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  • How do I update my primary key in MySQL?

    - by Wesley
    Ok, this is probably really simple, but I just can't figure it out. I have a primary key in a table that goes from 1-5,000. I need to manually update that id (for other table update purposes) so that it says 5,000-10,000. Can't I manually update this column? Please help!!! Thank you

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  • Split a sting array into a number array in javascript

    - by Wesley Skeen
    I am reading a value from a dropdown list depending on what option is selected. I am using jqPlot to graph the values. jqPlot expects an array of values like [91, 6, 2, 57, 29, 40, 95] but when I read the value in from the dropdown box it is coming in as a whole string "[91, 6, 2, 57, 29, 40, 95]" I tried splitting it but I got ["91", "6", "2", "57", "29", "40", "95"] which wont display the graph correctly. Is there anybody that has encountered something like this before and what can I do to make my values convert into a number array. Thanks for any help

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  • Valuing "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation"

    - by tom.spitz
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} I subscribe to the tenets put forth in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development - http://agilemanifesto.org. As Oracle's chief methodologist, that might seem a self-deprecating attitude. After all, the agile manifesto tells us that we should value "individuals and interactions" over "processes and tools." My job includes process development. I also subscribe to ideas put forth in a number of subsequent works including Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Boehm/Turner, Addison-Wesley) and Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Highsmith, Addison-Wesley). Both of these books talk about finding the right balance between "agility and discipline" or between a "predictive and adaptive" project approach. So there still seems to be a place for us in creating the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) to become the "single method framework that supports the successful implementation of every Oracle product." After all, the real idea is to apply just enough ceremony and produce just enough documentation to suit the needs of the particular project that supports an enterprise in moving toward its desired future state. The thing I've been struggling with - and the thing I'd like to hear from you about right now - is the prevalence of an ongoing obsession with "documents." OUM provides a comprehensive set of guidance for an iterative and incremental approach to engineering and implementing software systems. Our intent is first to support the information technology system implementation and, as necessary, support the creation of documentation. OUM, therefore, includes a supporting set of document templates. Our guidance is to employ those templates, sparingly, as needed; not create piles of documentation that you're not gonna (sic) need. In other words, don't serve the method, make the method serve you. Yet, there seems to be a "gimme" mentality in some circles that if you give me a sample document - or better yet - a repository of samples - then I will be able to do anything cheaply and quickly. The notion is certainly appealing AND reuse can save time. Plus, documents are a lowest common denominator way of packaging reusable stuff. However, without sustained investment and management I've seen "reuse repositories" turn quickly into garbage heaps. So, I remain a skeptic. I agree that providing document examples that promote consistency is helpful. However, there may be too much emphasis on the documents themselves and not enough on creating a system that meets the evolving needs of the business. How can we shift the emphasis toward working software and away from our dependency on documents - especially on large, complex implementation projects - while still supporting the need for documentation? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

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  • Ruby on Rails resources

    - by andrewpthorp
    I was hoping I could find some good ruby on rails reading/resources. Please note, I currently am aware of the following: Pragmatic Bookshelf (Exceptional Ruby, Agile web development with rails, etc) Addison Wesley (Rails AntiPatterns, The Rails 3 Way, etc) freenode #rubyonrails RSS Feeds (thoughtbot, pivotal blabs) railscasts I am looking for any other good resources. What are the best RSS feeds? What are the best books? Blogs? Videos? Any information you can share would be great!

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  • a whole new sellsbrothers.com

    The new sellsbrothers.com implementation has been a while in the making. In fact, I've had the final art in my hands since August of 2005. I've tried several times to sit down and rebuild my 15-year-old sellsbrothers.com completely from scratch using the latest tools. This time, I had a book contract ("Programming Data," Addison-Wesley, 2010) and I needed some real-world experience with Entity Framework 4.0 and OData, so I fired up Visual Studio 2010 a coupla months ago and went to...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.

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  • a whole new sellsbrothers.com

    The new sellsbrothers.com implementation has been a while in the making. In fact, I've had the final art in my hands since August of 2005. I've tried several times to sit down and rebuild my 15-year-old sellsbrothers.com completely from scratch using the latest tools. This time, I had a book contract ("Programming Data," Addison-Wesley, 2010) and I needed some real-world experience with Entity Framework 4.0 and OData, so I fired up Visual Studio 2010 a coupla months ago and went to...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.

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  • Mutithreading in Win32

    - by Gareth87
    is there any good book/video/web tutorials for multithreading in win32? I only found Addison-Wesley - Multithreading Applications in Win32 (1996) book and might going to order it soon.

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  • Free CodeSmith License!

    - by Randy Walker
    The catch?  Attend the Ozarks .Net User Group meeting on April 1st. Here’s a list of the other prizes for the event GRAND PRIZE 1 - iPad (Wi-Fi 16GB) THIRD PARTY COMPONENTS 6 - Telerik Premium Collection 5 - Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET 1 - Nevron Chart for .NET Lite DevExpress Xceed PRODUCTIVITY 2 - CodeRush with Refactor! Pro 2 - ReSharper CodeSmith GAMES 3 - Halo3 ODST (XBox 360) 3 - Forza Motorsport (Xbox 360) OTHER SOFTWARE 3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 2 - Microsoft Office Standard 2007 HARDWARE 2 - Microsoft Arc Mouse BOOKS 12 - OReilly eBooks 12 - Microsoft Press books 5 - Apress books 3 - Addison-Wesley books 2 - Manning books 2 - Sams books The Info: "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" by Claudio Lassala on April 1, 2010 PRESENTATION TOPIC "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" - by Claudio Lassala Poorly written code can be created quickly, but it comes at a cost of high maintenance. Most of the time, code can be improved easily by following some simple practices. Professional developers should know these practices and tools and apply it to their work every day. This session will cover the importance of writing clean code, the kind of attitude all developers should have towards the code they produce, as well as the practices and tools that can be used to aid you in becoming a better developer. BIOGRAPHY Claudio Lassala is a Senior Developer at EPS Software Corp. He has presented several lectures at Microsoft events such as PDC Brazil and various other Microsoft seminars, as well as several conferences and user groups across North America and Brazil. He is a multiple winner of the Microsoft MVP Award since 2001 (for Visual FoxPro in 2001-2002, and for C# ever since), an INETA speaker, and also holds the MCSD for .NET certification. He has articles published on several magazines, such as MSDN Brazil Magazine, CoDe Magazine, UTMag, Developers Magazine, and FoxPro Advisor. More detailed information regarding his presentations and articles can be found in his MVP Profile. You can also read more about Claudio on his blog or on Twitter Schedule 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Social Networking 6:30 PM - 7:00 PM  Prizes 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Presentation:  "Be a Professional Developer and Write Clean Code!" by Claudio Lassala 8:30 PM - 9:00 PM Wrap-Up

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  • September OTN Member Offers

    - by Cassandra Clark - OTN
    Oracle OpenWolrd and JavaOne are coming....so the OTN team is knee deep in planning the OTN Lounges that will be at each event this year (more info in another post soon), but we managed to work with our partners to offer a nice BIG list of NEW offers for September.  Visit Oracle Technology Network Member Discount page for codes and links to these great offers! Oracle Press Oracle Technology Network members get 40% off the newest Oracle Press title, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Handbook by Tom Plunkett! Mike Murach & Associates, Inc. Get 30% off and sample chapter of Murach’s SQL Server 2012 for Developers by Bryan Syverson and Joel Murach Manning - 41% off titles below and sample chapter of each. Making Java Groovy OCA Java SE 7 Programmer I Certification Guide Apress - Get 30% off on apress.com on Java 7 Recipes A Problem-Solution Approach Safari Books Online - OTN members get 30 days of free access + 20% off unlimited access to Safari Books Online for 6 months. Safari Books Online offers subscription access to more than 24,000 books and training videos about technology, digital media, business management and professional development from leading publishers such as Oracle Press, O'Reilly Media, Que, Addison-Wesley, Wrox, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press, McGraw Hill, Wiley, Apress, Adobe Press and many others. Already a customer? Come see us at Oracle OpenWorld (booth 537) or JavaOne (5110) and mention this to get a shirt!

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  • Problem with Three20 TTPhotoViewController

    - by Coppes
    Hi there, I aint sure if this is the right place to ask or report this... but i hope someone here can help me out with the following problem I'm currently creating an app which offers several functionalities. anyways it also includes the TTPhotoViewController which Three20 offers. Well this controller is absolutely awesome but i'm haveing some trouble after useing the TTPhotoviewcontorller, since then all content falls behind my navigationbarcontroller. Here are some screenshots where you can see before and after opening the viewcontroller Before : http:// img121.imageshack.us/img121/2253/fotoze.jpg After : http:// img88.imageshack.us/img88/5899/foto1c.jpg [remove spaces after the // ] Hopefully you guys can help me out since i'm quite new in these things. Thanks in advance, Wesley

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  • Reference book on Ruby on Rails social network site for novices

    - by Christopher
    Hey, so I am a novice programmer who has only worked with HTML, CSS, and a touch of Java a couple of years ago. I am looking to try to get a social network site up and running on Ruby on Rails and was looking at RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series) - Paperback (July 30, 2007) by Michael Hartl. This was published in 2007, however, and the newer reviews say it is not very helpful. Does anyone know if there are any new publications out there that walk you through building a social network site while teaching you the code(rather than just using a out of the box program)? Thanks

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  • Implementation of a distance matrix of a binary tree that is given in the adjacency-list representation

    - by Denise Giubilei
    Given this problem I need an O(n²) implementation of this algorithm: "Let v be an arbitrary leaf in a binary tree T, and w be the only vertex connected to v. If we remove v, we are left with a smaller tree T'. The distance between v and any vertex u in T' is 1 plus the distance between w and u." This is a problem and solution of a Manber's exercise (Exercise 5.12 from U. Manber, Algorithms: A Creative Approach, Addison-Wesley (1989).). The thing is that I can't deal properly with the adjacency-list representation so that the implementation of this algorithm results in a real O(n²) complexity. Any ideas of how the implementation should be? Thanks.

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  • links for 2011-03-08

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The Empowered Business "Someone needs to be the enterprise parent that asks the question, “do you really need that?” It may be a shiny new thing, but does it make a difference in the ability to accomplish the strategy and goals?" - Enterprise Architect Todd Biske (tags: enterprisearchitecture) Knowledge Workers in the British Raj "While we’ve used technology to change business, business has also evolved to the point that it’s changing how we think about and use technology." - Peter Evans Greenwood (tags: enterprisearchitecture enterprise2.0) Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...: OTN Developer Day Boston 2011 - Slides & Trip Report Arun Gupta shares slides from his Developer Day presentations. (tags: oracle otn java) Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination (James Bayer's Blog) James Bayer responds to a question. (tags: oracle otn weblogic jms) Triangle Circle Square: Apex in the Amazon Cloud Scott Wesley shares several links to resources covering Oracle Apex on an Amazon EC2 instance. (tags: oracle apex ec2 amazon cloud) William Vambenepe: Reading IBM's proposed standard for Cloud Architecture The always entertaining William Vambenepe gives IBM's proposed Cloud standards the full Ebert. (tags: oracle cloud ibm standards) Government Information Group Cloud Computing Research Study "The twin pressures of reduced budgets and the need for greater efficiency have led the federal government to strongly promote cloud computing as a solution whenever possible." (tags: cloudcomputing cloud) The Ron Batra Blog: Technology Whispers: Top 10 Reasons to go ExaData "Continuing my exploration of ExaData, I thought I'd take a minute to consolidate my thoughts into key reasons for which Oracle ExaData could be a good fit for your needs." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle oracleace exadata) Oracle WebCenter: Composite Applications & Mash-Ups (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) "The new Business Mash-up editor allows business users to take any Oracle Application or 3rd party application and wire the backend data sources or APIs to a rich set of visualizations and reuse them in mashups." (tags: oracle webcenter enterprise2.0) Antonio Romero: Great Discussion of ETL and ELT Tooling in TDWI Linkedin Group Antonio says: "There’s a great discussion of ETL and ELT tooling going on in the official TDWI Linkedin group, under the heading 'How Sustainable is SQL for ETL?' It delves into a wide range of topics." (tags: oracle linkedin etl elt) YouTube - Bunny Inc. - Episode 1. Mr. CIO meets Mr. Executive Manager Yes, it's a commercial. But it's well done and it's funny. (tags: e20 enterprise2.0 webcenter) Markus Eisele: Both Weblogic and Glassfish are strategic products for Oracle Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele shares selected quotes pulled from the recent TechCast Live interview with Oracle's Anil Gaur and Adam Leftik (tags: oracle java weblogic glassfish) How to become an Oracle SOA expert? (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jurgan Kress shares info and links for those interested in capitalizing on SOA. (tags: oracle soa)

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  • Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

    - by Ben Rees
    .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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  • Overload Avoidance

    - by mikef
    A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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  • Selectively Exposing Functionallity in .Net

    - by David V. Corbin
    Any developer should be aware of the principles of encapsulation, cross-tier isolation, and cross-functional separation of concerns. However, it seems the few take the time to consider the adage of "minimal yet complete"1 when developing the software. Consider the exposure of "business objects" to the user interface. Some common situations occur: Accessing a given element requires a compound set of calls that do not "make sense" to the User Interface. More information than absolutely required is exposed to the user interface It would be much cleaner if a custom interface was provided that exposed exactly (and only) the information that is required by the consumer. Achieving this using conventional techniques would require the creation (and maintenance!) of custom classes to filter and transpose the information into the ideal format. Determining the ROI on this approach can be very difficult to ascertain, and as a result it is often ignored completely. There is another approach, which is largely made practical by virtual of the Action and Func delegates. From a callers point of view, the following two samples can be used interchangeably:     interface ISomeInterface     {         void SampleMethod1(string param);         string SamepleMethod2(string param);     }       class ISomeInterface     {         public Action<string> SampleMethod1 {get; }         public Func<string,string> SamepleMethod2 {get; }     }   The capabilities this simple changes enable are significant (and remember it does not cange the syntax at the call site): The delegates can be initialized to directly call the proper method of any target class. The delegates can be dynamically updated based on the current state. The "interface" can NOT be cast to the concrete class (which often exposes more functionallity). This patterns By limiting the interface to the exact functionallity required, the reduced surface area will typically result in lower development, testing and maintenance costs. We are currently in the process of posting a project on CodePlex which illustrates this (and many other) techniques which have proven helpful in creating robust yet flexible solutions that are highly efficient2 and maintainable. This post will be updated as soon as the project is published. 1) Credit: Scott  Meyers, Effective C++, Addison-Wesley 1992 2) For those who read my previous post on performance it should be noted that the use of delegates is on the same order of magnitude (actually a tiny amount faster) as conventional interfaces.

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  • Need help identifing what resources (eg. In MIT OpenCourseWare) can help me prepare for a test [closed]

    - by jiewmeng
    I am entering uni soon. I can sit for a placement test to see if I elegible for exemptions. The details are http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/undergraduates/TestScope11_12.html Or CS2100 Computer Organisation (please click title) The objective of this module is to familiarise students with the fundamentals of computing devices. Through this module students will understand the basics of data representation, and how the various parts of a computer work, separately and with each other. This allows students to understand the issues in computing devices, and how these issues affect the implementation of solutions. Topics covered include data representation systems, combinational and sequential circuit design techniques, assembly language, processor execution cycles, pipelining, memory hierarchy and input/output systems. Recommended Textbooks Digital Design: Principles and Practices [DDPP] by John F. Wakerly, Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-324500-4. Computer Organizations and Design (The hardware/software interface) by David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy. CS2105 Introduction to Computer Networks (please click title) This course aims to provide a broad introduction to computer networks and some appreciations of network application programming. It covers a range of topics including basic data communication and computer network concepts, protocols, networked computing concepts and principles, network applications development and network security. The emphasis of teaching is on the working principles and application of computer networks. As an integral part of the course, tutorials and practical assignments enforcing learning will also be given. These assignments provide an early exposure in network application programming and they should be able to complete by using personal computers and school's network facilities. Topics included: An overview of computer networks and the Internet Basic data communications Application layer Transport layer Network layer and routing Link layer and local area networks Recommended Textbook James F. Kurose & Keith W. Ross, Computer networking: A top-down approach featuring internet, Addison Wesley, 2001 I am wondering what resources eg. MIT OpenCourseWare or other universities resources are available to help he perpare for these particular modubles. I am thinking does the Networking one look like CCNA? The computer oragization. Its like electronics, assembly etc? I learnt some electronics in Poly but looking at the sample papers, uni looks very different... I have about 1 month to prepare if I want any chance of exempting from these modules :) any help?

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  • Where’s my MD.050?

    - by Dave Burke
    A question that I’m sometimes asked is “where’s my MD.050 in OUM?” For those not familiar with an MD.050, it serves the purpose of being a Functional Design Document (FDD) in one of Oracle’s legacy Methods. Functional Design Documents have existed for many years with their primary purpose being to describe the functional aspects of one or more components of an IT system, typically, a Custom Extension of some sort. So why don’t we have a direct replacement for the MD.050/FDD in OUM? In simple terms, the disadvantage of the MD.050/FDD approach is that it tends to lead practitioners into “Design mode” too early in the process. Whereas OUM encourages more emphasis on gathering, and describing the functional requirements of a system ahead of the formal Analysis and Design process. So that just means more work up front for the Business Analyst or Functional Consultants right? Well no…..the design of a solution, particularly when it involves a complex custom extension, does not necessarily take longer just because you put more thought into the functional requirements. In fact, one could argue the complete opposite, in that by putting more emphasis on clearly understanding the nuances of functionality requirements early in the process, then the overall time and cost incurred during the Analysis to Design process should be less. In short, as your understanding of requirements matures over time, it is far easier (and more cost effective) to update a document or a diagram, than to change lines of code. So how does that translate into Tasks and Work Products in OUM? Let us assume you have reached a point on a project where a Custom Extension is needed. One of the first things you should consider doing is creating a Use Case, and remember, a Use Case could be as simple as a few lines of text reflecting a “User Story”, or it could be what Cockburn1 describes a “fully dressed Use Case”. It is worth mentioned at this point the highly scalable nature of OUM in the sense that “documents” should not be produced just because that is the way we have always done things. Some projects may well be predicated upon a base of electronic documents, whilst other projects may take a much more Agile approach to describing functional requirements; through “User Stories” perhaps. In any event, it is quite common for a Custom Extension to involve the creation of several “components”, i.e. some new screens, an interface, a report etc. Therefore several Use Cases might be required, which in turn can then be assembled into a Use Case Package. Once you have the Use Cases attributed to an appropriate (fit-for-purpose) level of detail, and assembled into a Package, you can now create an Analysis Model for the Package. An Analysis Model is conceptual in nature, and depending on the solution being developing, would involve the creation of one or more diagrams (i.e. Sequence Diagrams, Collaboration Diagrams etc.) which collectively describe the Data, Behavior and Use Interface requirements of the solution. If required, the various elements of the Analysis Model may be indexed via an Analysis Specification. For Custom Extension projects that follow a pure Object Orientated approach, then the Analysis Model will naturally support the development of the Design Model without any further artifacts. However, for projects that are transitioning to this approach, then the various elements of the Analysis Model may be represented within the Analysis Specification. If we now return to the original question of “Where’s my MD.050”. The full answer would be: Capture the functional requirements within a Use Case Group related Use Cases into a Package Create an Analysis Model for each Package Consider creating an Analysis Specification (AN.100) as a index to each Analysis Model artifact An alternative answer for a relatively simple Custom Extension would be: Capture the functional requirements within a Use Case Optionally, group related Use Cases into a Package Create an Analysis Specification (AN.100) for each package 1 Cockburn, A, 2000, Writing Effective Use Case, Addison-Wesley Professional; Edition 1

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  • Use Case Actors - Primary versus Secondary

    - by Dave Burke
    The Unified Modeling Language (UML1) defines an Actor (from UseCases) as: An actor specifies a role played by a user or any other system that interacts with the subject. In Alistair Cockburn’s book “Writing Effective Use Cases” (2) Actors are further defined as follows: Primary Actor: The primary actor of a use case is the stakeholder that calls on the system to deliver one of its services. It has a goal with respect to the system – one that can be satisfied by its operation. The primary actor is often, but not always, the actor who triggers the use case. Supporting Actors: A supporting actor in a use case in an external actor that provides a service to the system under design. It might be a high-speed printer, a web service, or humans that have to do some research and get back to us. In a 2006 article (3) Cockburn refined the definitions slightly to read: Primary Actors: The Actor(s) using the system to achieve a goal. The Use Case documents the interactions between the system and the actors to achieve the goal of the primary actor. Secondary Actors: Actors that the system needs assistance from to achieve the primary actor’s goal. Finally, the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) concurs with the UML definition of Actors, along with Cockburn’s refinement, but OUM also includes the following: Secondary actors may or may not have goals that they expect to be satisfied by the use case, the primary actor always has a goal, and the use case exists to satisfy the primary actor. Now that we are on the same “page”, let’s consider two examples: A bank loan officer wants to review a loan application from a customer, and part of the process involves a real-time credit rating check. Use Case Name: Review Loan Application Primary Actor: Loan Officer Secondary Actors: Credit Rating System A Human Resources manager wants to change the job code of an employee, and as part of the process, automatically notify several other departments within the company of the change. Use Case Name: Maintain Job Code Primary Actor: Human Resources Manager Secondary Actors: None The first example is quite straight forward; we need to define the Secondary Actor because without the “Credit Rating System” we cannot successfully complete the Use Case. In other words, the goal of the Primary Actor is to successfully complete the Loan Application, but they need the explicit “help” of the Secondary Actor (Credit Rating System) to achieve this goal. The second example is where people sometimes get confused. Within OUM we would not include the “other departments” as Secondary Actors and therefore not include them on the Use Case diagram for the following reasons: The other departments are not required for the successful completion of the Use Case We are not expecting any response from the other departments (at least within the bounds of the Use Case under discussion) Having said that, within the detail of the Use Case Specification Main Success Scenario, we would include something like: “The system sends a notification to the related department heads (ref. Business Rule BR101)” Now let’s consider one final example. A Procurement Manager wants to place a “bid” for some goods using an On-Line Trading Community (B2B version of eBay) Use Case Name: Create Bid Primary Actor: Procurement Manager Secondary Actors: On-Line Trading Community You might wonder why the Trading Community is listed as a Secondary Actor, i.e. if all we are going to do is place a bid for a specific quantity of goods at a given price and send that off to the Trading Community, then why would the Trading Community need to “assist” in that Use Case? Well, once again, it comes back to the “User Experience” and how we want to optimize that when we think about our Use Case, and ultimately, when the developer comes to assembling some code. In this final example, the Procurement Manager cannot successfully complete the “Create Bid” Use Case until they receive an affirmative confirmation back from the Trading Community that the Bid has been accepted. Therefore, the Trading Community must become a Secondary Actor and be referenced both on the Use Case diagram and Use Case Specification. Any astute readers who are wondering about the “single sitting” rule will have to wait for a follow-up Blog entry to find out how that consideration can be factored in!!! Happy Use Case writing! (1) OMG Unified Modeling LanguageTM (OMG UML), Superstructure Version 2.4.1 (2) Cockburn, A, 2000, Writing Effective Use Case, Addison-Wesley Professional; Edition 1 (3) Cockburn, A, 2006 “Use Case fundamentals” viewed 20th March 2012, http://alistair.cockburn.us/Use+case+fundamentals

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  • What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation?

    - by Dave Jarvis
    Background Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake was the invention of null. Subsequently, a lot of code has become riddled with null pointer exceptions (segfaults) when software developers try to use (dereference) uninitialized variables. In 1989, Wirfs-Brock and Wikerson wrote: Direct references to variables severely limit the ability of programmers to re?ne existing classes. The programming conventions described here structure the use of variables to promote reusable designs. We encourage users of all object-oriented languages to follow these conventions. Additionally, we strongly urge designers of object-oriented languages to consider the effects of unrestricted variable references on reusability. Problem A lot of software, especially in Java, but likely in C# and C++, often uses the following pattern: public class SomeClass { private String someAttribute; public SomeClass() { this.someAttribute = "Some Value"; } public void someMethod() { if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void setAttribute( String s ) { this.someAttribute = s; } public String getAttribute() { return this.someAttribute; } } Sometimes a band-aid solution is used by checking for null throughout the code base: public void someMethod() { assert this.someAttribute != null; if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void anotherMethod() { assert this.someAttribute != null; if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Default Value" ) ) { // do something... } } The band-aid does not always avoid the null pointer problem: a race condition exists. The race condition is mitigated using: public void anotherMethod() { String someAttribute = this.someAttribute; assert someAttribute != null; if( someAttribute.equals( "Some Default Value" ) ) { // do something... } } Yet that requires two statements (assignment to local copy and check for null) every time a class-scoped variable is used to ensure it is valid. Self-Encapsulation Ken Auer's Reusability Through Self-Encapsulation (Pattern Languages of Program Design, Addison Wesley, New York, pp. 505-516, 1994) advocated self-encapsulation combined with lazy initialization. The result, in Java, would resemble: public class SomeClass { private String someAttribute; public SomeClass() { setAttribute( "Some Value" ); } public void someMethod() { if( getAttribute().equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void setAttribute( String s ) { this.someAttribute = s; } public String getAttribute() { String someAttribute = this.someAttribute; if( someAttribute == null ) { setAttribute( createDefaultValue() ); } return someAttribute; } protected String createDefaultValue() { return "Some Default Value"; } } All duplicate checks for null are superfluous: getAttribute() ensures the value is never null at a single location within the containing class. Efficiency arguments should be fairly moot -- modern compilers and virtual machines can inline the code when possible. As long as variables are never referenced directly, this also allows for proper application of the Open-Closed Principle. Question What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation, if any? (Ideally, I would like to see references to studies that contrast the robustness of similarly complex systems that use and don't use self-encapsulation, as this strikes me as a fairly straightforward testable hypothesis.)

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  • Silverlight 3 - How to "refresh" a DataGrid content?

    - by Josimari Martarelli
    I have the following scenery: 1 using System; 2 using System.Windows; 3 using System.Windows.Controls; 4 using System.Windows.Documents; 5 using System.Windows.Ink; 6 using System.Windows.Input; 7 using System.Windows.Media; 8 using System.Windows.Media.Animation; 9 using System.Windows.Shapes; 10 using System.Collections.Generic; 11 12 namespace refresh 13 { 14 public partial class MainPage : UserControl 15 { 16 17 List c = new List(); 18 19 public MainPage() 20 { 21 // Required to initialize variables 22 InitializeComponent(); 23 c.Add(new Customer{ _nome = "Josimari", _idade = "29"}); 24 c.Add(new Customer{_nome = "Wesley", _idade = "26"}); 25 c.Add(new Customer{_nome = "Renato",_idade = "31"}); 26 27 this.dtGrid.ItemsSource = c; 28 } 29 30 private void Button_Click(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e) 31 { 32 c.Add(new Customer{_nome = "Maiara",_idade = "18"}); 33 } 34 35 } 36 37 public class Customer 38 { 39 public string _nome{get; set;} 40 public string _idade{get; set;} 41 } 42 } Where, dtGrid is my DataGrid control... The Question is: How to get the UI Updated after adding one more register to my list. I get to solve it setting the DataGrid's Item Source to "" and then setting to the list of Customer objects again, like that: 1 private void Button_Click(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e) 2 3 { 4 5 c.Add(new Customer{_nome = "Maiara",_idade = "18"}); 6 7 this.dtGrid.ItemsSource=""; 8 9 this.dtGrid.ItemsSource=c; 10 11 } 12 Is there a way to get the UI updated or the datagrid's itemsSource refreshed automatically after updating, altering or deleting an item from the list c ? Thank you, Josimari Martarelli

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  • Books for Computer Networking

    - by Altimet Gaandu
    Hi, I am a student of computer engineering from Vasula University, Somalia. We have a subject called Advanced Computer Networks and the following is the list of recommended books: Text Books: 1. B. A. Forouzan, "TCP/IP Protocol Suite", Tata McGraw Hill edition, Third Edition. 2. N. Olifer, V. Olifer, "Computer Networks: Principles, Technologies and Protocols for Network design", Wiley India Edition, First edition. References: 1. W.Richard Stevens, "TCP/IP Volume1, 2, 3", Addison Wesley. 2. D.E.Comer,"TCP/IPVolumeI and II", PearsonEducation. . 3.W.R. Stevens, "Unix Network Programming", Vol. 1, Pearson Education. 4. J.Walrand, P. Var~fya, "High Performance Communication Networks", Morgan Kaufmann. . 5. A.S.Tanenbaum,"Computer Networks", Pearson Education, Fourth Edition. But we have been unable to find these either in the market or on the internet (read: torrents). Please provide download links to any of these books and oblige. Thanks.

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  • Extended Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract does not return values

    - by WesleyE
    Hi, I'm quite new to Zend and the database classes from it. I'm having problems mapping a Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract to my rows. The problem is that whenever I try to map it to a class (Job) that extends the Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract class, the database data is not receivable anymore. I'm not getting any errors, trying to get data simply returns null. Here is my code so far: Jobs: class Jobs extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract { protected $_name = 'jobs'; protected $_rowsetClass = "Job"; public function getActiveJobs() { $select = $this->select()->where('jobs.jobDateOpen < UNIX_TIMESTAMP()')->limit(15,0); $rows = $this->fetchAll($select); return $rows; } } Job: class Job extends Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract { public function getCompanyName() { //Gets the companyName for this row (Is on another table), just for example } } Controller: $oJobs = new Jobs(); $aActiveJobs = $oJobs->getActiveJobs(); foreach ($aActiveJobs as $value) { var_dump($value->jobTitle); } When I remove the "protected $_rowsetClass = "Job";" line, so that the table row is not mapped to my own class, I get all the jobTitles perfectly. What am I doing wrong here? Thanks in advance, Wesley

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  • Becoming A Great Developer

    - by Lee Brandt
    Image via Wikipedia I’ve been doing the whole programming thing for awhile and reading and watching some of the best in the business. I have come to notice that the really great developers do a few things that (I think) makes them great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am one of these few. I still struggle with doing some of the things that makes one great at development. Coincidently, many of these things also make you a better person period. Believe That Guidance Is Better Than Answers This is one I have no problem with. I prefer guidance any time I am learning from another developer. Answers may get you going, but guidance will leave you stranded. At some point, you will come across a problem that can only be solved by thinking for yourself and this is where that guidance will really come in handy. You can use that guidance and extrapolate whatever technology to salve that problem (if it’s the right tool for solving that problem). The problem is, lots of developers simply want someone to tell them, “Do this, then this, then set that, and write this.” Favor thinking and learn the guidance of doing X and don’t ask someone to show you how to do X, if that makes sense. Read, Read and Read If you don’t like reading, you’re probably NOT going to make it into the Great Developer group. Great developers read books, they read magazines and they read code. Open source playgrounds like SourceForge, CodePlex and GitHub, have made it extremely easy to download code from developers you admire and see how they do stuff. Chances are, if you read their blog too, they’ll even explain WHY they did what they did (see “Guidance” above). MSDN and Code Magazine have not only code samples, but explanations of how to use certain technologies and sometimes even when NOT to use that same technology. Books are also out on just about every topic. I still favor the less technology centric books. For instance, I generally don’t buy books like, “Getting Started with Jiminy Jappets”. I look for titles like, “How To Write More Effective Code” (again, see guidance). The Addison-Wesley Signature Series is a great example of these types of books. They teach technology-agnostic concepts. Head First Design Patterns is another great guidance book. It teaches the "Gang Of Four" Design Patterns in a very easy-to-understand, picture-heavy way (I LIKE pictures). Hang Your Balls Out There Even though the advice came from a 3rd-shift Kinko’s attendant, doesn’t mean it’s not sound advice. Write some code and put it out for others to read, criticize and castigate you for. Understand that there are some real jerks out there who are absolute geniuses. Don’t be afraid to get some great advice wrapped in some really nasty language. Try to take what’s good about it and leave what’s not. I have a tough time with this myself. I don’t really have any code out there that is available for review (other than my demo code). It takes some guts to do, but in the end, there is no substitute for getting a community of developers to critique your code and give you ways to improve. Get Involved Speaking of community, the local and online user groups and discussion forums are a great place to hear about technologies and techniques you might never come across otherwise. Mostly because you might not know to look. But, once you sit down with a bunch of other developers and start discussing what you’re interested in, you may open up a whole new perspective on it. Don’t just go to the UG meetings and watch the presentations either, get out there and talk, socialize. I realize geeks weren’t meant to necessarily be social creatures, but if you’re amongst other geeks, it’s much easier. I’ve learned more in the last 3-4 years that I have been involved in the community that I did in my previous 8 years of coding without it. Socializing works, even if socialism doesn’t. Continuous Improvement Lean proponents might call this “Kaizen”, but I call it progress. We all know, especially in the technology realm, if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind. It may seem like drinking from a fire hose, but step back and pick out the technologies that speak to you. The ones that may you’re little heart go pitter-patter. Concentrate on those. If you’re still overloaded, pick the best of the best. Just know that if you’re not looking at the code you wrote last week or at least last year with some embarrassment, you’re probably stagnating. That’s about all I can say about that, cause I am all out of clichés to throw at it. :0) Write Code Great painters paint, great writers write, and great developers write code. The most sure-fire way to improve your coding ability is to continue writing code. Don’t just write code that your work throws on you, pick that technology you love or are curious to know more about and walk through some blog demo examples. Take the language you use everyday and try to get it to do something crazy. Who knows, you might create the next Google search algorithm! All in all, being a great developer is about finding yourself in all this code. If it is just a job to you, you will probably never be one of the “Great Developers”, but you’re probably okay with that. If, on the other hand, you do aspire to greatness, get out there and GET it. No one’s going hand it to you.

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  • Best Method For Evaluating Existing Software or New Software

    How many of us have been faced with having to decide on an off-the-self or a custom built component, application, or solution to integrate in to an existing system or to be the core foundation of a new system? What is the best method for evaluating existing software or new software still in the design phase? One of the industry preferred methodologies to use is the Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs (ARID) evaluation process.  ARID is a hybrid mixture of the Active Design Review (ADR) methodology and the Architectural Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). So what is ARID? ARD’s main goal is to ensure quality, detailed designs in software. One way in which it does this is by empowering reviewers by assigning generic open ended survey questions. This approach attempts to remove the possibility for allowing the standard answers such as “Yes” or “No”. The ADR process ignores the “Yes”/”No” questions due to the fact that they can be leading based on how the question is asked. Additionally these questions tend to receive less thought in comparison to more open ended questions. Common Active Design Review Questions What possible exceptions can occur in this component, application, or solution? How should exceptions be handled in this component, application, or solution? Where should exceptions be handled in this component, application, or solution? How should the component, application, or solution flow based on the design? What is the maximum execution time for every component, application, or solution? What environments can this component, application, or solution? What data dependencies does this component, application, or solution have? What kind of data does this component, application, or solution require? Ok, now I know what ARID is, how can I apply? Let’s imagine that your organization is going to purchase an off-the-shelf (OTS) solution for its customer-relationship management software. What process would we use to ensure that the correct purchase is made? If we use ARID, then we will have a series of 9 steps broken up by 2 phases in order to ensure that the correct OTS solution is purchases. Phase 1 Identify the Reviewers Prepare the Design Briefing Prepare the Seed Scenarios Prepare the Materials When identifying reviewers for a design it is preferred that they be pulled from a candidate pool comprised of developers that are going to implement the design. The believe is that developers actually implementing the design will have more a vested interest in ensuring that the design is correct prior to the start of code. Design debriefing consist of a summary of the design, examples of the design solving real world examples put in to use and should be no longer than two hours typically. The primary goal of this briefing is to adequately summarize the design so that the review members could actually implement the design. In the example of purchasing an OTS product I would attempt to review my briefing prior to its distribution with the review facilitator to ensure that nothing was excluded that should have not been. This practice will also allow me to test the length of the briefing to ensure that can be delivered in an appropriate about of time. Seed Scenarios are designed to illustrate conceptualized scenarios when applied with a set of sample data. These scenarios can then be used by the reviewers in the actual evaluation of the software, All materials needed for the evaluation should be prepared ahead of time so that they can be reviewed prior to and during the meeting. Materials Included: Presentation Seed Scenarios Review Agenda Phase 2 Present ARID Present Design Brainstorm and prioritize scenarios Apply scenarios Summarize Prior to the start of any ARID review meeting the Facilitator should define the remaining steps of ARID so that all the participants know exactly what they are doing prior to the start of the review process. Once the ARID rules have been laid out, then the lead designer presents an overview of the design which typically takes about two hours. During this time no questions about the design or rational are allowed to be asked by the review panel as a standard, but they are written down for use latter in the process. After the presentation the list of compiled questions is then summarized and sent back to the lead designer as areas that need to be addressed further. In the example of purchasing an OTS product issues could arise regarding security, the implementation needed or even if this is this the correct product to solve the needed solution. After the Design presentation a brainstorming and prioritize scenarios process begins by reducing the seed scenarios down to just the highest priority scenarios.  These will then be used to test the design for suitability. Once the selected scenarios have been defined the reviewers apply the examples provided in the presentation to the scenarios. The intended output of this process is to provide code or pseudo code that makes use of the examples provided while solving the selected seed scenarios. As a standard rule, the designers of the systems are not allowed to help the review board unless they all become stuck. When this occurs it is documented and along with the reason why the designer needed to help the review panel back on track. Once all of the scenarios have been completed the review facilitator reviews with the group issues that arise during the process. Then the reviewers will be polled as to efficacy of the review experience. References: Clements, Paul., Kazman, Rick., Klien, Mark. (2002). Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies Indianapolis, IN: Addison-Wesley

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