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• What is the value in hiding the details through abstractions? Isn't there value in transparency?

  - by user606723

  Background I am not a big fan of abstraction. I will admit that one can benefit from adaptability, portability and re-usability of interfaces etc. There is real benefit there, and I don't wish to question that, so let's ignore it. There is the other major "benefit" of abstraction, which is to hide implementation logic and details from users of this abstraction. The argument is that you don't need to know the details, and that one should concentrate on their own logic at this point. Makes sense in theory. However, whenever I've been maintaining large enterprise applications, I always need to know more details. It becomes a huge hassle digging deeper and deeper into the abstraction at every turn just to find out exactly what something does; i.e. having to do "open declaration" about 12 times before finding the stored procedure used. This 'hide the details' mentality seems to just get in the way. I'm always wishing for more transparent interfaces and less abstraction. I can read high level source code and know what it does, but I'll never know how it does it, when how it does it, is what I really need to know. What's going on here? Has every system I've ever worked on just been badly designed (from this perspective at least)? My philosophy When I develop software, I feel like I try to follow a philosophy I feel is closely related to the ArchLinux philosophy: Arch Linux retains the inherent complexities of a GNU/Linux system, while keeping them well organized and transparent. Arch Linux developers and users believe that trying to hide the complexities of a system actually results in an even more complex system, and is therefore to be avoided. And therefore, I never try to hide complexity of my software behind abstraction layers. I try to abuse abstraction, not become a slave to it. Question at heart Is there real value in hiding the details? Aren't we sacrificing transparency? Isn't this transparency valuable?

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• Presenting Designing an SSIS Execution Framework to Steel City SQL 18 Jan 2011!

  - by andyleonard

  I'm honored to present Designing an SSIS Execution Framework (Level 300) to Steel City SQL - the Birmingham Alabama chapter of PASS - on 18 Jan 2011! The meeting starts at 6:00 PM 18 Jan 2011 and will be held at: New Horizons Computer Learning Center 601 Beacon Pkwy. West Suite 106 Birmingham, Alabama, 35209 ( Map for directions ) Abstract In this “demo-tastic” presentation, SSIS trainer, author, and consultant Andy Leonard explains the what, why, and how of an SSIS framework that delivers metadata-driven...(read more)

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• How to represent a tree structure in NoSQL

  - by Vlad Nicula

  I'm new to NoSQL and have been playing around with a personal project on the MEAN stack (Mongo ExpressJs AngularJs NodeJs). I'm building a document editor of sorts that manages nodes of data. Each document is actually a tree. I have a CRUD api for documents, to create new trees and a CRUD api for nodes in a given document. Right now the documents are represented as a collection that holds everything, including nodes. The children parent relationship is done by ids. So the nodes are an map by id, and each node has references to what nodes are their children. I chose this "flat" approach because it is easier to get a node by id from a document. Being used to having a relation table between nodes and documents, a relation table between nodes and children nodes I find it a bit weird that I have to save the entire "nodes" map each time I update a node. Is there a better way to represent such a data type in NoSQL?

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• Extracting Data from a Source System to History Tables

  - by Derek D.

  This is a topic I find very little information written about, however it is very important that the method for extracting data be done in a way that does not hinder performance of the source system.  In this example, the goal is to extract data from a source system, into another database (or server) all [...]

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• Is it a "pattern smell" to put getters like "FullName" or "FormattedPhoneNumber" in your model?

  - by DanM

  I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC app, and I've been getting into the habit of putting what seem like helpful and convenient getters into my model/entity classes. For example: public class Member { public int Id { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public string PhoneNumber { get; set; } public string FullName { get { return FirstName + " " + LastName; } } public string FormattedPhoneNumber { get { return "(" + PhoneNumber.Substring(0, 3) + ") " + PhoneNumber.Substring(3, 3) + "-" + PhoneNumber.Substring(6); } } } I'm wondering people think about the FullName and FormattedPhoneNumber getters. They make it very easy to create standardized data formats throughout the app, and they seem to save a lot of repeated code, but it could definitely be argued that data format is something that should be handled in mapping from model to view-model. In fact, I was originally applying these data formats in my service layer where I do my mapping, but it was becoming a burden to constantly have to write formatters then apply them in many different places. E.g., I use "Full Name" in most views, and having to type something like model.FullName = MappingUtilities.GetFullName(entity.FirstName, entity.LastName); all over the place seemed a lot less elegant than just typing model.FullName = entity.FullName (or, if you use something like AutoMapper, potentially not typing anything at all). So, where do you draw the line when it comes to data formatting. Is it "okay" to do data formatting in your model or is that a "pattern smell"? Note: I definitely do not have any html in my model. I use html helpers for that. I'm strictly talking about formatting or combining data (and especially data that is frequently used).

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• Multithreaded UI desktop application issues

  - by igor

  I am involved into development a rich UI project: desktop windows application. Application uses asynchronous invocations and in its turn it should be ready to process external messages (events). The problem is clear: at first time it was built as a simple prototype and it was not stress tested and all was fine. Then application was grown: the number of calls to server and number of events from server are high and performance is low. What is more users noticed that sometimes performance is extremal low. Asynchronous invocations based on thread pool (BeginInvoke, EndInvoke), external events are going from WCF service (.NET 3.5). My goal is synchronization of all tasks and putting priorities to every executions in desktop application. My question is: is there any practice how to reach my goal: patterns, task priority list, others? What should I do at first, second and next times? Thanks

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• Designing javascript chart library

  - by coolscitist

  I started coding a chart library on top of d3js: My chart library. I read Javascript API reusability and Towards reusable charts. However, I am NOT really following the suggestions because I am not really convinced about them. This is how my library can be used to create a bubble chart: var chart = new XYBubbleChart(); chart.data = [{"xValue":200,"yValue":300},{"xValue":400,"yValue":200},{"xValue":100,"yValue":310}]; //set data chart.dataKey.x = "xValue"; chart.dataKey.y = "yValue"; chart.elementId = "#chart"; chart.createChart(); Here are my questions: It does not use chaining. Is it a big issue? Every property and function is exposed publicly. (Example: width, height are exposed in Chart.js). OOP is all about abstraction and hiding, but I don't really see the point right now. I think exposing everything gives flexibility to change property and functionality inside subclasses and objects without writing a lot of code. What could be pitfalls of such exposure? I have implemented functions like: zooming, "showing info boxes when data point is clicked" as "abilities". (example: XYZoomingAbility.js). Basically, such "abilities" accept "chart" object, play around with public variables of "chart" to add functionality. What this allows me to do is to add an ability by writing: activateZoomAbility(chartObject); My goal is to separate "visualization" from "interactivity". I want "interactivity" like: zooming to be plugged into the chart rather than built inside the chart. Like, I don't want my bubble chart to know anything about "zooming". However, I do want zoomable bubble chart. What is the best way to do this? How to test and what to test? I have written mixed tests: jasmine and actual html files so that I can test manually on browser.

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• Bringing true agility to enterprise .NET: Tellago Studios announces TeleSharp

  - by gsusx

  We are happy to announce the latest addition to Tellago Studios’ product family: TeleSharp . After the success of SO-Aware and the SO-Aware Test Workbench , we decided to tackle on a bigger challenge by taking the initial steps towards simplifying enterprise .NET application development. After months of discussion with customers we decided to focus on the following challenges: Cataloging Applications What if you could keep a central catalog of the .NET applications exist on your enterprise? What...(read more)

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• Practical Meta Programming System (MPS)

  - by INTPnerd

  This is in regards to Meta Programming System or MPS by JetBrains. Thus far, from my efforts to learn how to use MPS, I have only learned its basic purpose and that it is very complex. Is MPS worth learning? Is there anyone who already effectively uses MPS to create their own languages and editors for those languages and uses these created editors as their primary way of programming? If so, what types of programs have they made with this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of working with MPS? What is the best way to learn MPS?

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• S#arp Architecture 1.5.1 released

  - by AlecWhittington

  So far we have had some great success with the 1.5 release of S#arp Architecture, but there were a few issues that made it into the release that needed to be corrected. These issues were: Unnecessary assemblies in the root /bin and SolutionItemsContainer folders Nant folder removed from root /bin - this was causing issues with the build scripts that come with the project if the user did not have Nant installed and available via a path variable VS 2010 template - the CrudScaffoldingForEnterpriseApp...(read more)

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• Data structure for pattern matching.

  - by alvonellos

  Let's say you have an input file with many entries like these: date, ticker, open, high, low, close, <and some other values> And you want to execute a pattern matching routine on the entries(rows) in that file, using a candlestick pattern, for example. (See, Doji) And that pattern can appear on any uniform time interval (let t = 1s, 5s, 10s, 1d, 7d, 2w, 2y, and so on...). Say a pattern matching routine can take an arbitrary number of rows to perform an analysis and contain an arbitrary number of subpatterns. In other words, some patterns may require 4 entries to operate on. Say also that the routine (may) later have to find and classify extrema (local and global maxima and minima as well as inflection points) for the ticker over a closed interval, for example, you could say that a cubic function (x^3) has the extrema on the interval [-1, 1]. (See link) What would be the most natural choice in terms of a data structure? What about an interface that conforms a Ticker object containing one row of data to a collection of Ticker so that an arbitrary pattern can be applied to the data. What's the first thing that comes to mind? I chose a doubly-linked circular linked list that has the following methods: push_front() push_back() pop_front() pop_back() [] //overloaded, can be used with negative parameters But that data structure seems very clumsy, since so much pushing and popping is going on, I have to make a deep copy of the data structure before running an analysis on it. So, I don't know if I made my question very clear -- but the main points are: What kind of data structures should be considered when analyzing sequential data points to conform to a pattern that does NOT require random access? What kind of data structures should be considered when classifying extrema of a set of data points?

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• C++ - Constructor or Initialize Method to Startup

  - by Bob Fincheimer

  I want to determine when to do non-trivial initialization of a class. I see two times to do initialization: constructor and other method. I want to figure out when to use each. Choice 1: Constructor does initialization MyClass::MyClass(Data const& data) : m_data() { // does non-trivial initialization here } MyClass::~MyClass() { // cleans up here } Choice 2: Defer initialization to an initialize method MyClass::MyClass() : m_data() {} MyClass::Initialize(Data const& data) { // does non-trivial initialization here } MyClass::~MyClass() { // cleans up here } So to try and remove any subjectivity I want to figure out which is better in a couple of situations: Class that encapsulates a resource (window/font/some sort of handle) Class that composites resources to do something (a control/domain object) Data structure classes (tree/list/etc.) [Anything else you can think of] Things to analyze: Performance Ease of use by other developers How error-prone/opportunities for bugs [Anything else you can think of]

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• How best do you represent a bi-directional sync in a REST api?

  - by Edward M Smith

  Assuming a system where there's a Web Application with a resource, and a reference to a remote application with another similar resource, how do you represent a bi-directional sync action which synchronizes the 'local' resource with the 'remote' resource? Example: I have an API that represents a todo list. GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /todos/, etc. That API can reference remote TODO services. GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /todo_services/, etc. I can manipulate todos from the remote service through my API as a proxy via GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /todo_services/abc123/, etc. I want the ability to do a bi-directional sync between a local set of todos and the remote set of TODOS. In a rpc sort of way, one could do POST /todo_services/abc123/sync/ But, in the "verbs are bad" idea, is there a better way to represent this action?

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• Is it necessary to create a database with as few tables as possible

  - by Shaheer

  Should we create a database structure with a minimum number of tables? Should it be designed in a way that everything stays in one place or is it okay to have more tables? Will it in anyway affect anything? I am asking this question because a friend of mine modified some database structure in mediaWiki. In the end, instead of 20 tables he was using only 8, and it took him 8 months to do that (it was his college assignment). EDIT I am concluding the answer as: size of the tables does NOT matter, until the case is exceptional; in which case the denormalization may help. Thanks to everyone for the answers.

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• Configuration data: single-row table vs. name-value-pair table

  - by Heinzi

  Let's say you write an application that can be configured by the user. For storing this "configuration data" into a database, two patterns are commonly used. The single-row table CompanyName | StartFullScreen | RefreshSeconds | ... ---------------+-------------------+------------------+-------- ACME Inc. | true | 20 | ... The name-value-pair table ConfigOption | Value -----------------+------------- CompanyName | ACME Inc. StartFullScreen | true (or 1, or Y, ...) RefreshSeconds | 20 ... | ... I've seen both options in the wild, and both have obvious advantages and disadvantages, for example: The single-row tables limits the number of configuration options you can have (since the number of columns in a row is usually limited). Every additional configuration option requires a DB schema change. In a name-value-pair table everything is "stringly typed" (you have to encode/decode your Boolean/Date/etc. parameters). (many more) Is there some consensus within the development community about which option is preferable?

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• Proper Data Structure for Commentable Comments

  - by Wesley

  Been struggling with this on an architectural level. I have an object which can be commented on, let's call it a Post. Every post has a unique ID. Now I want to comment on that Post, and I can use ID as a foreign key, and each PostComment has an ItemID field which correlates to the Post. Since each Post has a unique ID, it is very easy to assign "Top Level" comments. When I comment on a comment however, I feel like I now need a PostCommentComment, which attaches to the ID of the PostComment. Since ID's are assigned sequentially, I can no longer simply use ItemID to differentiate where in the tree the comment is assigned. I.E. both a Post and a Post Comment might have an ID of '5', so my foreign key relationship is invalid. This seems like it could go on infinitely, with PostCommentCommentComment's etc... What's the best way to solve this? Should I have a field in the comment called "IsPostComment" or something of the like to know which collection to attach the ID to? This strikes me as the best solution I've seen so far, but now I feel like I need to make recursive DataBase calls which start to get expensive. Meaning, I get a Post and get all PostComments where ItemID == Post.ID && where IsPostComment == true Then I take that as a collection, gather all the ID's of the PostComments, and do another search where ItemID == PostComment[all].ID && where IsPostComment == false, then repeat infinitely. This means I make a call for every layer, and if I'm calling 100 Posts, I might make 1000 DB calls to get 10 layers of comments each. What is the right way to do this?

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• Multithreded UI desktop application issues

  - by igor

  I am involved into development a rich UI project: desktop windows application. Application uses asynchronous invocations and in its turn it should be ready to process external messages (events). The problem is clear: at first time it was built as a simple prototype and it was not stress tested and all was fine. Then application was grown: the number of calls to server and number of events from server are high and performance is low. What is more users noticed that sometimes performance is extremal low. Asynchronous invocations based on thread pool (BeginInvoke, EndInvoke), external events are going from WCF service (.NET 3.5). My goal is synchronization of all tasks and putting priorities to every executions in desktop application. My question is: is there any practice how to reach my goal: patterns, task priority list, others? What should I do at first, second and next times? Thanks

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• Should a domain expert make class diagrams?

  - by Matthieu

  The domain expert in our team uses UML class diagrams to model the domain model. As a result, the class diagrams are more of technical models rather than domain models (it serves of some sort of technical specifications for developpers because they don't have to do any conception, they just have to implement the model). In the end, the domain expert ends up doing the job of the architect/technical expert right? Is it normal for a domain expert (not a developer or technical profile) to do class diagrams? If not, what kind of modeling should he be using?

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• Adding a forum to an existing site

  - by Andrew Heath

  I've got a site with ~500 registered members, 300 of which are what you'd call "active". Site data is kept in a MySQL dbase. I'd like to add a myBB forum to the site, but this question applies to any forum really. What I very much want to avoid is requiring my users to register both on the site and on the forum because my userbase is not technically literate and this would confuse a lot of them. However the forum software has its own registration, login, cookie, and password management system which naturally are different from the site's mechanics. I envision the following possibilities: install myBB into the existing database and customize the login code to unify the two systems. This would probably mean changing the site's code to use the myBB system as that would likely be less painful to refactor and wouldn't hurt future myBB upgrade ability. install myBB into separate database and write a bridging script of some sort that auto-registers existing site users with the forum if they elect to participate. Also check new forum registrations against the site's username list to prevent newcomers from taking existing names. run them fully separate and force users to re-register (easiest for ME, but least desirable for them) I would like a suggested course of action from those who have trod this path before... Thank you.

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• Distinction between API and frontend-backend

  - by Jason

  I'm trying to write a "standard" business web site. By "standard", I mean this site runs the usual HTML5, CSS and Javascript for the front-end, a back-end (to process stuff), and runs MySQL for the database. It's a basic CRUD site: the front-end just makes pretty whatever the database has in store; the backend writes to the database whatever the user enters and does some processing. Just like most sites out there. In creating my Github repositories to begin coding, I've realized I don't understand the distinction between the front-end back-end, and the API. Another way of phrasing my question is: where does the API come into this picture? I'm going to list some more details and then questions I have - hopefully this gives you guys a better idea of what my actual question is, because I'm so confused that I don't know the specific question to ask. Some more details: I'd like to try the Model-View-Controller pattern. I don't know if this changes the question/answer. The API will be RESTful I'd like my back-end to use my own API instead of allowing the back-end to cheat and call special queries. I think this style is more consistent. My questions: Does the front-end call the back-end which calls the API? Or does the front-end just call the API instead of calling the back-end? Does the back-end just execute an API and the API returns control to the back-end (where the back-end acts as the ultimate controller, delegating tasks)? Long and detailed answers explaining the role of the API alongside the front-end back-end are encouraged. If the answer depends on the model of programming (models other than the Model-View-Controller pattern), please describe these other ways of thinking of the API. Thanks. I'm very confused.

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• Callback Contract in WCF

  Callback contracts are a very powerful concept that is easily implemented in WCF. Using this, it is very easy to achieve event-like behavior between a service and client (duplex operations).

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• What's wrong with JavaScript

  - by ts01

  There is a lot of buzz around Dart recently, often questioning Google motivations and utility of Dart as replacement for JavaScript. I was searching for rationale of creating Dart rather than investing more effort in ECMAScript. In well known leaked mail its author is saying that Javascript has historical baggage that cannot be solved without a clean break. But there is only one concrete example given (apart of performance concerns) of "fundamental language problems", which is an existence of a single Number primitive So, my questions are: How an existence of a single Number primitive can be a "fundamental problem"? Are there other known "fundamental problems" in JavaScript?

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• Please recommend a patterns book for iOS development

  - by Brett Ryan

  I've read several books on iOS development and Objective-C, however what a lot of them teach is how to work with interfaces and all contain the model inside the view controller, i.e. a UITableViewController based view will simply have an NSArray as it's model. I'm interested in what the best practices are for designing the structure of an application. Specifically I'm interested in best practices for the following: How to separate a model from the view controller. I think I know how to do this by simply replacing the NSArray style example with a specific model object, however what I do not know how to do is alert the view when the model changes. For example in .NET I would solve this by conforming to INotifyPropertyChanged and databinding, and similarly with Java I would use PropertyChangeListener. How to create a service model for my domain objects. For example I want to learn the best way to create a service for a hypothetical Widget object to manage an internal DB and also services for communicating with remote endpoints. I need to learn the best ways to do this in a way that interface components can subscribe to events such as widgetUpdated. These services should be singleton classes and some how dependency injected into model/controller objects. Books I've read so far are: Programming in Objective-C (4th Edition) Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Expanded Electronic Edition: Essentials and Advanced Recipes for iOS Programmers Learn Objective-C on the Mac: For OS X and iOS I've also purchased the following updated books but not yet read them. The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook (4th edition Programming in Objective-C (5th Edition) I come from a Java and C# background with 15 years experience, I understand that many of the ways I would do things in these languages may not fit to the ObjC way of developing applications. Any guidance on the topic is very much appreciated.

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• Should I comment Tables or Columns in my database?

  - by jako

  I like to comment my code with various information, and I think most people nowadays do so while writing some code. But when it comes to database tables or columns, I have never seen anyone setting some comments, and, to be honest, I don't even think of looking for comments there. So I am wondering if some people are commenting their DB strcuture here, and if I should bother commenting, for instance when I create a new column to an existing table?

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• NCurses, scrolling of multiline items, "current item" pointer and "selected items"

  - by mjf

  I am looking for hints/ideas for the best (most effective) way on how to scroll multi-line items as well as emphasizing of the "current item" and "selected items" such as: 1 FOO ITEM 1 Foo sub-item 2 Foo sub-item 3 Foo sub-item 2 BAR ITEM 1 Bar sub-item 3 BAZ ITEM 1 Baz sub-item 2 Baz sub-item 4 RAB ITEM 5 ZZZ ITEM 1 Zzz sub-item 2 Zzz sub-item 3 Zzz sub-item 4 Zzz sub-item using NCurses (some combination of windows, sub-windows, pads, copywin? Uff! In fact, the lines could exceed the stdscr's width so that possibility to scroll left/right would be also nice - pads?)... The whole items (including the sub-items) are supposed to be emphasized as full-width window/pad areas. The "current item" (including it's set of lines) should be emphasized (i.e. using A_BOLD), selected set of items of choice (including the set of lines for each the selected item) should be emphasized in another way (i.e. using A_REVERSE). What would you choose to cope with it the most effective NCurses way? (The less redrawals/refreshes the better and terminal is supposed to have the ability to change it's size - such as XTerm running under "floating window" management.) Thank you for your ideas (or perhaps some piece of code where something similar is already solved - I was not able to find anything helpful on the Internet. I mean I am not going to copy/paste foreign code but programming NCurses properly is still somehow difficult to me). P.S.: Would you suggest to "smooth-scroll" +1/-1 screen line or rather "jump-scroll" +lines/-lines of the items? (I personally prefer the latter one.) Sincerely, -- mjf

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