Search Results

Search found 29920 results on 1197 pages for 'software tools'.

Page 254/1197 | < Previous Page | 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261  | Next Page >

  • Why is a software development life-cycle so inefficient?

    - by user87166
    Currently the software development lifecycle followed in the IT company I work at is: The "Business" works with a solution manager to build a Business Requirement document The solution manager works with the Program manager to build a Functional Spec The PM works with the engineering lead to develop a release plan and with the engineering team to develop technical specifications If there are any clarifications required, developers contact the PM who contacts the solution manager who contacts the business and all the way back introducing a latency of nearly 24 hours and massive email chains for any clarifications By the time the tech spec is made, nearly 1 month has passed in back and forth Now, 2 weeks go to development while the test writes test cases Code is dropped formally to test, test starts raising bugs. Even if there is 1 root cause for 10 different issues, and its an easily fixed one, developers are not allowed to give fresh code to test for the next 1 week. After 2-3 such drops to test the code is given to the ops team as a "golden drop" ( 2 months passed from the beginning) Ops team will now deploy the code in a staging environment. If it runs stable for a week, it will be promoted to UAT and after 2 weeks of that it will be promoted to prod. If there are any bugs found here, well, applying for a visa requires less paperwork This entire process is followed even if a single SSRS report is to be released. How do other companies process such requirements? I'm wondering why, the business cannot just drop the requirements to developers, developers build and deploy to UAT themselves, expose it to the business who raise functional bugs and after fixing those promote to prod. (even for more complex stuff)

    Read the article

  • Chrome Mobile: The Mobile Web Developers Toolkit (Part 2)

    Chrome Mobile: The Mobile Web Developers Toolkit (Part 2) Building for mobile web requires a different mindset than desktop web development, and a different set of tools. The tools we're used to using often aren't available or would take up too much screen real estate. And going back to the dark ages of tweak/save/deploy/test/repeat isn't exactly optimal, so what can we do? Thankfully there are a number of great options - from remote debugging to emulation, mobile browsers are offering more and more tools to make our lives easier. We'll take a look at a couple of tools that you can use today to make cross platform mobile web development easier and then peer into the crystal ball to see what tools may bring in the future. Join us for Part 2 - as we take a look at a some of the many tools to make testing the mobile web easier. From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 01:00:00 More in Science & Technology

    Read the article

  • Grub gives messages about the boot sector being used by other software. What should I do?

    - by Bobble
    This only happens with one of my computers. It is an elderly laptop that has had a long and varied history with several operating systems, but in its retirement it is acting as a server for my home network using Ubuntu 12.04. It is a single-boot system, there are no other systems installed. Every so often, whenever there is a grub upgrade, I notice a message like this: Setting up grub-common (1.99-21ubuntu3.4) ... Installing new version of config file /etc/grub.d/00_header ... Setting up grub2-common (1.99-21ubuntu3.4) ... Setting up grub-pc-bin (1.99-21ubuntu3.4) ... Setting up grub-pc (1.99-21ubuntu3.4) ... /usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Sector 32 is already in use by FlexNet; avoiding it. This software may cause boot or other problems in future. Please ask its authors not to store data in the boot track. Installation finished. No error reported. Should I be worried about this? What (if anything) should I do about it?

    Read the article

  • If timestamp is deprecated, why do none of the current db tools support rowversion?

    Perhaps the title of this blog post will suffice, but I just wanted to highlight this problem. If you were to look up the timestamp data type in the SQL Server 2008 documentation, this is waht you will find within the topic article: The timestamp syntax is deprecated. This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature. Its been there for quite some time. The...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

    Read the article

  • What tools do I have to disuade users from using the same password with similar systems?

    - by Resorath
    I'm building a web application that connects to other web services (using strictly anonymous binding, so no user passwords are being used). However the web application maintains its own users itself, and is required to ask certain details such as e-mail addresses and public linking information to these other web services (for example, a username but not a password). I want to deter or prevent users from reusing passwords in my application that they have also used in the applications I'm linking to. For example, if I ask for their e-mail and provide me with their gmail address, I don't want them using their gmail password for my system. Another example would be reusing a password to a linked system in which they also gave me their username. One idea I had was to simply try using the information they gave me, along with the password they are trying to store and log in to these external web applications to test the password - then immediately unbind if I was successful and ask the user to use a different password. However I suspect there is a host of morale and legal issues there. The reason this is a big deal to me is accountability. My application is simply not funded enough to invest properly in security around user passwords. A salted, hashed password in a public SQL-like database is as secure as it gets. So if passwords and linked usernames or e-mails get out, I don't want my userbase compromised.

    Read the article

  • What language and tools can I use to create a simple game with child-lock (capture all key press) for Windows? [closed]

    - by scw
    I'm writing an open source program that changes colors & plays sounds when keys are pressed. I want it to run in full screen mode and have a child-lock so kids can't exit accidentally. I want it to capture all keys including ctrl alt delete. (So it's partially a game, but partially windows utility.) My target OS is Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit), keeping Windows 8 in mind. My options: Visual Studio using .net C# Windows Forms - the devil I know. But not a "game" platform, which is why I'm asking this question. Visual Studio & XNA - have never used XNA, not sure of capabilities or support future Python - What flavor, what modules, what IDE? I've never done anything with Python but I found a couple of similar open source projects in python. Something else that I don't know about? Any input is appreciated.

    Read the article

  • The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #1 - It&acute;s about the money, stupid

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/05/24/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---1---itacutes-about-the.aspx Software development is an economic endeavor. A customer is only willing to pay for value. What makes a software valuable is required to become a trait of the software. We as software developers thus need to understand and then find a way to implement requirements. Whether or in how far a customer really can know beforehand what´s going to be valuable for him/her in the end is a topic of constant debate. Some aspects of the requirements might be less foggy than others. Sometimes the customer does not know what he/she wants. Sometimes he/she´s certain to want something - but then is not happy when that´s delivered. Nevertheless requirements exist. And developers will only be paid if they deliver value. So we better focus on doing that. Although is might sound trivial I think it´s important to state the corollary: We need to be able to trace anything we do as developers back to some requirement. You decide to use Go as the implementation language? Well, what´s the customer´s requirement this decision is linked to? You decide to use WPF as the GUI technology? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide in favor of a layered architecture? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide to put code in three classes instead of just one? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? You decide to use MongoDB over MySql? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? etc. I´m not saying any of these decisions are wrong. I´m just saying whatever you decide be clear about the requirement that´s driving your decision. You have to be able to answer the question: Why do you think will X deliver more value to the customer than the alternatives? Customers are not interested in romantic ideals of hard working, good willing, quality focused craftsmen. They don´t care how and why you work - as long as what you deliver fulfills their needs. They want to trust you to recognize this as your top priority - and then deliver. That´s all. Fundamental aspects of requirements If you´re like me you´re probably not used to such scrutinization. You want to be trusted as a professional developer - and decide quite a few things following your gut feeling. Or by relying on “established practices”. That´s ok in general and most of the time - but still… I think we should be more conscious about our decisions. Which would make us more responsible, even more professional. But without further guidance it´s hard to reason about many of the myriad decisions we´ve to make over the course of a software project. What I found helpful in this situation is structuring requirements into fundamental aspects. Instead of one large heap of requirements then there are smaller blobs. With them it´s easier to check if a decisions falls in their scope. Sure, every project has it´s very own requirements. But all of them belong to just three different major categories, I think. Any requirement either pertains to functionality, non-functional aspects or sustainability. For short I call those aspects: Functionality, because such requirements describe which transformations a software should offer. For example: A calculator software should be able to add and multiply real numbers. An auction website should enable you to set up an auction anytime or to find auctions to bid for. Quality, because such requirements describe how functionality is supposed to work, e.g. fast or secure. For example: A calculator should be able to calculate the sinus of a value much faster than you could in your head. An auction website should accept bids from millions of users. Security of Investment, because functionality and quality need not just be delivered in any way. It´s important to the customer to get them quickly - and not only today but over the course of several years. This aspect introduces time into the “requrements equation”. Security of Investments (SoI) sure is a non-functional requirement. But I think it´s important to not subsume it under the Quality (Q) aspect. That´s because SoI has quite special properties. For one, SoI for software means something completely different from what it means for hardware. If you buy hardware (a car, a hair blower) you find that a worthwhile investment, if the hardware does not change it´s functionality or quality over time. A car still running smoothly with hardly any rust spots after 10 years of daily usage would be a very secure investment. So for hardware (or material products, if you like) “unchangeability” (in the face of usage) is desirable. With software you want the contrary. Software that cannot be changed is a waste. SoI for software means “changeability”. You want to be sure that the software you buy/order today can be changed, adapted, improved over an unforseeable number of years so as fit changes in its usage environment. But that´s not the only reason why the SoI aspect is special. On top of changeability[1] (or evolvability) comes immeasurability. Evolvability cannot readily be measured by counting something. Whether the changeability is as high as the customer wants it, cannot be determined by looking at metrics like Lines of Code or Cyclomatic Complexity or Afferent Coupling. They may give a hint… but they are far, far from precise. That´s because of the nature of changeability. It´s different from performance or scalability. Also it´s because a customer cannot tell upfront, “how much” evolvability he/she wants. Whether requirements regarding Functionality (F) and Q have been met, a customer can tell you very quickly and very precisely. A calculation is missing, the calculation takes too long, the calculation time degrades with increased load, the calculation is accessible to the wrong users etc. That´s all very or at least comparatively easy to determine. But changeability… That´s a whole different thing. Nevertheless over time the customer will develop a feedling if changeability is good enough or degrading. He/she just has to check the development of the frequency of “WTF”s from developers ;-) F and Q are “timeless” requirement categories. Customers want us to deliver on them now. Just focusing on the now, though, is rarely beneficial in the long run. So SoI adds a counterweight to the requirements picture. Customers want SoI - whether they know it or not, whether they state if explicitly or not. In closing A customer´s requirements are not monolithic. They are not all made the same. Rather they fall into different categories. We as developers need to recognize these categories when confronted with some requirement - and take them into account. Only then can we make true professional decisions, i.e. conscious and responsible ones. I call this fundamental trait of software “changeability” and not “flexibility” to distinguish to whom it´s a concern. “Flexibility” to me means, software as is can easily be adapted to a change in its environment, e.g. by tweaking some config data or adding a library which gets picked up by a plug-in engine. “Flexibiltiy” thus is a matter of some user. “Changeability”, on the other hand, to me means, software can easily be changed in its structure to adapt it to new requirements. That´s a matter of the software developer. ?

    Read the article

  • New site – and a special offer

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    SSAS Compare has a brand new website! The old page was thrown together in the way that most Red Gate labs sites tend to be — as experimental sites for experimental products. We’ve been developing SSAS Compare for a while now, so we decided it was time for something a bit prettier. The new site is mostly the work of Andrew, our marketing manager, who has all sorts of opinions about websites. One of the opinions Andrew has is that his photo should be on every site on the internet, or at least every Red Gate site on the internet, and that’s why his handsome visage now appears on the SSAS Compare page. Well, that isn’t quite true. According to Andrew, people download more software when they have photos of human beings to look at. We want as many people to try SSAS Compare as possible, so we got the team together for an intimate photoshoot directed by Red Gate’s resident recorder of light, Dom Reed (aka Mr Flibble). The photo will appear on the site as soon as Dom is finished photoshopping us into something more palatable, which is a big job. Until then, you’ll have to put up with Andrew. We’ve also used the new site to announce a special offer. Right now, SSAS Compare is still a free beta, but by signing up to our Early Access Program, you’ll get a 20% discount when we release SSAS Compare as a fully-fledged product. We’ll use your email address to send you news and updates about business intelligence tools from Red Gate (and nothing else). If that sounds good to you, go to the SSAS Compare site to sign up. By the way, the BI Tools team wasn’t the only thing Dom photographed last week. Remember Noemi’s blog about the flamenco dance? We’ll be at SQL Saturday in our home town of Cambridge this Saturday (8th September), handing out flyers of a distinctly Mediterranean flavour. If you’re attending, be sure to say hello!

    Read the article

  • USB software protection dongle for Java with an SDK which is cross-platform “for real”. Does it exist?

    - by Unai Vivi
    What I'd like to ask is if anybody knows about an hardware USB-dongle for software protection which offers a very complete out-of-the-box API support for cross-platform Java deployments. Its SDK should provide a jar (only one, not one different library per OS & bitness) ready to be added to one's project as a library. The jar should contain all the native stuff for the various OSes and bitnesses From the application's point of view, one should continue to write (api calls) once and run everywhere, without having to care where the end-user will run the software The provided jar should itself deal with loading the appropriate native library Does such a thing exist? With what I've tried so far, you have different APIs and compiled libraries for win32, linux32, win64, linux64, etc (or you even have to compile stuff yourself on the target machine), but hey, we're doing Java here, we don't know (and don't care) where the program will run! And we can't expect the end-user to be a software engineer, tweak (and break!) its linux server, link libraries, mess with gcc, litter the filesystem, etc... In general, Java support (in a transparent cross-platform fashion) is quite bad with the dongle SDKs I've evaluated so far (e.g. KeyLok and SecuTech's UniKey). I even purchased (no free evaluation kit available) SecureMetric SDKs&dongles (they should've been "soooo" straighforward to integrate -- according to marketing material :\ ) and they were the worst ever: SecureDongle X has no 64bit support and SecureDongle SD is not cross-platform at all. So, has anyone out there been through this and found the ultimate Java security usb dongle for cross-platform deployments? Note: software is low-volume, high-value; application is off-line (intranet with no internet access), so no online-activation alternatives and the like. -- EDIT Tried out HASP dongles (used to be called "Aladdin"), and added them to the no-no list: here, too, there is no out-of-the-box (out-of-the-jar) support: e.g. end-linux-user has to manually put the .so library (the specific file for the appropriate bitness) in the right place on his filesystem, and export an env. variable accordingly. -- EDIT 2 I really don't understand all the negativity and all the downvoting: is this a taboo topic? Is it so hard to understand that a freelance developer has to put food on the table everyday to feed its family and pay the bills at the end of the month? Please don't talk about "adding value" as a supplier, because that'd be off-topic. Furthermore I'm not in direct contact with end-customers, but there's an intermediate reselling entity: it's this entity I want to prevent selling copies of the software without sharing the revenue. -- EDIT 3 I'd like to emphasize the fact that the question is looking for a technical answer, not one about opinions concerning business models, philosophical lucubrations on the concept of value, resellers' reliability, etc. I cannot change resellers, because this isn't a "general purpose" kind of sw, but a very vertical one and (for some reasons it's not worth explaining here) I must go through them. I just need to prevent the "we sold 2 copies, here's your share [bwahaha we sold 10]" scenario.

    Read the article

  • Development-led security vs administration-led security in a software product?

    - by haylem
    There are cases where you have the opportunity, as a developer, to enforce stricter security features and protections on a software, though they could very well be managed at an environmental level (ie, the operating system would take care of it). Where would you say you draw the line, and what elements do you factor in your decision? Concrete Examples User Management is the OS's responsibility Not exactly meant as a security feature, but in a similar case Google Chrome used to not allow separate profiles. The invoked reason (though it now supports multiple profiles for a same OS user) used to be that user management was the operating system's responsibility. Disabling Web-Form Fields A recurrent request I see addressed online is to have auto-completion be disabled on form fields. Auto-completion didn't exist in old browsers, and was a welcome feature at the time it was introduced for people who needed to fill in forms often. But it also brought in some security concerns, and so some browsers started to implement, on top of the (obviously needed) setting in their own preference/customization panel, an autocomplete attribute for form or input fields. And this has now been introduced into the upcoming HTML5 standard. For browsers that do not listen to this attribute, strange hacks* are offered, like generating unique IDs and names for fields to avoid them from being suggested in future forms (which comes with another herd of issues, like polluting your local auto-fill cache and not preventing a password from being stored in it, but instead probably duplicating its occurences). In this particular case, and others, I'd argue that this is a user setting and that it's the user's desire and the user's responsibility to enable or disable auto-fill (by disabling the feature altogether). And if it is based on an internal policy and security requirement in a corporate environment, then substitute the user for the administrator in the above. I assume it could be counter-argued that the user may want to access non-critical applications (or sites) with this handy feature enabled, and critical applications with this feature disabled. But then I'd think that's what security zones are for (in some browsers), or the sign that you need a more secure (and dedicated) environment / account to use these applications. * I obviously don't deny the ingeniosity of the people who were forced to find workarounds, just the necessity of said workarounds. Questions That was a tad long-winded, so I guess my questions are: Would you in general consider it to be the application's (hence, the developer's) responsiblity? Where do you draw the line, if not in the "general" case?

    Read the article

  • Develop web site from existing software or cherry pick and use a web framework?

    - by erisco
    A small team and I are tasked with developing a web site. The client has referenced a particular open source project (we'll call it X) when describing some of the features. Because of this, the team wants to start with X and adapt it to satisfy the client. I have looked at X and its code and, in my opinion, it would be unwise. However, my experience is limited, and could really benefit from the insights of others so that I can figure out what I should be asserting as the right direction for the team. My red flags are going up and this is why. X was developed in the earlier days of PHP; 500 line blocks of code are the norm; global variables are abundant; giant switch cases are the norm for switching between which page is shown. There is no clear mapping between URL and where the code for that page sits. From a feature-set standpoint, X is actually software specialized for a different task and has dozens of features we don't need or have use for that come as core assumptions. We will be unable to adapt X through its plugin system. That said, there are a few features which can be mapped, with some modification, to suit our purposes. I believe this is the attraction the team feels. I would feel comfortable if, instead of using X directly, we lifted what is salvageable and useful to us. We can then use that code, and the same 3rd party libraries X is using, in a new code base built on top of a PHP web framework (particularly Agavi, so you understand what I mean by 'web framework'). The web framework gives us a strong MVC structure and provides the common facilities for web development, or adapters to work with 3rd party libraries that do so. We will also have a clean slate feature-wise to work from, which means we can work additively instead of subtractively. Because the code base is better structured, and contains none of what we don't need, it will be easier to document, which is a critical requirement of our client. So to summarize, the team wants to use X, whereas I want to take the bits we can from X and use a web framework instead. I want to bounce this opinion off of other's experiences so that I can be more informed. Thanks for your insight.

    Read the article

  • Alignment requirements: converting basic disk to dynamic disk in order to set up software RAID?

    - by 0xC0000022L
    On Windows 7 x64 Professional I am struggling to convert a basic disk to a dynamic one. Under Disk Management in the MMC the conversion is supposed to be initiated automatically, but it doesn't. My guess: because of using third-party partitioning tools there isn't enough space in front and after the partitions (system-reserved/boot + system volume) to store the required meta-data. When demoting a dynamic disk to a basic disk manually, I noticed that some space seems to be required before and after the partitions. What are the exact alignment requirements that allow the on-board tools in Windows to do the conversion?

    Read the article

  • Remote desktop type software that the client need not install anything...

    - by allentown
    I am primarily a Macintosh user, and can usually walk a client though any troubles they may have because I have a Macintosh in front of me. If they are on a different OS, things are close enough, or I cam remember, that I can get by. When trying to help clients on Windows, I get stuck. I do not have access to windows, and even if I did, there are far too many versions of Outlook, all with their various esoteric settings and checkboxes, that I could never see exactly what they are seeing. I mostly need to just help them with email setup. Something like copilot.com may do the trick. What is the simplest remote control software out there, ideally, it would accomplish these: No software needed on remote end, or, a single .exe that they can toss when done. I need Mac based software on my end. I do have ARD, which support VNC Free :) If possible, it would be really nice Needs a port forwarding proxy run by the company. There is no way I can get the user to alter their router, or to even plug directly into their WAN for a short time. On the Mac, I just have them open iChat, and this is all built in, proxying through AIM, looking for the same for Windows and Mac.

    Read the article

  • How do I resolve an "Invalid Transaction" error saving a zone config in Brocade Web Tools?

    - by Frank Szczerba
    When trying to save zoning changes in the Zone Administration tool in Brocade Web Tools, I get the status "Failed to commit changes to fabric" and the messages window shows: --- start of commit (Enable Config) at: Fri Jul 23 2010 19:43:40 GMT+00:00 Invalid Transaction --- end of commit at: Fri Jul 23 2010 19:43:47 GMT+00:00 I've tried refreshing the config and just re-saving what is already on the switch, but can't get this message to go away.

    Read the article

  • Do any good tools exist for restoring Windows 7 to its factory settings when a clean install isn't an option?

    - by JMK
    I am trying to restore a Windows 7 (Ultimate) PC to its factory settings manually, basically by uninstalling everything in the Add/Remove Programs dialogue box, deleting all personal files and running CCleaner. This is going to take a while. I can't do a clean install because I don't have physical access to the computer, do any good tools exist for restoring Windows 7 to its factory settings when a clean install isn't an option?

    Read the article

  • What are your favorite open source tools? (that is not very famous)

    - by sucuri
    I believe every system administrator is used to open source by now. From Apache to Firefox or Linux, everyone uses it at least a little bit. However, most open source developers are not good in marketing, so I know that there are hundreds of very good tools out there that very few people know. To fill this gap, share your favorite open source tool that you use on your day by day that is not very famous. *I will post mine in the comments.

    Read the article

  • What tools exist for monitoring the CPU and memory utilization of Firefox?

    - by vfclists
    Firefox appears to using too much memory and cpu even when it is idle What tools exist for monitoring the CPU and memory utilization of Firefox? I am thinking of an equivalent of Sysinternals Process Explorer for Firefox or something like top or htop, on a page, script and addon basis. More technically oriented, something I can see and hand over to the script designers or Mozilla and say "see what this doing to my browsing experience!!"

    Read the article

  • Is there extensible structured file analyzer, like network analysis tools?

    - by ???
    There are many network analysis tools like Wireshark, Sniffer Pro, Omnipeak which can dump the packet data in structured manner. I'm just writing my own file analyzer for general purpose, which can dump JPEG, PNG, EXE, ELF, ASN.1 DER encoded files, etc. in tree style. There are so many file formats in the world that I can't handle them all. So I'm wondering if there's some software already there, with pluggable architecture and a large established file format repository?

    Read the article

  • Tools to extract text from powerpoint pptx in linux?

    - by felix
    Any there any linux tools that will extract the text from a Powerpoint pptx file? I tried catppt but it just returns file.pptx is not OLE file or Error. abiword --to=txt file.pptx also returns an empty text file. I can open the file in libreoffice but it doesn't seem to have an "export as text" option. As a guess I also tried libreoffice --headless --convert-to txt:Text file.pptx but that doesn't even return an empty file.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261  | Next Page >