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• Five Best Practices for Going Mobile

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  76% of IT decision makers indicate mobile trends will have a high to extremely high impact on their organization. Has your organization gone mobile? Looking for some ideas on how to get started? John Brunswick shares his Best Practices for Going Mobile. Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables social networking, decision support, purchasing, content consumption, and location-based searching, extending experiences beyond what is available in traditional desktop computing.  Organizations rushing to ensure their brand's mobile availability may have taken a tactical approach to implementation, but strategically approaching mobile can enable greater returns on a similar investment and subsequent mobile projects. Here are some strategic considerations for delivering products, services, and information to mobile constituents.  Who, Why, and What? Ask yourself these key questions: who are you attempting to engage through the channel, and why are they engaging you through this channel? What experience will satisfy their needs? What outcome will support your core business? Will you be informing and/or transacting with this person?  Mobile Behavior. Mobile users generally engage for a very specific purpose. Ensure that access to information, services, and products is streamlined. Arriving on a mobile site through search only to be asked to search again frustrates users.  Mobile Is Broad. After establishing the audience and goal, review technology requirements to support them. Do you need a mobile Website, native mobile application, or both? Do you need to support multiple devices? Know the difference between native mobile and mobile Web.  Social Strategy. Users are more likely to trust reviews from peers than marketing information from a vendor. If you are selling products or services, be sure to make social integration part of your strategy.  Content Management. Consider a shared content platform strategy for Web and mobile projects. Fresh, consistent content is important for high-quality experiences. Read more from John Brunswick.We'll also be talking mobile strategies and how you can transform your portal experience and optimize online engagement -- making your portals more interactive and more engaging across multiple channels in a webcast tomorrow. We hope you'll join us!

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• How to host a site in another site - with little or no coding

  - by tunmise fasipe

  SUMMARY: All of these happens on Site A User visits site A User enter username and password User click on Login Button User authenticated on Site B behind the scene User is shown a page on Site A that contains his/her profile from Site B as layout/styled from Site B User can click links in the Profile page that links to other area in Site B Meaning: Session has to be maintained somehow I have web application where I store users' password and username. If you logon to this site, you can login with the password and username to have access to your profile. There is another option that requires you to login to my site from your site and have your profile displayed within your site. This is because you might already have a site that your clients know you with. This link is close to what I want to do: http://aspmessageboard.com/showthread.php?t=235069 A user on Site A login to Site B and have the information on site B showing in site A. He should not know whether Site B exists. It should be as if everything is happening in Site A This latter part is what I don't know to implement. I have these ideas: Have a fixed IFrame within your site to contain my site: but I am concerned about size/layout since different clients have different layout/size for their content section. I am thinking of how to maintain session too A webservice: I don't know how feasible this is since the Password and ID are on my server. You may have to send them back and forth. It means client would have to code with my API. But I am not just returning data, I have to show them a page that contains the profile details OpenID, Single-SignOn: Just guessing - but the authentication and data resides on my server. there is nothing to access on your side in this case Examples: like login into facebook within my site and still be able to do post updates, receive notifications Facebook implement some of these with IFrame e.g. the Like button *NOTE: * I have tested the IFrame option. It worked but I still have to remove my site specific content like my page Banner, Side Navigation etc. I was able to login normally as if I was actually on the site. This show my GUI but - style sheet was missing - content not styled with CSS - Any relative url won't work. It would look for that resource relative to the current server. Unless I change links to absolute - Clicking on the LogIn button produces this error: The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted. UPDATE: I was reading about REST webservice few days ago and I got this idea: What about the idea of returning an XML from a webservice [REST or SOAP] and providing an XSLT (that I can provide) to display it. Thus they won't have to do much coding?

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• ZFS pool broken after upgrading to 14.04 LTS

  - by cruiserparts

  Well, I have been putting off upgrading to 14.04 for fear that I would break something. Actually for fear that it would break zfs (or I would break it). I am bascially slightly better than novice at linux. Spent the last couple of hours trying to get the pool back. Now I am at the stage where I don't think I have a complete failure, but I am worried that I may break it. So if could help me not break it, and recover it, I would be thankful. My zfs is file storage and not boot. It was working fine for a year and was working perfectly before the upgrade (scrub and everything was fine). I was confident that the upgrade would work (or at least I could fix it) because I had upgraded once in the past, the pool went missing, but I was able to get it back. I have reinstalled zfs, zfs utilities, and some dependencies (after searching this forum) I think what happened is 14.04 deleted some config file, or specified disk names differntly, but I could be wrong. When I set the pool up originally, I was using specific device Ids as I recall (because I did not want to break things if they got reassigned at boot) So see if this helps. I can confirm that old mountpoint folders are there but empty. no talloc stackframe at ../source3/param/loadparm.c:4864, leaking memory pool: naspool1 state: UNAVAIL status: One or more devices could not be used because the label is missing or invalid. There are insufficient replicas for the pool to continue functioning. action: Destroy and re-create the pool from a backup source. see: http://zfsonlinux.org/msg/ZFS-8000-5E scan: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM naspool1 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 insufficient replicas raidz1-0 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 insufficient replicas scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1001FALS-_WD-WMATV0990825 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD1001FALS-_WD-WMATV2995365 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD10EARS-00_WD-WMAV51894349 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 ___@ourserver:~$ sudo zpool import naspool1 cannot import 'naspool1': a pool with that name is already created/imported, and no additional pools with that name were found ___@ourserver:~$ sudo zfs list no datasets available What other output can I post to help? I'm thinking the update deleted some zfs config files. It seems like the pool exists and certainly 3 perfectly working disks did not fail at once. I am worried that I may break something without a little bit of guideance. Thanks.

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• What layer to introduce human readable error messages?

  - by MrLane

  One of the things that I have never been happy with on any project I have worked on over the years and have really not been able to resolve myself is exactly at what tier in an application should human readable error information be retrieved for display to a user. A common approach that has worked well has been to return strongly typed/concrete "result objects" from the methods on the public surface of the business tier/API. A method on the interface may be: public ClearUserAccountsResult ClearUserAccounts(ClearUserAccountsParam param); And the result class implementation: public class ClearUserAccountsResult : IResult { public readonly List<Account> ClearedAccounts{get; set;} public readonly bool Success {get; set;} // Implements IResult public readonly string Message{get; set;} // Implements IResult, human readable // Constructor implemented here to set readonly properties... } This works great when the API needs to be exposed over WCF as the result object can be serialized. Again this is only done on the public surface of the API/business tier. The error message can also be looked up from the database, which means it can be changed and localized. However, it has always been suspect to me, this idea of returning human readable information from the business tier like this, partly because what constitutes the public surface of the API may change over time...and it may be the case that the API will need to be reused by other API components in the future that do not need the human readable string messages (and looking them up from a database would be an expensive waste). I am thinking a better approach is to keep the business objects free from such result objects and keep them simple and then retrieve human readable error strings somewhere closer to the UI layer or only in the UI itself, but I have two problems here: 1) The UI may be a remote client (Winforms/WPF/Silverlight) or an ASP.NET web application hosted on another server. In these cases the UI will have to fetch the error strings from the server. 2) Often there are multiple legitimate modes of failure. If the business tier becomes so vague and generic in the way it returns errors there may not be enough information exposed publicly to tell what the error actually was: i.e: if a method has 3 modes of legitimate failure but returns a boolean to indicate failure, you cannot work out what the appropriate message to display to the user should be. I have thought about using failure enums as a substitute, they can indicate a specific error that can be tested for and coded against. This is sometimes useful within the business tier itself as a way of passing via method returns the specifics of a failure rather than just a boolean, but it is not so good for serialization scenarios. Is there a well worn pattern for this? What do people think? Thanks.

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• Oracle Gave Me a Chance - ECEMEA Internship Programme

  - by FelixWehmeyer

  My name is Mohammad Raad and I started in the One Year Training program with Oracle on March 1, 2012. I graduated on September 2011 and started searching for a job. Starting your career, as you all know, is hard because some companies see you as a fresh graduate lacking experience and no one is willing to invest in you. I used to check the recruitment websites daily to see if there were openings to apply to, but unfortunately no one wanted to hire a zero year experience fresh graduate. One day I saw Oracle’s 1 year internship program advertised and that was what I needed. I applied but expected nothing to happen because I was used to applying and getting no replies, but they called and that was the start! I had my first interview over the phone and decided to go to Qatar and to continue to search for a job. Two weeks after arriving at Qatar, Oracle called me for a second interview in Lebanon so I booked a ticket on the same day because my interview was the next day I had my interview and went back to Qatar. On January 2012, I heard from Oracle that I was accepted and they choose me for this program, it was a day I will not forget! Starting on 1st March 2012, I was full of energy, willing to do anything to gain experience and prove that I can do it. What really give me a big push is my colleagues’ motivation and support especially from Youssef Halawi, my mentor and Rami Mattar because they believe in me and track my progress day-by-day. At Oracle, I meet customers, attend meetings, demos and presentations, partners’ events and online trainings. Now I’m focusing on a specific product that I really liked and aim to master by the end of my internship. So dear readers wish me good luck! I know that I will get the experience that I want, because from Oracle, a leader in its industry, you have the chance to grab experience as much as you can handle, simply because there are no limits to excellence. Do you want to find out more about the open roles within Oracle? Follow us on https://campus.oracle.com.

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• Installed LibreOffice 4 with ppa, how do I remove it and go back to LibreOffice 3?

  - by MMA

  EDIT This question is not at all a duplicate of How to downgrade from LibreOffice 4.0 to 3.6? The above mentioned question talks about downgrading from a specific version of LibreOffice, namely from 4.0 to 3.6. The solutions mentioned are not the ones I am looking for. They will work but I wanted a general solution without using PPA or downloading .deb files for from a higher version to a lower version. The above solutions suggest either downloading .deb files for LibreOffice 3.6 or adding repository for it. Furthermore, some of the answers put out-of-proportion~(applicable for the solution, however) stress on use of synaptic, not general command-line-solution. That made me wonder, at this very moment, if I take a fresh computer, and install Ubuntu 12.04, LibreOffice installation will work without a hitch. Then why I can not install LibreOffice in my 12.04 machine today from simple command line? This answer to my question, clarified everything. I need to use ppa-purge so that this resets all packages from a PPA to the standard versions released for my distribution. Basically it is like a way to restore my system back to the way it was before my installed packages from a PPA. This article further elaborates the idea. The above mentioned answer worked perfectly for me. Actually, this was an education for me since it taught me how do downgrade a package that was added via PPA. I had upgraded from LibreOffice 3 to LibreOffice 4 using the PPA. Now since I found that LibreOffice 4 has some issues, including handling my native language, I want to move back to LibreOffice 3. In order to accomplish this, I removed the LibreOffice config directory from my home and then purged LibreOffice from my machine. sudo apt-get purge libreoffice-* Then I removed the relevant PPA's using the sudo apt-add-repository --remove command. And then ran sudo apt-get update. Now, when I try to install LibreOffice using the command sudo apt-get install libreoffice I get an avalanche of output about unmet dependencies, something like, The following packages have unmet dependencies: libreoffice : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.5.7-0ubuntu4) but it is not going to be installed (snipped) If I dig the issue further, by using the command, sudo apt-get install libreoffice-core I get The following packages have unmet dependencies: libreoffice-core : Depends: libreoffice-common (> 1:3.5.7) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libexttextcat0 (>= 2.2-8) but it is not going to be installed Depends: ure (>= 3.5.7~) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. Could you please tell me how do I install LibreOffice 3 in my machine? I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

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• SOASuite 11.1.1.4 : Error Logging into BPM11g Composer?

  - by angelo.santagata

  Hey all, I’ve just installed SOA Suite 11.1.1.4 and noticed a few funnies which people might hit, thankfully each of them have an easy solution.   1. Some applications are installed but dont appear to work? If when you install SOASuite you may notice that the following applications dont appear to work, however they do appear as deployments in Weblogic Server Console e.g.  SOA Composer (composer), FMW Welcome Page Application (11.1.0.0.0) and some of the adaptors. If they appear in the deployments list state as “installed” and not Active, then its likely that they haven't been targeted to a specific server.   The solution is to target the application the desired managed server , e.g. AdminServer in a development environment. This is done by selecting the application, tab “Targets”, select all components, Button[change Targets] and select the appropriate server. This change can be done without restarting the Weblogic Server 2. You might find that when you try to log into the BPM Composer at http://machine:7001/bpm/composer , the login screen will appear but you cant log in. The error log might mention the following   The solution to this is two fold, a) When creating the domain, avoid using 127.0.0.1 as the Listener address, or “Any Addresses”, if this is a development machine create an alias in your /etc/hosts file and then use this alias in the domain creation wizard. e.g.   my host file contains an entry     mypc     127.0.0.1   And in the Fusion middleware Configuration wizard   Twill then work!   if it still doesnt you can try setting the ServerURL attribute to http://mypc in the SoaInfraMBean instead of blank. This is accomplished by using Enterprise Manager. Use the System MBean Browser to navigate to Application Defined MBeans->oracle.as.soainfra.config->[ server]->SoaInfraConfig->soa-infra. Then changing the value of 'ServerURL' to http://mypc   Failing that give support a call….

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• How Big Data and Social Won the Election

  - by Mike Stiles

  The story of big data’s influence on the outcome of the US Presidential election is worth a good look, because a) it’s a harbinger of things to come, and b) it’s an example of similar successes available to any enterprise seriously resourcing integrated big data, modeling, and data-driven execution on all assets, including social. Obama campaign manager Jim Messina fielded a data and analytics brain trust 5 times larger than 2008. At that time, there were numerous databases from various sources, few of them talking to each other. This time, the mission was to be metrics-centered and measure everything measurable, and in context with all the other data. Big data showed them exactly what they needed to know and told them what to do about it. It showed them women 40-49 on the west coast would donate big money if they got to eat with George Clooney. Women on the east coast would pony up to hang out with Sarah Jessica Parker. Extensive daily modeling showed them what kinds of email appeals, from who, and to whom, would prove most successful in raising cash, recruiting volunteers, and getting out the vote. Swing state voters were profiled and approached with more customized targeting that at any time in history. Ads were purchased on specific shows watched by the targets, increasing efficiency 14% over traditional media buys. For all the criticism of the candidate’s focus on appearing on comedy and entertainment shows, and local radio morning shows, that’s where the data sent them to reach the voters most likely to turn out for them. And then there was social. Again, more than in any other election, Facebook was used for virtual, highly efficient door-to-door canvasing. Facebook fans got pictures of friends in swing states and were asked to encourage them to act. Using that approach, 1 in 5 peer-to-peer appeals led to the desired action. Assumptions, gut, intuition, campaign experience, all took a backseat to strategy shifts solidly backed up by data. Zeroing in on demographics likely to back the President and tracking their mood daily literally changed the voter landscape. The Romney team watched Obama voters appear seemingly out of thin air. One Obama campaign aide said, “We ran the election 66,000 times every night.” Which brings us to your organization. If you’re starting to feel like the battle-cry of “but this is the way we’ve always done it” is starting to put you in an extremely vulnerable position, you’re right. Social has become a key communication tool of the 21st century. Failing to use it, or failing to invest in a deep understanding of who your customers and prospects are so the content you post there will achieve desired actions and results, will leave you waking up one morning wondering, “What happened?”@mikestilesPhoto stock.xchng

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• Great opportunity to try Windows Azure over the next 7 days if you are a UK developer &ndash; act to

  - by Eric Nelson

  Are you a UK based developer who has been put off from trying out the Windows Azure Platform? Were you concerned that you needed to hand over credit card details even to use the introductory offer? Or concerned about how many charges you might run up as you played with “elastic computing”. Then we might have just what you need. 7 Days of access to the Windows Azure Platform – for FREE (expires June 6th 2010) If you are accepted, you will be given a Windows Azure Platfom subscription that will enable you to create Windows Azure hosted services and storage accounts, SQL Azure databases and AppFabric services without any fear of being charged between now and Sunday the 6th of June 2010. No credit card is required. Important: At the end of Sunday your subscription and all your code and data you have uploaded will be deleted. It is your responsibility to keep local copies of your code and data. Apply now To apply for this offer you need to: email ukdev AT microsoft.com with a subject line that starts “UKAZURETRAIL:” (This must  be present) In the email you need to demonstrate you are UK based (.uk email alias or address or… be creative) And you must include 30 to 100 words explaining What your interest is in the Windows Azure Platform and Cloud Computing What you would use the 7 days to explore Some notes (please read!): We have a limited number of these offers to give away on a first come, first served basis (subject to meeting the above criteria). We plan to process all request asap – but there is a UK bank holiday weekend looming. We will do our best to process all by Tues afternoon (which would still give you 5 days of access) There will be no specific support for this offer. We will not be processing any requests that arrive after Tuesday 1st. In case you were wondering, there is no equivalent offer for developer outside of the UK. This offer is a direct result of UK based training we are currently doing which has some spare Azure capacity which we wanted to make best use of. Sorry in advance if you based outside of the UK. Related Links: If you are UK based, you should also join the UK Windows Azure Platform community http://ukazure.ning.com Microsoft UK Windows Azure Platform page

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• Is There a Real Advantage to Generic Repository?

  - by Sam

  Was reading through some articles on the advantages of creating Generic Repositories for a new app (example). The idea seems nice because it lets me use the same repository to do several things for several different entity types at once: IRepository repo = new EfRepository(); // Would normally pass through IOC into constructor var c1 = new Country() { Name = "United States", CountryCode = "US" }; var c2 = new Country() { Name = "Canada", CountryCode = "CA" }; var c3 = new Country() { Name = "Mexico", CountryCode = "MX" }; var p1 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = "Alabama", Abbreviation = "AL" }; var p2 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = "Alaska", Abbreviation = "AK" }; var p3 = new Province() { Country = c2, Name = "Alberta", Abbreviation = "AB" }; repo.Add<Country>(c1); repo.Add<Country>(c2); repo.Add<Country>(c3); repo.Add<Province>(p1); repo.Add<Province>(p2); repo.Add<Province>(p3); repo.Save(); However, the rest of the implementation of the Repository has a heavy reliance on Linq: IQueryable<T> Query(); IList<T> Find(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); T Get(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); T First(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); //... and so on This repository pattern worked fantastic for Entity Framework, and pretty much offered a 1 to 1 mapping of the methods available on DbContext/DbSet. But given the slow uptake of Linq on other data access technologies outside of Entity Framework, what advantage does this provide over working directly with the DbContext? I attempted to write a PetaPoco version of the Repository, but PetaPoco doesn't support Linq Expressions, which makes creating a generic IRepository interface pretty much useless unless you only use it for the basic GetAll, GetById, Add, Update, Delete, and Save methods and utilize it as a base class. Then you have to create specific repositories with specialized methods to handle all the "where" clauses that I could previously pass in as a predicate. Is the Generic Repository pattern useful for anything outside of Entity Framework? If not, why would someone use it at all instead of working directly with Entity Framework? Edit: Original link doesn't reflect the pattern I was using in my sample code. Here is an (updated link).

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• Developing for 2005 using VS2008!

  - by Vincent Grondin

  I joined a fairly large project recently and it has a particularity… Once finished, everything has to be sent to the client under VS2005 using VB.Net and can target either framework 2.0 or 3.0… A long time ago, the decision to use VS2008 and to target framework 3.0 was taken but people knew they would need to establish a few rules to ensure that each dev would use VS2008 as if it was VS2005… Why is that so? Well simply because the compiler in VS2005 is different from the compiler inside VS2008…  I thought it might be a good idea to note the things that you cannot use in VS2008 if you plan on going back to VS2005. Who knows, this might save someone the headache of going over all their code to fix errors… -        Do not use LinQ keywords (from, in, select, orderby…).   -        Do not use LinQ standard operators under the form of extension methods.   -        Do not use type inference (in VB.Net you can switch it OFF in each project properties). o   This means you cannot use XML Literals.   -        Do not use nullable types under the following declarative form:    Dim myInt as Integer? But using:   Dim myInt as Nullable(Of Integer)     is perfectly fine.   -        Do not test nullable types with     Is Nothing    use    myInt.HasValue     instead.   -        Do not use Lambda expressions (there is no Lambda statements in VB9) so you cannot use the keyword “Function”.   -        Pay attention not to use relaxed delegates because this one is easy to miss in VS2008   -        Do not use Object Initializers   -        Do not use the “ternary If operator” … not the IIf method but this one     If(confition, truepart, falsepart).   As a side note, I talked about not using LinQ keyword nor the extension methods but, this doesn’t mean not to use LinQ in this scenario. LinQ is perfectly accessible from inside VS2005. All you need to do is reference System.Core, use namespace System.Linq and use class “Enumerable” as a helper class… This is one of the many classes containing various methods that VS2008 sees as extensions. The trick is you can use them too! Simply remember that the first parameter of the method is the object you want to query on and then pass in the other parameters needed… That’s pretty much all I see but I could have missed a few… If you know other things that are specific to the VS2008 compiler and which do not work under VS2005, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll modify my list accordingly (and notify our team here…) ! Happy coding all!

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• RIM's current BB7 developer toolset is a joke

  - by mbrit

  tl;dr - RIM's current developer toolset is not fit for purpose.Background to this is that I'm currently working on a PhoneGap/Cordova project for a client that has to run on BlackBerry. The tooling is so ridiculous to use that even though I had a gentle dig at them in a Guardian piece it's worth having a more full-on attack.At the moment, RIM's pitch is that apps are built for the current BBOS7 devices using WebWorks. This is an HTML-based toolset. Essentially a browser is spun up in a native app container and your app is powered by JavaScript. Specific JavaScript libraries exist that thunk down to native capabilities no the device. I happen to use PhoneCap/Cordova in combination with this.The tooling is non-existent. I'm using TextMate, Ant, and Terminal to develop the app. There's no "console.log" output, and no debugging. The only way to instrument the app is to put "alert" calls in your code.Apart from the fact that that's *not* fine in 2012, how about this… every time you deploy a new app to the device, the device has to reboot. This process takes six minutes on a relatively modern BlackBerry device. How about this as well - in order to get a file into the package it has to be signed. My small app over here has 100 different files (75 or so generated). Signing doesn't happen locally, it happens on RIM's servers in Waterloo. Thus whenever you deploy the app you have this utility have to call RIM's servers 100 times. More to the point, sometimes during the day these servers have "micro-downtime" moments where they're unreachable for five or ten minutes, normally two or three times a day. Oh yes, you'll also get an email sent to you per signing on success or failure. 100 inbound emails, per deployment.(I started this post at the beginning of one of these cycles, by the way. That's how long it takes to build and deploy *once*. By the way, the change I made didn't work.)To clarify:* Change the script,* Build it using Ant,* Ant will spin up a Java app that talks to RIM's servers to sign it.* Receive 100 emails, assuming the server is up.* App deployed - takes about 30 seconds.* BlackBerry device restarts - takes about six minutes.* Find and open the app. Go through security prompts.* Test the app, with no "console.log" output and no debugger."Why not use the simulator?" I hear you ask. Well, apart from the fact that the simulator refused to reach any network service over HTTPS that I happen to own? (Some people suggest changing DNS settings for this known issue.) Admittedly, the simulator does show you console.log, but you still have the "six minute" restart issue on the simulator.Developers will understand this problem. Breaking concentration for six-plus minutes every time you want to deploy an app turns developing into a nightmare. Combining that with no worthy debugging tools turns the toolset into a joke.

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• Do I need to create my own or use a commercial server for the features and matchmaking options I want my game to support?

  - by baptzmoffire

  So I'm developing an indie turn-based game for iOS and, in coding up a Game Center matchmaking class, I'm starting to question whether Game Center is even the best choice for what I want this game to do. I need to figure out whether I need to create my own server, invest in a preexisting client or server service, or if I even need to use a server at all. If I do need to use a ready-made service other than Game Center, which server would accomodate my game's needs best? I have limited resources and funds. Here is the list of features I want my game to support, ideally: Turn-based gameplay (a la "with Friends" and "with Buddies" games) Smart matchmaking (matching users up with other players of comparable skill/achievements) Random matchmaking Facebook matchmaking Specific username matchmaking Contact list matchmaking A way to select what "type" of match you want to challenge an opponent to. (In random, smart, and Facebook matchmaking, there will be different "wagers" the player can make. [e.g. "I wanna play a random opponent for 1000 points. Now, I wanna play my Facebook buddy for 1,000,000 points."] There will be a predetermined range of amounts you can play for. It won't be customizable.) Buddies list capability (Game-buddies, as opposed to contacts and Facebook) A higher concurrent game cap than Game Center offers (which I still can't really find a straight answer on) Scalability (it should support 2 or 20,000,000 players) Objective-C compatibility Flexibility (for all the stuff I haven't thought of yet) Am I dreaming, here? Is there even a service that can handle all of these features? Do I need to invest months in learning a networking language to build my own? If so, how much would I need to spend on hardware? I've been looking around all morning and, so far, the only seemingly viable option is SmartFox. Under "Everything and the kitchen sink" section here, it says they support "virtual world with Zones, Rooms and RoomGroups, create complex game challenges, send invitations, manage buddy lists, create custom permission profiles, oversee the security aspects and tons more." http://www.smartfoxserver.com/overview/platform Is there an option that Im just overlooking? Thanks for any help anyone can provide. Sorry for the long poast. One last question: Does anyone know which server Dice with Buddies uses? I was experimenting with how many concurrent games I could get going and my ADHD kicked in at about 80 games. 80 concurrent games would be great for my game, but again, I need the other features I mentioned too. Thanks again.

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• Storing game objects with generic object information

  - by Mick

  In a simple game object class, you might have something like this: public abstract class GameObject { protected String name; // other properties protected double x, y; public GameObject(String name, double x, double y) { // etc } // setters, getters } I was thinking, since a lot of game objects (ex. generic monsters) will share the same name, movement speed, attack power, etc, it would be better to have all that information shared between all monsters of the same type. So I decided to have an abstract class "ObjectData" to hold all this shared information. So whenever I create a generic monster, I would use the same pre-created "ObjectData" for it. Now the above class becomes more like this: public abstract class GameObject { protected ObjectData data; protected double x, y; public GameObject(ObjectData data, double x, double y) { // etc } // setters, getters public String getName() { return data.getName(); } } So to tailor this specifically for a Monster (could be done in a very similar way for Npcs, etc), I would add 2 classes. Monster which extends GameObject, and MonsterData which extends ObjectData. Now I'll have something like this: public class Monster extends GameObject { public Monster(MonsterData data, double x, double y) { super(data, x, y); } } This is where my design question comes in. Since MonsterData would hold data specific to a generic monster (and would vary with what say NpcData holds), what would be the best way to access this extra information in a system like this? At the moment, since the data variable is of type ObjectData, I'll have to cast data to MonsterData whenever I use it inside the Monster class. One solution I thought of is this, but this might be bad practice: public class Monster extends GameObject { private MonsterData data; // <- this part here public Monster(MonsterData data, double x, double y) { super(data, x, y); this.data = data; // <- this part here } } I've read that for one I should generically avoid overwriting the underlying classes variables. What do you guys think of this solution? Is it bad practice? Do you have any better solutions? Is the design in general bad? How should I redesign this if it is? Thanks in advanced for any replies, and sorry about the long question. Hopefully it all makes sense!

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• 2D water with dynamic waves

  - by user1103457

  New Super Mario Bros has really cool 2D water that I'd like to learn how to create. Here's a video showing it. When something hits the water, it creates a wave. There are also constant "background" waves. You can get a good look at the constant waves just after 00:50 when the camera isn't moving. I assume the splashes in NSMB work as in the first part of this tutorial. But in NSMB the water also has constant waves on the surface, and the splashes look very different. Another difference is that in the tutorial, if you create a splash, it first creates a deep "hole" in the water at the origin of the splash. In new super mario bros this hole is absent or much smaller. I am referring to the splashes that the player creates when jumping in and out of the water. How do they create the constant waves and the splashes? I am especially interested in the splashes, and how they work together with the constant waves. I am programming in XNA. I've tried this myself, but couldn't really get it all to work well together. Bonus questions: How do they create the light spots just under the surface of the waves and how do they texture the deeper parts of the water? This is the first time I try to create water like this. EDIT: I assume the constant waves are created using a sine function. The splashes are probably created in a way like in the tutorial. (But they are not the same, so I am still interested in how to make this kind of splashes) But I have a lot of trouble combining those things. I know I can use the sine function to set the height of a specific watercolumn but the splashes are using the speed, to determine the new height. I can't figure out how to combine those. Not that I am not asking how the developers of new super mario bros did this exactly. I am just interested in ways to recreate an effect like it. This week I have an examweek so I don't have time to work on the code. After this week I will spend a lot of time on it. But I am constantly thinking about it, so that's why I will be checking comments etc. I just won't be looking at the code since it might be too time-consuming.

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• How can I keep directories in sync

  - by Guillaume Boudreau

  I have a directory, dirA, that users can work in: they can create, modify, rename and delete files & sub-directores in dirA. I want to keep another directory, dirB, in sync with dirA. What I'd like, is a discussion on finding a working algorithm that would achieve the above, with the limitations listed below. Requirements: 1. Something asynchronous - I don't want to stop file operations in dirA while I work in dirB. 2. I can't assume that I can just blindly rsync dirA to dirB on regular interval - dirA could contain millions of files & directories, and terrabytes of data. Completely walking the dirA tree could take hours. Those two requirements makes this really difficult. Having it asynchronous means that when I start working on a specific file from dirA, it might have moved a lot since it appeared. And the second limitation means that I really need to watch dirA, and work on atomic file operations that I notice. Current (broken) implementation: 1. Log all file & directory operations in dirA. 2. Using a separate process, read that log, and 'repeat' all the logged operations in dirB. Why is it broken: echo 1 > dirA/file1 # Allow the 'log reader' process to create dirB/file1: log = "write dirA/file1"; action = cp dirA/file1 dirB/file1; result = OK echo 1 > dirA/file2 mv dirA/file1 dirA/file3 mv dirA/file2 dirA/file1 rm dirA/file3 # End result: file1 contains '1' # 'log reader' process starts working on the 4 above file operations: log = "write file2"; action = cp dirA/file2 dirB/file2; result = failed: there is no dirA/file2 log = "rename file1 file3"; action = mv dirB/file1 dirB/file3; result = OK log = "rename file2 file1"; action = mv dirB/file2 dirB/file1; result = failed: there is no dirB/file2 log = "delete file3"; action = rm dirB/file3; result = OK # End result in dirB: no more files! Another broken example: echo 1 > dirA/dir1/file1 mv dirA/dir1 dirA/dir2 # 'log reader' process starts working on the 2 above file operations: log = "write file1"; action = cp dirA/dir1/file1 dirB/dir1/file1; result = failed: there is no dirA/dir1/file1 log = "rename dir1 dir2"; action = mv dirB/dir1 dirB/dir2; result = failed: there is no dirA/dir1 # End result if dirB: nothing!

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows, --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 -- volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then -- c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) -- c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I ll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• ApiChange Corporate Edition

  - by Alois Kraus

  In my inital announcement I could only cover a small subset what ApiChange can do for you. Lets look at how ApiChange can help you to fix bugs due to wrong usage of an Api within a fraction of time than it would take normally. It happens that software is tested and some bugs show up. One bug could be …. : We get way too man log messages during our test run. Now you have the task to find the most frequent messages and eliminate the Log calls from the source code. But what about the myriads other log calls? How can we check that the distribution of log calls is nearly equal across all developers? And if not how can we contact the developer to check his code? ApiChange can help you too connect these loose ends. It combines several information silos into one cohesive view. The picture below shows how it is able to fill the gaps. The public version does currently “only” parse the binaries and pdbs to give you for a –whousesmethod query the following colums: If it happens that you have Rational ClearCase (a source control system) in your development shop and an Active Directory in place then ApiChange will try to determine from the source file which was determined from the pdb the last check in user which should be present in your Active Directory. From there it is only a small hop to an LDAP query to your AD domain or the GC (Global Catalog) to get from the user name his Full name Email Phone number Department …. ApiChange will append this additional data all of your query results which contain source files if you add the –fileinfo option. As I said this is currently not enabled by default since the AD domain needs to be configured which are currently only some hard coded values in the SiteConstants.cs source file of ApiChange.Api.dll. Once you got this data you can generate metrics based on source file, developer, assembly, … and add additional data by drag and drop directly into the pivot tables inside Excel. This allows you to e.g. to generate a report which lists the source files with most log calls in descending order along with the developer name and email in the pivot table. Armed with this knowledge you can take meaningful measures e.g. to ask the developer if the huge number of log calls in this source file can be optimized. I am aware that this is a very specific scenario but it is a huge time saver when you are able to fill the missing gaps of information. ApiChange does this in an extensible way. namespace ApiChange.ExternalData {     public interface IFileInformationProvider     {         UserInfo GetInformationFromFile(string fileName);     } } It defines an interface where you can implement your custom information provider to close the gap between source control system and the real person I have to send an email to ask if his code needs a closer inspection.

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• XNA Moddable Game - Architecture Design and Reflection

  - by David K

  I've decided to embark on an XNA moddable game project of a simple rogue style. For all purposes of this question, I'm going to not be using a scripting engine, but rather allow modders to directly compile assemblies that are loaded by the game at run time. I know about the security problems this may raise. So in order to expose the moddable content, I have gone about creating a generic project in XNA called MyModel. This contains a number of interfaces that all inherit from IPlugin, such as IGameSystem, IRenderingSystem, IHud, IInputSystem etc. Then I've created another project called MyRogueModel. This references MyModel project, and holds interfaces such as IMonster, IPlayer, IDungeonGenerator, IInventorySystem. More rogue specific interfaces, but again, all interfaces in this project inherit from IPlugin. Then finally, I've created another project called MyRogueGame, that references both MyModel and MyRogueModel projects. This project will be the game that you run and play. Here I have put the actual implementation of the Monster, DungeonGenerator, InputSystem and RenderingSystem classes. This project will also scan the mods directory during run time and load any IPlugins it finds using reflection and override anything it finds from the default. For example if it finds a new implementation of the DungeonGenerator it will use that one instead. Now my question is, in order to get this far, I have effectively 2 projects that contain nothing but interfaces... which seems a little... strange ? For people to create mods for the game, I would give them both the MyModel and MyRogueModel assemblies in which they would reference. I'm not sure whether this is the right way to do it, but my reasoning goes as follows : If I write 1 input system, I can use it in any game I write. If I create 3 rogue like games, and a modder writes 1 rendering system, that modder could use the rendering system for all 3 games, because it all comes from the MyModel project. I come from a more web based C# role, so having empty interface projects doesn't seem wrong, its just something I haven't done before. Before I embark on something that might be crazy, I'd just like to know whether this is a foolish idea and whether there's a better (or established) design principle I should be following ?

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• Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into an Ubuntu Forums Powerhouse

  - by Asian Angel

  There’s a lot of start page plug-ins for Google Chrome, but if you’re an Ubuntu Forums enthusiast, you might be interested in the powerful UbuntuForums.org Start Page extension. Using the Ubuntu Forums Chrome Start Page Once you’ve installed the extension and opened a new tab, you’ll notice quite a difference from the boring default “New Tab Page”. While you may look at this and wonder if what you see is all that there is to it, there’s actually a lot of hidden customization and functionality. The upper left corner is where you will control the content displayed in the “Ubuntu New Tab Page”. The “Buttons Toolbar” that you see at the top lets you shift between the types of content viewed, from RSS feeds to bookmarks and more. This entire set of links provides direct links to the appropriate section in the Ubuntu Forums. As with the set of links pictured above each of these will open in a new tab when clicked on. There’s even a feature to browse wallpapers from DesktopNexus with categories on the left and pictures to the right. If you want to return to the regular layout you should use the “Start Page Link” highlighted here. Options The options will allow you to customize the colors shown in the “Ubuntu New Tab Page” to create a very nice match to your current browser and/or system theme if desired. You can also do some customization to the fonts, “Bookmark Shortcuts”, and populate the “Custom Links Section” in the main page. Conclusion If you are an Ubuntu enthusiast then this will be a very useful extension to add to your browser. The wealth of direct links and built-in functionality make this extension worth trying. Links Download the Ubuntuforums.org Start Page extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Turn Off Auto-Play of Audio and Video CDs and DVDs in UbuntuScroll Backwards From the Ubuntu Server Command LineAnnouncing the How-To Geek ForumsDisable the System Beep on Ubuntu EdgyEnable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu Linux TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Shared Links - May 23-29, 2014

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Among the 5,144 fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page the following Top 10 items were the most popular over the last seven days, May 23-29, 2014. GlassFish/Java EE Community Open Forum Today! | Reza Rahman Have questions about Glassfish? Java EE/GlassFish evangelist Reza Rahman has answers, and you can pick his brain tomorrow during an online forum organized by the London Glassfish User Group and C2B2. The event is free, but you must register in order to participate. Click the link for more information. Twitter Tuesday - Top 10 @ArchBeat Tweets - May 20-26, 2014 The top 10 @OTNArchBeat tweets for the week of May 20-26, 2014. Topics covered include ADF, Cloud, GoldenGate, KScope14, OBIEE, ODI, WebLogic, WebCenter, and more. FrameworkFolders Support has come to Oracle WebCenter Portal | JayJay Zheng Interested in working with Framework Folders in Oracle WebCenter Portal? Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng reviews the essentials. Video: Programming Best Practices - ADF Business Components | Frank Nimphius Frank Nimphius discusses best practices and recommendations for ADF Business Components in the latest video from ADF Architecture TV. Video: Kscope 2014 Preview: Data Modeling and Moving Meditation with Kent Graziano For your mind and your body! Oracle ACE Director Kent Graziano previews his Kscope 2014 data modeling presentations and the early morning Chi Gung sessions he will once again lead for Kscope attendees. OAG and OES Integration for Web API Security: skin and guts | Andre Correa A-Team architect Andre Correa's post examines a strategy for web API security that uses OAG (Oracle API Gateway) and OES (Oracle Entitlements Server). Getting Started with Coherence*Web in WebLogic Server 12.1.2 | Tim Middleton Solution architect Tim Middleton shows you how to configure Coherence*Web in WebLogic Server 12.1.2 and deploy a basic web application. SOA and Business Processes: You are the Process! Part of the 13-part "Industrial SOA" article series, this article looks at best practices for modeling and managing effective business processes. Authentication in Oracle Identity Federation/ IdP | Damien Carru Damien Carru discuss authentication when OIF acts as an IdP and how the server can be configured to use specific OAM Authentication Schemes to challenge the user. Caveats on Using WebLogic Server with JDK7 | JayJay Zheng Quick tech tips from Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng.

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• CAM v2.0 ships – all new foundation version

  - by drrwebber

  The latest release of the CAM editor toolset is now available on Sourceforge.net – search NIEM. In this all new version the support from Oracle has enabled a transformation of the editor underpinning Java framework and results in 3x performance improvement and 50% better memory utilization. The result of nearly six months of improvements are catalogued in the release notes. http://sourceforge.net/projects/camprocessor/files/CAM%20Editor/Releases/2.0/CAM_Editor_2-0_Release_Notes.pdf/download However here I’d like to talk about the strategic vision and highlight specific new go to features that make a difference for exchange schema designers and with a focus on the NIEM community. So why is this a foundation version? Basically the new drag and drop designer tool allows you to tailor your own dictionary collection of components and then simply select and position those into your resulting exchange structure. This is true global reuse enabled from a canonical domain dictionary collection. So instead of grappling with XSD Schema syntax, or UML model nuances – this is straightforward direct WYSIWYG visual engineering – using familiar sets of business components. Then the toolkit writes the complex XSD Schema for you, along with test samples, documentation, XMI/UML models, Mindmaps and more. So how do you get a set of business components? The toolkit allows you to harvest these from existing schema collections or enterprise data models, or as in the case of NIEM, existing domain dictionary collections. I’ve been using this for the latest IEEE/OASIS/NIST initiative on a Common Data Format (CDF) for elections management systems. So you can download those from OASIS and see how this can transform how you build actual business exchanges – improving the quality, consistency and usability – and dramatically allowing automated generation of artifacts you only dreamed of before – such as a model of your entire major exchange collection components. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=election So what we have here is a foundation version – setting the scene and the basis for changing how people can generate and manage information exchanges. A foundation built using the OASIS CAM standard combined with aspects of the NIEM Naming and Design Rules and the UN/CEFACT Core Components specifications and emerging work on OASIS CIQ name and address and ANSI/ISO code list schema. We still have a raft of work to do to integrate this into SOA best practices and extend the dictionary capabilities to assist true community development. Answering questions such as: - How good is my canonical component collection? - How much reuse is really occurring? - What inconsistencies and extensions are there in the dictionary components? Expect us to begin tackling these areas now that the foundation is in place. The immediate need is to develop training and self-start materials – so we will be focusing there for the next couple of months and especially leading up to the IJIS industry event in July in New Jersey, and the NIEM NTE event in August in Philadelphia. http://sourceforge.net/projects/camprocessor

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• Java Embedded Releases

  - by Tori Wieldt

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

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• As a tooling/automation developer, can I be making better use of OOP?

  - by Tom Pickles

  My time as a developer (~8 yrs) has been spent creating tooling/automation of one sort or another. The tools I develop usually interface with one or more API's. These API's could be win32, WMI, VMWare, a help-desk application, LDAP, you get the picture. The apps I develop could be just to pull back data and store/report. It could be to provision groups of VM's to create live like mock environments, update a trouble ticket etc. I've been developing in .Net and I'm currently reading into design patterns and trying to think about how I can improve my skills to make better use of and increase my understanding of OOP. For example, I've never used an interface of my own making in anger (which is probably not a good thing), because I honestly cannot identify where using one would benefit later on when modifying my code. My classes are usually very specific and I don't create similar classes with similar properties/methods which could use a common interface (like perhaps a car dealership or shop application might). I generally use an n-tier approach to my apps, having a presentation layer, a business logic/manager layer which interfaces with layer(s) that make calls to the API's I'm working with. My business entities are always just method-less container objects, which I populate with data and pass back and forth between my API interfacing layer using static methods to proxy/validate between the front and the back end. My code by nature of my work, has few common components, at least from what I can see. So I'm struggling to see how I can better make use of OOP design and perhaps reusable patterns. Am I right to be concerned that I could be being smarter about how I work, or is what I'm doing now right for my line of work? Or, am I missing something fundamental in OOP? EDIT: Here is some basic code to show how my mgr and api facing layers work. I use static classes as they do not persist any data, only facilitate moving it between layers. public static class MgrClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Perform logic to validate or apply biz logic // call APIClass to do the work return APIClass.PowerOnVM(VMName); } } public static class APIClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Calls to 3rd party API to power on a virtual machine // returns true or false if was successful for example } }

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• Cheating on Technical Debt

  - by Tony Davis

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

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