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• OpenGL profiling with AMD PerfStudio 2

  - by Aurus

  I'm rendering just a really small amount of polygons for my UI but however I still tried to increase the FPS. In the end I removed redundant calls which increased the FPS. I really don't want to lose FPS for nothing so I keep looking for more improvements. The first thing I noticed is the "huge" time where no calls are made before SwapBuffer (the black one). Well I know that OpenGL works asynchronous so SwapBuffer has to wait until everything is done. But shouldn't PerfStudio mark this time also as black ? Correct me If I am wrong. The second thing I noticed is that some glUniform2f calls just take longer (the brown ones). I mean they should all upload 2floats to the GPU how can the time be so different from call to call. The program isn't even changed or something like that. I also tried to look at other programs like gDebugger or CodeXL but they often crashed and they show less statistics (only # of calls or redundant calls etc.) EDIT: I also realized that the draw calls also have different durations, which was obvious for me but sometimes drawing more vertices is faster than drawing less vertices.

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• How to mange big amount users at server side?

  - by Rami

  I built a social android application in which users can see other users around them by gps location. at the beginning thing went well as i had low number of users, But now that I have increasing number of users (about 1500 +100 every day) I revealed a major problem in my design. In my Google App Engine servlet I have static HashMap that holding all the users profiles objects, currenty 1500 and this number will increase as more users register. Why I'm doing it Every user that requesting for the users around him compares his gps with other users and check if they are in his 10km radius, this happens every 5 min on average. That is why I can't get the users from db every time because GAE read/write operation quota will tare me apart. The problem with this desgin is As the number of users increased the Hashmap turns to null every 4-6 hours, I thing that this time is getting shorten but I'm not sure. I'm fixing this by reloading the users from the db every time I detect that it became null, But this causes DOS to my users for 30 sec, So I'm looking for better solution. I'm guessing that it happens because the size of the hashmap, Am I right? I have been advised to use spatial database, but that mean that I can't work with GAE any more and that mean that I need to build my big server all over again and lose my existing DB. Is there something I can do with the existing tools? Thanks.

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• I'm really offtopic. But I've got a really good reason.

  - by lost

  Is there anyway Encryption on an unidentified file can be broken(file in question: config file and log files from ardamax keylogger). These files date back all the way to 2008. I searched everywhere, nothing on slashdot, nothing on google. Ardamax Keyviewer? Should I just write to Ardamax? I am at a loss of what to do. I feel comprimised. Anyone managed to decrpyt files with Crypto-analysis?

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• FB Connect: (417) Expectation failed

  - by FearUs

  Hi, I developed a simple ASP.NET app, it was working fine, but now I can't get user info; I am getting this message: The remote server returned an error: (417) Expectation failed. and here's the code I'm using: Dim FBUser As Facebook.Schema.user = Nothing Dim connectSession As Facebook.Session.ConnectSession Dim FBApi As Api connectSession = New Facebook.Session.ConnectSession(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("AppKey"), ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("AppSecret")) If connectSession.IsConnected() Then FBApi = New Api(connectSession) Try FBUser = FBApi.Users.GetInfo() '' do some work Catch ex As Exception FBUser = Nothing '' other work End Try This is really confusing, because it was just working fine for 2 weeks now !! Thanks

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• Can't read query string if default index file name is omitted?

  - by Mike

  Is there an issue with IIS or ASP Classic where *Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")* returns blank if no default file name is given in the URL? On my local developer machine, I can do http://localhost/xslt/?opcs/abc which returns "opcs/abc". However, on our ancient web server, it returns nothing. I have to explicitly give it the default file name in the URL. Like so http://localhost/xslt/default.asp?opcs/abc While nothing too major, it is a little bit of a annoyance. One way I can maybe think of remidying the problem is have Javascript read the URL and return everything after the ?. Unfortunately, I do not know what version of IIS or ASP we are using. Thank you.

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• Should I start MCPD training now or wait for new exams?

  - by lunchmeat317

  i apologize if this question has been asked before, or if this is the wrong place to put it. I'm beginning my study track for the MCPD certification in Web Development. However, Microsoft plans to retire this certification on July 31st of 2013, along with two of the necessary tests to receive the certification. On MS's site, I can't find a newer certification path to take - I imagine that Microsoft will release new certification paths and new tests for their new software, but I don't know when that will happen. I don't really know anything about Microsoft's process, as this is the first Microsoft certification I'll be studying for. The bottom line is this - I don't want to lose six months waiting for a new test to appear that won't expire, but I don't want to rush to get a certification that will be invalid in six months (or have to reset any progress due to new study material). To those with experience in affairs like this - what is the best course to take, and can I maximize the time I have now (not wait for new testing material)? Is there any way to find material for the new tests that Microsoft will be rolling out? Thank you for your patience. If this is the wrong place to put this question, I would like to request that it be moved to the correct StackExchange site instead of being closed. Thanks for your help!

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• How can I check that the NSPasteboard is updated?

  - by Ben Packard

  I'm automating a copy command to place some text on the pasteboard every second or so - unfortunately this is my only way of accessing the text, which is in another application. After copying, I access the pasteboard text and process it. Sometimes, the copy command will be sent when nothing is selected - for example in textEdit, if the cursor is at the end of a line (instead of highlighting some text) and you hit copy, you get a system beep because there is nothing selected to copy. The pasteboard does not update and retains its previous data. I can't think of a creative way to identify when this happens. If I send a copy command and the pasteboard doesn't update, is there any kind of time stamp on the pasteboard I can access that will confirm that something has or hasn't been captured? I was looking at the changeCount, but I'm not sure what that is for exactly, and the documentation didn't help me much - red herring? Any simple and effective ideas gratefully received!

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• Python unicode issues (2.6)

  - by ephemeralis

  I'm currently working on a irc bot for a multi-lingual channel, and I'm encountering some issues with unicode which are proving nearly impossible to solve. No matter what configuration of unicode encoding I seem to try, the list function which the below code sits within just flat out does nothing (c.notice is a class function which sends a NOTICE command to the irc server) or when it does do something, spits out something which obviously isn't encoded. The command should be sending ??, but instead it seems hellbent on sending å¤©å­ with a previous configuration of the same commands. The one I have specified below is of the 'send nothing' variety. I haven't worked with unicode before this, and thus I am quite stuck. I'm also positive that I'm doing this completely wrong as a consequence. (compileCMD just takes a list and spits out a single string of all the elements within the list) uk = self.compileCMD(self.faq.keys(),0) ukeys = unicode(uk,"utf-8").encode("utf-8") c.notice(nick, u"Current list of faq entries: %s" % (uk))

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• Getting Revisions from CVS repository

  - by Rob

  Hi, I am trying to get somehow all the revision log that were made to a particular file, but I seem to stupid to do that :( To checkout a module I do the following CVSROOT="/home/projects/stuff/" cvs co myworkingdir within myworkingdir I have a testfile called paper.tex and from this I wanna try to get the revisions but I tried the following but nothing works ... CVSROOT="/home/projects/stuff/" cvs log paper.tex cvs log: cannot open CVS/Entries for reading: No such file or directory cvs log: nothing known about paper.tex -bash-3.2$ CVSROOT="/home/projects/stuff/" cvs log myworkingdir/paper.tex cvs [log aborted]: no such directory `myworkingdir' Anyone an idea how I could get the log of the revisions of the paper.tex file in the myworkingdir module? Many thanks for your help! Claus

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• Firefox freezes frequently

  - by user141740

  Good day, The application Firefox freezes very frequently and I have to use 'force quit" to get out and hence I lose all my activities and it is extremely frustrating. Only in one occasion, there was a pop-out message saying that this problem was going to be tracked but in all other occasions there is no tracking and no message I posted this error on Ubuntu community and it was stopped and I was told to post it on launchpad. I did try to do so with no success as after reading pages and pages which i really do not understand who would read them and why so many ridiculous and tedious rules and information, i even could not find the place or the way to post this bug. And I thought of this ASkUBUNTU and so i am posting here in the hope for some useful help and I have to mention I am new to Linux. Just a few minutes ago, I opened the Firefox through the Terminal and it crashed very quickly and there are some error messages and i copy and paste them hoping they can help thank you in advance and look forward to your help and solving this frustrating problem/bug and if you wish you may post it on Launchpad or do with report as you wish as long as the problem is solved. And here the messages appearing in Terminal, after Firefox crashed: ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling add_icon method of Contextcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling set_homepage method of Contextcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling clear_indicator method of Indicatorcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling clear_indicator method of Indicatorcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling clear_indicator method of Indicatorcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling set_view_location method of Contextcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling set_view_window method of Contextcontext: Timeout was reached ** (firefox:4099): WARNING **: Error calling set_view_is_active method of Contextcontext: Timeout was reached Killed

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• Migration of PowerBuilder application to multiplatform

  - by Alex Bibiano

  I developed a client/server application with PowerBuilder in the past for medical clinics and done maintenance for it until now. Now, some clients are asking me to develop a release for Mac/Linux and need some advice about what programming language/technology is best suited for it and the learning curve. It’s not a very very big program but I’m the only developer and have done it in my spare time. PowerBuilder is very productive for this kind of projects (database centric), but it’s not multiplatform and it’s hard to sell PowerBuilder application now days (web, .NET, java sells a lot better with his marketing). My programming skills: - I studied C and C++ in the past (university) but never used it on real projects - Have some Java experience but not in desktop applications - Some experience with Ruby on Rails for web projects - Good skills with PowerBuilder and C# (.NET) (there are my main developing languages) My first dilemma is if I change the desktop application to a web interface, but I think the user will lose some user-experience, and some doctors don’t have a clinic (they are alone at home with my software). I think installing a web application (with webserver) for one user will be overwhelming. If I continue developing desktop application, what is at the moment a good framework/toolset to learn having my skills? Somebody has had similar experiences? A lot of thanks

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• Why do AlarmManager broadcasts get cancelled when app gets killed?

  - by skooter

  Ok so I have two BroadcastReceiver registered. When the app is closed they both fire at the appropriate times and do the appropriate things. If the app is closed then killed (say with an AppKiller), the receivers never receive their broadcasts, and nothing happens. Presumably the same thing happens if the parent app is killed due to low memory, so how do I ensure those broadcasts are fired/received. The API states that even if the app is killed it should fire, does anyone else have experience with this situation? If it helps my manifest is: <!-- receivers for AlarmManager --> <receiver android:exported="true" android:label="Shift roster updating calendar." android:name="com.skooter.shiftroster.backend.service.UpdateCalendar" > </receiver> <receiver android:exported="true" android:label="Shift roster checking alarm." android:name="com.skooter.shiftroster.backend.service.SetWakeup" > </receiver> and nothing esoteric is going on in the AlarmManager/BroadcastReceivers

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• Sending html data via $post fails

  - by Neil

  I am using the code below which is fine but when I use the code below that in an attempt to send an html fragment to a processing page to save it as a file but I get nothing. I have tried using ajax with processData set to false ads dataTypes of html, text and xml but nothing works. I can't find anything on this so I guess I must be missing something fairly trivial but I've been at it for 3 hours now. This works $.post("SaveFile.aspx", {f: "test4.htm", c: "This is a test"}, function(data){ alert(data); }, "text"); This fails $.post("SaveFile.aspx", {f: "test4.htm", c: "<h1>This is a test</h1>"}, function(data){ alert(data); }, "text");

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• Enhanced Podcasts and MPMoviePlayerViewController

  - by Ben Robinson

  Hi, This is a bit of an odd/specific one - possibly a bug? I'm using MPMoviePlayerViewController to play a variety of files, including Enhanced Podcasts - these are audio files, but with a slideshow of images, often created using GarageBand. Until (i think) iOS 3.2 they weren't supported at all, now they are and play fine in the iPod app, but in my app the slideshow doesn't start, the full screen movie player opens, and the audio begins, but all I see is the QuickTime logo. If I scrub the track the pictures appear - and will continue to play correctly - but I see nothing if I don't scrub! Any ideas?? On a related note, these files also include a small rectangluar button containing an (i) button on the right hand side - anybody know what it is or should do?! It does nothing for me!

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• Consume restful webservice through web proxy

  - by Chico

  Hello, I'm trying to consume a restful webservice in java using the Apache Wink framework through my school web proxy requiring authentification ClientConfig clientConfig = new ClientConfig(); clientConfig.proxyHost("proxy.school.com"); clientConfig.proxyPort(3128); //nothing to set username and password :( RestClient client = new RestClient(clientConfig); Resource resource = client.resource("http://vimeo.com/api/v2/artist/videos.xml"); String response = resource.accept("text/plain").get(String.class); I've also tried to use the BasicAuthSecurityHandler but it seems to be used to authenticate directly to a web server, not the web proxy BasicAuthSecurityHandler basicAuthHandler = new BasicAuthSecurityHandler(); basicAuthHandler.setUserName("username"); basicAuthHandler.setPassword("password"); config.handlers(basicAuthHandler); It still fail with a HTTP 407 error code : Proxy Authentication Required. I've googled the best I could, nothing came up better to consume a webservice from a Java client through a web proxy, if someone has another idea, feel free to respond

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• both IPV4 and IPV6 at the same time over DSL connection?

  - by namiheike

  Let me describe my situation: while I connect computer with the wire, I've got an IPV6 address automatically, there's a "Wired connection" tab in network manager, and I can access an website that support IPV6 (google,facebook,twitter...)with a hosts file, or use the proxy like google.com.sixxs.org But if I want to access the whole internet, I have to create a DSL connection with username and password that ISP gave me. BUT after I change my connection into this DSL connection, I cannot access website over IPV6, even there's the site's ipv6 address in /etc/hosts, then I realize that I lose my IPV6 connection, because the ping6 says connect: Network is unreachable. the problem is, there's no IPV6 tab or options about IPV6 in the configure of DSL connection. It feels like I can only use one connection at the same time, but the DSL doesn't support IPV6 and the wired connection doesn't support IPV4(I mean, there's no way to input the password the ISP gave me) maybe make somebody uncomfortable, but when I work in MS windows, there's no such problem, (maybe just feel like) I can access V4 and V6 at the same time. So how to solve with this? thanks a lot. I'm in 11.10 + gnome3

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• Can someone explain me the parameter RETURN_VALUE ?

  - by Ronnie Chester Lynwood

  hello. I want to know what does RETURN_VALUE means! I'm stucked at this thing. how to use RETURN_VALUE on MSSQL SP ? thanks.. ASP: Set cmdDB = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Command") With cmdDB .ActiveConnection = ADOConM .CommandText = "usp_jaljava_member_select" .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("RETURN_VALUE", adInteger, adParamReturnValue, 0) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@TLoginName", adVarChar, adParamInput, 15,lcase(TLoginName)) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@TPassword", adVarChar, adParamInput, 20,TPassword) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@retval", adVarChar, adParamOutput, 50) ' .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@TPinCode", adVarChar, adParamInput, 15,TPinCode) .Execute,,adExecuteNoRecords RetVal = .Parameters("@retval") Ret = Trim(.Parameters("RETURN_VALUE")) 'Set .ActiveConnection = Nothing End With Set cmdDB = Nothing UTid = RetVal MSSQL SP: CREATE PROCEDURE usp_jaljava_member_select @TLoginName varchar(15), @TPassword varchar(20), @retval varchar(50) OUTPUT --@TPinCode varchar(15) AS

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• ImageMagick and Grails not working

  - by TripWired

  I'm trying to have ImageMagick run from grails to convert some images when I run the command to make an image nothing happens. I get no errors, no information returned nothing at all. I've tried running other commands like touch and ps ux just to see if they work and they all work fine. It just seems like the imagemagick commands are getting lost and I''m not sure what to do. Here is the code I've been working with. String command = CH.config.ImageMagickPath + "/convert -size 40x20 xc:red xc:blue -append -rotate 90 append_rotate.gif" println command command.execute() CH.config.ImageMagickPath is set up to where imagemagick/bin is. I've taken what is shown in println command and run it in a terminal and it works fine. Is there any reason why I can't get IM to work from grails?

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• Suspend file validation on Zend Framework

  - by dimitris mistriotis

  Hi, Currently on my application I have a form where I ask the user to upload an image file to be used as a logo. I want to allow the user to reset that to nothing by supplying no file (by just pressing the upload button from the browser). In this scenario the only thing left is to suspend file validation when no file is included. Currently I get the *self::NO_FILE* error from the *Zend_Validate_File_Upload* class. Is there any way to suspend the validation so that nothing will be checked if no file has been provided?

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• Sharing an internet connection through the Ethernet port

  - by Bob Cunningham

  I have a small living room PC (Bohica, running fully-updated Ubuntu 10.10/Maverick) connected to my HDTV that I use for web browsing and media streaming. It connects via WiFi (wlan0) to my Fedora server (Snafu) that in turn connects to the internet. I use static addressing, and everything has been working fine. I just got a Blu-ray player, and I'd like to give it wired network access to the internet via Bohica's available wired ethernet port (eth0). So far, I haven't been to get eth0 and the network configured to get the Blu-ray player talking to the internet. Here's my wlan0 configuration: ip4 addr: 192.168.0.100 mask: /24 (255.255.255.0) gateway: 192.168.0.4 (fedora box) The Blu-ray player is set to an IP of 192.168.0.98/24, with the same gateway as above. I want eth0 set to an IP of 192.168.0.99/24, but when I do this using nm-connection-editor I lose internet access (the system tries to use eth0 as the default internet access interface). How do I get my blu-ray player to talk to the internet through Bohica, and do so without disrupting my current (working) network? Thanks. Edit: Here's the relevant output from nm-tool with the Blu-ray player connected: $ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: connected - Device: eth0 Type: Wired Driver: forcedeth State: disconnected Default: no HW Address: 90:FB:A6:2C:94:32 Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Speed: 100 Mb/s Wired Properties Carrier: on - Device: wlan0 [wlan0] Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: ndiswrapper State: connected Default: yes HW Address: 00:26:5A:C0:D0:05 IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.100 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.4

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• How to explain a layperson why a developer should not be interrupted while neck-deep in coding?

  - by András Szepesházi

  If you just consider the second part of my question, "Why a developer should not be interrupted while neck-deep in coding", that has been discussed a number of times by smart people. Heck, even the co-founder of SO, Joel Spolsky, wrote a blog post about "getting in the zone" and "being knocked out of the zone" and why it takes an average of 15 minutes to achieve productivity when participating in complex, software development related tasks. So I think the why has been established. What I'm interested in is how to explain all that to somebody who doesn't know beans about Beans (khmm I mean software development). How to tell the wife, or the funny guy from accounting at the workplace, or the long time friend who pings you on Skype every 30 minutes with a "Wazzzzzzup?!", that all the interruptions have a much deeper impact on your work than the obvious 30 seconds they took from your time. Obviously you can't explain it by sentences like "I have to juggle a lot of variable names in my short term memory" unless you want to be the target of blank stares or friendly abuse. I'd like to be able to explain all that to non-developers in a way that will make them clearly understand - without being offensive, elitist or too technical. EDIT: Thanks to everyone for their great insights. I've accepted EpsilonVector's answer as his analogy was the closest one to my original needs. The "falling asleep" explanation is neither offensive nor technical, almost anyone can relate to it, and the consequences of getting disturbed while falling asleep or while being in the zone are very similar: you experience frustration and you "lose" 15-20 minutes of time.

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• Memory leak with WPF & ItemsControl (VB.NET)

  - by Matt H.

  I have an ItemsControl that uses a DataTemplate to display properties in my customClass that implements INotifyPropertyChanged... Pretty straightforward... Some items in the DataTemplate use CommandBindings (such as buttons), and a few have some code-behind (yuck). When I empty the ItemsControl and set all instances of customClass = Nothing , no memory is released from my program. This becomes a problem pretty quickly! Any idea where I should start looking? I've even gone so far as to completely traverse the visual tree of each DataTemplate instance and set each Visual = Nothing. I'm not really if that's supposed to have any effect though.

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• AVPlayer seeking to a different point after app resume

  - by CGuess

  I have an AVPlayer, the video in it is ~2 seconds long. After the video plays, if the app goes to the background and reenters the foreground I need the video to still be shown exactly as it was when the app was exited. The AVPlayer sticks around just fine, however when I reenter the app from the background the video appears to be seeked to the middle of the video. However, if I just play the video, it starts from the beginning, so it doesn't seem like it actually seeked and is just showing a preview image. I've tried to auto-seek the video to the end on relaunch but nothing happens . Nothing I can figure out or find in the docs would describe this behavior. Any tips on having the video launch either at the beginning or end?

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• PHP Battle System for RPG game

  - by Jay

  I posted this a while ago on stackoverflow, they thought it would be better place here, I agree. Essentially I know what I want to accomplish, and I have something to the effect of what I want but I am not satisfied with it. Here's the problem. Each user has some states: STR (how hard they hit), DEF (dodging/blocking attacks), SPD (when they can strike), and STAMINA (basically their endurance in game, if this runs out they can no longer fight and lose) What I need is something like this: UserA Stats: STR: 1,000 DEF: 2500 SPD: 2000 (HP: 1000/1000) UserB Stats: STR: 1,500 DEF: 500 SPD: 4000 (HP: 1000/1000) Because the second user has double the speed, he lands twice the amount of hits on the first user, before he gets hit. Because he has less strength than the first users defence, he will do no, to little damage. This is how the battle would theoretically go: UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserA strikes UserB for 500 damage UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserA strikes UserB for 500 damage, and sends him to the hospital! I was using this code, which is buggy, and not efficient, I just need a better way to do this: http://pastebin.com/15LiQQuJ Oh, and if anyone has some good ideas on how to improve the concept that would be cool too! It's not that elaborate so I'll be thinking of all sorts of things to make it more dynamic. Thanks.

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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