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  • How much info can I store in a cookie?

    - by Artemix
    Hi guys, Im developing a flash game and I'd like to know how much info can I store in a browser cookie. The game is simple, but it needs to store several variables in order to save all the details of your current progress. The game is only one swf file, no server, no nothing. I need to know how should I use the cookies to achieve this, and if they have the posibility of doing it, of course. (several = 200 variables i.e)

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  • Is it a bad practice to store large files (10 MB) in a database?

    - by B Seven
    I am currently creating a web application that allows users to store and share files, 1 MB - 10 MB in size. It seems to me that storing the files in a database will significantly slow down database access. Is this a valid concern? Is it better to store the files in the file system and save the file name and path in the database? Are there any best practices related to storing files when working with a database? I am working in PHP and MySQL for this project, but is the issue the same for most environments (Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET) and databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL).

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  • What is the ideal length of a method?

    - by iPhoneDeveloper
    In object-oriented programming, there is no exact rule on the maximum length of a method , but I still found these two qutes somewhat contradicting each other, so I would like to hear what you think. In Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Robert Martin says: The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that. Functions should not be 100 lines long. Functions should hardly ever be 20 lines long. and he gives an example from Java code he sees from Kent Beck: Every function in his program was just two, or three, or four lines long. Each was transparently obvious. Each told a story. And each led you to the next in a compelling order. That’s how short your functions should be! This sounds great, but on the other hand, in Code Complete, Steve McConnell says something very different: The routine should be allowed to grow organically up to 100-200 lines, decades of evidence say that routines of such length no more error prone then shorter routines. And he gives a reference to a study that says routines 65 lines or long are cheaper to develop. So while there are diverging opinions about the matter, is there a functional best-practice towards determining the ideal length of a method for you?

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  • Notifying a separate application of an event

    - by TomDestry
    I have an application that runs through various tasks as an automated process. My client would like me to create a file in a given folder for each task as a way to flag when each task completes. They prefer this to a database flag because they can be notified by the file system rather than continually polling a database table. I can do this but creating and deleting files as flags feels clunky. Is there a more elegant approach to notifying a third-party of an event?

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  • Logarithmic spacing of FFT bins

    - by Mykel Stone
    I'm trying to do the examples within the GameDev.net Beat Detection article ( http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/programming/features/beatdetection/index.html ) I have no issue with performing a FFT and getting the frequency data and doing most of the article. I'm running into trouble though in the section 2.B, Enhancements and beat decision factors. in this section the author gives 3 equations numbered R10-R12 to be used to determine how many bins go into each subband: R10 - Linear increase of the width of the subband with its index R11 - We can choose for example the width of the first subband R12 - The sum of all the widths must not exceed 1024 He says the following in the article: "Once you have equations (R11) and (R12) it is fairly easy to extract 'a' and 'b', and thus to find the law of the 'wi'. This calculus of 'a' and 'b' must be made manually and 'a' and 'b' defined as constants in the source; indeed they do not vary during the song." However, I cannot seem to understand how these values are calculated...I'm probably missing something simple, but learning fourier analysis in a couple of weeks has left me Decimated-in-Mind and I cannot seem to see it.

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  • Should all foreign table references use foreign key constraints

    - by TecBrat
    Closely related to: Foreign key restrictions -> yes or no? I asked a question on SO and it led me to ask this here. If I'm faced with a choice of having a circular reference or just not enforcing the restraint, which is the better choice? In my particular case I have customers and addresses. I want an address to have a reference to a customer and I want each customer to have a default billing address id and a default shipping address id. I might query for all addresses that have a certain customer ID or I might query for the address with the ID that matches the default shipping or billing address ids. I'm not sure yet how the constraints (or lack of) will effect the system as my application and it's data age.

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  • which platform to choose for designing a game

    - by Pramod
    I am new to gaming platform and don't have any experience in gaming as well. I want to develop a small shooting game and don't have any idea from where to start and which platform to use like things. I have some experience in java and .net. Can anyone help me in giving me a start? I don't mind even if this question is voted down or closed. But please do help me. I've tried searching other similar questions but everyone is already into gaming and i can't get any of the words. Please refer me to some books or tutorials

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  • How can I screen clients that try to register multiple times?

    - by Aba Dov
    My company offers a bonus to every client that register. We would like to prevent people from abusing this by registering several times. we thought about filtering clients by ip (there is a problem with workplaces where all stations have the same ip) cookies (if cookies are not allowed we might lose a client) I would like your opinions on these two methods and will be glad to hear about new ones. thanks

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  • Are factors such as Intellisense support and strong typing enough to justify the use of an 'Anaemic Domain Model'?

    - by David Osborne
    It's easy to accept that objects should be used in all layers except a layer nominated as a data layer. However, it's just as easy to end-up with an 'anaemic domain model' that is just an object representation of data with no real functionality ( http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AnemicDomainModel.html ). However, using objects in this fashion brings the benefit of factors such as Intellisense support, strong typing, readability, discoverability, etc. Are these factors strong arguments for an otherwise, anaemic domain model?

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  • Website restyle, SEO migration plan?

    - by Goboozo
    I am currently in a project for one of my biggest clients. We have built a website that will -replace- the old website. When it comes to actual content its is largely the same. However, the presentation of the content has changed drastically. From our point of view much more user-friendly (main reason to update the site). Now, since the sites presentation has changed we have some major changes in: HTML & CSS: To change the presentation of the content URL's: To make them better understandable (301 redirects have been taken care of and are in place) Breadcrumbs: To enhance the navigation (we have made the breadcrumbs match exactly with the url's) Pagination: This was added to enable content browsing Title tags: Added descriptive title tags to the major links and buttons. Basically all user content including meta tags have remained the same. Now since this company is rather successful and 90% of its clients come from Google's organic results I am obliged to take all necessary precautions. People tell me I need a migration plan to prevent the site being hurt in Google, but I have never worked using such a plan... ...So, based on the above. Would you consider a migration plan necessary and what precautions/actions would you recommend to prevent us being put down in our SERP positions? Many thanks in advance for your answers.

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  • Best approach to accessing multiple data source in a web application

    - by ced
    I've a base web application developed with .net technologies (asp.net) used into our LAN by 30 users simultanousley. From this web application I've developed two verticalization used from online users. In future i expect hundreds users simultanousley. Our company has different locations. Each site use its own database. The web application needs to retrieve information from all existing databases. Currently there are 3 database, but it's not excluded in the future expansion of new offices. My question then is: What is the best strategy for a web application to retrieve information from different databases (which have the same schema) whereas the main objective performance data access and high fault tolerance? There are case studies in the literature that I can take as an example? Do you know some good documents to study? Do you have any tips to implement this task so efficient? Intuitively I would say that two possible strategy are: perform queries from different sources in real time and aggregate data on the fly; create a repository that contains the union of the entities of interest and perform queries directly on repository;

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  • Is throwing an error in unpredictable subclass-specific circumstances a violation of LSP?

    - by Motti Strom
    Say, I wanted to create a Java List<String> (see spec) implementation that uses a complex subsystem, such as a database or file system, for its store so that it becomes a simple persistent collection rather than an basic in-memory one. (We're limiting it specifically to a List of Strings for the purposes of discussion, but it could extended to automatically de-/serialise any object, with some help. We can also provide persistent Sets, Maps and so on in this way too.) So here's a skeleton implementation: class DbBackedList implements List<String> { private DbBackedList() {} /** Returns a list, possibly non-empty */ public static getList() { return new DbBackedList(); } public String get(int index) { return Db.getTable().getRow(i).asString(); // may throw DbExceptions! } // add(String), add(int, String), etc. ... } My problem lies with the fact that the underlying DB API may encounter connection errors that are not specified in the List interface that it should throw. My problem is whether this violates Liskov's Substitution Principle (LSP). Bob Martin actually gives an example of a PersistentSet in his paper on LSP that violates LSP. The difference is that his newly-specified Exception there is determined by the inserted value and so is strengthening the precondition. In my case the connection/read error is unpredictable and due to external factors and so is not technically a new precondition, merely an error of circumstance, perhaps like OutOfMemoryError which can occur even when unspecified. In normal circumstances, the new Error/Exception might never be thrown. (The caller could catch if it is aware of the possibility, just as a memory-restricted Java program might specifically catch OOME.) Is this therefore a valid argument for throwing an extra error and can I still claim to be a valid java.util.List (or pick your SDK/language/collection in general) and not in violation of LSP? If this does indeed violate LSP and thus not practically usable, I have provided two less-palatable alternative solutions as answers that you can comment on, see below. Footnote: Use Cases In the simplest case, the goal is to provide a familiar interface for cases when (say) a database is just being used as a persistent list, and allow regular List operations such as search, subList and iteration. Another, more adventurous, use-case is as a slot-in replacement for libraries that work with basic Lists, e.g if we have a third-party task queue that usually works with a plain List: new TaskWorkQueue(new ArrayList<String>()).start() which is susceptible to losing all it's queue in event of a crash, if we just replace this with: new TaskWorkQueue(new DbBackedList()).start() we get a instant persistence and the ability to share the tasks amongst more than one machine. In either case, we could either handle connection/read exceptions that are thrown, perhaps retrying the connection/read first, or allow them to throw and crash the program (e.g. if we can't change the TaskWorkQueue code).

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  • Requiring multithreading/concurrency for implementation of scripting language

    - by Ricky Stewart
    Here's the deal: I'm looking at designing my own scripting/interpreted language for fun. I'm only in the planning stages right now; I want to make sure I have a very strong hold on exactly how I will implement everything before I start coding. What I'm currently struggling with is concurrency. It seems to me like an easy way to avoid the unpredictable performance that comes with garbage collection would be to put the garbage collector in its own thread, and have it run concurrently with the interpreter itself. (To be clear, I don't plan to allow the scripts to be multithreaded themselves; I would simply put a garbage collector to work in a different thread than the interpreter.) This doesn't seem to be a common strategy for many popular scripting languages, probably for portability reasons; I would probably write the interpreter in the UNIX/POSIX threading framework initially and then port it to other platforms (Windows, etc.) if need be. Does anyone have any thoughts in this issue? Would whatever gains I receive by exploiting concurrency be nullified by the portability issues that will inevitably arise? (On that note, am I really correct in my assumption that I would experience great performance gains with a concurrent garbage collector?) Should I move forward with this strategy or step away from it?

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  • Inventory Management concepts in XNA game

    - by user1332755
    I am trying to code the inventory system in my first real game so I have very little experience in both c# and game engine development. Basically, I need some general guidance and tips with how to structure and organize these sorts of systems. Please tell me if I am on the right track or not before I get too deep into making some badly structured system. It's fine if you don't feel like looking through my code, suggestions about general structure would also be appreciated. What I am aiming to end up with is some sort of system like Minecraft or Terraria. It must include: main inventory GUI (items can be dragged and placed in whatever slot desired Itembar outside of the main inventory which can be assigned to certain items the ability to use items from either location So far, I have 4 main classes: Inventory holds the general info and methods, inventoryslot holds info for individual slots, Itembar holds all info and methods for itself, and finally, ItemManager to manage interactions between the two and hold a master list of items. So far, my itembar works perfectly and interacts well with mousedragging items into and out of it as well as activating the item effect. Here is the code I have so far: (there is a lot but I will try to keep it relevant) This is the code for the itembar on the main screen: class Itembar { public Texture2D itembarfull, iSelected; public static Rectangle itembar = new Rectangle(5, 218, 40, 391); public Rectangle box1 = new Rectangle(itembar.X, 218, 40, 40); //up to 10 Rectangles for each slot public int Selected = 0; private ItemManager manager; public Itembar(Texture2D texture, Texture2D texture3, ItemManager mann) { itembarfull = texture; iSelected = texture3; manager = mann; } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw( itembarfull, new Vector2 (itembar.X, itembar.Y), null, Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 1.0f); if (Selected == 1) spriteBatch.Draw(iSelected, new Rectangle(box1.X-3, box1.Y-3, box1.Width+6, box1.Height+6), Color.White); //goes up to 10 slots } public int Box1Query() { foreach (Item item in manager.items) { if(box1.Contains(item.BoundingBox)) return manager.items.IndexOf(item); } return 999; } //10 different box queries It is working fine right now. I just put an Item in there and the box will query things like the item's effects, stack number, consumable or not etc...This one is basically almost complete. Here is the main inventory class: class Inventory { public bool isActive; public List<Rectangle> mainSlots = new List<Rectangle>(24); public List<InventorySlot> mainSlotscheck = new List<InventorySlot>(24); public static Rectangle inv = new Rectangle(841, 469, 156, 231); public Rectangle invfull = new Rectangle(inv.X, inv.Y, inv.Width, inv.Height); public Rectangle inv1 = new Rectangle(inv.X + 4, inv.Y +3, 32, 32); //goes up to inv24 resulting in a 6x4 grid of Rectangles public Inventory() { mainSlots.Add(inv1); mainSlots.Add(inv2); mainSlots.Add(inv3); mainSlots.Add(inv4); //goes up to 24 foreach (Rectangle slot in mainSlots) mainSlotscheck.Add(new InventorySlot(slot)); } //update and draw methods are empty because im not too sure what to put there public int LookforfreeSlot() { int slotnumber = 999; for (int x = 0; x < mainSlots.Count; x++) { if (mainSlotscheck[x].isFree) { slotnumber = x; break; } } return slotnumber; } } } LookforFreeSlot() method is meant to be called when I do AddtoInventory(). I'm kinda stumped about what other things I need to put in this class. Here is the inventorySlot class: (its main purpose is to check the bool "isFree" to see whether or not something already occupies the slot. But i guess it can also do other stuff like get item info.) class InventorySlot { public int X, Y; public int Width = 32, Height = 32; public Vector2 Position; public int slotnumber; public bool free = true; public int? content = null; public bool isFree { get { return free; } set { free = value; } } public InventorySlot(Rectangle slot) { slot = new Rectangle(X, Y, Width, Height); } } } Finally, here is the ItemManager (I am omitting the master list because it is too long) class ItemManager { public List<Item> items = new List<Item>(20); public List<Item> inventory1 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory2 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory3 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory4 = new List<Item>(24); public Texture2D icon, filta; private Rectangle msRect; MouseState mouseState; public int ISelectedIndex; Inventory inventory; SpriteFont font; public void GenerateItems() { items.Add(new Item(new Rectangle(0, 0, 32, 32), icon, font)); items[0].name = "Grass Chip"; items[0].itemID = 0; items[0].consumable = true; items[0].stackable = true; items[0].maxStack = 99; items.Add(new Item(new Rectangle(32, 0, 32, 32), icon, font)); //master list continues. it will generate all items in the game; } public ItemManager(Inventory inv, Texture2D itemsheet, Rectangle mouseRectt, MouseState ms, Texture2D fil, SpriteFont f) { icon = itemsheet; msRect = mouseRectt; filta = fil; mouseState = ms; inventory = inv; font = f; } //once again, no update or draw public void mousedrag() { items[0].DestinationRect = new Rectangle (msRect.X, msRect.Y, 32, 32); items[0].dragging = true; } public void AddtoInventory(Item item) { int index = inventory.LookforfreeSlot(); if (index == 999) return; item.DestinationRect = inventory.mainSlots[index]; inventory.mainSlotscheck[index].content = item.itemID; inventory.mainSlotscheck[index].isFree = false; item.IsActive = true; } } } The mousedrag works pretty well. AddtoInventory doesn't work because LookforfreeSlot doesn't work. Relevant code from the main program: When I want to add something to the main inventory, I do something like this: foreach (Particle ether in ether1.ethers) { if (ether.isCollected) itemmanager.AddtoInventory(itemmanager.items[14]); } This turned out to be much longer than I had expected :( But I hope someone is interested enough to comment.

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  • Beat detection and FFT

    - by Quincy
    So I am working on a platformer game which includes music with beat detection. I am currently using a simple if the energy that is stored in the history buffer is smaller then the current energy there is a beat. The problem with this is that ofcourse if you use songs like rock songs where you have a pretty steady amplitude this isn't going to work. So I looked further and found algorithms splitting the sound into multiple bands using FFT. I then found this : http://en.literateprograms.org/Cooley-Tukey_FFT_algorithm_(C) The only problem I'm having is that I am quite new to audio and I have no idea how to use that to split the signal up into multiple signals. So my question is : How do you use a FFT to split a signal into multiple bands ? Also for the guys interested, this is my algorithm in c# : // C = threshold, N = size of history buffer / 1024 public void PlaceBeatMarkers(float C, int N) { List<float> instantEnergyList = new List<float>(); short[] samples = soundData.Samples; float timePerSample = 1 / (float)soundData.SampleRate; int sampleIndex = 0; int nextSamples = 1024; // Calculate instant energy for every 1024 samples. while (sampleIndex + nextSamples < samples.Length) { float instantEnergy = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nextSamples; i++) { instantEnergy += Math.Abs((float)samples[sampleIndex + i]); } instantEnergy /= nextSamples; instantEnergyList.Add(instantEnergy); if(sampleIndex + nextSamples >= samples.Length) nextSamples = samples.Length - sampleIndex - 1; sampleIndex += nextSamples; } int index = N; int numInBuffer = index; float historyBuffer = 0; //Fill the history buffer with n * instant energy for (int i = 0; i < index; i++) { historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[i]; } // If instantEnergy / samples in buffer < instantEnergy for the next sample then add beatmarker. while (index + 1 < instantEnergyList.Count) { if(instantEnergyList[index + 1] > (historyBuffer / numInBuffer) * C) beatMarkers.Add((index + 1) * 1024 * timePerSample); historyBuffer -= instantEnergyList[index - numInBuffer]; historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[index + 1]; index++; } }

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  • How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?

    - by IAE
    I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like: Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance) The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?

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  • Visual Basic link to SQL output to Word

    - by CLO_471
    I am in need of some advice/references. I am currently trying to develop a legal document interface. There are certain fields in which I need to query out of my sql db and have those fields output into a document that can be printed. I am trying to develop a user interface where people can enter fields that will output to a document template but at the same time I need the template to be able to pull data from the SQL database. This is the reason why I think that VB might be my best choice and because it is one of the only OOP languages I am familiar with presently. Does anyone know that best way to be able to handle this type of job?? I know that you can use VBA within MS Word and have the form output variables to a word template. But, is there a way to have the word document also pull information from the SQL db? Is the best option to use VB linked to SQL and run queries to get the information from the database and then have it output to a for within VB? Is it possible for VB to be linked to a SQL db and output variables and SQL fields to a Word Template? I have looked into Mail Merge and I see that it allows users to pull data from an Access query but I dont think it would be easy to automate and it seems that users would need to have an advanced knowledge of MS Word and Access to handle this. I am not finding much useful information online so I came here. Any advice or references would be greatly appreciated. If there is a better way please let me know.

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  • Developing a Cost Model for Cloud Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows Azure and SQL Azure are located here, and are more accurate than anything you will see in this post: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/  When writing software that is run on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering like Windows Azure / SQL Azure, one of the questions you must answer is how much the system will cost. I will not discuss the comparisons between on-premise costs (which are nigh impossible to calculate accurately) versus cloud costs, but instead focus on creating a general model for estimating costs for a given application. You should be aware that there are (at this writing) two billing mechanisms for Windows and SQL Azure: “Pay-as-you-go” or consumption, and “Subscription” or commitment. Conceptually, you can consider the former a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan, where you pay by the unit used (at a slightly higher rate) and the latter as a standard cell phone plan where you commit to a contract and thus pay lower rates. In this post I’ll stick with the pay-as-you-go mechanism for simplicity, which should be the maximum cost you would pay. From there you may be able to get a lower cost if you use the other mechanism. In any case, the model you create should hold. Developing a good cost model is essential. As a developer or architect, you’ll most certainly be asked how much something will cost, and you need to have a reliable way to estimate that. Businesses and Organizations have been used to paying for servers, software licenses, and other infrastructure as an up-front cost, and power, people to the systems and so on as an ongoing (and sometimes not factored) cost. When presented with a new paradigm like distributed computing, they may not understand the true cost/value proposition, and that’s where the architect and developer can guide the conversation to make a choice based on features of the application versus the true costs. The two big buckets of use-types for these applications are customer-based and steady-state. In the customer-based use type, each successful use of the program results in a sale or income for your organization. Perhaps you’ve written an application that provides the spot-price of foo, and your customer pays for the use of that application. In that case, once you’ve estimated your cost for a successful traversal of the application, you can build that into the price you charge the user. It’s a standard restaurant model, where the price of the meal is determined by the cost of making it, plus any profit you can make. In the second use-type, the application will be used by a more-or-less constant number of processes or users and no direct revenue is attached to the system. A typical example is a customer-tracking system used by the employees within your company. In this case, the cost model is often created “in reverse” - meaning that you pilot the application, monitor the use (and costs) and that cost is held steady. This is where the comparison with an on-premise system becomes necessary, even though it is more difficult to estimate those on-premise true costs. For instance, do you know exactly how much cost the air conditioning is because you have a team of system administrators? This may sound trivial, but that, along with the insurance for the building, the wiring, and every other part of the system is in fact a cost to the business. There are three primary methods that I’ve been successful with in estimating the cost. None are perfect, all are demand-driven. The general process is to lay out a matrix of: components units cost per unit and then multiply that times the usage of the system, based on which components you use in the program. That sounds a bit simplistic, but using those metrics in a calculation becomes more detailed. In all of the methods that follow, you need to know your application. The components for a PaaS include computing instances, storage, transactions, bandwidth and in the case of SQL Azure, database size. In most cases, architects start with the first model and progress through the other methods to gain accuracy. Simple Estimation The simplest way to calculate costs is to architect the application (even UML or on-paper, no coding involved) and then estimate which of the components you’ll use, and how much of each will be used. Microsoft provides two tools to do this - one is a simple slider-application located here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/  The other is a tool you download to create an “Return on Investment” (ROI) spreadsheet, which has the advantage of leading you through various questions to estimate what you plan to use, located here: https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=176318219048082115  You can also just create a spreadsheet yourself with a structure like this: Program Element Azure Component Unit of Measure Cost Per Unit Estimated Use of Component Total Cost Per Component Cumulative Cost               Of course, the consideration with this model is that it is difficult to predict a system that is not running or hasn’t even been developed. Which brings us to the next model type. Measure and Project A more accurate model is to actually write the code for the application, using the Software Development Kit (SDK) which can run entirely disconnected from Azure. The code should be instrumented to estimate the use of the application components, logging to a local file on the development system. A series of unit and integration tests should be run, which will create load on the test system. You can use standard development concepts to track this usage, and even use Windows Performance Monitor counters. The best place to start with this method is to use the Windows Azure Diagnostics subsystem in your code, which you can read more about here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sumitm/archive/2009/11/18/introducing-windows-azure-diagnostics.aspx This set of API’s greatly simplifies tracking the application, and in fact you can use this information for more than just a cost model. After you have the tracking logs, you can plug the numbers into ay of the tools above, which should give a representative cost or in some cases a unit cost. The consideration with this model is that the SDK fabric is not a one-to-one comparison with performance on the actual Windows Azure fabric. Those differences are usually smaller, but they do need to be considered. Also, you may not be able to accurately predict the load on the system, which might lead to an architectural change, which changes the model. This leads us to the next, most accurate method for a cost model. Sample and Estimate Using standard statistical and other predictive math, once the application is deployed you will get a bill each month from Microsoft for your Azure usage. The bill is quite detailed, and you can export the data from it to do analysis, and using methods like regression and so on project out into the future what the costs will be. I normally advise that the architect also extrapolate a unit cost from those metrics as well. This is the information that should be reported back to the executives that pay the bills: the past cost, future projected costs, and unit cost “per click” or “per transaction”, as your case warrants. The challenge here is in the model itself - statistical methods are not foolproof, and the larger the sample (in this case I recommend the entire population, not a smaller sample) is key. References and Tools Articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patrick_butler_monterde/archive/2010/02/10/windows-azure-billing-overview.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg213848.aspx http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/06/05/azure-faq-how-much-will-it-cost-me-to-run-my-application-on-windows-azure/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnalioto/archive/2010/08/25/10054193.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/02/08/qampa-how-can-i-calculate-the-tco-and-roi-when.aspx   Other Tools: http://cloud-assessment.com/ http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud_tools

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  • Is switch-case over enumeration bad practice?

    - by Puckl
    I have an enumeration with the commands Play, Stop and Pause for a media player. In two classes I do a switch-case over the received commands. The player runs in a different thread and I deliver the commands in a command queue to the thread. If I generate class diagrams the enumeration has dependencies all over the place. Is there a nicer way to deal with the commands? If I would change/extend the enumeration, I would have to change several classes. (Its not super important to keep the player extensible, but I try to write nice software.)

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  • Making a game "resize-safe"

    - by CPP_Person
    It's one thing to get the graphics aligned perfectly, it's another to do this for every single resolution and not take too much time and/or make the code unreadable due to size. Games like Battlefield 3 and Minecraft seem to manage this. But what do they do to keep things from stretching or going off the screen? I don't know any algorithms to do this. I'd like some help on this topic. I've always programmed games that only handle a single resolution, so help would be appreciate.

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  • Absolute statements in IT that are wrong

    - by Dan McGrath
    I was recently in a discussion about the absolute statement "It costs more in programming time to optimise software than it costs to throw hardware at a problem". The general thought (of which I agree with) is that as an absolute statement this is wrong. There are too many variables to ever generalise in such a way. What other statements do you hear about software/programming that simply do not work as an absolute and why?

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  • Simple vs Complex (but performance efficient) solution - which one to choose and when?

    - by ManojGumber
    I have been programming for a couple of years and have often found myself at a dilemma. There are two solutions - one is simple one i.e. simple approach, easier to understand and maintain. It involves some redundancy, some extra work (extra IO, extra processing) and therefore is not the most optimal solution. but other uses a complex approach,difficult to implement, often involving interaction between lot of modules and is a performance efficient solution. Which solution should I strive for when I do not have hard performance SLA to meet and even the simple solution can meet the performance SLA? I have felt disdain among my fellow developers for simple solution. Is it good practice to come up with most optimal complex solution if your performance SLA can be met by a simple solution?

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  • Bachelor in Game Development [on hold]

    - by vandamon taigi
    At this moment, I'm in year 11 in Romania. I have started thinking about an university to go to and I am not really sure which should be my choice. I want it to be game development, but I also want it to be good and fun university.Thing is, I don't want to pay 30 grands a year or so for Cambridge or something like that. I am looking for a decent university at a decent price. I have in my hometown a University that is ranked 1613 world-wide which has a software development category. I need some advices and some possible options for decent universities ( Personal experience is greatly appreciated )

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  • What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly smash a button?

    - by Michael
    What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly and quickly press a button or perform an action? I'm especially interested in examples in retro games (e.g., from the NES, SNES, and 1980-90s arcade eras), and I would love to see examples with text, graphics, or both. To illustrate, here are a few examples of the type of instructions that I'm thinking of: Smash the A button to lift something heavy! Toggle the joystick back and forth to break free! Quickly press the button to build power in a meter! I'm working on a 2D iOS game with retro-style pixel art, and there's a point where I want the player to quickly tap on a sprite to complete an action. I have a serviceable starting point -- the word "TAP" flashing with an arrow repeatedly moving downward beneath it: But it still doesn't feel quite right. I would love to see some actual examples from the golden days of 2D gaming to use as reference material. I know examples abound, but I'm just struggling to think of any concrete ones at the moment. Can you think of any examples of this type of thing in old games?

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