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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: HarQen Nodal

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. We wrapped the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge last week at OpenWorld, and this week, I’ll be sharing all the entries. All the teams that entered our challenge did a ton of work and built really interesting integrations with Oracle Social Network, and I want to showcase their hard work and innovative ideas. Today, I give you Nodal from the HarQen (@harqen) team, Kris Gösser (@krisgosser), Jesse Vogt (@jesse_vogt) and Matt Stockton (@mstockton). The guys from HarQen built Nodal to provide a visual way to navigate your connections and conversations in Oracle Social Network and view relationships. Using Nodal, you can: Search through names and profiles in Oracle Social Network. Choose people and view their social graphs in a visually useful way. Expand nodes in the social graph and add that person’s social graph to the Nodal view for comparison. Move nodes around and lock them in place for easier viewing, using a physics engine for movement. Adjust the physics engine properties according to your viewing preferences. Select nodes in the social graph and create a conversation directly based on the selection. Here are some shots of Nodal. They really don’t do the physics engine justice, but maybe the guys at Harqen will post a video of what they did for your viewing pleasure. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }   Nodal’s visuals wowed the judges and the audience, and anyone with a decent-sized social network presence understands the need for good network visualization. Tools like Nodal allow you to discover hidden connections in your network and maximize the value of your weak ties and find mavens, a very important key to getting work done. Thanks to the HarQen team for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week.

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• Documenting sp_ssiscatalog

  - by jamiet

  What is the best way to document an API? Moreover, what is the best way to document a T-SQL API? Before I try to answer those questions I should explain what I mean by “a T-SQL API”. I think of an API as being a collection of well-defined, known, code modules that provide some notion of a service to whomever uses it; in T-SQL terms I tend to think of a collection of stored procedures and functions as a form of API. Its a loose definition, I admit, and in SQL Server circles we don’t tend to think of stored procedures collectively as an API but if you think about it that’s exactly what they are. The question of how to document a T-SQL API came to my mind as I worked on sp_ssiscatalog. How could I make it easy for people to learn about the capabilities of sp_ssiscatalog without forcing them to dig through the code and find out for themselves? My opening gambit was to write documentation pages on the wiki at http://ssisreportingpack.codeplex.com. That’s kinda useful but it does suffer the disadvantage that someone using sp_ssiscatalog needs to go visit a webpage to read it – I want the documentation to be available wherever the user is using sp_ssiscatalog. Moreover, maintaining the wiki is a real PITA. Intellisense works up to a point, I guess: but that only shows whatever SQL Server knows about the various parameters, which isn’t all that much! I wanted a better way for my API users to learn about its capabilities and so I hit upon the idea of simply using PRINT statements within the code itself to inform the user what options are available; hence I added such PRINT statements in the latest check-in. Now when you execute (for example): EXEC sp_ssiscatalog @operation_type='execs' you can hit F6 a few times to view the messages pane and you shall see something like this: Notice that I’m returning information about all the parameters that can be used to affect the results that just got returned. I really do think this will be very useful to anyone using sp_ssiscatalog; I myself am always forgetting what the parameters are and I wrote the damn thing so I can’t really expect anyone else to remember them. I have not yet made available a release that has these changes in it but when I do I’ll blog about it right here. At the time of writing the latest available release of sp_ssiscatalog is DB v1.0.1.0 but if you want to the latest and greatest simply download it straight from source. Feedback is welcome as always. @Jamiet

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• Managing accounts on a private website for a real-life community

  - by Smudge

  I'm looking at setting-up a walled-in website for a real-life community of people, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with managing member accounts for this kind of thing. Some conditions that must be met: This community has a set list of real-life members, each of whom would be eligible for one account on the website. We don't expect or require that they all sign-up. It is purely opt-in, but we anticipate that many of them would be interested in the services we are setting up. Some of the community members emails are known, but some of them have fallen off the grid over the years, so ideally there would be a way for them to get back in touch with us through the public-facing side of the site. (And we'd want to manually verify the identity of anyone who does so). Their names are known, and for similar projects in the past we have assigned usernames derived from their real-life names. This time, however, we are open to other approaches, such as letting them specify their own username or getting rid of usernames entirely. The specific web technology we will use (e.g. Drupal, Joomla, etc) is not really our concern right now -- I am more interested in how this can be approached in the abstract. Our database already includes the full member roster, so we can email many of them generated links to a page where they can create an account. (And internally we can require that these accounts be paired with a known member). Should we have them specify their own usernames, or are we fine letting them use their registered email address to log-in? Are there any paradigms for walled-in community portals that help address security issues if, for example, one of their email accounts is compromised? We don't anticipate attempted break-ins being much of a threat, because nothing about this community is high-profile, but we do want to address security concerns. In addition, we want to make the sign-up process as painless for the members as possible, especially given the fact that we can't just make sign-ups open to anyone. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks!

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• Our own Daily WTF

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dvroegop/archive/2014/08/20/our-own-daily-wtf.aspxIf you're a developer, you've probably heard of the website the DailyWTF. If you haven't, head on over to http://www.thedailywtf.com and read. And laugh. I'll wait. Read it? Good. If you're a bit like me probably you've been wondering how on earth some people ever get hired as a software engineer. Most of the stories there seem to weird to be true: no developer would write software like that right? And then you run into a little nugget of code one of your co-workers wrote. And then you realize: "Hey, it happens everywhere!" Look at this piece of art I found in our codebase recently: public static decimal ToDecimal(this string input) {     System.Globalization.CultureInfo cultureInfo = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InstalledUICulture;     var numberFormatInfo = (System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo)cultureInfo.NumberFormat.Clone();     int dotIndex = input.IndexOf(".");     int commaIndex = input.IndexOf(",");     if (dotIndex > commaIndex)         numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ".";     else if (commaIndex > dotIndex)         numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ",";     decimal result;     if (decimal.TryParse(input, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Float, numberFormatInfo, out result))         return result;     else         throw new Exception(string.Format("Invalid input for decimal parsing: {0}. Decimal separator: {1}.", input, numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator)); }  Me and a collegue have been looking long and hard at this and what we concluded was the following: Apparently, we don't trust our users to be able to correctly set the culture in Windows. Users aren't able to determine if they should tell Windows to use a decimal point or a comma to display numbers. So what we've done here is make sure that whatever the user enters, we'll translate that into whatever the user WANTS to enter instead of what he actually did. So if you set your locale to US, since you're a US citizen, but you want to enter the number 12.34 in the Dutch style (because, you know, the Dutch are way cooler with numbers) so you enter 12,34 we will understand this and respect your wishes! Of course, if you change your mind and in the next input field you decide to use the decimal dot again, that's fine with us as well. We will do the hard work. Now, I am all for smart software. Software that can handle all sorts of input the user can think of. But this feels a little uhm, I don't know.. wrong.. Or am I too old fashioned?

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• career planning advice [closed]

  - by JDB

  Possible Duplicate: Are certifications worth it? I am at the point in my career where people start to veer off into either management-type roles or they focus on solidifying their technical skills to stay in the development game for the long-haul. Here's my story: I've got a degree in economics, an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Finance and Management. In addition, I've done coursework in advanced math and software development (although no degree in math or software). All-in-all, I've got 13 years of post-secondary education under my belt. I, however, currently work as a software developer using C# for desktop, Silverlight, Flex and javascript for web, and objective c for mobile. I've been in software development for the past 3.3 years, and it seems like it comes pretty easy to me. I work in a field called "geospatial information systems," which just involves customization and manipulation of geospatial data. Right now I am looking at one of several certifications. Given this background, which of these certifications has the highest ceiling? CFA PMP various development/technological certifications from Microsoft, etc. Other? My academic and work experience are all heavy on the analytical/development side, esp. so given the MBA and the B.S. in Econ. The political science degree was really a lot of stats. So it seems that I would be good pursuing more of the CFA/analytical role. This is a difficult path, however, because I have no work experience in the financial sector, and the developers in finance are all "quants," which again, I am OK with, but I haven't done much statistical modeling in the past 3.3 years. The PMP would require knowledge of best practices as it pertains explicitly to software development. I also don't enjoy a lot of business travel, a common theme for most PMP jobs I've seen. If certifications is the route, which would you recommend? Anything else? I've thought about going back to try to knock out a B.S. in C.S., but I wasn't sure how long that would take, or what would be involved. Thoughts or recommendations? Thanks in advance! I turn 32 this weekend, which is what has forced me to think about these issues.

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• ecommerce item deleted by user, 301 rediret to HOME PAGE or 404 not found?

  - by Marco Demaio

  I know this question is someway similar to this one where they reccomend using 404, but after reading this other one where they suggest to use 301 when changing site urls (in the specific case was due to redesign/refactoring) I get a bit of confused and I hope someone could clarify for this specific example: Let's say I have an ecommerce site, let's also say the final user inserted some interesting items in the site and the ecommerce webapp created the item pages at the urls: http://...?id=20, http://...?id=30 etc. Now let's say some of these interesting items got many external links toward them from many other sites because some people found those items very interesting and linked to them. After some years the final user deletes those items, so obviously the pages/urls http://...?id=20, http://...?id=30, etc. now do not exist anymore, but still many pages on the web are linking toward them. What should the ecommerce site do now, just show a 404 page for those items? But, I'm confused, wouldn't this loose all the Google PR passed by the external links to the items pages? So isn't it better to use 301 redirect to HOME PAGE that at least passes the PR to the HOME PAGE? Thanks, EDIT: Well, according to answeres the best thing to do so far is to do a 404/410. In order to make this question more complete, I would like to talk about a special case, just to make sure I understood. properly. Let's say the user creates those items again (the ones he previously deleted at point 4), maybe he changes a bit their names and description, but they are basically the same items. The webapp has no way to know these new added items were the old items so it obviously create them as new items with new urls http://...?id=100, http://...?id=101, does it makes sense at this point to redirect 301 the old urls to the new ones? MORE EDIT (It would be VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND): Well according to the clever answers received so far it seems for the special case, explained in my last EDIT, I could use 301, since it's something of not deceptive cause basically the new pages is a replacement for the old page in term of contents. This is basically done to keep the PR passed from external link and also for better user experience. But beside the user experince, that is discussible (*1), in order to preserve PR from external broken linlks why not just always use 301, In my understanding Google dislikes duplicated contents, but are we sure that 301 redirect to HOME PAGE is seen as duplicated contents for Google?! Google itself suggests to redircet 301 index.html to document root so if they consider 301 as duplicated contents wouldn't that be considered duplicated contents too?! Why do they suggest it? Let me provoke you: “why not just add a 301 to HOME PAGE for every not found page?” (*1) as a user, when I follo a broken url from some external link to some website's page I would stick more on this website if I get redirected to HOME PAGE rather than seeing a 404 page where I would think the webiste does not even exist anymore and maybe I don't even try to go to HOME PAGE of the website.

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• Do I need to go to a big-name university?

  - by itaiferber

  As a soon-to-be graduating high school senior in the U.S., I'm going to be facing a tough decision in a few months: which college should I go to? Will it be worth it to go to Cornell or Stanford or Carnegie Mellon (assuming I get in, of course) to get a big-name computer science degree, internships, and connections with professors, while taking on massive debt; or am I better off going to SUNY Binghamton (probably the best state school in New York) and still get a pretty decent education while saving myself from over a hundred-thousand dollars worth of debt? Yes, I know questions like this has been asked before (namely here and here), but please bear with me because I haven't found an answer that fits my particular situation. I've read the two linked questions above in depth, but they haven't answered what I want to know: Yes, I understand that going to a big-name college can potentially get me connected with some wonderful professors and leaders in the field, but on average, how does that translate financially? I mean, will good connections pay off so well that I'd be easily getting rid of over a hundred-thousand dollars of debt? And how does the fact that I can get a fifth-years master's degree at Carnegie Mellon play into the equation? Will the higher degree right off the bat help me get a better-paying job just out of college, or will the extra year only put me further into debt? Not having to go to graduate school to get a comparable degree will, of course, be a great financial relief, but will getting it so early give it any greater worth? And if I go to SUNY Binghamton, which is far lesser-known than what I've considered (although if there are any alumni out there who want to share their experience, I would greatly appreciate it), would I be closing off doors that would potentially offset my short-term economic gain with long-term benefits? Essentially, is the short-term benefit overweighed by a potential long-term loss? The answers to these questions all tie in to my final college decision (again, permitting I make it to these schools), so I hope that asking the skilled and knowledgeable people of the field will help me make the right choice (if there is such a thing). Also, please note: I'm in a rather peculiar situation where I can't pay for college without taking out a bunch of loans, but will be getting little to no financial aid (likely federal or otherwise). I don't want to elaborate on this too much (so take it at face value), but this is mainly the reason I'm asking the question. Thanks a lot! It means a lot to me.

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• Looking for recommendations for a server-side newsletter program

  - by Sparky672

  Hello- I'm currently using a server-side SQL based mailing list program called Php-List on multiple sites and it works fairly well. But installation and setup is quite cumbersome, quirky and the interface is not well organized... neither is the code... with pieces all over the place in random fashion. Customizing the "look & feel" and full site integration are both tedious and painful. Upgrading the version is made more complex since multiple edits need to be manually transferred each time. Also, probably due to a poor English translation, descriptions and instructions within certain areas of the user interface are contradictory and unclear. You just have to play with it and remember what you did last time it worked. It's supposed to be so my customers can send out their own newsletters... after supplying a written tutorial, about half of them seem to stumble through it okay and the other half just hire me to do it for them. So not quite easy enough for most average people to use. I'm looking for something that's as easy for them as using a blog or discussion forum. It also must be easier to set up and integrate into a site than Php-List. I have no problem getting dirty and writing CSS or HTML by hand. Nor do I have any problem editing the program code. Perhaps what I'm looking for is a solution that is more organized, a better GUI, and template or "skin" based. Therefore, if I spend many hours customizing a skin, I can simply update the program and re-use my custom skin without having to reproduce the tedious setup over and over. (I currently maintain a list of about 25 things I must manually edit or add to multiple files in multiple directories each time I install or upgrade Php-List) A great example of what I'm looking for is very much like WordPress or phpBB. They're both easy to install and customize yet powerful and packed full of features. They're also VERY well organized making customization less painful. So enough yammering for now... anyone know of something, besides Php-List, with many of the same features as Php-List; maintaining a mailing list with a server-side database, custom sign-up pages, automatic opt-in opt-out, allowing custom HTML newsletter templates, etc? Thank-you!

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• How to write comments to explain the "why" behind the callback function when the function and parameter names are insufficient for that?

  - by snowmantw

  How should I approach writing comments for callback functions? I want to explain the "why" behind the function when the function and parameter names are insufficient to explain what's going on. I have always wonder why comments like this can be so ordinary in documents of libraries in dynamic languages: /** * cb: callback // where's the arguments & effects? */ func foo( cb ) Maybe the common attitude is "you can look into source code on your own after all" which pushes people into leaving minimalist comments like this. But it seems like there should be a better way to comment callback functions. I've tried to comment callbacks in Haskell way: /** * cb: Int -> Char */ func foo(cb) And to be fair, it's usually neat enough. But it gets into trouble when I need to pass some complex structure. The problem being partly due to the lack of type system: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } // too long... */ func foo(cb) Or I have tried this too: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), * success: () -> Char } // better ? */ func bar(cb) The problem is that you may put the structure in somewhere else, but you must give it a name to reference it. But then when you name a structure you're about to use immediately looks so redundant: // Somewhere else... // ResultCallback: { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } /** * cb: Int -> ResultCallback // better ?? */ func foo(cb) And it bothers me if I follow the Java-doc like commenting style since it still seems incomplete. The comments don't tell you anything that you couldn't immediately see from looking at the function. /** * @param cb {Function} yeah, it's a function, but you told me nothing about it... * @param err {Function} where should I put this callback's argument ?? * Not to mention the err's own arguments... */ func foo(cb) These examples are JavaScript like with generic functions and parameter names, but I've encountered similar problems in other dynamic languages which allow complex callbacks.

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• Feedback from SQLBits 8

  - by Peter Larsson

  This years SQLBits occurred in Brighton. Although I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the full conference, I did a presentation at Saturday. Getting to Brighton was easy. Drove to Copenhagen airport at 0415, flew 0605 and arrived at Gatwick 0735. Then I took the direct train to Brighton and showed up at 0830, just one hour before presenting. This was the easy part. Getting home was much worse. Presentation ended at 1030 and I had to rush to the train station to get back to London, change to tube for Heathrow. Made it at the gate just 15 seconds before closing. That included a half mile run in the airport… Anyway, yesterday I got the feedback for my presentation. It does look good, especially since English is not my first language. This is the first graph Seems to be just halfway between conference average and best session. I can live with that. Second graph shows more detail about attendees voting. It also look acceptable. A wider spread for the 9’s, but it is an inevitable effect from how attendees percept the session. I did get a lot of 8’s and the lower grades in an descending order. The two people voting 4 and 5 didn’t say why they voted this so I don’t know how to remedy this. Third graph is about each category of votes.   Again, I find this acceptable. The Session abstract and Speaker’s knowledge seems to follow attendees expectations compared to conference average. I seem to have met the attendees expectations (and some more) for the other four categories, also compared to conference average. Since this did encourage me, I believe I will present some more at future meetings. I do have a new presentation about something all developers are doing every day but they may not know it. I will also cover this new topic in the next Deep Dives II book. Stay tuned! //Peter

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• Is is possible to get a patch included in the current release? If so, how?

  - by Oli

  So a while back I reported a bug in Compiz's Place Window plugin. It's a fairly major regression for people affected by it: mainly those using Gnome-Fallback, judging by the reports. A patch surfaced a short time later. I created a PPA for testing and everybody involved so far is reporting the issues are fixed. It even fixes another bug. I've done testing with a standard Unity desktop and can say (for my testing) no adverse effects were visible. I want to get this pushed to Ubuntu right now for two main reasons: I'm selfish. I don't want to need to update my PPA every time a new version of Compiz is pushed to 12.04. I don't want Ubuntu users seeing their windows flying around because of a silly little bug. I want this patch pushed to Ubuntu's version of Compiz as soon as possible, so we can mark these bugs fixed and move on with our lives. Whose leg do I have to hump to get this pulled into Ubuntu right now? I don't maintain this project and it's an upstream thing but it's fairly integral to Ubuntu. I could go to Compiz but I imagine that if they accept the patch, it'll be months (at least a release) before it's anywhere near Ubuntu. And when I do find the right person, how can I make the process as slick as possible for them? I want them to see my request, go "Yup, that all looks great, done" and that be it. I don't want seventeen rounds of emails addressing aspects of the patch. More importantly, I don't want to waste their time either. And what do I have to provide them? My packaging skills are... lamentable. This was my first attempt at patching a package for redistribution so I've probably made every single packaging error known to man. Will they be happy with the original patch (so they can apply it themselves) or should I repackage things so the diff/changelog is a little cleaner (it took me a few goes and the versioning is all over the place). Note: This question is about Compiz but I'd prefer if answers could address other styles of package too so we have an authoritative and comprehensive thread of how to get things fixed.

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• The Problem Should Define the Process, Not the Tool

  - by thatjeffsmith

  All around awesome tool, but not the only gadget in your toolbox.I’m stepping down from my SQL Developer pulpit today and standing up on my philosophical soap box. I’m frequently asked to help folks transition from one set of database tools over to Oracle SQL Developer, which I’m MORE than happy to do. But, I’m not looking to simply change the way people interact with Oracle database. What I care about is your productivity. Is there a faster, more efficient way for you to connect the dots, get from A to B, or just get home to your kids or to the pub for happy hour? If you have defined a business process around a specific tool, what happens when that tool ‘goes away?’ Does the business stop? No, you feel immediate pain until you are able to re-implement the process using another mechanism. Where I get confused, or even frustrated, is when someone asks me to redesign our tool to match their problem. Tools are just tools. Saying you ‘can’t load your data anymore because XYZ’ isn’t valid when you could easily do that same task via SQL*Loader, Create Table As Selects, or 9 other different mechanisms. Sometimes changes brings opportunity for improvement in the process. Don’t be afraid to step back and re-evaluate a problem with a fresh set of eyes. Just trying to replicate your process in another tool exactly as it was done in the ‘old tool’ doesn’t always make sense. Quick sidebar: scheduling a Windows program to kick off thousands if not millions of table inserts from Excel versus using a ‘proper’ server process using SQL*Loader and or external tables means sacrificing scalability and reliability for convenience. Don’t let old habits blind you to new solutions and possibilities. Of couse I’m not going to sit here and say that our tools aren’t deficient in some areas or can’t be improved upon. But I bet if we work together we can find something that’s not only better for the business, but is also better for you. What do you ‘miss’ since you’ve started using SQL Developer as your primary Oracle database tools? I’d love to start a thread here and share ideas on how we can better serve you and your organizations needs. The end solution might not look exactly what you have in mind starting out, but I had no idea I’d be a Product Manager when I started college either What can you no longer ‘do’ since you picked up SQL Developer? What hurts more than it should? What keeps you from being great versus just good?

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• Oredev 2012: Summary and source code

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This week, I had the pleasure to be invited to talk at Oredev, a really cool conference taking place in Malmo, Sweden. The whole event is awesome, including a very special dinner on Monday including sauna and swimming in a 6 degrees cold Baltic sea, and a reception with dinner at the town hall, including the mayor himself. Considering Malmo is a town of 300'000 inhabitants, it is a pretty nice occasion and the historical building itself is really worth seeing. For those interested, I placed my pictures on my Flickr account. I had a workshop on Tuesday morning about Windows 8 development with XAML/C#, and then a session on Wednesday about MVVM in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, of course using MVVM Light. I was very nervous because I reworked some of my demos as recently as this morning, in the wake of the Build conference last week and the release of both the Windows Phone SDK and MVVM Light V4.1. Everything went well however, and if I judge by the people I talked t after the talk, and Twitter, everything went pretty well. Before my talk on Tuesday, I had the pleasure to see a talk by Iris Classon (@irisclasson) on the challenges of being a "n00b" and a woman in software development. I especially appreciated her research and conclusions on the lack of women I our industry, a topic that is dear to my heart (because I want the best possible future for my two daughters, and also because I really enjoy working with women on projects, and getting a different insight on the art of software development. I really want to thank the excellent organization committee for their hard work and their fantastic welcome to Malmo. In particular Emily Holweck did a wonderful job and was super helpful throughout the preparation and the conference itself. I made a few pictures during my stay, all with the new Nokia Lumia 920, and hope you will enjoy them too. The source code and the slides… The source code is available for download from Skydrive. You will find the following: Windows 8 workshop slides. MVVM Applied slides Source code package with Win8Demo: The demo I built during the 4 hours workshop, with some light MVVM, web services (JSON), GridView, Design time data (Blend / Visual Studio designer), Bing maps integration, location sensor, Search pane integration. SemanticZoomSample: a sample I put together to demonstrate the SemanticZoom control, with two GridViews and of course full design time data for Blend work. Due to time constraints, I was not able to show this demo during the workshop, but I publish it anyway, hoping it will be useful to someone. PictureUploader: The demo I built during my 50 minutes session about MVVM Applied in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. Code sharing, design time data, MVVM Light are used in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 apps. And in video… You can also see the video of my MVVM talk thanks to the good services of the Oredev team! MVVM Applied in Windows Phone and Windows 8 from Øredev Conference on Vimeo.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Good, simple reasons for having multiple environments

  - by smp7d

  Throughout my career I had worked at companies that had a collection of different environments for different purposes. We always had more or less our desktop environment, a test environment, a QA environment, a staging environment and a production environment. This went for both servers/applications and any data sources we were using. When I started at my current company I found that 90% of the apps were either developed on a desktop environment against production data sources or developed directly on the production server depending on the platform. I wasn't fazed because I was hired in part to make changes to improve the way the development team functioned, which was clear from my interview process. We slowly started to turn the philosophy and pretty soon, most of the apps could be run in either a desktop, test or production environment. Not too long after that staging came around as well. Now most of our developers see the benefit of this methodology and defend it vigilantly. However, we have a number of legacy apps that never got migrated. We also have a number of legacy programmers who think of this as a waste of time. Unfortunately, we got lip service but never full buy-in from management. We got what we thought was a commitment to invest substantially in this about a year ago, but nothing materialized despite the considerable planning that we put into it. Now we are finding that we need more and more environments. We need help from the server/network administration teams for setup and we need participation from the business stakeholders to support the release cycle. We are at a place now where a project can function what I consider "normally" only if you have the right people on the project and the time to set up the proper environments. I'd love to present a complete argument, but management really has no time and interest in hearing me out until there is a critical issue. I can't really articulate the benefits simply as it always just seemed second nature to me. I was wondering if there are any good, simple, irrefutable reasons for the separation of environments that would get managers with no development experience to get behind this idea. Are there any good resources/literature on the topic?

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• My 2011 Professional Development Goals

  - by kerry

  I thought it might be a good idea to post some professional goals for 2011.  Hopefully, I can look at this list at the end of the year and have accomplished most of them. Release an Android app to the marketplace – I figured I would put this first because I have one that I have been working on for a while and it is about ready.  Along with this, I would like to start another one and continue to develop my Android skills. Contribute free software to the community – Again, I have an SMF plugin that will fill this requirement nicely.  Just need to give it some polish and release it.  That’s not all, I would like to add a few more libraries on github, or possibly contribute to an open source project. Regularly attend a user group meetings outside of Java – A great way to meet people and learn new things. Obtain the Oracle Certified Web Developer Certification – I got the SCJP a few years ago and would like to obtain another one.  One step closer to Certified Enterprise Architect. Learn scala – As a language geek, I like to stick to the Pragmatic Programmer’s ‘learn a new language every year’ rule (last year was Ruby).  Scala presents some new concepts all wrapped in a JVM-based OOP language.  Time to dig in. Write an app using JSF – New JEE 6 features are pretty slick.  I want to really leverage them in an app. Present at a user group meeting – Last but not least, I would like to improve my public speaking and skills in presenting.  Also, is a great reason to dig in to some latest and greatest tech. Use git more, and more effectively – Trying to move all my personal projects from Subversion to Git. That’s it.  A little daunting, but I am confident I can at least touch on most of these and it’s a great roadmap to my professional development.

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• How to cleanly add after-the-fact commits from the same feature into git tree

  - by Dennis

  I am one of two developers on a system. I make most of the commits at this time period. My current git workflow is as such: there is master branch only (no develop/release) I make a new branch when I want to do a feature, do lots of commits, and then when I'm done, I merge that branch back into master, and usually push it to remote. ...except, I am usually not done. I often come back to alter one thing or another and every time I think it is done, but it can be 3-4 commits before I am really done and move onto something else. Problem The problem I have now is that .. my feature branch tree is merged and pushed into master and remote master, and then I realize that I am not really done with that feature, as in I have finishing touches I want to add, where finishing touches may be cosmetic only, or may be significant, but they still belong to that one feature I just worked on. What I do now Currently, when I have extra after-the-fact commits like this, I solve this problem by rolling back my merge, and re-merging my feature branch into master with my new commits, and I do that so that git tree looks clean. One clean feature branch branched out of master and merged back into it. I then push --force my changes to origin, since my origin doesn't see much traffic at the moment, so I can almost count that things will be safe, or I can even talk to other dev if I have to coordinate. But I know it is not a good way to do this in general, as it rewrites what others may have already pulled, causing potential issues. And it did happen even with my dev, where git had to do an extra weird merge when our trees diverged. Other ways to solve this which I deem to be not so great Next best way is to just make those extra commits to the master branch directly, be it fast-forward merge, or not. It doesn't make the tree look as pretty as in my current way I'm solving this, but then it's not rewriting history. Yet another way is to wait. Maybe wait 24 hours and not push things to origin. That way I can rewrite things as I see fit. The con of this approach is time wasted waiting, when people may be waiting for a fix now. Yet another way is to make a "new" feature branch every time I realize I need to fix something extra. I may end up with things like feature-branch feature-branch-html-fix, feature-branch-checkbox-fix, and so on, kind of polluting the git tree somewhat. Is there a way to manage what I am trying to do without the drawbacks I described? I'm going for clean-looking history here, but maybe I need to drop this goal, if technically it is not a possibility.

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• Developing a Support Plan for Cloud Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as "Step 1, then Step 2" because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple "template" solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single way of doing things, that's not really viable. The same holds true for support. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the term "cloud", and would rather use the tem "Distributed Computing". That being said, more people understand the former, so I'll just use that for now. What I mean by Distributed Computing is leveraging another system or setup to perform all or some of a computing function. If this definition holds true, then you're essentially creating a partnership with a vendor to run some of your IT - whether that be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, or more often, a mix. In your on-premises systems, you're the first and sometimes only line of support. That changes when you bring in a Cloud vendor. For Windows Azure, we have plans for support that you can pay for if you like. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/plans/ You're not off the hook entirely, however. You still need to create a plan to support your users in their applications, especially for the parts you control. The last thing they want to hear is "That's vendor X's problem - you'll have to call them." I find that this is often the last thing the architects think about in a solution. It's fine to put off the support question prior to deployment, but I would hold off on calling it "production" until you have that plan in place. There are lots of examples, like this one: http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/customer.html some of which are technology-specific. Once again, this is an "it depends" kind of approach. While it would be nice if there was just something in a box we could buy, it just doesn't work that way in a hybrid system. You have to know your options and apply them appropriately.

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• Capture a Query Executed By An Application Or User Against a SQL Server Database in Less Than a Minute

  - by Compudicted

  At times a Database Administrator, or even a developer is required to wear a spy’s hat. This necessity oftentimes is dictated by a need to take a glimpse into a black-box application for reasons varying from a performance issue to an unauthorized access to data or resources, or as in my most recent case, a closed source custom application that was abandoned by a deserted contractor without source code. It may not be news or unknown to most IT people that SQL Server has always provided means of back-door access to everything connecting to its database. This indispensible tool is SQL Server Profiler. This “gem” is always quietly sitting in the Start – Programs – SQL Server <product version> – Performance Tools folder (yes, it is for performance analysis mostly, but not limited to) ready to help you! So, to the action, let’s start it up. Once ready click on the File – New Trace button, or using Ctrl-N with your keyboard. The standard connection dialog you have seen in SSMS comes up where you connect the standard way: One side note here, you will be able to connect only if your account belongs to the sysadmin or alter trace fixed server role. Upon a successful connection you must be able to see this initial dialog: At this stage I will give a hint: you will have a wide variety of predefined templates: But to shorten your time to results you would need to opt for using the TSQL_Grouped template. Now you need to set it up. In some cases, you will know the principal’s login name (account) that needs to be monitored in advance, and in some (like in mine), you will not. But it is VERY helpful to monitor just a particular account to minimize the amount of results returned. So if you know it you can already go to the Event Section tab, then click the Column Filters button which would bring a dialog below where you key in the account being monitored without any mask (or whildcard):  If you do not know the principal name then you will need to poke around and look around for things like a config file where (typically!) the connection string is fully exposed. That was the case in my situation, an application had an app.config (XML) file with the connection string in it not encrypted: This made my endeavor very easy. So after I entered the account to monitor I clicked on Run button and also started my black-box application. Voilà, in a under a minute of time I had the SQL statement captured:

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• Code testing practice

  - by Robin Castlin

  So now I have come to the conclusion like many others that having some way of constantly testing your code is good practice since it enables fewer people to be involved (colleges and customers alike) by simply knowing what's wrong before someone else finds out the hard way. I've heard and read some about Unit Testing and understand what it's supposed to do and all. The there are so many different types of bugs. It can be everything from web browser not being able not being able to send correct values, javascript failing, a global function messing up a piece of code somewhere to a change that looked good when testing it out but fails in some special case which was hard to anticipate. My simply finding these errors I learn to rarely repeat them again, but there seems to always be new bugs to be found and learnt from. I would guess maybe the best practice would be to run every page and it's functions a couple of times, witness the result and repeat this in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer (and all smartphones apparently) to make sure it works as intended. However this would take quite some time to do consider I don't work with patches/versions and do little fixes here and there a couple of times per week. What I prefer would be some kind of page I can just load that tests as much things as possible to make sure the site works as intended. Basicly just run a lot of cURL's with POST-values and see if I get expected result. But how would I preferably not increase the IDs of every mysql rows if I delete these testing rows? It feels silly to be on ID 1000 with maybe 50 rows in total. If I could build a new project from scratch I would probably implement some kind of smooth way to return a "TRUE" on testing instead of the actual page. But this solution would for the moment being have to be passed on existing projects. My question What would you recommend to be the best way to test my site to make sure that existing functions does their job upon editing the code? Should I consider to implement a lot of edits first, then test manually the entire code to make sure it still works? Is there any nice way of testing codes without "hurting" the ID columns? Extra thoughs Would it be a good idea to associate all of my files to the different parts of my site which they affect? For instance if I edit home.php I will through documentation test if my homepage's start works as intended since it's the only part of my site it should affect.

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• Should I continue to pursue programming based on my experience?

  - by El Be

  The reason I ask this question is because I am not sure my troubles come from a lack of confidence, or something much deeper like lack of passion. I'm hoping experienced programmers and developers can help identify the cause of my troubles. To be brief my undergraduate major was in Computer Science, but in a small school and I had the highest gpa in my year in computer science. The first time I ever programmed was once in the 5th grade (using logo) and when I was a freshman in college. I enjoyed programming when I was in school. Then I did an internships where I was expected to produce image processing software and program microchips. I was unsuccessful and produced little results and I hated the job, because I had to figure out everything for myself, did not have any help, and there was a lot of pressure to produce results. Although I tried I could not figure out what to do and was stuck all the time and made me dislike the job. When the internship ended I went to a PhD program for computer science at a prestigious computer science school. I had a very hard time with the course, met people who have been programming since they were 6 and made plenty of applications in their spare time (which I never did, although I tried). I even met many sophomores who understood more than I did. The combination of this and other things have made me feel that programming is not for me, but sometimes I consider a career in programming. I still consider programming as a career because of the career potential (not only just because of money). Based on my experience do you believe my confidence has just been shaken and I should continue to prepare for a programming career, or do you see a lack of passion and it would make it tough to continue programming. thank you for reading and for your advice Thank you for everyone's advice so far! Also: I dropped out of the ph.D program for computer science and switched to a master's in computer graphics. Its more applied, but I still find it hard to be motivated (due to either lack of confidence or passion), but since programming is such a big field I am looking for that niche area that I feel good programming in.

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• High traffic chat - how to check if there is new message and show it for all users

  - by user2633999

  I already had question about this but obviously it was not accepted very well, apparently too long when it's actually more information so you could have given me better answer. Ok, I will be much clearer now. Best possible logic to develop scalable chat in terms of stability, storing/reading messages on chat, updating chat on new message for all users etc.? I have most of this developed, the logic I think I miss is -- check if there is new message and show it for all users. I have this implemented but it crashes the site due to its traffic of 300k-400k people, so that's my main question. The chat is PHP based and uses Pusher (www.pusher.com) for instant messaging but it lacks what I need because it's more like a websocket. I'm using hardcoded files to keep messages (want to avoid database as much as possible). It's a no extension type of file, I'm sure you know. I'm getting crash with $fp = fopen(..., "w"); // pretend ... is the path and filename fwrite($fp, $msg); //hardcode the message fclose($fp); where $msg is the message itself. I'm having 1 file per message. I show last 150 messages = 150 file accesses and reads, yeah it's too much I guess. I have better logic now which I'm pursuing and that is 1 file with last 50-100 messages at all time. Sure it should be much better. How does it crash, that's the trickiest part because everything seems ordinary, believe me it is difficult to determine what exactly crashes the site, but in like 5 minutes when I try to open the site it's gone, then I put the old content without chat and is back online again. I'm having jquery post every 1 second to check if there is new message. I'm using timestamp in a special file where I keep the time last message was sent and if ((time() - time in file) <= 2) = reload last 150 messages including the last one. Too much input/output, write/read or however to say it I think is what crashes the site.

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• "Whole-team" C++ features?

  - by Blaisorblade

  In C++, features like exceptions impact your whole program: you can either disable them in your whole program, or you need to deal with them throughout your code. As a famous article on C++ Report puts it: Counter-intuitively, the hard part of coding exceptions is not the explicit throws and catches. The really hard part of using exceptions is to write all the intervening code in such a way that an arbitrary exception can propagate from its throw site to its handler, arriving safely and without damaging other parts of the program along the way. Since even new throws exceptions, every function needs to provide basic exception safety — unless it only calls functions which guarantee throwing no exception — unless you disable exceptions altogether in your whole project. Hence, exceptions are a "whole-program" or "whole-team" feature, since they must be understood by everybody in a team using them. But not all C++ features are like that, as far as I know. A possible example is that if I don't get templates but I do not use them, I will still be able to write correct C++ — or will I not?. I can even call sort on an array of integers and enjoy its amazing speed advantage wrt. C's qsort (because no function pointer is called), without risking bugs — or not? It seems templates are not "whole-team". Are there other C++ features which impact code not directly using them, and are hence "whole-team"? I am especially interested in features not present in C. Update: I'm especially looking for features where there's no language-enforced sign you need to be aware of them. The first answer I got mentioned const-correctness, which is also whole-team, hence everybody needs to learn about it; however, AFAICS it will impact you only if you call a function which is marked const, and the compiler will prevent you from calling it on non-const objects, so you get something to google for. With exceptions, you don't even get that; moreover, they're always used as soon as you use new, hence exceptions are more "insidious". Since I can't phrase this as objectively, though, I will appreciate any whole-team feature. Appendix: Why this question is objective (if you wonder) C++ is a complex language, so many projects or coding guides try to select "simple" C++ features, and many people try to include or exclude some ones according to mostly subjective criteria. Questions about that get rightfully closed regularly here on SO. Above, instead, I defined (as precisely as possible) what a "whole-team" language feature is, provide an example (exceptions), together with extensive supporting evidence in the literature about C++, and ask for whole-team features in C++ beyond exceptions. Whether you should use "whole-team" features, or whether that's a relevant concept, might be subjective — but that only means the importance of this question is subjective, like always.

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• Developing a Support Plan for Cloud Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last week I blogged about developing a High-Availability plan. The specifics of a given plan aren't as simple as "Step 1, then Step 2" because in a hybrid environment (which most of us have) the situation changes the requirements. There are those that look for simple "template" solutions, but unless you settle on a single vendor and a single way of doing things, that's not really viable. The same holds true for support. As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the term "cloud", and would rather use the tem "Distributed Computing". That being said, more people understand the former, so I'll just use that for now. What I mean by Distributed Computing is leveraging another system or setup to perform all or some of a computing function. If this definition holds true, then you're essentially creating a partnership with a vendor to run some of your IT - whether that be IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, or more often, a mix. In your on-premises systems, you're the first and sometimes only line of support. That changes when you bring in a Cloud vendor. For Windows Azure, we have plans for support that you can pay for if you like. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/plans/ You're not off the hook entirely, however. You still need to create a plan to support your users in their applications, especially for the parts you control. The last thing they want to hear is "That's vendor X's problem - you'll have to call them." I find that this is often the last thing the architects think about in a solution. It's fine to put off the support question prior to deployment, but I would hold off on calling it "production" until you have that plan in place. There are lots of examples, like this one: http://www.va-interactive.com/inbusiness/editorial/sales/ibt/customer.html some of which are technology-specific. Once again, this is an "it depends" kind of approach. While it would be nice if there was just something in a box we could buy, it just doesn't work that way in a hybrid system. You have to know your options and apply them appropriately.

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• June 2013 release of SSDT contains a minor bug that you should be aware of

  - by jamiet

  I have discovered what seems, to me, like a bug in the June 2013 release of SSDT and given the problems that it created yesterday on my current gig I thought it prudent to write this blog post to inform people of it. I’ve built a very simple SSDT project to reproduce the problem that has just two tables, [Table1] and [Table2], and also a procedure [Procedure1]: The two tables have exactly the same definition, both a have a single column called [Id] of type integer. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Table1] (     [Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY ) My stored procedure simply joins the two together, orders them by the column used in the join predicate, and returns the results: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Procedure1] AS     SELECT t1.*     FROM    Table1 t1     INNER JOIN Table2 t2         ON    t1.Id = t2.Id     ORDER BY Id Now if I create those three objects manually and then execute the stored procedure, it works fine: So we know that the code works. Unfortunately, SSDT thinks that there is an error here: The text of that error is: Procedure: [dbo].[Procedure1] contains an unresolved reference to an object. Either the object does not exist or the reference is ambiguous because it could refer to any of the following objects: [dbo].[Table1].[Id] or [dbo].[Table2].[Id]. Its complaining that the [Id] field in the ORDER BY clause is ambiguous. Now you may well be thinking at this point “OK, just stick a table alias into the ORDER BY predicate and everything will be fine!” Well that’s true, but there’s a bigger problem here. One of the developers at my current client installed this drop of SSDT and all of a sudden all the builds started failing on his machine – he had errors left right and centre because, as it transpires, we have a fair bit of code that exhibits this scenario.  Worse, previous installations of SSDT do not flag this code as erroneous and therein lies the rub. We immediately had a mass panic where we had to run around the department to our developers (of which there are many) ensuring that none of them should upgrade their SSDT installation if they wanted to carry on being productive for the rest of the day. Also bear in mind that as soon as a new drop of SSDT comes out then the previous version is instantly unavailable so rolling back is going to be impossible unless you have created an administrative install of SSDT for that previous version. Just thought you should know! In the grand schema of things this isn’t a big deal as the bug can be worked around with a simple code modification but forewarned is forearmed so they say! Last thing to say, if you want to know which version of SSDT you are running check my blog post Which version of SSDT Database Projects do I have installed? @Jamiet

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• List of common pages to have in the footer [closed]

  - by user359650

  I would like to post this question as a reference for webmasters wondering what pages they should include in the footer. I will use answers to complete my initial list: About us / About MyCompany / MyCompany About / About us: description about the company, its mission, and its vision. History: summary of milestones achieved by the company. The team / Management / Board of directors: depending on size of the company there may be one of more pages describing the people involved in the company, depending on their position. Awards: list of awards received by the company if any. In the press / They're talking about us: list of links to external websites, usually highly regarded news websites, which mentioned the company in one of their articles. Media Wallpapers: wallpapers with company logo in different colors and formats that fans can set as desktop image for their computer. logos: company logo in different colors and formats that websites/blogs posting about the website can use for illustration purposes. Media kits: documents, usually in PDF format summarizing the key company figures and facts that journalists can download and read to get a quick overview of the company. Misc Contact / Contact us: contact details the company is prepared to disclose if any (address, email, phone) or contact form. Careers / Jobs / Join us: list of open vacancies with contact form to apply. Investors / Partners / Publishers: information and contact forms for companies willing to become Investors/Partners/Publishers or login page to access portal restricted to those who already are. FAQ: list of common questions and answers to guide users and reduce number of support requests. Follow us / Community Facebook / Twitter / Google+: links to the company's pages/accounts on various social networks. Legal Terms / Terms of use / Terms & Conditions: rules users must follow when browsing the website. Privacy / Privacy Statement: explanations as to how the company deals with users' personal data and what users can do about it (request information to be deleted...). cookies: page that starts appearing on more and more websites due to new regulation (notably EU) imposing more transparency and control for users about cookies (e.g. BBC cookie page). Any input is welcome PS: if someone with enough rep could add the footer tag that would be great (min. 300 required).

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