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• A starting point for Use Cases and User Stories

  - by Mike Benkovich

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/benko/archive/2013/07/23/a-starting-point-for-use-cases-and-user-stories.aspxSoftware is a challenging business and is rife with opportunities to go wrong. Over the years a number of methodologies have evolved to help make sure that things go right. In an effort to contribute to this I’ve created a list of user stories that I think should be included and sometimes are just assumed. Note this is a work in progress, so I’m looking for your feedback. I’m curious what you would add or change in my list. · As a DBA I am working with a Normalized data model that reflects an agreed upon logical model for the system · As a DBA I am using consistent names for my fields which match the naming standards of my organization · As a DBA my model supports simple CRUD operations against all the entities · As an Application Architect the UI has been validated against the Business requirements and a complete set of user story’s have been created · As an Application Architect the database model has been validated against the UI · As an Application Architect we have a logical business model that describes all the known and/or expected usage of the system during the software’s expected lifecycle · As an Application Architect we have a Deployment diagram that describes how the application components will be deployed · As an Application Architect we have a navigation diagram that describes the typical application flow · As an Application Architect we have identified points of interaction which describes how the UI interacts with the services and the data storage · As an Application Architect we have identified external systems which may now or in the future use the data of this application and have adapted the logical model to include these interactions · As an Application Architect we have identified existing systems and tools that can be extended and/or reused to help this application achieve it’s business goals · As a Project Manager all team members understand the goals of each release and iteration as they are planned · As a Project Manager all team members understand their role and the roles of others · As a Project Manager we have support of the business to do the right thing even if it is not the expedient thing · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created a simulation environment for testing the system which does not use sensitive data and accurately reflects the scenarios of all the data that will be supported by the system · As a Test/QA Analyst we have identified the matrix of supported clients used to access the system including the likely browsers, mobile devices and other interfaces to work with the application · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created exit criteria for each user story that match the requirements of the business story that was used to create them · As a Test/QA Analyst we have access to a Test environment that is isolated from production and staging environments · As a Test/QA Analyst there we have a way to reset the environment so we can rerun tests when a new version of the software becomes available · As a Test/QA Analyst I am able to automate portions of the test process Thoughts? -mike

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• Would someone please explain Octree Collisions to me?

  - by A-Type

  I've been reading everything I can find on the subject and I feel like the pieces are just about to fall into place, but I just can't quite get it. I'm making a space game, where collisions will occur between planets, ships, asteroids, and the sun. Each of these objects can be subdivided into 'chunks', which I have implemented to speed up rendering (the vertices can and will change often at runtime, so I've separated the buffers). These subdivisions also have bounding primitives to test for collision. All of these objects are made of blocks (yeah, it's that kind of game). Blocks can also be tested for rough collisions, though they do not have individual bounding primitives for memory reasons. I think the rough testing seems to be sufficient, though. So, collision needs to be fairly precise; at block resolution. Some functions rely on two blocks colliding. And, of course, attacking specific blocks is important. Now what I am struggling with is filtering my collision pairs. As I said, I've read a lot about Octrees, but I'm having trouble applying it to my situation as many tutorials are vague with very little code. My main issues are: Are Octrees recalculated each frame, or are they stored in memory and objects are shuffled into different divisions as they move? Despite all my reading I still am not clear on this... the vagueness of it all has been frustrating. How far do Octrees subdivide? Planets in my game are quite large, while asteroids are smaller. Do I subdivide to the size of the planet, or asteroid (where planet is in multiple divisions)? Or is the limit something else entirely, like number of elements in the division? Should I load objects into the octrees as 'chunks' or in the whole, then break into chunks later? This could be specific to my implementation, I suppose. I was going to ask about how big my root needed to be, but I did manage to find this question, and the second answer seems sufficient for me. I'm afraid I don't really get what he means by adding new nodes and doing subdivisions upon adding new objects, probably because I'm confused about whether the tree is maintained in memory or recalculated per-frame.

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• Walmart's Mobile Self-Checkout

  - by David Dorf

  Reuters recently reported that Walmart was testing an iPhone-based self-checkout at a store near its headquarters.  Consumers scan items as they're placed in the physical basket, then the virtual basket is transferred to an existing self-checkout station where payment is tendered.  A very solid solution, but not exactly original. Before we go further, let's look at the possible cost savings for Walmart.  According to the article: Pushing more shoppers to scan their own items and make payments without the help of a cashier could save Wal-Mart millions of dollars, Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley said on March 7. The company spends about $12 million in cashier wages every second at its Walmart U.S. stores. Um, yeah. Using back-of-the-napkin math, I calculated Walmart's cashiers are making $157k per hour.  A more accurate statement would be saving $12M per year for each second saved on the average transaction time.  So if this self-checkout approach saves 2 seconds per transaction on average, Walmart would save $24M per year on labor.  Maybe.  Sometimes that savings will be used to do other tasks in the store, so it may not directly translate to less employees. When I saw this approach demonstrated in Sweden, there were a few differences, which may or may not be in Walmart's plans.  First, the consumers were identified based on their loyalty card.  In order to offset the inevitable shrink, retailers need to save on labor but also increase basket size, typically via in-aisle promotions.  As they scan items, retailers should target promos, and that's easier to do if you know some shopping history.  Last I checked, Walmart had no loyalty program. Second, at the self-checkout station consumers were randomly selected for an audit in which they must re-scan all the items just like you do at a typical self-checkout.  If you were found to be stealing, your ability to use the system can be revoked.  That's a tough one in the US, especially when the system goes wrong, either by mistake or by lying.  At least in my view, the Swedes are bit more trustworthy than the people of Walmart. So while I think the idea of mobile self-checkout has merit, perhaps its not right for Walmart.

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• My Automated NuGet Workflow

  - by Wes McClure

  When we develop libraries (whether internal or public), it helps to have a rapid ability to make changes and test them in a consuming application. Building Setup the library with automatic versioning and a nuspec Setup library assembly version to auto increment build and revision AssemblyInfo –> [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")] This autoincrements build and revision based on time of build Major & Minor Major should be changed when you have breaking changes Minor should be changed once you have a solid new release During development I don’t increment these Create a nuspec, version this with the code nuspec - set version to <version>$version$</version> This uses the assembly’s version, which is auto-incrementing Make changes to code Run automated build (ruby/rake) run “rake nuget” nuget task builds nuget package and copies it to a local nuget feed I use an environment variable to point at this so I can change it on a machine level! The nuget command below assumes a nuspec is checked in called Library.nuspec next to the csproj file $projectSolution = 'src\\Library.sln' $nugetFeedPath = ENV["NuGetDevFeed"] msbuild :build => [:clean] do |msb| msb.properties :configuration => :Release msb.targets :Build msb.solution = $projectSolution end task :nuget => [:build] do sh "nuget pack src\\Library\\Library.csproj /OutputDirectory " + $nugetFeedPath end Setup the local nuget feed as a nuget package source (this is only required once per machine) Go to the consuming project Update the package Update-Package Library or Install-Package TLDR change library code run “rake nuget” run “Update-Package library” in the consuming application build/test! If you manually execute any of this process, especially copying files, you will find it a burden to develop the library and will find yourself dreading it, and even worse, making changes downstream instead of updating the shared library for everyone’s sake. Publishing Once you have a set of changes that you want to release, consider versioning and possibly increment the minor version if needed. Pick the package out of your local feed, and copy it to a public / shared feed! I have a script to do this where I can drop the package on a batch file Replace apikey with your nuget feed's apikey Take out the confirm(s) if you don't want them @ECHO off echo Upload %1? set /P anykey="Hit enter to continue " nuget push %1 apikey set /P anykey="Done " Note: helps to prune all the unnecessary versions during testing from your local feed once you are done and ready to publish TLDR consider version number run command to copy to public feed

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• Are there any concerns with using a static read-only unit of work so that it behaves like a cache?

  - by Rowan Freeman

  Related question: How do I cache data that rarely changes? I'm making an ASP.NET MVC4 application. On every request the security details about the user will need to be checked with the area/controller/action that they are accessing to see if they are allowed to view it. The security information is stored in the database. For example: User Permission UserPermission Action ActionPermission A "Permission" is a token that is applied to an MVC action to indicate that the token is required in order to access the action. Once a user is given the permission (via the UserPermission table) then they have the token and can therefore access the action. I've been looking in to how to cache this data (since it rarely changes) so that I'm only querying in-memory data and not hitting a database (which is a considerable performance hit at the moment). I've tried storing things in lists, using a caching provider but I either run in to problems or performance doesn't improve. One problem that I constantly run in to is that I'm using lazy loading and dynamic proxies with EntityFramework. This means that even if I ToList() everything and store them somewhere static, the relationships are never populated. For example, User.Permissions is an ICollection but it's always null. I don't want to Include() everything because I'm trying to keep things simple and generic (and easy to modify). One thing I know is that an EntityFramework DbContext is a unit of work that acts with 1st-level caching. That is, for the duration of the unit of work, everything that is accessed is cached in memory. I want to create a read-only DbContext that will exist indefinitely and will only be used to read about permission data. Upon testing this it worked perfectly; my page load times went from 200ms+ to 20ms. I can easily force the data to refresh at certain intervals or simply leave it to refresh when the application pool is recycled. Basically it will behave like a cache. Note that the rest of the application will interact with other contexts that exist per request as normal. Is there any disadvantage to this approach? Could I be doing something different?

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• Wireframing: A Day In the Life of UX Workshop at Oracle

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Oracle Applications User Experience team's Day in the Life (DITL) of User Experience (UX) event was run in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ for Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members. I was charged with putting together a wireframing session, together with Director of Financial Applications User Experience, Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson). Example of stunning new wireframing visuals we used on the DITL events. We put on a lively show, explaining the basics of wireframing, the concepts, what it is and isn't, considerations on wireframing tool choice, and then imparting some tips and best practices. But the real energy came when the OUAB customers and partners in the room were challenge to do some wireframing of their own. Wireframing is about bringing your business and product use cases to life in real UX visual terms, by creating a low-fidelity drawing to iterate and agree on in advance of prototyping and coding what is to be finally built and rolled out for users. All the best people wireframe. Leonardo da Vinci used "cartoons" on some great works, tracing outlines first and using red ochre or charcoal dropped through holes in the tracing parchment onto the canvas to outline the subject. (Image distributed under Wikimedia commons license) Wireframing an application's user experience design enables you to: Obtain stakeholder buy-in. Enable faster iteration of different designs. Determine the task flow navigation paths (in Oracle Fusion Applications navigation is linked with user roles). Develop a content strategy (readability, search engine optimization (SEO) of content, and so on) Lay out the pages, widgets, groups of features, and so on. Apply usability heuristics early (no replacement for usability testing, but a great way to do some heavy-lifting up front). Decide upstream which functional user experience design patterns to apply (out of the box solutions that expedite productivity). Assess which Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) or equivalent technology components can be used (again, developer productivity is enhanced downstream). We ran a lively hands-on exercise where teams wireframed a choice of application scenarios using the time-honored tools of pen and paper. Scott worked the floor like a pro, pointing out great use of features, best practices, innovations, and making sure that the whole concept of wireframing, the gestalt, transferred. "We need more buttons!" The cry of the energized. Not quite. The winning wireframe session (online shopping scenario) from the Applications UX DITL event shown. Great fun, great energy, and great teamwork were evident in the room. Naturally, there were prizes for the best wireframe. Well, actually, prizes were handed out to the other attendees too! An exciting, slightly different aspect to delivery of this session made the wireframing event one of the highlights of the day. And definitely, something we will repeat again when we get the chance. Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped organize.

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• Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3 now available

  - by user12609056

  Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3 The Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool Team is happy to announce the availability of release 5.3.  This release addresses bugs discovered since the release of 5.2 plus enhancements to support Oracle Solaris 11 and updates to Oracle Solaris versions 7 through 10. The packages are available on My Oracle Support - simply search for Patch 13365310 to find the downloadable packages. Release Notes General blast support The blast GUI has been removed and is no longer supported. Oracle Solaris 2.6 Support As of Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3, support for Oracle Solaris 2.6 has been dropped. If you have systems running Solaris 2.6, you will need to use Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.2 or earlier to read its crash dumps. New Commands Sanity Command Though one can re-run the sanity checks that are run at tool start-up using the coreinfo command, many users were unaware that they were. Though these checks can still be run using that command, a new command, namely sanity, can now be used to re-run the checks at any time. Interface Changes scat_explore -r and -t option The -r option has ben added to scat_explore so that a base directory can be specified and the -t op[tion was added to enable color taggging of the output. The scat_explore sub-command now accepts new options. Usage is: scat --scat_explore [-atv] [-r base_dir] [-d dest] [unix.N] [vmcore.]N Where: -v Verbose Mode: The command will print messages highlighting what it's doing. -a Auto Mode: The command does not prompt for input from the user as it runs. -d dest Instructs scat_explore to save it's output in the directory dest instead of the present working directory. -r base_dir Instructs scat_explore to save it's under the directory base_dir instead of the present working directory. If it is not specified using the -d option, scat_explore names it's output file as "scat_explore_system_name_hostid_lbolt_value_corefile_name." -t Enable color tags. When enabled, scat_explore tags important text with colors that match the level of importance. These colors correspond to the color normally printed when running Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool in interactive mode. Tag Name Definition FATAL An extremely important message which should be investigated. WARNING A warning that may or may not have anything to do with the crash. ERROR An error, usually printer with a suggested command ALERT Used to indicate something the tool discovered. INFO Purely informational message INFO2 A follow-up to an INFO tagged message REDZONE Usually used when prnting memory info showing something is in the kernel's REDZONE. N The number of the crash dump. Specifying unix.N vmcore.N is optional and not required. Example: $ scat --scat_explore -a -v -r /tmp vmcore.0 #Output directory: /tmp/scat_explore_oomph_833a2959_0x28800_vmcore.0 #Tar filename: scat_explore_oomph_833a2959_0x28800_vmcore.0.tar #Extracting crash data... #Gathering standard crash data collections... #Panic string indicates a possible hang... #Gathering Hang Related data... #Creating tar file... #Compressing tar file... #Successful extraction SCAT_EXPLORE_DATA_DIR=/tmp/scat_explore_oomph_833a2959_0x28800_vmcore.0 Sending scat_explore results The .tar.gz file that results from a scat_explore run may be sent using Oracle Secure File Transfer. The Oracle Secure File Transfer User Guide describes how to use it to send a file. The send_scat_explore script now has a -t option for specifying a to address for sending the results. This option is mandatory. Known Issues There are a couple known issues that we are addressing in release 5.4, which you should expect to see soon: Display of timestamps in threads and clock information is incorrect in some cases. There are alignment issues with some of the tables produced by the tool.

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• Java Embedded Releases

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Oracle today announced a new product in its Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) product portfolio, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, a complete client Java runtime Optimized for resource-constrained, connected, embedded systems.  Also, Oracle is releasing Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2, Oracle Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.2. Oracle also announced Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0 for larger embedded devices, providing a middleware stack for embedded systems. Small is the new big! Introducing Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2  Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small embedded, low power devices such as micro-controllers and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. These include: On-the-fly application downloads and updates Remote operation, often in challenging environments Ability to add new capabilities without impacting the existing functions Support for hardware with as little as 130 kB RAM and 350 kB ROM Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2 Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2 is built around an optimized Java ME implementation that delivers a feature-rich application environment for mass-market mobile devices. This new release: Leverages standard JSRs, Oracle optimizations/APIs and a flexible porting layer for device specific customizations, which are tuned to device/chipset requirements Supports advanced tooling functions, such as memory and network monitoring and on-device tooling Offers new support for dual SIM functionality, which is highly useful for mass-market devices supported by multiple carriers with multiple phone connections Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 provides a complete development environment for both Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 and Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2. Available for download from OTN, The latest version includes: Small embedded device support In-field and remote administration and debugging Java ME SDK plug-ins for Eclipse and the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE), enabling more application development environments for Java ME developers. A new device skin creator that developers can use to generate their custom device skins for testing their applications. Oracle Embedded Suite 7.0 The Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a new packaged solution from Oracle (including Java DB, GlassFish for Embedded Suite, Jersey Web Services Framework, and Oracle Java SE Embedded 7 platform), created to provide value added services for collecting, managing, and transmitting data to and from other embedded devices.The Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a complete device-to-data center solution subset for embedded systems.  See Java Me and Java Embedded in Action Java ME and Java Embedded technologies will be showcased for developers at JavaOne 2012 in over 60 conference sessions and BOFs, as well as in the JavaOne Exhibition Hall. For business decision makers, the new event Java Embedded @ JavaOne you learn more about Java Embedded technologies and solutions.

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• Cheating on Technical Debt

  - by Tony Davis

  One bad practice guaranteed to cause dismay amongst your colleagues is passing on technical debt without full disclosure. There could only be two reasons for this. Either the developer or DBA didn’t know the difference between good and bad practices, or concealed the debt. Neither reflects well on their professional competence. Technical debt, or code debt, is a convenient term to cover all the compromises between the ideal solution and the actual solution, reflecting the reality of the pressures of commercial coding. The one time you’re guaranteed to hear one developer, or DBA, pass judgment on another is when he or she inherits their project, and is surprised by the amount of technical debt left lying around in the form of inelegant architecture, incomplete tests, confusing interface design, no documentation, and so on. It is often expedient for a Project Manager to ignore the build-up of technical debt, the cut corners, not-quite-finished features and rushed designs that mean progress is satisfyingly rapid in the short term. It’s far less satisfying for the poor person who inherits the code. Nothing sends a colder chill down the spine than the dawning realization that you’ve inherited a system crippled with performance and functional issues that will take months of pain to fix before you can even begin to make progress on any of the planned new features. It’s often hard to justify this ‘debt paying’ time to the project owners and managers. It just looks as if you are making no progress, in marked contrast to your predecessor. There can be many good reasons for allowing technical debt to build up, at least in the short term. Often, rapid prototyping is essential, there is a temporary shortfall in test resources, or the domain knowledge is incomplete. It may be necessary to hit a specific deadline with a prototype, or proof-of-concept, to explore a possible market opportunity, with planned iterations and refactoring to follow later. However, it is a crime for a developer to build up technical debt without making this clear to the project participants. He or she needs to record it explicitly. A design compromise made in to order to hit a deadline, be it an outright hack, or a decision made without time for rigorous investigation and testing, needs to be documented with the same rigor that one tracks a bug. What’s the best way to do this? Ideally, we’d have some kind of objective assessment of the level of technical debt in a software project, although that smacks of Science Fiction even as I write it. I’d be interested of hear of any methods you’ve used, but I’m sure most teams have to rely simply on the integrity of their colleagues and the clear perceptions of the project manager… Cheers, Tony.

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• Size doesn't matter

  - by ssoolsma

  Whenever I start a new project I *always* break up my code in different projects. Also known as n-tier solution. The scale of  the project doesn't matter, but make sure that each project is responsible for himself (or herself if you prefer). I make sure that i ....At least thought about how the project should work on the toilet or in a project team meeting.Have a solution directory and create my projects within. I like to name my project (and it's folders by the namespaces). For instance: When i'm creating a piece of (web)software called: ChuckNorris, i always include the software name in my projects. Start off with designing the DataAccess project. I name it: ChuckNorris.DataAccess which lets me easily identify the project incase the project scales alot.Build the classes which represent the database structure. Don't stop working on a class untill it's finished for now. Also, don't over-do the methods. Build stuff only when it's needed, and not think: "Hm, that would be cool to have". Cause most of the time you end up with unused code, and we don't want that.Build a unittest project and make sure you create the folder inside the project that it's testing. So, create the ChuckNorris.DataAccess.UnitTest project inside the folder of the dataaccess project. I would suggest using the nUnit testframework.Incase you though, hm i skip unittest: Don't! Just build it - it will safe you alot of time later onNow, read 5 again. Build that bloody unittest. Don't skip. (i cant emphasize this enough)Now, every class in the dataaccess project is responsible for itself. They don't rely on each other. This is where we use the BusinessLogic project for. Start creating the ChuckNorris.BusinessLogic project. (not inside the data-access project ofcourse, but withing the ChuckNorris folder.Combine stuff from data-access. This usual involves alot of copying the data-access classes and feels silly at first. (we'll get to that later on)Now you come up to a point of creating a service project. You might not always see why to use it, but see it as a way to expose your businesslogic to any application (including your own). Sometimes i use it as a so-called "Factory". Every call goes through this factory, so that's the only thing i'm exposing to any program, and make sure that those methods are the only ones that I allow you to invoke.Build any UI (website, phoneapp, forms application, silverlight, wpf or whatever) and reference it to you service project. Fall in love (cough) with this approach.It's possible that it doesn't seem to make much sense, and very incomplete. Well, that last part is correct. Next post will go in to detail of setting up your Data-Access project and use the entity framework.

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• Where should you put constants and why?

  - by Tim Meyer

  In our mostly large applications, we usually have a only few locations for constants: One class for GUI and internal contstants (Tab Page titles, Group Box titles, calculation factors, enumerations) One class for database tables and columns (this part is generated code) plus readable names for them (manually assigned) One class for application messages (logging, message boxes etc) The constants are usually separated into different structs in those classes. In our C++ applications, the constants are only defined in the .h file and the values are assigned in the .cpp file. One of the advantages is that all strings etc are in one central place and everybody knows where to find them when something must be changed. This is especially something project managers seem to like as people come and go and this way everybody can change such trivial things without having to dig into the application's structure. Also, you can easily change the title of similar Group Boxes / Tab Pages etc at once. Another aspect is that you can just print that class and give it to a non-programmer who can check if the captions are intuitive, and if messages to the user are too detailed or too confusing etc. However, I see certain disadvantages: Every single class is tightly coupled to the constants classes Adding/Removing/Renaming/Moving a constant requires recompilation of at least 90% of the application (Note: Changing the value doesn't, at least for C++). In one of our C++ projects with 1500 classes, this means around 7 minutes of compilation time (using precompiled headers; without them it's around 50 minutes) plus around 10 minutes of linking against certain static libraries. Building a speed optimized release through the Visual Studio Compiler takes up to 3 hours. I don't know if the huge amount of class relations is the source but it might as well be. You get driven into temporarily hard-coding strings straight into code because you want to test something very quickly and don't want to wait 15 minutes just for that test (and probably every subsequent one). Everybody knows what happens to the "I will fix that later"-thoughts. Reusing a class in another project isn't always that easy (mainly due to other tight couplings, but the constants handling doesn't make it easier.) Where would you store constants like that? Also what arguments would you bring in order to convince your project manager that there are better concepts which also comply with the advantages listed above? Feel free to give a C++-specific or independent answer. PS: I know this question is kind of subjective but I honestly don't know of any better place than this site for this kind of question. Update on this project I have news on the compile time thing: Following Caleb's and gbjbaanb's posts, I split my constants file into several other files when I had time. I also eventually split my project into several libraries which was now possible much easier. Compiling this in release mode showed that the auto-generated file which contains the database definitions (table, column names and more - more than 8000 symbols) and builds up certain hashes caused the huge compile times in release mode. Deactivating MSVC's optimizer for the library which contains the DB constants now allowed us to reduce the total compile time of your Project (several applications) in release mode from up to 8 hours to less than one hour! We have yet to find out why MSVC has such a hard time optimizing these files, but for now this change relieves a lot of pressure as we no longer have to rely on nightly builds only. That fact - and other benefits, such as less tight coupling, better reuseability etc - also showed that spending time splitting up the "constants" wasn't such a bad idea after all ;-)

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• Business Choices and Evony

  - by Robert May

  Recently, I’ve been playing a game called Evony, and I finally decided to quit the game and thought I should warn others who might be tempted.  I also find a lot of insight with this game as an example.  A few of the companies that I’ve worked with or worked for have been like this and they are NOT good places to be. Evony is a joke designed to milk as much money out of people as possible.  As a professional software developer who mentors teams on how to build better software, here's what I see: They obviously offshore all development and have little oversight over that offshore development, and they probably have a small team at that.  Evidenced by the poor grammar throughout the game. They're seeking to maximize revenue and pushing to do as little development as possible, which would mean a small team. They're horribly understaffed in the customer support department as evidenced by never replying to this forum and never responding to bug reports or help requests (I've had one open with no response AT ALL for over a month . . .) They have way inadequate testing, no CI, and probably no automated unit tests.  You can see this by the poor grammar throughout the game and the type of bugs that show up. They aren't following a formal development process (no Agile, Waterfall, or anything else) as evidenced by their lack of predictable release cycle and lack of visibility. I'm guessing that the internal code base is terrible, otherwise, there wouldn't be an "Age II" that had nothing more than a new visual interface and a few rule tweaks.  This is also evidenced by the itty bitty scope of bug fixes and their inability to really fix bugs. Their Architect sucks.  Really, 42k user is all you can handle on a single server?  Could you REALLY not come up with a better way to scale to handle users?  They've built isolated worlds, instead of a single continuous world. Back to milking people for money--to really progress, you have to spend money. All of this adds up to knowing, deliberate actions on the part of management.  They CHOOSE to do this (like AOL choosing to send more discs instead of improve quality). So, what can we learn? This game will never really improve, since the bosses don't care, they're only in it for the money. The game will never have good support.  Again, the owners don't care. Giving them money only perpetuates this scam (and yes, I've given them money, way too much money. :() They don't care if you quit.  There's a new sucker born every day. Don't EVER go to work for them.  I've worked both with and for people like this and the culture is NEVER good. Ah well. Technorati Tags: Evony

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• More Maintenance Plan Weirdness

  - by AjarnMark

  I’m not a big fan of the built-in Maintenance Plan functionality in SQL Server.  I like the interface in SQL 2005 better than 2000 (it looks more like building an SSIS package) but it’s still a bit of a black box.  You don’t really know what commands are being run based on the selections you have made, and you can easily make some unwise choices without realizing it, such as shrinking your database on a regular basis.  I really prefer to know exactly what commands and with which options are being run on my servers. Recently I had another very strange thing happen with a Maintenance Plan, this time in SQL 2005, SP3.  I inherited this server and have done a bit of cleanup on it, but had not yet gotten around to replacing the Maintenance Plans with all my own scripts.  However, one of the maintenance plans which was just responsible for doing LOG backups was running more frequently than that system needed, and I thought I would just tweak the schedule a bit.  So I opened the Maintenance Plan and edited the properties of the Subplan, setting a new schedule, saved it and figured all was good to go.  But the next execution of the Scheduled Job that triggers the Maintenance Plan code failed with an error about the Owner of the job.  Specifically the error was, “Unable to determine if the owner (OldDomain\OldDBAUserID) of job MaintenancePlanName.Subplan has server access (reason: Could not obtain information about Windows NT group/user 'OldDomain\OldDBAUserID’..”  I was really confused because I had previously updated all of the jobs to have current accounts as the owners.  At first I thought it was just a fluke, but it happened on the next scheduled cycle so I investigated further and sure enough, that job had the old DBA’s account listed as the owner.  I fixed it and the job successfully ran to completion. Now, I don’t really like mysteries like that, so I did some more testing and verified that, sure enough, just editing the Subplan schedule and saving the Maintenance Job caused the Scheduled Job to be recreated with the old credentials.  I don’t know where it is getting those credentials, but I can only assume that it is the same as the original creator of the Maintenance Plan, and for some reason it insists on using that ID for the job owner.  I looked through the options in SSMA and could not find anything would let me easily set the value that I wanted it to use.  I suspect that if I did something like executing sp_changeobjectowner against the Maintenance Plan that it would use that new ID instead.  I’m sure that there is good reason that it works this way, but rather than mess around with it much more, I’m just going to spend my time rolling out my replacement scripts instead. Chalk this little hidden oddity up as yet one more reason I’m not a fan of Maintenance Plans.

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• Black screen on latest Nvidia Cards when starting LightDM/Ubuntu

  - by Luis Alvarado

  Today I installed an Nvidia GT440 on my computer, changing the one that existed there, an Nvidia 9500GT. After changing it I started getting a problem where the screen just went black when loading the lightdm login screen (Where I punt my user and password). The thing is, if I disconnect the VGA cable and connect it again I get to see the lightdm greeter and everything works perfect. The problem is that I have to connect/disconnect every time I reboot the PC. I tried installing the 285.xx drivers. Same problem. I removed the Nvidia drivers installed with Jockey, rebooted, same problem. I install the current 280.xx again, same problem. After all that I installed a fresh install of Ubuntu, selected to install the Nvidia drivers while installing it from the livecd. After booting the same problem appeared. Dmesg does not say anything wrong about it. Same goes for the log from Jockey. What else should I check or what to do to solve it. Just to clarify, this does not happen BEFORE the lightdm greeter appears. Am guessing before the actual use of the video card with X starts with all the 2D/3D stuff that is used in ligthdm and unity. I can use any tty and even see the Ubuntu logo when starting. UPDATE: When I open a game in fullscreen the problem appears again. I have to unplug the monitor cable and plug it back in to see the game. Then when I quit the game I have to do it again to see the desktop. UPDATE 2: Today I bought a HDMI cable, connected the video card to the TV am testing it with and it actually did log in correctly without any black screen but it shows the resolution a little over the actual size of the screen. So I see only half of the launcher since the left side of it is hidden outside of the real resolution and the top bar is beyond the resolution. So the black screen is related to the VGA connection.

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• Is it okay to have people with multiple roles in a Scrum team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm evaluating some Agile-style methodologies for possible introduction to my team. With Scrum, is it allowable to have the same person perform multiple roles? We have a small team of four developers and a web designer; we don't really have a lead (I fulfill this role), QA testers or business analysts, and all of our development tasks come from the CIO. Automated testing is seen as a total waste of time, and everything focuses on speed and not quality. What will happen is the CIO will come up with a development task (whether a feature or a bug) and give it to a developer (not to the whole team, to an individual, often in private or out of the blue) who is then expected to get it completed. The CIO doesn't gather requirements beyond the initial idea (and this has bitten us before as we'll implement something only to find out that none of the end users can use the feature, because they weren't consulted or even informed about it before we developed it, and in a panic we'll be told to revert the change) but requires say in/approval of everything that we do. First things first, is a Scrum style something to consider to introduce some standards and practices? From reading, Scrum seems to rely on a bit more trust and communication and focuses more on project management than on development, which is something we are completely devoid of as we don't have any semblance of project management at present. Second, if it can work is it unreasonable for someone, let's say myself, to act as both ScrumMaster and a developer? Or for a developer to also be the Product Owner (although chances are this will be the CIO, who isn't a developer)? I realize the Scrum Master and the Product Owner should be different people but at the same time I don't think we have anyone who has the qualities of a Product Owner (chances are it would turn into a "I need all these stories, I don't care how but get it done" type of deal and/or any freeze would be unfrozen on a whim). It seems to me that I might need to pick and choose pieces of Scrum/XP/Lean to compensate for how things are done currently, as it's highly unlikely that the mentality can be changed; for instance Pair Programming would never fly (seen as a waste, you get half the tasks done if you need two people for everything), TDD would be a hard sell, but short cycles would be welcomed.

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• Who should control navigation in an MVVM application?

  - by SonOfPirate

  Example #1: I have a view displayed in my MVVM application (let's use Silverlight for the purposes of the discussion) and I click on a button that should take me to a new page. Example #2: That same view has another button that, when clicked, should open up a details view in a child window (dialog). We know that there will be Command objects exposed by our ViewModel bound to the buttons with methods that respond to the user's click. But, what then? How do we complete the action? Even if we use a so-called NavigationService, what are we telling it? To be more specific, in a traditional View-first model (like URL-based navigation schemes such as on the web or the SL built-in navigation framework) the Command objects would have to know what View to display next. That seems to cross the line when it comes to the separation of concerns promoted by the pattern. On the other hand, if the button wasn't wired to a Command object and behaved like a hyperlink, the navigation rules could be defined in the markup. But do we want the Views to control application flow and isn't navigation just another type of business logic? (I can say yes in some cases and no in others.) To me, the utopian implementation of the MVVM pattern (and I've heard others profess this) would be to have the ViewModel wired in such a way that the application can run headless (i.e. no Views). This provides the most surface area for code-based testing and makes the Views a true skin on the application. And my ViewModel shouldn't care if it displayed in the main window, a floating panel or a child window, should it? According to this apprach, it is up to some other mechanism at runtime to 'bind' what View should be displayed for each ViewModel. But what if we want to share a View with multiple ViewModels or vice versa? So given the need to manage the View-ViewModel relationship so we know what to display when along with the need to navigate between views, including displaying child windows / dialogs, how do we truly accomplish this in the MVVM pattern?

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• Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook book review

  - by Chris Muir

  I recently received a free copy of Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook published by Packt Publishing for review. Readers of technical cookbooks would know this genre of text includes problems that developers will hit and the prescribed solutions, in this case for Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF).  Books like this excel themselves on excellent coverage, a logical progress of solutions through out the book, and providing a readable narrative around the numerous steps and code. This book progresses well through ADF application assembly, ADF Business Components, the view layer, security, deployment and tuning.  Each recipe had a clear introduction and I especially enjoyed the "There's more" follow up sections for some recipes that leads the reader onto related ideas and issues the reader really needs to be aware of. Also worthy of comment having worked with ADF for over 5 years, there certainly was recipes and solutions I hadn't encountered before, this book gets bonus points for that. As a reviewer what negatives can I give this text? The book has cast it's net too wide by trying to cover "everything from design and construction, to deployment, testing, debugging and optimization."  ADF is such a large and sophistication technology, this book with 100 recipes barely scrapes the surface.  Don't expect all your ADF problems to be solved here. In turn there is inconsistency in the level of problems and solutions.  I felt at the beginning the book was pitching itself at advanced problems to solve (that's great for me), but then it introduces topics like building a static View Object or train.  These topics in my opinion are fairly simple and are covered by the Oracle documentation just as well, they shouldn't have been included here.  In conclusion, ADF beginners will find this book worthwhile as it will open your eyes to the wider problems and solutions required for ADF, and experts for just the fact they can point junior programmers at the book for certain problems and say "get on with it". Is there scope for more ADF tombs like this?  Yes!  I'd love to see a cookbook specializing on ADF Business Components (hint hint to budding authors).

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• TechEd 2012: Windows 8 And Metro

  - by Tim Murphy

  Windows 8 is here (or at least very close) and that was the main feature of this morning’s key note.  Antoine LeBlond started off by apologizing to the IT professionals since he planned on showing code.  I’m not sure if IT Pros are that easily confused or why you would need such a disclaimer.  Developers do real work, IT Pros just play with toys (just kidding). The highlights of the Windows 8 keynote for me started with some of the UI design elements that I had not seen when I was shown one of the Build tablets.  Specifically I liked the AppBar features that we have become used to with Windows Phone and some of the gesture features.  Even though they have been available on other platforms before I think Microsoft really got them right. Two other great features of Windows 8 that they demonstrated were the Hyper-V capabilities and the ability to run Windows 8 anywhere from a USB key.  My jaw dropped through the floor seeing a feature rich OS boot off of a thumb drive. WOW!  I also can’t wait to get rid of dual booting just to run Hyper-V images when developing. The morning continued with a session on Metro XAML development with Tim Heuer.  While included a lot of great XAML Metro demos, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things I found out about Visual Studio 2012.  Finding out that Blend is now integrated with VS2012 was a nice addition after working with them as separate applications was an encouraging start. Moving on to Metro he introduced the nugget that WinRT is Async everywhere.  How deep this model goes will be an interesting thing to find out as I learn more about developing for the platform.  Thankfully he followed that up with a couple of new keywords, await and async, that eliminates a lot of plumbing that has been required in the past for asynchronous transactions. Tim also related that since the Metro framework is relatively small and most apps will use a significant amount of it the entire surface is referenced by default.  This is a contrast to adding namespace and assemblies one after another as we normally do. This was such a power packed session that I can’t detail it all here so here is the teaser list. New icons in VS2012 for extension methods Emulator/simulator testing features for gestures Portable class libraries XAML no longer managed code And so much more …   del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Metro,Tim Heuer,XAML,Widows Phone,Hyper-V,Antoine LeBlond,TechEd,TechEd 2012,Visual Studio 2012,Visual Studio

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• How to become a good team player?

  - by Nick

  I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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• At $20/month Windows Azure host my website with 99.97% uptime

  - by Gopinath

  Couple of years ago a reliable and decent performing Windows hosting was not affordable to many enthusiastic developers who want to try a startup idea or build a hobby site. I tried to start an ASP.NET website few years ago to provide services like – Mobile Tracing, Vehicle Tracing. But due to high cost of Windows hosting I developed those services using PHP (not an easy task for .NET developer) and hosted on them Linux servers.  But with recent evolution of Windows Azure, hosting ASP.NET websites on highly reliable servers is affordable. Today anyone can host a high responsive and available ASP.NET website for just $20/month using Windows Azure. My website coziie.com is running on Windows Azure and serves close to quarter millions visitors a month with 99.97% of uptime and most of the page load times are less than 3 seconds. All I spend to run this website is just around $20, if you translate it to India rupees its roughly Rs.1000. The web sever of coziie.com is powered by a single Extra Small Web role instance and the backend is powered by a SQL Azure instance. Azure is quite impressive to provide 99.97% of uptime. Response times during peak are around 3 seconds and on nomarl loads it is around 1.5 seconds. Here is the report of uptime provided by Royal Pingdom over last one year For just $20/month Windows Azure takes care of the following apart from hosting Patches up Windows OS to the latest version Upgrades ASP.NET to the latest version – coziie.com is running on ASP.NET MVC 3 and soon I’ll upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 Hosts data on latest and best version Sql Server database SQL Azure maintains 3 copies of database and automatically recovers in case of server failures and disasters. I never worry about database backups/restore. Provides staging environment for deploying applications for testing purpose and move them to production – I upgrade  twice a month on average With Windows Azure I no longer focus on server maintenance or data backups. They are taken up by Microsoft team and I just focus on building my website. Wish there is a low cost Linux version of Windows Azure so that I can stop worrying about server maintenance of this blog!! If you are looking for a Windows hosting, look no further than Windows Azure. If you find $20/month is a bit expensive to start with you may explore Azure Website (sort of shared hosted environment) which is free to start with and as your traffic grows you can move to paid hosting.

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• Application Integration Future &ndash; BizTalk Server &amp; Windows Azure (TechEd 2012)

  - by SURESH GIRIRAJAN

  I am really excited to see lot of new news around BizTalk in TechEd 2012. I was recently watching the session presented by Sriram and Rajesh on “Application Integration Futures: The Road Map and What's Next on Windows Azure”. It was great session and lot of interesting stuff about the feature updates for BizTalk and Azure integration. I have highlighted them below, definitely customers who haven’t started using Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit should start using them which is going to be part of the core BizTalk product in future release, which is cool… BizTalk Server feature enhancements Manageability: ESB Tool Kit is going to be part of the core BizTalk product and Setup. Visualize BizTalk artifact dependencies in BizTalk administration console. HIS administration using configuration files. Performance: Improvements in ordered send port scenarios Improved performance in dynamic send ports and ESB, also to configure BizTalk host handler for dynamic send ports. Right now it runs under default host, which does not enable to scale. MLLP adapter enhancements and DB2 client transaction load balancing / client bulk insert. Platform Support: Visual Studio 2012, Windows 8 Server, SQL Server 2012, Office 15 and System Center 2012. B2B enhancements to support latest industry standards natively. Connectivity Improvements: Consume REST service directly in BizTalk SharePoint integration made easier. Improvements to SMTP adapter, to add macros for sending same email with different content to different parties. Connectivity to Azure Service Bus relay, queues and topics. DB2 client connectivity to SQL Server and SQL Server connectivity to Informix. CICS Http client connectivity to Windows. Azure: Use Azure as IaaS/PaaS for BizTalk environment. Use Azure to provision BizTalk environment for test environment / development. Later move to On-premises or build a Hybrid cloud approach. Eliminate HW procurement for BizTalk environment for testing / demos / development etc. Enable to create BizTalk farm easily and remove/add more servers as needed. EAI Service: EAI Bridge Protocol transformation Message Transformation Running custom code Message Enrichment Hybrid Connectivity LOB Applications On-premises Application On-premises Connectivity to Applications in the cloud Queues/ Topics Ftp Devices Web Services Bridge can be customized based on the service needs to provide different capabilities needed as part of the bridge. Look at the sample for EDI bridge for EDI service sample. Also with Tracking enabled through the portal. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh674490 Adapters: Service Bus Messaging adapter - New adapter added. WebHttp adapter - For REST services. NetTcpRelay adapter - New adapter added. I will start posting more and once I start playing with this…

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• std::vector::size with glDrawElements crashes?

  - by NoobScratcher

  ( win32 / OpenGL 3.3 / GLSL 330 ) I decided after a long time of trying to do a graphical user interface using just opengl graphics to go back to a gui toolkit and so in the process have had to port alot of my code to win32. But I have a problem with my glDrawElement function. my program compiles and runs fine until it gets to glDrawElements then crashes.. which is rather annoying right. so I was trying to figure out why and I found out its std::vector::size member not returning the correct amount of faces in the unsigned interger vector eg, "vector<unsigned int>faces; " so when I use cout << faces.size() << endl; I got 68 elements???? instead of 24 as you can see here in this .obj file: # Blender v2.61 (sub 0) OBJ File: '' # www.blender.org v 1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000 v 1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000 v -1.000000 -1.000000 1.000000 v -1.000000 -1.000000 -1.000000 v 1.000000 1.000000 -0.999999 v 0.999999 1.000000 1.000001 v -1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 v -1.000000 1.000000 -1.000000 s off f 1 2 3 4 f 5 8 7 6 f 1 5 6 2 f 2 6 7 3 <--- 24 Faces not 68? f 3 7 8 4 f 5 1 4 8 I'm using a parser I created to get the faces/vertexes in my .obj file: char modelbuffer [20000]; int MAX_BUFF = 20000; unsigned int face[3]; FILE * pfile; pfile = fopen(szFileName, "rw"); while(fgets(modelbuffer, MAX_BUFF, pfile) != NULL) { if('v') { Point p; sscanf(modelbuffer, "v %f %f %f", &p.x, &p.y, &p.z); points.push_back(p); cout << " p.x = " << p.x << " p.y = " << p.y << " p.z = " << p.x << endl; } if('f') { sscanf(modelbuffer, "f %d %d %d %d", &face[0], &face[1], &face[2], &face[3]); cout << "face[0] = " << face[0] << " face[1] = " << face[1] << " face[2] = " << face[2] << " face[3] = " << face[3] << "\n"; faces.push_back(face[0] - 1); faces.push_back(face[1] - 1); faces.push_back(face[2] - 1); faces.push_back(face[3] - 1); cout << face[0] - 1 << face[1] - 1 << face[2] - 1 << face[3] - 1 << endl; } } using this struct to store the x,y,z positions also this vector was used with Point: vector<Point>points; struct Point { float x, y, z; }; If someone could tell me why its not working and how to fix it that would be awesome I also provide a pastebin to the full source code if you want a closer look. http://pastebin.com/gznYLVw7

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• Loading another domain's content in a modal iframe - acceptable?

  - by user568458

  Is it okay to load another page in an iframe in a modal pop-up window - in terms of legal and ethical standards around displaying 3rd party content? I remember a few years ago there was controversy and a debate about whether it was okay to load another domain's page content on your domain in a full-width iframe, with your site providing a masthead with controls for favouriting, linking etc (e.g. like StumbleUpon). I seem to recall that the consensus was, that it was okay so long as you were clearly in no way claiming ownership of the 3rd party content or attempting to modify the content and so long as there was a 'go to site' button or equivalent; and that sites could ask you to exclude them, but generally speaking, it's an acceptable practice. How acceptable would it be considered to be to load another site's page within a modal (lightbox-like) popup box (following all the above principles: clear attribution and a prominent button that kills the iframe and gives them the 3rd party original)? My expectation would be that it would follow the same principles, and be acceptable so long as these conditions were met. Note that I'm asking about the likely legitimate responses of the 3rd party sites and possible legal position, not about usability or UX. I'm aware that this should never ever ever ever ever be the standard way external links are loaded, and that 99% of the time linking to external content like this would be terrible for usability. My specific use case is one of those 1% of cases where loading a separate page in this tab actually wouldn't be the expected behaviour of a link: an interactive data visualisation tool that also acts as a 'browser' of external content (science papers underlying the data it navigates). All other links within the interactive will change something while staying on the same page. If the user clicked one of these external links by mistake (as people often do, even when they are clearly, noisily labelled) and then had to back-button back, they would lose their fine-grained position in the interactive tool (jquery bbq hashchanges being not appropriate for all elements of the tool). New window/tab will simply open the target page on the 3rd party domain. Opening a new window/tab would also be an alternative option (and has its own disadvantages) - my question is, whether this is an alternative that could be considered (in terms of acceptable practice around intellectual property etc), irrespective of which option is best for UX: which is something we'll decide the proper way, based on actual UX testing.

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• How do I take responsibility for my code when colleague makes unnecessary improvements without notice?

  - by Jesslyn

  One of my teammates is a jack of all trades in our IT shop and I respect his insight. However, sometimes he reviews my code (he's second in command to our team leader, so that's expected) without a heads up. So sometimes he reviews my changes before they complete the end goal and makes changes right away... and has even broken my work once. Other times, he has made unnecessary improvements to some of my code that is 3+ months old. This annoys me for a few reasons: I am not always given a chance to fix my mistakes He has not taken the time to ask me what I was trying to accomplish when he is confused, which could affect his testing or changes I don't always think his code is readable Deadlines are not an issue and his current workload doesn't require any work in my projects other than reviewing my code changes. Anyways, I have told him in the past to please keep me posted if he sees something in my work that he wants to change so that I could take ownership of my code (maybe I should have said "shortcomings") and he's not been responsive. I fear that I may come off as aggressive when I ask him to explain his changes to me. He's just a quiet person who keeps to himself, but his actions continue. I don't want to banish him from making code changes (not like I could), because we are a team--but I want to do my part to help our team. Added clarifications: We share 1 development branch. I do not wait until all my changes complete a single task because I risk losing some significant work--so I make sure my changes build and do not break anything. My concern is that my teammate doesn't explain the reason or purpose behind his changes. I don't think he should need my blessing, but if we disagree on an approach I thought it would be best to discuss the pros and cons and make a decision once we both understand what is going on. I have not discussed this with our team lead yet as I would prefer to resolve personal disagreements without getting management involved unless it is necessary. Since my concern seemed more of personal issue than a threat to our work, I chose to not bother the team lead. I am working on code review process ideas--to help promote the benefits of more organized code reviews without making it all about my pet peeves.

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• Move over DFS and Robocopy, here is SyncToy!

  - by andywe

  Ever since Windows 2000, I have always had the need to replicate data to multiple endpoints with the same content. Until DFS was introduced, the method of thinking was to either manually copy the data location by location, or to batch script it with xcopy and schedule a task. Even though this worked (and still does today), it was cumbersome, and intensive on the network, especially when dealing with larger amounts of data. Then along came robocopy, as an internal tool written by an enterprising programmer at Microsoft. We used it quite a bit, especially when we could not use DFS in the early days. It was received so well, it made it into the public realm. At least now we could have the ability to determine what files had changed and only replicate those. Well, over time there has been evolution of this ideal. DFS is obviously the Windows enterprise class service to do this, along with BrancheCache..however you don’t always need or want the power of DFS, especially when it comes to small datacenter installations, or remote offices. I have specific data sets that are on closed or restricted networks, that either have a security need for this, or are in remote countries where bandwidth is a premium. FOr this, I use the latest evolution for one off replication names Synctoy. Synctoy is from Microsoft, seemingly released in 2009, that wraps a nice GUI around setting up a paired set of folders (remember the mobile briefcase from Windows 98?), and allowing you the choice of synchronization methods. 1 way, or 2 way. Simply create a paired set of folders on the source and destination, choose your options for content, exclude any file types you don’t want to replicate, and click run. Scheduling is even easier. MS has included a wrapper for doing just this so all you enter in your task schedule in the SynToyCMD.exe, a –R as an argument, and the time schedule. No more complicated command lines or scripts.   I find this especially useful when I use MS backup to back up a system volume, but only want subsets of backup information of a data share and ONLY when that dataset has changed. Not relying on full backups and incremental. An example of this is my application installation master share. I back this up with SyncToy because I do not need multiple backup copies..one copy elsewhere suffices to back it up. At home, very useful for your pictures, videos, music, ect..the backup is online and ready to access, not waiting for you to restore a backup file, and no need to institute a domain simply to have DFS.'   Do note there is a risk..if you accidently delete a file and do not catch this before the next sync, then depending on your SyncToy settings, you can indeed lose that file as the destination updates..so due diligence applies. I make it a rule to sync manly one way…I use my master share for making changes, and allow the schedule to follow suit. Any real important file I lock down as read only through file permissions so it cannot be deleted unless I intervene.   Check out the tool and have some fun! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=15155

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