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• Field symbol and Data reference in SAP-ABAP

  - by PDP-21

  If we compare field symbol and data refernece with that of the pointer in C i concluded that :- In C language, Say we declare a variable "var" type "Integer" with default value "5". The variable "var" will be stored some where in the memory and say the memory address which holds this variable is "1000". Now we define a pointer "ptr" and this pointer is assigned to our variable. So, "&ptr" will be "1000" and " *ptr " will be 5. Lets comapre the above situation in SAP ABAP. Here we declare a Field symbol "FS" and assign that to the variable "var". Now my question is what "FS" holds ? I have searched this rigorously in the internet but found out many ABAP consultants have the opinion that FS holds the address of the variable i.e. 1000. But that is wrong. While debugging i found out that fs holds only 5. So fs (in ABAP) is equivalent to *ptr (in C). Please correct me if my understanding is wrong. Now lets declare a data reference "dref" and another filed symbol "fsym" and after creating the data reference we assign the same to field symbol . Now we can do operations on this field symbol. So the difference between data refernec and field symbol is :- in case of field symbol first we will declare a variable and assign it to a field symbol. in case of data reference first we craete a data reference and then assign that to field symbol. Then what is the use of data reference? The same functionality we can achive through field symbol also.

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• Now Available: Profit November 2012

  - by user462779

  The November 2012 issue of Profit is now available. In the five years I've worked on Profit, there has been measurable interest in content related to project management. Stories featuring project management as a key component have resulted in extra clicks, likes, and RTs (for you Twitter users) from our readers. I've chatted about this with Oracle customers, partners, and experts and received an assortment of ideas about why this might be. This issue of Profit is a bit of a culmination of those conversations, and the trends that are driving interest in project management best practices. Also, two online developments for Profit: check out my newly relaunched blog, Editor's Notebook, at blogs.oracle.com/profit, where readers can get a peek at the development of each issue of Profit as it happens. We've also launched a new LinkedIn group for our social media-inclined readers. In this issue: Three Keys to Project Management What can organizations with world-class project management teach the rest of us? Strong Medicine Gilead Sciences simplifies business processes to establish a foundation for continued growth. Architects of Reform Enterprise architecture plays an essential role in establishing Oregon as a leader in healthcare reform. Answering the Call Turkcell CIO Ilker Kuruoz finds IT-powered growth and innovation to be the calling card for success. Projected Results Sound project management practices and technology can have an immediate impact on the bottom line. Preparing for Impact Plans for dealing with enterprise information will define the big data winners. Is one issue of Profit not enough to get you through to February? Visit the Profit archives, or follow @OracleProfit on Twitter for a daily dose of enterprise technology news from Profit.

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• design in agile process

  - by ying

  Recently I had an interview with dev team in a company. The team uses agile + TDD. The code exercise implements a video rental store which generates statement to calc total rental fee for each type of video (new release, children, etc) for a customer. The existing code use object like: Statement to generate statement and calc fee where big switch statement sits to use enum to determine how to calc rental fee customer holds a list of rentals movie base class and derived class for each type of movie (NEW, CHILDREN, ACTION, etc) The code originally doesn't compile as the owner was assumed to be hit by a bus. So here is what I did: outlined the improvement over object model to have better responsibility for each class. use strategy pattern to replace switch statement and weave them in config But the team says it's waste of time because there is no requirement for it and UAT test suite works and is the only guideline goes into architecture decision. The underlying story is just to get pricing feature out and not saying anything about how to do it. So the discussion is focused on why should time be spent on refactor the switch statement. In my understanding, agile methodology doesn't mean zero design upfront and such code smell should be avoided at the beginning. Also any unit/UAT test suite won't detect such code smell, otherwise sonar, findbugs won't exist. Here I want to ask: is there such a thing called agile design in the agile methodology? Just like agile documentation. how to define agile design upfront? how to know enough is enough? In my understanding, ballpark architecture and data contract among components should be defined before/when starting project, not the details. Am I right? anyone can explain what the team is really looking for in this kind of setup? is it design aspect or agile aspect? how to implement minimum viable product concept in the agile process in the real world project? Is it must that you feel embarrassed to be MVP?

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• Is this an acceptable approach to undo/redo in Python?

  - by Codemonkey

  I'm making an application (wxPython) to process some data from Excel documents. I want the user to be able to undo and redo actions, even gigantic actions like processing the contents of 10 000 cells simultaneously. I Googled the topic, and all the solutions I could find involves a lot of black magic or is overly complicated. Here is how I imagine my simple undo/redo scheme. I write two classes - one called ActionStack and an abstract one called Action. Every "undoable" operation must be a subclass of Action and define the methods do and undo. The Action subclass is passed the instance of the "document", or data model, and is responsible for committing the operation and remembering how to undo the change. Now, every document is associated with an instance of the ActionStack. The ActionStack maintains a stack of actions (surprise!). Every time actions are undone and new actions are performed, all undone actions are removed for ever. The ActionStack will also automatically remove the oldest Action when the stack reaches the configurable maximum amount. I imagine the workflow would produce code looking something like this: class TableDocument(object): def __init__(self, table): self.table = table self.action_stack = ActionStack(history_limit=50) # ... def delete_cells(self, cells): self.action_stack.push( DeleteAction(self, cells) ) def add_column(self, index, name=''): self.action_stack.push( AddColumnAction(self, index, name) ) # ... def undo(self, count=1): self.action_stack.undo(count) def redo(self, count=1): self.action_stack.redo(count) Given that none of the methods I've found are this simple, I thought I'd get the experts' opinion before I go ahead with this plan. More specifically, what I'm wondering about is - are there any glaring holes in this plan that I'm not seeing?

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• NoSQL

  - by NoReasoning

  Last night, (Tuesday, June 28), at the KC .NET User group meeting, George Westwater gave a terrific presentation on NoSQL. The best way to define it (the best way is to see George explain it, and he says he will record his presentation and make it available through his blog – link above)  is databases  that does not use relational technology. And his point, and this is true – I have been around awhile – is that non-relational databases have been used for over 50 years in the business. He points out that Wall Street firms have been using non-relational technology ever since they started using computers. IBM still fully supports IMS, now in version 11 (12 is in beta), because these firms are still using this product and will continue to do so for a long time. Of course, like a lot of computer business technology, there are a lot of new NoSQL products available these days, simply as a reaction to the problems of scaling relational databases for internet use. As a result, it almost looks as though NoSQL is something new. And there are a lot, I mean a LOT, I mean a L-O-T , of new products out there for this technology. The best resource to cover all of these products is http://nosql-database.org/, which has a huge listing of what is available. My interest in the subject is primarily due to my interest in Windows Azure and the fact that Windows Azure storage is all non-relational, even the table storage. It is very fascinating and most of all, far cheaper than using SQL Azure for storage in the “cloud."

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• It could be worse....

  - by Darryl Gove

  As "guest" pointed out, in my file I/O test I didn't open the file with O_SYNC, so in fact the time was spent in OS code rather than in disk I/O. It's a straightforward change to add O_SYNC to the open() call, but it's also useful to reduce the iteration count - since the cost per write is much higher: ... #define SIZE 1024 void test_write() { starttime(); int file = open("./test.dat",O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_SYNC,S_IWGRP|S_IWOTH|S_IWUSR); ... Running this gave the following results: Time per iteration 0.000065606310 MB/s Time per iteration 2.709711563906 MB/s Time per iteration 0.178590114758 MB/s Yup, disk I/O is way slower than the original I/O calls. However, it's not a very fair comparison since disks get written in large blocks of data and we're deliberately sending a single byte. A fairer result would be to look at the I/O operations per second; which is about 65 - pretty much what I'd expect for this system. It's also interesting to examine at the profiles for the two cases. When the write() was trapping into the OS the profile indicated that all the time was being spent in system. When the data was being written to disk, the time got attributed to sleep. This gives us an indication how to interpret profiles from apps doing I/O. It's the sleep time that indicates disk activity.

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• Putting DSMD into Remission

  - by Justin Greenwood

  As a programmer with over ten years of professional experience, I've often suffered from DSMD (distraction surplus/motivation deficit) disorder. I know I'm not alone. Many of my colleagues have shared their experiences with this productivity cancer to me in support groups or in moments of inebriated intimacy. Often, I observe friends unknowingly surrendering to it - sitting at their computer, cycling through the same set of web sites (blogs, facebook, youtube, news providers, wikipeida, etc.), over and over again. Intermittently, they get up, take a walk around the office, make small talk with their colleagues, get another cup of coffee, then sit down and start the cycle all over again. It is completely controlled by the subconscious mind and will destroy your ability to get into that groove you used to live in back in your better days. Programming requires extended periods of focused attention, and this type of behavior will really kill productivity and in the end, when deadlines are near, launch your stress level to near emotional breakdown levels.DiagnosisThe best way to diagnose infection is to completely disconnect your devices from the internet while working. If you find yourself launching web browsers every minute or so, then you're down with the sickness.TreatmentA few techniques I've found that will help send this ailment into regression are as follows:Segment your day into two to three hour work segments. For example: 9:00-11:00, 1:00-3:00, 3:30-5:00.Define a few small one to two hour tasks you want to accomplish in your day. Assign each of those tasks to one of the short work segments.If possible, turn off the internet and any other distractions during these work segments (at least until you regain control of your browsing habits) - this includes instant messaging and email. You can check your email and waste time surfing in the hours between work segments.Reward yourself on productive days with a beer or whatever butters your muffins.

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• Data base structure of a subscriber list

  - by foodil

  I am building a application that allow different user to store the subscriber information To store the subscriber information , the user first create a list For each list, there is a ListID. Subscriber may have different attribute : email phone fax .... For each list, their setting is different , so a require_attribute table is introduced. It is a bridge between subscriber and List That store Listid ,subid , attribute, datatype That means the system have a lot of list, each user have their own list, and the list have different attribute, some list have email , phone , some may have phone, address, name mail.. And the datatype is different, some may use 'name' as integer , some may use 'name' as varchar attribute means email phone, it is to define for which list have which subscriber attribute datatype means for each attribute, what is its datatype Table :subscriber : Field :subid , name,email Table :Require Attribute: Field : Listid ,subid , attribute, datatype The attribute here is {name, email} So a simple data is Subscriber: 1 , MYname, Myemail Require Attribute : Listid , 1 , 'email', 'intger' Listid , 1 , 'name', 'varchar' I found that this kind of storage is too complex too handle with, Since the subscriber is share to every body, so if a person want to change the datatype of name, it will also affect the data of the other user. Simple error situation: Subscriber: list1, Subscriber 1 , name1, email1 list2, Subscriber 2 , name2 , email2 Require Attribute : List1 , Subscriber 1 , 'email', 'varchar', List1 , Subscriber 1 , 'name', 'varchar', Listid , Subscriber 2 , 'email', 'varchar', Listid , Subscriber 2, 'name', 'integer', if user B change the data type of name in require attribute from varchar to integer, it cause a problem. becasue list 1 is own by user A , he want the datatype is varchar, but list 2 is won by user B , he want the datatype to be integer So how can i redesign the structure?

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• Interpolation between two 3D points?

  - by meds

  I'm working with some splines which define a path a character follows (you can see a gameplay video here to get a better understanding of what's going on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BndobjOiZ6g). Basically the characters 'forward' look direction is set to the 'forward' direction of the spline and when players tilt their phone left and right the character is strafed along its 'right' coordinate. The issue with this is (rather obviously) in performance, interpolating over a spline to find the nearest position and tangent relative to the player is an incredibly costly operation. To get by this I cache a finite number of positions in what I call 'SplineDetails', the class is as follows: public class SplineDetails { public SplineDetails() { Forward = Vector3.forward; Position = Vector3.one * float.MaxValue; Alpha = -1; } public float Alpha; // [0,1] measured along length of spline where 0 is the initial point and 1 is the end point of the spline public Vector3 Position; // the point of the spline at this alpha public Vector3 Forward; // the forward tangent of the spline at this alpha } I populate this with say 30 coordinates and I can give a rough estimate of a coordinate and 'forward' based on a position past in. It's not as accurate but it's much faster. But now I'd like to make the system work better by estimating positions and 'forward' directions by interpolating between two of the cached points though I'm stuck trying to figure out some logic. My first problem is, how can I determine between which two points the object is? Given each point can be placed at different intervals along the spline it could mean that two points in front or behind the object can be closer to the object. The other problem is to figure out the proportion between the two paths it's between, i.e. if there is a point a at coordinate (0,0,0) and point b at coordinate (1,0,0) if the object is at position (0.5,0,0) then the result it should give is '0.5' (as it is equal distance away from point a and point b). That's a simple example, but what if the object is at coordinate (0.5,3,0) for example?

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• Speed up ADF Mobile Deployment to Android with Keystore

  - by Shay Shmeltzer

  As you might have noticed from my latest ADF Mobile entries, I'm doing most of my ADF Mobile development on a windows machine and testing on an Android device. Unfortunately the Android/windows experience is not as fast as the iOS/Mac one. However, there is one thing I learned today that can make this a bit less painful in terms of the speed to deploy and test your application - and this is to use the "Release" mode when deploying your application instead of the "Debug" mode. To do this you'll first need to define a keystore, but as Joe from our Mobile team showed me today, this is quite easy. Here are the steps: Open a command line in your JDK bin directory (I just used the JDK that comes with the JDeveloper install). Issue the following command: keytool –genkey –v –keystore <Keystore Name>.keystore –alias <Alias Name> -keyalg RSA –keysize 2048 –validity 10000 Both keystore name and alias names are strings that you decide on. The keytool utility will then prompt you with various questions that you'll need to answer. Once this is done, the next step is to configure your JDeveloper preferences->ADF Mobile to add this keystore there under the release tab:  Then for your application specific deployment profile - switch the build mode from debug to release. The end result is a much smaller mobile application (for example from 60 to 21mb) and a much faster deployment cycle (for me it is about twice as fast as before).

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• Jittery Movement, Uncontrollably Rotating + Front of Sprite?

  - by Vipar

  So I've been looking around to try and figure out how I make my sprite face my mouse. So far the sprite moves to where my mouse is by some vector math. Now I'd like it to rotate and face the mouse as it moves. From what I've found this calculation seems to be what keeps reappearing: Sprite Rotation = Atan2(Direction Vectors Y Position, Direction Vectors X Position) I express it like so: sp.Rotation = (float)Math.Atan2(directionV.Y, directionV.X); If I just go with the above, the sprite seems to jitter left and right ever so slightly but never rotate out of that position. Seeing as Atan2 returns the rotation in radians I found another piece of calculation to add to the above which turns it into degrees: sp.Rotation = (float)Math.Atan2(directionV.Y, directionV.X) * 180 / PI; Now the sprite rotates. Problem is that it spins uncontrollably the closer it comes to the mouse. One of the problems with the above calculation is that it assumes that +y goes up rather than down on the screen. As I recorded in these two videos, the first part is the slightly jittery movement (A lot more visible when not recording) and then with the added rotation: Jittery Movement So my questions are: How do I fix that weird Jittery movement when the sprite stands still? Some have suggested to make some kind of "snap" where I set the position of the sprite directly to the mouse position when it's really close. But no matter what I do the snapping is noticeable. How do I make the sprite stop spinning uncontrollably? Is it possible to simply define the front of the sprite and use that to make it "face" the right way?

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• With Slick, how to change the resolution during gameplay?

  - by TheLima

  I am developing a tile-based strategy game using Java and the Slick API. So far so good, but I've come to a standstill on my options menu. I have plans for the user to be able to change the resolution during gameplay (it is pretty common, after all). I can already change to fullscreen and back to windowed, this was pretty simple... //"fullScreenOption" is a checkbox-like button. if (fullScreenOption.isMouseOver(mouseX, mouseY)) { if (input.isMouseButtonDown(Input.MOUSE_LEFT_BUTTON)) { fullScreenOption.state = !fullScreenOption.state; container.setFullscreen(fullScreenOption.state); } } But the container class (Implemented by Slick, not me), contrary to my previous beliefs, does not seem to have any resolution-change functions! And that's pretty much the situation...I know it's possible, but i don't know how to do it, nor what is the class responsible! The AppGameContainer class, used on the very start of the game's initialization, is the only place with any functions for changing the display-mode that I've found so far, but it's only used at the very start, and i haven't found a way to travel back to it from my options menu. //This is my implementation of it... public static void main(String[] args) throws SlickException { AppGameContainer app = new AppGameContainer(new Main()); // app.setTargetFrameRate(60); app.setVSync(true); app.setDisplayMode(800, 600, false); app.start(); } I can define it as a static global on the Main, but it's probably a (very) bad way to do it...

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• What do you wish language designers paid attention to?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  The purpose of this question is not to assemble a laundry list of programming language features that you can't live without, or wish was in your main language of choice. The purpose of this question is to bring to light corners of languge design most language designers might not think about. So, instead of thinking about language feature X, think a little more philisophically. One of my biases, and perhaps it might be controversial, is that the softer side of engineering--the whys and what fors--are many times more important than the more concrete side. For example, Ruby was designed with a stated goal of improving developer happiness. While your opinions may be mixed on whether it delivered or not, the fact that was a goal means that some of the choices in language design were influenced by that philosophy. Please do not post: Syntax flame wars (I could care less whether you use whitespace [Python], keywords [Ruby], or curly braces [Java, C/C++, et. al.] to denote program blocks). That's just an implementation detail. "Any language that doesn't have feature X doesn't deserve to exist" type comments. There is at least one reason for all programming languages to exist--good or bad. Please do post: Philisophical ideas that language designers seem to miss. Technical concepts that seem to be poorly implemented more often than not. Please do provide an example of the pain it causes and if you have any ideas of how you would prefer it to function. Things you wish were in the platform's common library but seldom are. One the same token, things that usually are in a common library that you wish were not. Conceptual features such as built in test/assertion/contract/error handling support that you wish all programming languages would implement properly--and define properly. My hope is that this will be a fun and stimulating topic.

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• First Shard for SQL Azure and SQL Server

  - by Herve Roggero

  That's it!!!!! It's ready to go and be tested, abused and improved! It requires .NET 4.0 and uses some cool technologies, like caching (the new System.Runtime.Caching) and the Task Parallel Library (System.Threading.Tasks). With this library you can: Define a shard of 1, 2 or 100 SQL databases (a mix of SQL Server and SQL Azure) Read from the shard in parallel or sequentially, and cache resultsets Update, Delete a record from the shard Insert records quickly in the shard with a round-robin load Reset the cache You can download the source code and a sample application here: http://enzosqlshard.codeplex.com/  Note about the breadcrumbs: I had to add a connection GUID in order for the library to know which database a record came from. The GUID is currently calculated on the fly in the library using some of the parameters of the connection string. The GUID is also dynamically added to the result set so the client can pass it back to the library. I am curious to get your feedback on this approach. ** Correction from my previous post: this is a library for a Horizontal Partition Shard (HPS): tables are split across databases horizontally. So in essence, the tables need to have the same schema across the databases.

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• Object oriented wrapper around a dll

  - by Tom Davies

  So, I'm writing a C# managed wrapper around a native dll. The dll contains several hundred functions. In most cases, the first argument to each function is an opaque handle to a type internal to the dll. So, an obvious starting point for defining some classes in the wrapper would be to define classes corresponding to each of these opaque types, with each instance holding and managing the opaque handle (passed to its constructor) Things are a little awkward when dealing with callbacks from the dll. Naturally, the callback handlers in my wrapper have to be static, but the callbacks arguments invariable contain an opaque handle. In order to get from the static callback back to an object instance, I've created a static dictionary in each class, associating handles with class instances. In the constructor of each class, an entry is put into the dictionary, and this entry is then removed in the Destructors. When I receive a callback, I can then consult the dictionary to retrieve the class instance corresponding to the opaque reference. Are there any obvious flaws to this? Something that seems to be a problem is that the existence static dictionary means that the garbage collector will not act on my class instances that are otherwise unreachable. As they are never garbage collected, they never get removed from the dictionary, so the dictionary grows. It seems I might have to manually dispose of my objects, which is something absolutely would like to avoid. Can anyone suggest a good design that allows me to avoid having to do this?

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• When can you call yourself good at language X?

  - by SoulBeaver

  This goes back to a conversation I've had with my girlfriend. I tried to tell her that I simply don't feel adequate enough in my programming language (C++) to call myself good. She then asked me, "Well, when do you consider yourself good enough?" That's an interesting question. I didn't know what to tell her. So I'm asking you. For any programming language, framework or the like, when do you reach a point were you sit back, look at what you've done and say, "Hey, I'm actually pretty good at this."? How do you define "good" so that you can tell others, honestly, "Yeah, I'm good at X". Additionally, do you reach these conclusions by comparing what others can do? Additional Info I have read the canonical paper on how it takes ten-thousand hours before you are an expert on the field. (Props to anybody that knows what this paper is called again) I have also read various articles from Coding Horror about interviewing people. Some people, it was said, "Cannot function outside of a framework." So they may be "good" for that framework, but not otherwise in the language. Is this true?

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• Installing 13.04 on an EFI partition - Share with Windows 8?

  - by mengelkoch

  Information I've found here suggests that for my system, I need to install 13.04 into an EFI-type partition, since it needs to boot as UEFI. I also understand it is advisable to have only ONE EFI partition on the disk; I've read here that it is OK for Ubuntu and Windows to share the same partition (please confirm). When I try to install into the existing EFI drive, I get the message "No root file system is defined. Please correct from partitioning menu." Do I change the EFI boot partition to another type? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? If I change it to Ext4 Journaling File System, I am given the opportunity to define the '/' Mount point. I haven't proceeded beyond this point for fear I am going to destroy Windows 8 by altering this partition. BTW, I created three partitions in Windows before installing, per the helpful response to my previous question. But if I try to install into the partition I created for Ubuntu, I get the "No root file system..." error again.

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• Easy to use JSON Web Service Hosts?

  - by Serguei Fedorov

  I saw this being used by someone in a college class once and cannot find anything that is analogous to it. I am not sure if this is the right place to ask about something like this, but hopefully I can get some direction. I want to write an app which uses web services that can obtain and push data back to the client apps. Right now I am gathering up the design and documentation of this app. Not having to code the web service myself would reduce development time by a lot; instead using an easy to setup web service that will be easy to setup and manage. Either XML based on JSON based is totally fine; though I would prefer JSON for its reduced overhead. Like I said I have seen this demonstrated before; you define the data structure to be stored and how it is treated. I cannot find the person who demonstrated this; hopefully maybe someone can suggest something? The service he used was free with a limited amount of requests allowed. EDIT: He was using an online service to do this not a script which is installed onto an existing web hosting account. Thank you!

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• Flow Fields in Dynamics NAV

  - by T

  I don’t know the exact business reason but someone asked how to identify all sales shipping orders with any negative quantities on them.  They needed to print these separately from the shipments that only have all positive quantities. Here is one way to solve this problem In NAV, open Sales Shipment Header Add a field of type Boolean (The field type should match the value you expect to return from the flow field method.  In this case we will use an exist so we expect a bool but we could have used a Sum, Average, Min, Max, Count, or a Lookup to return a value). Define it as a flow field and click on the ellipse next to CalcFormula Now [Has Negative Qty] is false if no negatives exist And [Has Negative Qty] and true if a negative exist So it is ready to be used as a filter on the report. Don’t forget that if you are using it in code, you may need to CalcFields. Hope that helps.  If you really can’t afford the field in your header, you can use code to check the lines for a negative value each time and use a skip or break function to skip that header record but it seems expensive to check them all if you only want a few to print. Please let me know if you think of a better solution.

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• Constituent Experience Counts In Public Sector

  - by Michael Seback

    Businesses and government organizations are operating in an era of the empowered customer where service  and communication channels are challenged every day.  Consumers in the private sector have high expectations from purchasing gifts online, reading reviews on social sites, and expecting the companies they do business with to know and reward them.   In the Public Sector, constituents also expect government organizations to provide consistent and timely service across agencies and touch points.  Examples include requesting critical city services, applying for social assistance or reviewing insurance plans for a health insurance exchange. If an individual does not receive the services they need at the right time and place, it can create a dire situation – involving housing, food or healthcare assistance. Government organizations need to deliver a fast, reliable and personalized experience to constituents. Look at a few recent statistics from a Government focused survey: How do you define good customer service? 70 % improved services, 48% shortest time to provide information, 44% shortest time to resolve complaints What are ways/opportunities to improve customer service? 69% increased collaboration across agencies and 41% increased customer service channels Are you using data collected to make informed decisionsto improve customer service efforts? 39% data collection is limited, not used to improve decision making Source: Re-Imagining Customer Service in Government, 2012 Click here to see the highlights.  Would you like to get started – read Eight Steps to great constituent experiences for government.

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• Why should I use MSBuild instead of Visual Studio Solution files?

  - by Sid

  We're using TeamCity for continuous integration and it's building our releases via the solution file (.sln). I've used Makefiles in the past for various systems but never msbuild (which I've heard is sorta like Makefiles + XML mashup). I've seen many posts on how to use msbuild directly instead of the solution files but I don't see a very clear answer on why to do it. So, why should we bother migrating from solution files to an MSBuild 'makefile'? We do have a a couple of releases that differ by a #define (featurized builds) but for the most part everything works. The bigger concern is that now we'd have to maintain two systems when adding projects/source code. UPDATE: Can folks shed light on the lifecycle and interplay of the following three components? The Visual Studio .sln file The many project level .csproj files (which I understand an "sub" msbuild scripts) The custom msbuild script Is it safe to say that the .sln and .csproj are consumed/maintained as usual from within the Visual Studio IDE GUI while the custom msbuild script is hand-written and usually consumes the already existing individual .csproj "as-is"? That's one way I can see reduce overlap/duplicate in maintenance... Would appreciate some light on this from other folks' operational experience

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• SQL language drawbacks, The Third Manifesto

  - by David Portabella

  Sometime ago I read about SQL language drawbacks (the basic language specification, not vendor specific), and one of the drawbacks was that the language does not allow to create a set of tuples that don't come from a table. For instance, SELECT firstName, lastName from people; this creates a set of tuples coming from the table people. Now, if I don't have this table people, and I want to return a constant, I'd need something like this to return a set of two tuples (this would not require to have a table): SELECT VALUES('james', 'dean'), ('tom', 'cruisse'); Why I would need that? Because of the same reasons that we can define constants (not only basic types, but objects and arrays also) in any advanced programming language. Workarounds, Yes, I could create a temporal table, fill the data, and SELECT from that table. This is a hack, to overcome the drawbacks of the poor SQL language. I think that I read about this somewhere in "The Third Manifesto", but I don't find the paragraph/example talking about this concrete drawback anymore. Do you know a reference about it?

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• How to manage Areas/Levels in an RPG?

  - by Hexlan

  I'm working on an RPG and I'm trying to figure out how to manage the different levels/areas in the game. Currently I create a new state (source file) for every area, defining its unique aspects. My concern is that as the game grows the number of class files will become unmanageable with all the towns, houses, shops, dungeons, etc. that I need to keep track of. I would also prefer to separate my levels from the source code because non-programmer members of the team will be creating levels, and I would like the engine to be as free from game specific code as possible. I'm thinking of creating a class that provides all the functions that will be the same between all the levels/areas with a unique member variable that can be used to look up level specifics from data. This way I only need to define level/area once in the code, but can create multiple instances each with its own unique aspects provided by data. Is this a good way to go about solving the issue? Is there a better way to handle a growing number of levels?

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• Questions before I revamp my rendering engine to use shaders (GLSL)

  - by stephelton

  I've written a fairly robust rendering engine using OpenGL ES 1.1 (fixed-function.) I've been looking into revamping the engine to use OpenGL ES 2.0, which necessitates that I use shaders. I've been absorbing information all day long and still have some questions. Firstly, lighting. The fixed-function pipeline is guaranteed to have at least 8 lights available. My current engine finds lights that are "close" to the primitives being drawn and enables them; I don't know how many lights are going to be enabled until I draw a given model. Nothing is dynamically allocated in GLSL, so I have to define in a shader some number of lights to be used, right? So if I want to stick with 8, should I write my general purpose shader to have 8 lights and then use uniforms to tell it how many / which lights to use? Which brings me to another question: should I be concerned with the amount of data I'm allocating in a shader? Recent video cards have hundreds of "stream processors." If I've got a fragment shader being used on some number of fragments in a given triangle, I assume they must each have their own stack to work on. Are read-only variables copied here, or read when needed? My initial goal is to rework my code so that it is virtually identical to the current implementation. What I have in mind is to create my own matrix stack so that I can implement something along the lines of push/popMatrix and apply all my translations, rotations, and scales to this matrix, then provide the matrix to the vertex shader so that it can make very quick vertex translations. Is this approach sound? Edit: My original intention was to ask if there was a tutorial that would explain the bare minimum necessary to jump from fixed-function to using shaders. Thanks!

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• Java enum pairs / "subenum" or what exactly?

  - by vemalsar

  I have an RPG-style Item class and I stored the type of the item in enum (itemType.sword). I want to store subtype too (itemSubtype.long), but I want to express the relation between two data type (sword can be long, short etc. but shield can't be long or short, only round, tower etc). I know this is wrong source code but similar what I want: enum type { sword; } //not valid code! enum swordSubtype extends type.sword { short, long } Question: How can I define this connection between two data type (or more exactly: two value of the data types), what is the most simple and standard way? Array-like data with all valid (itemType,itemSubtype) enum pairs or (itemType,itemSubtype[]) so more subtype for one type, it would be the best. OK but how can I construct this simplest way? Special enum with "subenum" set or second level enum or anything else if it does exists 2 dimensional "canBePairs" array, itemType and itemSubtype dimensions with all type and subtype and boolean elements, "true" means itemType (first dimension) and itemSubtype (second dimension) are okay, "false" means not okay Other better idea Thank you very much!

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