouchDB, eXistDB, Elasticsearch, BaseX, MarkLogic, OrientDB, Oracle Database, PostgresQL).

Which one would be the future?

XML is a document markup that serves schemas and DTD that in my opinion could be used in document creation, manipulation, and storage. It is still heavily used on the web for publishing needs and is considered as a source from which other markup formats (ePub/x-Html) are converted. There are a lot of new devices, products which have been developed in the Internet of Things that are smaller and less powerful than computers and will be in a need to exchange data across the web, the lighter and faster JSON would naturally be preferable to XML. Moreover, REST APIs, NoSQL databases, full-stack javascript, new methods of API development and with the increasing performance, JSON will be more widely used and would replace XML in the software development field. Whereas XML will continue strongly in serving the need for managing documents.

In the Mirror

The sky is the limit


To celebrate the power of womanhood, COO, Sowmya Mahadevan was invited as the guest of honour for the International Women's Day celebration by St. Joseph College of Engineering, Chennai. Ms Mahadevan gave a motivational speech on Business Opportunities for Women. She shared her views on how women could empower themselves and achieve greater heights with confidence.

Make a difference

 

Access to quality education is fundamental to the growth of India. Driven by this motto, we at Exeter, have set out on the journey of educating the underprivileged kids. Exeter Academy has extended support to Shishu Shakthi,  a non-profit trust that works with children from the slums of Chennai. Exeter employees spend their weekends with under privileged youngsters teaming them subjects like English, Maths, Computer Science, General Knowledge, and more. We hope to make a real difference by improving their learning experiences, moulding them to a better tomorrow. Here’s a glimpse of our fun activity sessions at Shishu Shakthi.

Hackerrupt 2020

Exeter Premedia is proud to sponsor ‘Hackerrupt 2020’ Hackathon, a unique event to broaden exposure and foster greater access to the world of computer technology for young coding enthusiasts. Hackathon was conducted by the students of Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering on 14th and 15th of March.

Each month Exeter brings you our reflections (pun intended!) of the ever-changing publishing world. Join us as we share updates and insights through Kriya Kaleidoscope. Click here for recent issues. Would you like to share updates or your views? We would love to hear from you. 
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