Search Results

Search found 30894 results on 1236 pages for 'best practice'.

Page 721/1236 | < Previous Page | 717 718 719 720 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 728  | Next Page >

• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

  Read the article

• Adjusting the Score on Oracle Text search results

  - by Kyle Hatlestad

  When you sort the results of a search by Score using OracleTextSearch as the search engine in WebCenter Content, the results coming back are based on the relevancy on the document.  In theory, the more relevant the search term is to the document, the higher ranked Score it should receive.  But in practice, the relevancy score can seem somewhat of a mystery.  It's not entirely clear how it ranks the importance of some documents over others based on the search term.  And often times, once a word appears a certain number of times within a document, the Score simply maxes out at 100 and the top results can be difficult to discern from one another.  Take for example the search for 'vacation' on this set of documents: Out of 7 results, 6 of them have a Score of '100' which means they are basically ranked the same.  This doesn't make the sort by Score very meaningful.   Besides sorting by relevance, you can also tell Oracle Text to sort by occurrence.  In that case, it is a much more predictable result in how they would be ranked. And for many cases provide a more meaningful sorting of results then relevance. To change this takes a small component change to the SearchOperatorMap resource.  By default, the query used for full-text searching looks like: <td>(ORACLETEXTSEARCH)fullText</td> <td>DEFINESCORE((%V), RELEVANCE * .1)</td> <td>text</td> Overriding this resource and changing it to: <td>(ORACLETEXTSEARCH)fullText</td> <td>DEFINESCORE((%V), OCCURRENCE * .01)</td>  <td>text</td> will force it to now use occurrence (note the change in scale to .01 as well).  So running the same search and sort options as the example above, the results come out quite a bit differently: In this case, there is a clear understanding of how the items rank.   And generally, if the search term appears 3 times more in one document then another, it's got a better chance of being a document I'm interested in.  You may or may not feel the relevance ranking is better then the search term occurrence, but this provides the opportunity to try an alternate method that might work better for your results.  A pre-built component is available for download here. There is one caveat in using this method.  The occurrence ranking also maxes out at 100, so if a search term is in the document more then that, the Score result will stay at 100.

  Read the article

• June 23, 1983: First Successful Test of the Domain Name System [Geek History]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Nearly 30 years ago the first Domain Name System (DNS) was tested and it changed the way we interacted with the internet. Nearly impossible to remember number addresses became easy to remember names. Without DNS you’d be browsing a web where numbered addresses pointed to numbered addresses. Google, for example, would look like http://209.85.148.105/ in your browser window. That’s assuming, of course, that a numbers-based web every gained enough traction to be popular enough to spawn a search giant like Google. How did this shift occur and what did we have before DNS? From Wikipedia: The practice of using a name as a simpler, more memorable abstraction of a host’s numerical address on a network dates back to the ARPANET era. Before the DNS was invented in 1983, each computer on the network retrieved a file called HOSTS.TXT from a computer at SRI. The HOSTS.TXT file mapped names to numerical addresses. A hosts file still exists on most modern operating systems by default and generally contains a mapping of the IP address 127.0.0.1 to “localhost”. Many operating systems use name resolution logic that allows the administrator to configure selection priorities for available name resolution methods. The rapid growth of the network made a centrally maintained, hand-crafted HOSTS.TXT file unsustainable; it became necessary to implement a more scalable system capable of automatically disseminating the requisite information. At the request of Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System in 1983 and wrote the first implementation. The original specifications were published by the Internet Engineering Task Force in RFC 882 and RFC 883, which were superseded in November 1987 by RFC 1034 and RFC 1035.Several additional Request for Comments have proposed various extensions to the core DNS protocols. Over the years it has been refined but the core of the system is essentially the same. When you type “google.com” into your web browser a DNS server is used to resolve that host name to the IP address of 209.85.148.105–making the web human-friendly in the process. Domain Name System History [Wikipedia via Wired] What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNSHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is Compromised

  Read the article

• Should a server "be lenient" in what it accepts and "discard faulty input silently"?

  - by romkyns

  I was under the impression that by now everyone agrees this maxim was a mistake. But I recently saw this answer which has a "be lenient" comment upvoted 137 times (as of today). In my opinion, the leniency in what browsers accept was the direct cause of the utter mess that HTML and some other web standards were a few years ago, and have only recently begun to properly crystallize out of that mess. The way I see it, being lenient in what you accept will lead to this. The second part of the maxim is "discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification", and this feels borderline offensive. Any programmer who has banged their head on the wall when something fails silently will know what I mean. So, am I completely wrong about this? Should my program be lenient in what it accepts and swallow errors silently? Or am I mis-interpreting what this is supposed to mean? The original question said "program", and I take everyone's point about that. It can make sense for programs to be lenient. What I really meant, however, is APIs: interfaces exposed to other programs, rather than people. HTTP is an example. The protocol is an interface that only other programs use. People never directly provide the dates that go into headers like "If-Modified-Since". So, the question is: should the server implementing a standard be lenient and allow dates in several other formats, in addition to the one that's actually required by the standard? I believe the "be lenient" is supposed to apply to this situation, rather than human interfaces. If the server is lenient, it might seem like an overall improvement, but I think in practice it only leads to client implementations that end up relying on the leniency and thus failing to work with another server that's lenient in slightly different ways. So, should a server exposing some API be lenient or is that a very bad idea? Now onto lenient handling of user input. Consider YouTrack (a bug tracking software). It uses a language for text entry that is reminiscent of Markdown. Except that it's "lenient". For example, writing - foo - bar - baz is not a documented way of creating a bulleted list, and yet it worked. Consequently, it ended up being used a lot throughout our internal bugtracker. Next version comes out, and this lenient feature starts working slightly differently, breaking a bunch of lists that (mis)used this (non)feature. The documented way to create bulleted lists still works, of course. So, should my software be lenient in what user inputs it accepts?

  Read the article

• EPM Planning (Hyperion) V11.1.2 Implementation Hands-On Boot-camp

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  5-Day Training for Partners: 29th October - 2nd November 2012, London (UK): REGISTER Here This FREE for Partners 5-day workshop is designed to provide implementation instruction on Oracle Hyperion EPM Planning.  This boot-camp is intended for prospective implementers of the Planning and Budgeting functionality of Oracle EPM or implementers that are currently familiar with the basics of EPM Planning and looking to strengthen their base of knowledge in the product. The class begins with an overview of Essbase, the foundation of Hyperion Planning. It provides a general overview of Planning and Planning terms, the architecture of all the Planning components, and how they are commonly used. The course goes over all the steps to create an application from scratch. This involves some preparation work outside of Planning and leads to developing the application in both the Planning Windows and Web clients. Participants will modify existing dimensions and build out the hierarchies using the Web client. Topics Covered The boot-camp shows developers how to build out dimensions using Classic Planning and by using EPMA. It covers the mechanics and cover strategies for automating the build process such as interface tables. It reviews data loads using Load Rules to load the Planning database. The course focuses on tasks that end-users must perform during the planning cycle. It walks students through creating and modifying forms, working with forms to enter data, adding annotations, and the rest of the form features such as running business rules and managing task lists. It covers how to use the forms in the Smart View client and finishes up the end-user perspective by going through Workflow Management and the process of submitting a plan for review. The final section of the course covers Security and other administration topics such as automation and deployment. Prerequisites Ideal participants are Oracle partners (SIs and resellers) with a background in business information systems and a clientele of customers with ongoing or prospective EPM initiatives. Alternatively, partners with the background described above and an interest in evolving their practice to a similar profile are suitable participants. Further online OPN guided learning path information and webinars are available at: Oracle Hyperion Planning 11 Essentials. Please note that attendees are required to bring a laptop. View here laptop requirements and detailed agenda. ·       REGISTER Here : acceptance is subject to availability and your place will be confirmed within two weeks  ( and for help see the Partner Registration Guide ). Training Location: Oracle Corporation UK Ltd Columbus Room Customer Visit Center 1 South Place London EC2M 2RB Training Dates: 29th October - 2nd November  9:30 am – 5:00 pm BST For more information please contact [email protected].

  Read the article

• Windows Phone 7 Development Updates &ndash; March 8th 2011

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  Here are the latest update from the Windows Phone 7 Developer Worlds that went live this month. Here are some of the latest numbers: Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 quality apps and games and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps every day. There have been over 1 million downloads of the developers tools for Windows Phone 7. Trial version help you sell more Trials result in higher sales by the numbers: Users like trials  - paid apps with trial functionality are downloaded 70 times more than paid apps that don’t Nearly 1 out of 10 trial apps downloaded convert to a purchase and generate 10 times more revenue on average than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality. Trial downloads convert to paid downloads quickly. More than half of trial downloads that convert to a sale do so within the 1st 24 hours of trial download, and mostly within 2 hours of trial download. Microsoft Ad Control is gaining traction By the numbers - ad supported Windows Phone 7 apps are: Roughly ¼ of all registered U.S. WP7 developers have downloaded the free Ad SDK for Silverlight and XNA Of ad funded apps, over 95 percent use the free Microsoft Advertising Ad Control Monthly impressions from our Ad Exchange has continued to grow by double digits – impressions increased by 376 percent since January Ad Control, the first wave of “How Do I” videos are now available on MSDN: Create an Ad in a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game App Register Ad-Enabled Windows Phone 7 Apps Measure Ad Performance of Windows Phone 7 Apps Boarder International App submission for Free Apps through Yalla Apps As of today you can start submitting your free applications in developer markets that are currently not covered by Microsoft. To submit your Free application if you DO NOT belong to one of the Marketplace supported countries, go to: Yalla Apps Marketplace Policy Updates: Free App Marketplace Submission upped to 100 and other news Microsoft has been revisiting a few of our Marketplace policies based on feedback from developers to reduce friction and cost, word for word: 1. We have raised the limit on the number of certifications that can be performed for FREE apps at no cost to the registered developer from five to 100. This was a common request from developers which we are glad to implement after building alternate methods to ensure that users can find and download high quality apps. 2. We have converted policy 5.6 - related to the inclusion of contact information for support - from a mandatory to an optional policy. This is still a strongly recommended best practice, but we recognized and responded to developer feedback that this policy was creating excessive drag on the certification process for developers without commensurate user benefit for all apps. 3. We also understand the desire for clarification with regard to our policy on applications distributed under open source licenses.  The Marketplace Application Provider Agreement (APA) already permits applications under the BSD, MIT, Apache Software License 2.0 and Microsoft Public License.  We plan to update the APA shortly to clarify that we also permit applications under the Eclipse Public License, the Mozilla Public License and other, similar licenses and we continue to explore the possibility of accommodating additional OSS licenses. Enjoy and happy coding! Official Blog Post for reference.

  Read the article

• 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.

  Read the article

• Is Cygwin or Windows Command Prompt preferable for getting a consistent terminal experience for development?

  - by Paul Hazen

  The question: Which is better, installing cygwin or one of its cousins on all my windows machines to have a consistent terminal experience across all my development machines, or becoming well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt? Systems I use: OSX Lion on a Macbook Air Windows 8 on a desktop Windows 7 on the same desktop Fedora 16 on the same desktop What I'm trying to accomplish Configure an entirely consistent (or consistent enough) terminal experience across all my machines. "enough" in this context is clearly subjective. Please be clear in your answer why the configuration you suggest is consistent enough. One more thing to keep in mind: While I do write a lot of code intended to run on Windows (actually code that runs on Windows Phone which necessitates a windows machine), I also write a lot of Java code, and prefer to do so in vim. I test a local repo in Java on my windows machine, and push to another test machine running ubuntu later in the development stage. When I push to the ubuntu machine, I'm exclusively in terminal, since I'm accessing it via SSH. Summary, with more accurate question: Is there a good way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, or is it better to get accustomed to remembering different commands based on the system I'm on? Which (if either) is considered "best practice" by the development community? Alternatively, for a consistent development experience, would it be better to write all my code SSHed into another machine, and move things to windows for compile / build only when I needed to? That seems like too much work... but could be a solution. Update: While there are insightful responses below, I have yet to hear an answer that talks about why any given solution is superior. Cygwin/GnuWin32 is certainly a way to accomplish a similar experience on all platforms, but since I'm just learning all things command line, I don't want to set myself up to do a lot of relearning/unlearning in the future. Cygwin/GnuWin32 has its peculiarities I would imagine, and being aware of how that set up works on Windows is a learning curve. Additionally, using Cygwin/GnuWin32 robs me of learning the benefits of PowerShell. As a newcomer to working in a command line, which path should I choose to minimize having to relearn/unlearn things in the future? or as my first paragraph poses: [is it better to use Cygwin] ...or [become] well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt?

  Read the article

• Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy - part 1 / 2

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In this post I will discuss the essence of maturity assessment and the business imperative for doing the same in the context of BPM. Social psychology purports that an individual progresses from being a beginner to an expert in a given activity or task along four stages of self-awareness: Unconscious Incompetence where the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit and may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Conscious Incompetence where the individual recognizes the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. Conscious Competence where the individual understands or knows how to do something but demonstrating the skill requires explicit concentration. Unconscious Competence where the individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and serves as a basis of developing other complementary skills. We can extend the above thinking to an organization as a whole by measuring an organization’s level of competence in a specific area or capability, as an aggregate of the competence levels of individuals it is comprised of. After all organizations too like individuals, evolve through experience, develop “memory” and capabilities that are shaped through a constant cycle of learning, un-learning and re-learning. Hence the key to organizational success lies in developing these capabilities to enable execution of its strategy in-line with the external environment i.e. demand, competition, economy etc. However developing a capability merits establishing a base line in order to Assess the magnitude of improvement from past investments Identify gaps and short-comings Prioritize future investments in the right areas A maturity assessment is essentially an organizational self-awareness check that is aimed at depicting the “as-is” snapshot of an existing capability in-order to guide future investments to develop that capability in-line with business goals. This effectively is the essence of a maturity Organizational capabilities stem through its architecture, routines, culture and intellectual resources that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in its business processes. Given that business processes underpin realization of organizational capabilities, is what has prompted business transformation and process management efforts. Thus, the BPM capability of an organization needs to be measured on an on-going basis to ensure delivery of its planned benefits. In my next post I will describe Oracle’s BPM Maturity assessment methodology.

  Read the article

• Indefinite loops where the first time is different

  - by George T

  This isn't a serious problem or anything someone has asked me to do, just a seemingly simple thing that I came up with as a mental exercise but has stumped me and which I feel that I should know the answer to already. There may be a duplicate but I didn't manage to find one. Suppose that someone asked you to write a piece of code that asks the user to enter a number and, every time the number they entered is not zero, says "Error" and asks again. When they enter zero it stops. In other words, the code keeps asking for a number and repeats until zero is entered. In each iteration except the first one it also prints "Error". The simplest way I can think of to do that would be something like the folloing pseudocode: int number = 0; do { if(number != 0) { print("Error"); } print("Enter number"); number = getInput(); }while(number != 0); While that does what it's supposed to, I personally don't like that there's repeating code (you test number != 0 twice) -something that should generally be avoided. One way to avoid this would be something like this: int number = 0; while(true) { print("Enter number"); number = getInput(); if(number == 0) { break; } else { print("Error"); } } But what I don't like in this one is "while(true)", another thing to avoid. The only other way I can think of includes one more thing to avoid: labels and gotos: int number = 0; goto question; error: print("Error"); question: print("Enter number"); number = getInput(); if(number != 0) { goto error; } Another solution would be to have an extra variable to test whether you should say "Error" or not but this is wasted memory. Is there a way to do this without doing something that's generally thought of as a bad practice (repeating code, a theoretically endless loop or the use of goto)? I understand that something like this would never be complex enough that the first way would be a problem (you'd generally call a function to validate input) but I'm curious to know if there's a way I haven't thought of.

  Read the article

• WebLogic Server 11gR1 Interactive Quick Reference

  - by JuergenKress

  The WebLogic Server 11gR1 Administration interactive quick reference is a multimedia tool for various terms and concepts used in WebLogic Server architecture. This tool is available for administrators for online or offline use. This is built as a multimedia web page which provides descriptions of WebLogic Server Architectural components, and references to relevant documentation. This tool offers valuable reference information for any complex concept or product in an intuitive and useful manner. Each interactive type presents data that may be available in the documentation (in the case of Oracle products), but presents it in a way that is more intuitive and useful to a user of Oracle products because it displays data the way it is used in a real world, best practice scenario. For example, the architectural diagram interactive type provides an image of an architectural diagram that is typically larger than a single slide or paper. The image is scrollable and provides zoom capabilities to easily and clearly view any part of the image. The image itself contains a hotspot map that you can click to get more information about a feature, including reference links to the documentation in question. Linking the visual image of the component and where it fits in the overall architecture of the product, or technology in use, to the technical explanation and how-to materials related to that component is something not offered by the documentation. In a future release, the poster will also enable you to drill down even further into the individual subsystems in nested diagrams to look at the details of that subsystem. In short, the interactive posters are good at showing you the big picture, then quickly and easily getting you to the detailed information you need. In an instant, you can see where a technical component fits into an overall architecture, and zero in on the nitty-gritty details that show you how to do it yourself. Note: This is a first initial release with more features in development. Currently known information: Only Firefox 8.0 and higher is known to work with this product. This product may work with Chrome and Safari browsers, but is known to have issues in Internet Explorer at this time. Smartphones, such as iPads and iPhones, are partially supported WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. BlogTwitterLinkedInMixForumWiki Technorati Tags: WebLogic server quick reference,weblogic overview,weblogic 12c,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

  Read the article

• Handling bugs, quirks, or annoyances in vendor-supplied headers

  - by supercat

  If the header file supplied by a vendor of something with whom one's code must interact is deficient in some way, in what cases is it better to: Work around the header's deficiencies in the main code Copy the header file to the local project and fix it Fix the header file in the spot where it's stored as a vendor-supplied tool Fix the header file in the central spot, but also make a local copy and try to always have the two match Do something else As an example, the header file supplied by ST Micro for the STM320LF series contains the lines: typedef struct { __IO uint32_t MODER; __IO uint16_t OTYPER; uint16_t RESERVED0; .... __IO uint16_t BSRRL; /* BSRR register is split to 2 * 16-bit fields BSRRL */ __IO uint16_t BSRRH; /* BSRR register is split to 2 * 16-bit fields BSRRH */ .... } GPIO_TypeDef; In the hardware, and in the hardware documentation, BSRR is described as a single 32-bit register. About 98% of the time one wants to write to BSRR, one will only be interested in writing the upper half or the lower half; it is thus convenient to be able to use BSSRH and BSSRL as a means of writing half the register. On the other hand, there are occasions when it is necessary that the entire 32-bit register be written as a single atomic operation. The "optimal" way to write it (setting aside white-spacing issues) would be: typedef struct { __IO uint32_t MODER; __IO uint16_t OTYPER; uint16_t RESERVED0; .... union // Allow BSRR access as 32-bit register or two 16-bit registers { __IO uint32_t BSRR; // 32-bit BSSR register as a whole struct { __IO uint16_t BSRRL, BSRRH; };// Two 16-bit parts }; .... } GPIO_TypeDef; If the struct were defined that way, code could use BSRR when necessary to write all 32 bits, or BSRRH/BSRRL when writing 16 bits. Given that the header isn't that way, would better practice be to use the header as-is, but apply an icky typecast in the main code writing what would be idiomatically written as thePort->BSRR = 0x12345678; as *((uint32_t)&(thePort->BSSRH)) = 0x12345678;, or would be be better to use a patched header file? If the latter, where should the patched file me stored and how should it be managed?

  Read the article

• Why is multithreading often preferred for improving performance?

  - by user1849534

  I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approaches here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that manages the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about multi-threading when they want to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's in fact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async approach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

  Read the article

• Register Game Object Components in Game Subsystems? (Component-based Game Object design)

  - by topright

  I'm creating a component-based game object system. Some tips: GameObject is simply a list of Components. There are GameSubsystems. For example, rendering, physics etc. Each GameSubsystem contains pointers to some of Components. GameSubsystem is a very powerful and flexible abstraction: it represents any slice (or aspect) of the game world. There is a need in a mechanism of registering Components in GameSubsystems (when GameObject is created and composed). There are 4 approaches: 1: Chain of responsibility pattern. Every Component is offered to every GameSubsystem. GameSubsystem makes a decision which Components to register (and how to organize them). For example, GameSubsystemRender can register Renderable Components. pro. Components know nothing about how they are used. Low coupling. A. We can add new GameSubsystem. For example, let's add GameSubsystemTitles that registers all ComponentTitle and guarantees that every title is unique and provides interface to quering objects by title. Of course, ComponentTitle should not be rewrited or inherited in this case. B. We can reorganize existing GameSubsystems. For example, GameSubsystemAudio, GameSubsystemRender, GameSubsystemParticleEmmiter can be merged into GameSubsystemSpatial (to place all audio, emmiter, render Components in the same hierarchy and use parent-relative transforms). con. Every-to-every check. Very innefficient. con. Subsystems know about Components. 2: Each Subsystem searches for Components of specific types. pro. Better performance than in Approach 1. con. Subsystems still know about Components. 3: Component registers itself in GameSubsystem(s). We know at compile-time that there is a GameSubsystemRenderer, so let's ComponentImageRender will call something like GameSubsystemRenderer::register(ComponentRenderBase*). pro. Performance. No unnecessary checks as in Approach 1. con. Components are badly coupled with GameSubsystems. 4: Mediator pattern. GameState (that contains GameSubsystems) can implement registerComponent(Component*). pro. Components and GameSubystems know nothing about each other. con. In C++ it would look like ugly and slow typeid-switch. Questions: Which approach is better and mostly used in component-based design? What Practice says? Any suggestions about implementation of Approach 4? Thank you.

  Read the article

• Wesquare (NL) helps major CG customer integrating Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with JDEdwards

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE When this well known, Italy based, CG player claimed that they needed a new CRM tool, Oracle partner WeSquare had a precise idea of what would be required, knowing that the customer was using JDEdwards as an ERP: they immediately thoughts about a solution that would help synchronizing the customer’s back-end system with the new CRM interface. The customer asked for presentations from three companies, including Oracle, and eventually selected Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with Alfa Sistemi (Oracle Platinum Partner) as a System Integrator supported by Wesquare (Oracle Gold partner specialized in RightNow). Synchronizing an On Premises ERP with a new SaaS based CRM platform could be seen as an uphill task, but WeSquare was determined, during the presales cycle, to prove that they had the skills and the attitude to make the difference. So, they rolled up their sleeves and got to it: five days of relentless work, missed lunches, and hours of brainstorming showed its result in the form of a new interface that works fabulously well with the JDEdwards ERP back-end and was successfully pitched by Oracle to the end-customer to win the deal! WeSquare took the occasion to learn that they can integrate Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with practically every other solution that a customer may run. As part of the project, WeSquare was also involved in different add-on’s development with the aim of enriching Oracle Service Cloud’s functionality. WeSquare is based in The Netherlands with an in-shore practice supported by off-shore teams in India. WeSquare can integrate and synchronize any application with RightNow. For more information, visit www.wesquare.nl or contact Wiebe Blankenberg (Managing Director) at +31 (0) 6 3632 1104 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

  Read the article

• Criteria for selecting timeout value?

  - by stijn

  Situation: a piece of software reads frames of data from a file in a seperate thread and puts it on a queue, emptied by another thread. That second thread periodically checks on the queue and fails rather gracefully, by showing an error message stating the read timed out, if no data is available within a certain amount of time. Initially this timeout was set to 200mSec. There was no real reasoning behind that constant though, but it worked fine. We measured on a couple of machines and for large data frames, larger than what would be used by customers, a read took like 20mSec whith no other load on the machine. However one customer now gets timeout errors now and then (on the second try all is fine, probably the file is in cache or the virus scanner leaves it alone). The programmers are like 'well, yeah, but that customer's machine is full of cruft, virus scanners, tons of unneeded background processes etc'. Of course the customer is like 'hey this should just work, shouldn't it'? While the programers have a point, since the software is heavy enough to validate the need for a dedicated machine, that does not make the customer happy. Increasing the timeout to 2 seconds, for example, solves the problem. But I'd like to make a proper decision now instead of just randomly pick some magic constant that is probably ok in 99% of cases. What criteria should be used for that? We could just pick a large number, but that feels wrong. (and then we end up with a program that has the horrible bahaviour of hanging when trying to read from a disconnected drive for instance, whereas we'd rather make it show an error right away). Or we could make the timeout value a user setting, but then we need to ducument it clearly and even then not all customers are tech savy enough to really understand what it does. Or we could try and wait until another customer reports timeouts and increase the value again. And again. Until we find something ok for 99.99% of the cases.. Any good practice for this type of situation?

  Read the article

• Speaker Notes...

  - by wulfers

  At a .Net User Group meeting this week, I experienced two poorly prepared speakers floundering through presentations….  As a Lead Technologist at the company I work for, I have experience training technical staff and also giving presentations at code camps.  Here are a few guidelines for aspiring speakers you might find helpful…   1.       Do not stand in front of your audience and read your slides.  This is  offensive to your audience and not what they came for...  Your slides are there to reinforce the information you are presenting and to give the audience a little clarification on some terms you may use and as a visual aid for some complicated issues. 2.       Have someone review your presentation (slides, notes, …) who speaks the language you will be presenting in fluently.  Also record at least ten minutes of your presentation and have that same person review that.  One of the speakers this week used the word “Basically” fifty times in less than thirty minutes…  I started to flinch every time he used the term. 3.       Be Prepared  -  before the presentation begins.  Don’t make any last minute changes to your presentation or demo code the night before.  Don’t patch your laptop or demo servers the night before.  If possible create a virtual image that you only use for presentations and use that (refreshed before every presentation). 4.       Know the level of expertise of your audience.  Speaking above or below their abilities will make or break your presentation. 5.       Deliver what you promise. The presentation this week was supposed to be on BDD (Behavior Driven Develpment).  The presenter completely ran off track and 90% of the discussion was how his team mistakenly used TDD (Test Driven Development), and was unhappy with the results.  Based on his loss of focus we only heard a rushed 10 minute presentation on DBB which was a disservice to the audience. 6.       Practice your presentation with your own small team before you try this on a room full of people you don’t know.  A side benefit of doing this with your own team is that you can get candid feedback from your team and also get kudos for training your own team.  I find I can also turn my presentations into technical white papers and get a third benefit from the work I’ve put into a presentation. 7.       Sharpen your own saw.  Pick a topic that is fairly current.  Something you would like to learn about and would benefit your current career path. 8.       Have fun doing it.

  Read the article

• Managing Regulated Content in WebCenter: USDM and Oracle Offer a New Part 11 Compliant Solution for Life Sciences

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post today provided by Oracle partner, USDM  Regulated Content in WebCenterUSDM and Oracle offer a new Part 11 compliant solution for Life Sciences (White Paper) Life science customers now have the ability to take advantage of all of the benefits of Oracle’s WebCenter Content, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management.   For the past year, USDM has been developing best practice compliance solutions to meet regulated content management requirements for 21 CFR Part 11 in WebCenter Content. USDM has been an expert in ECM for life sciences since 1999 and in 2011, certified that WebCenter was a 21CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform (White Paper).  In addition, USDM has built Validation Accelerators Packs for WebCenter to enable life science organizations to quickly and cost effectively validate this world class solution.With the Part 11 certification, Oracle’s WebCenter now provides regulated life science organizations  the ability to manage REGULATORY content in WebCenter, as well as the ability to take advantage of ALL of the additional functionality of WebCenter, including  a complete, open, and integrated portfolio of portal, web experience management, content management and social networking technology.  Here are a few screen shot examples of Part 11 functionality included in the product: E-Sign, E-Sign Rendor, Meta Data History, Audit Trail Report, and Access Reporting. Gone are the days that life science companies have to spend millions of dollars a year to implement, maintain, and validate ECM systems that no longer meet the ever changing business and regulatory requirements.  Life science companies now have the ability to use WebCenter Content, an ECM system with a substantially lower cost of ownership and unsurpassed functionality.Oracle has been #1 in life sciences because of their ability to develop cost effective, easy-to-use, scalable solutions which help increase insight and efficiency to drive growth for their customers.  Adding a world class ECM solution to this product portfolio allows life science organizations the chance to get rid of costly ECM systems that no longer meet their needs and use WebCenter, part of the Oracle Fusion Technology stack, with their other leading enterprise applications.USDM provides:•    Expertise in Life Science ECM Business Processes•    Prebuilt Life Science Configuration in WebCenter •    Validation Accelerator Packs for WebCenterUSDM is very proud to support Oracle’s expanding commitment to Life Sciences…. For more information please contact:  [email protected] Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

  Read the article

• Does the method of adjustment matter, or just the final calibration?

  - by Steve

  A company produces software (and hardware) that is used to both perform automatic adjustments on electronic test equipment as well as perform calibrations of the same equipment. The results of the calibrations are put onto a certificate of calibration that is sent to the customer along with the equipment. This calibration certificate states various conditions of the calibration, such as what hardware (models/serial numbers) and software (version) was used to perform the calibration, as well as things like environmental conditions, etc. Making the assumption that the software used to produce the data (and listed on the calibration certificate) used on the certificate of calibration must have gone through a "test/release" process and must be considered "released" software - does this also mean that the software used for adjustment must also be released? I believe that the method (software/environmental conditions/etc) used or present during adjustment doesn't matter, all that really matters is the end result of the calibration, the conditions present during the calibration, and whether or not the equipment was within the specifications. The real question I'm hoping to get answered: Is there a reputable source (e.g. NIST or somewhere similar) that addresses this question? (I have searched...) The thinking is that during high volume production runs, the "unreleased" system can be used to perform adjustments, as long as a released system is used to perform the calibrations, since the time required to perform the adjustments is much longer than the calibration. This unreleased system will eventually become released for use, but currently is not. Also, please not that there is a distinction between "adjustment" and "calibration". The definition from BIPM International vocabulary of metrology, 2.39: Operation that, under specified conditions, in a first step, establishes a relation between the quantity values with measurement uncertainties provided by measurement standards and corresponding indications with associated measurement uncertainties (of the calibrated instrument or secondary standard) and, in a second step, uses this information to establish a relation for obtaining a measurement result from an indication. Followed by NOTE 2 (emphasis in original text): Calibration should not be confused with adjustment of a measuring system, often mistakenly called "self-calibration", nor with verification of calibration As a side note, I'm not sure why this got down voted. It's regarding software and it's use before and after release for use. I believe there is a best practice that can be applied and this is (hopefully) not primarily opinion based.

  Read the article

• How do I know if I am using Scrum methodologies?

  - by Jake

  When I first started at my current job, my purpose was to rewrite a massive excel-VBA workbook-application to C# Winforms because it was thought that the new C# app will fix all existing problems and have all the new features for a perfect world. If it were a direct port, in theory it would be easy as i just need to go through all the formulas, conditional formatting, validations, VBA etc. to understand it. However, that was not the case. Many of the new features are tightly dependant on business logic which I am unfamiliar with. As a solo programmer, the first year was spent solely on deciphering the excel workbook and writing the C# app. In theory, I had the business people to "help" me specify requirements, how GUI looks and work, and testing of the app etc; but in practice it is like a contant tsunami of feature creep. At the beginning of the second year I managed to convince the management that this is not going anywhere. I made them start from scratch with the excel-VBA. I have this "issue log" saved on the network, each time they found something they didn't like about the excel-VBA app, they will write it in there. I check the log daily and consolidate issues (in my mind) mainly into 2 groups: (1) requires massive change. (2) can be fixed in current version. For massive change issues, I make a copy of the latest excel-VBA and give it a new version number, then work on it whenever I can. For current version fixes, I make the changes in a few days to a week, and then immediately release it. I also ensure I update the same change in any in-progress massive change future versions. This has gone on for about 4 months and I feel it works great. I made many releases and solved many real issues, also understood the business logic more and more. However, my boss (non-IT trained) thinks what I am doing are just adhoc changes and that i am not looking at the "bigger picture". I am struggling to convince my boss that this works. So I hope to formalise my approach and maybe borrow a buzzword to confuse him. Incidentally, I read about Agile and SCRUM, about backlog and sprints. But it's all very vague to me still. QUESTION (finally): I want to tell him that this is SCRUM! But I want to hold my breath first and ask whether my current approach is considered SCRUM or SCRUM-like? How can I make it more SCRUM-like? Note that I have only myself, there's no project leader or teams.

  Read the article

• How do you automate a SharePoint 2010 deployment?

  - by Enrique Lima

  In the last couple of months SharePoint traffic (consulting, training and speaking) has picked up.  And with that also the requests for deployments.  There are good, great, bad and really bad things around this. But that is for another topic.  However part of the good and great has been the fact of organizations wanting to do a proof of concept deployment (even when WSS or MOSS has been deployed). We can go through a session (Microsoft has the SDPS concept, SharePoint Deployment Planning Services) of discovering what the customer wants to achieve from their investment in the platform and then also proceed to model the solution that would fit their needs.  But it should not stop there.  The next step should be a POC (as many have requested) to test out. Now, on to the meat of this post.  How do I deploy?  While it is a good process to watch and see all of it take place, not many have the time to sit through that.  Even more so, when that has been part of the description of deploying the platform in the sessions mentioned above. I will, though, break it into a deployment for development purposes and a deployment of a farm. Two tools (or scripts) for those two different types of deployment. First, let me address the development environment.  Around the last week in October, Chris Johnson (SharePoint Product Team) announced a SharePoint Easy Setup for Developers.  The kit itself will assist you in installing SharePoint Server (in standalone mode), the tools that go around Visual Studio, Expression Studio and the Office 2010 tools. Here is the link to Chris’ post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjohnson/archive/2010/10/28/announcing-sharepoint-easy-setup-for-developers.aspx The other scenario is the use of a script in assisting you through the deployment of a farm. Now, this is not to override planning.  It should highlight the need for planning even more.  How?  Having your service accounts planned, the structure of the sites and the scale of your deployment.  Enter AutoSPInstaller.  This is a CodePlex project, and the intent behind this is not only to automate the installation but to give some meaning and get some sense out of what goes on during a SharePoint deployment. How?  Take for example the creation of the databases, when we do the initial OOB deployment by using the wizard, more times than not, we leave the names as they are.  How is that a “bad thing”?  Let’s make it a better practice to rename those Databases, and have them take on a name that is not “GUID-ized”. Having a better naming convention will not hurt, on the other hand will allow for consistency. Here is the link to AutoSPInstaller’s site on CodePlex: http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/

  Read the article

• PeopleSoft Grants & the Federal Agency Letter of Credit Draw Changes

  - by Mark Rosenberg

  For decades, most, if not all, US Federal agencies that sponsor research allowed grant recipients to request and receive payments using pooled accounts, commonly known as pooled letter of credit (LOC) draws. This enabled organizations, such as universities and hospitals, fast and efficient access to reimbursement of the expenditures they incurred conducting research across a portfolio of grants. To support this business practice, the PeopleSoft Grants solution has delivered an LOC Draw report to provide the total request amount along with all of the supporting invoice details for reconciliation and audit purposes. Now, in an attempt to provide greater transparency, eliminate fraud, strengthen accountability for grant-related financial transactions, and simplify grant award closeout, many US Federal sponsors are transitioning from the “pooling” letter of credit draw method to requesting on a “grant-by-grant” basis. The National Science Foundation, the second largest issuer of Federal awards, already transitioned to detailed grant draws in 2013. And, in response to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) directive to HHS-supported Agencies, the largest Federal awards sponsor, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will fully transition to the new HHS subaccount draw method. This will require NIH award recipients to request payments based on actual expenses incurred on an award-by-award basis. NIH is expected to fully transition to this new draw method by the end of Federal fiscal year 2015.  (The NIH had planned to fully transition to this new method by the end of fiscal 2014; however, the impact to institutions was deemed to be significant enough that a reprieve was recently granted.) In light of these new Federal draw requirements, we have recently released these new features to aid our customers on both PeopleSoft Grants releases 9.1 and 9.2:1. Federal Award Identification Number on the Proposal and Award Profile 2. Letter of credit fields on contract lines to support award basis draws and comply with Federal close out mandates3. Process to produce both pro forma and final LOC Draw Reports in BI Publisher report format4. Subacccount ID field on the LOC Summary and a new BI Publisher version of the LOC Summary report 5. Added Subaccount Field and contract info to be displayed on the LOC summary page6. Ability to generate by a variety of dimensions pro forma and invoiced draw listings 7. Queries for generation and manipulation of data to upload into sponsor payment request systems and perform payment matching8. Contracts LOC Close Out query to quickly review final balances prior to initiating final draws and preparing Federal Financial Reports prior to close The PeopleSoft Development team actively monitors this and other major Federal changes and continues working closely with the Grants Product Advisory Group of the Higher Education User Group to ensure a clear understanding of what our customers need in order to transition to new approaches for doing business with the Federal government. For more information regarding the enhancements to the PeopleSoft Grants solution, existing customers can login to My Oracle Support and review the Enhancements to Letter of Credit Process (Doc ID 1912692.1) associated with resolution ID 904830. This enhanced LOC functionality is available in both PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Bundle #31 and PeopleSoft FSCM 9.2 Update Image 8.

  Read the article

• Oracle Linux Hands-on Lab from your Home? Yes You Can Do That!

  - by Zeynep Koch

  We're taking the very popular OTN Sysadmin Days and going virtual! We have two days to choose from: Americas - Tuesday January 15th, 2013 9:00 a.m – 1:00 p.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET / 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. BRT EMEA -  Tuesday January 29th, 2013 - 9:00 a.m – 13:00 p.m GMT / 10:00 a.m – 14:00 p,m CET / 12:00 p.m – 16:00 p.m AST / 13:00 p.m – 17:00 p,m MSK / 14:30 p.m – 18:30 p.m IST You'll be able to perform real-world tasks with Oracle Linux and if you have questions you can ask for help from the Oracle experts through chat window. There's one caveat: you'll have to do a little homework ahead of time. Load the virtual images onto your laptop, find the instructions, and make sure everything is working properly. This wiki https://wikis.oracle.com/display/virtualsysadminday/Home explains what you need to do. If you have questions, ask them as comments to the wiki:https://wikis.oracle.com/display/virtualsysadminday/Home.  Oracle Linux Track  1. Oracle Linux Technology Overview - In this session we will go over the latest Oracle Linux features including tools for Linux administration such as the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and public yum. We will also show you a demo of Ksplice zero downtime kernel updates, only available to Oracle Linux customers. You will see how easy it is to switch from Red Hat support to Oracle Linux support by using ULN. Last but not least, we’ll introduce the 3 hands-on labs that will follow this session in the Linux track. 2. HOL: Package Management -  In this lab session you will use the package management on Oracle Linux using RPM and yum. Some of the tasks that you will experience include listing installed packages, obtaining additional information about packages, searching for packages and installing/updating them as well as verifying package integrity and removing software. We’ll also review Linux services and run levels, how to start and stop them, checking the status of a particular service and enabling a service to be started automatically at system boot. 3. HOL: Storage Management - In this hands-on lab session, you will learn about storage management with LVM2, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, preparing block devices, creating physical and logical volumes, creating file systems on top of logical volumes, and resizing file systems dynamically. You will also practice setting up software RAID devices, configuring encrypted block devices.Btrfs File System - In this hands-on lab session, we will introduce you to Btrfs file system. You will be able to create and mount a Btrfs file system and learn to setup a mirrored/striped file system across multiple block devices. You’ll also learn how to add and remove block devices, and create file system snapshots. Register for this FREE event.

  Read the article

• My co-worker has not been doing such a good job for the past decade. What do I do? [closed]

  - by stijn

  Possible Duplicate: How do I approach a coworker about his or her code quality? I started working with him almost a decade ago and back then I had never really programmed before, being a young hardware engineer. Right now however I have made quite some progress in all areas being part of software design and i am much, much more skilled than my co-worker who is 15 years older and has been programming more than twice as long. He is super nice and definitely smart enough, but lately his lack of skill and performance are starting to drag me down because we're more and more working on the same codebase. And soon we are going to do a quite ambitious start from scratch creating a whole new hard/software system. I feel it is time to address all issues now, but i do not know how to start. Here are some of the things that I would like to see him improve on: no consistent usage of style, spaces nor tabs (eg if(something ) a =b ) adds newlines around pieces of code to make it easier to read, then commits those with messages like 'no changes made' overall commit messages are useless and so are most of the comments, if there are any (eg 'remove solves for bug Rik' if Rik reported a bug). There is no function/class documentation. lots of spelling errors, in both English and native language, which sometimes are mixed 6/7/8 level deep deep nesting is no exception, a lot of functions start with one level already like if(ptr!=Null){ even when ptr is the result of allocation via new in the constructor numerous source files have over 10k lines of those lines, a major part is simply a result of copy-pasting functionality instead of using a function. This includes copying comments so we end up with 50 occurrences of var=NULL; //TODO TEST this!!!!!!! another part is hundreds of lines of dead code knows what versioning does, yet comments out old code and places new code underneath it when making changes coding skills are below par, especially for the type of rather high precision applications we do. Yet somehow, after a lot of trying and testing, stuff starts to work. But then breaks again some time later because every change casues a waterfall effect. violates every single item in the C++ FAQ lite, practices every bad practice I can think of still doesn't know how to properly use the debugger, but spends hours inspecting messy logfiles in notepad on a tiny laptop screen. Does not make any adjustments to the settings of the software he uses. Never uses keyboard shortcuts. does not seem to progress or learn new things at all. Work rather slow, mostly due to the lack of planning and incorrect usage of tools. How does one deal with this? For starters, how do I make him aware of all these problems? Should I tell the staff about it? And the next step, how to get him to learn new things and adopt another way of working?

  Read the article

• Segmentation and Targeting: Your Tools for Personalizing the Online Customer Experience

  - by Christie Flanagan

  In order to deliver the kind of personalized and engaging online experiences that customers expect today, look to segmentation and targeting.  Segmentation is the practice of dividing your site visitors into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behavior – for example, a segment may consist of site visitors who have visited pages related to certain product type, or they may consist of visitors within the same age group or geographic area.  The idea is that those within a segment are more likely to have common needs, problems or interests that can be served by your business. Targeting is the process by which the most relevant content, whether an article promotion or other piece of content, is delivered to your visitors based on their segment membership. Segmentation and targeting are used to drive greater engagement on your web presence by delivering content to your site visitors that is tailored to their interests, behavior or other attributes.  You may have a number of different goals for your segmentation and targeting efforts: Up-sell or cross-sell to your customers Conduct A/B testing on your offers and creative Offer discounts, promotions or other incentives for the time and duration that you specify Make is easier to find relevant information about products and services Create premium content model There are two different approaches you can take toward segmentation and targeting for you online customer experience initiatives. The first is more of a manual process, in which marketers manage the process of determining which segments to create and which content to target to those segments. The benefit of this approach is that it gives marketers a high level of control over the whole process which works well when you have a thorough understanding of your segments and which content is most likely to serve their needs.  Tools for marketer managed segmentation and targeting are often built right in to your WEM platform, as they are with Oracle WebCenter Sites. The downside is that the more segments and content that you have, the more time consuming and complicated in can be to manage manually.The second approach relies on predictive intelligence to automate the segmentation and targeting process.  This allows optimization of the process to occur in real time. This approach helps reduce the burden of manual segmentation and targeting and can result in new insights into segments that you may never have thought of on your own.  It also provides you with the capability to quickly test new offers and promotions on your site.  Predictive segmentation and targeting can be achieved by using Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions together. *****Get a taste for how Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions combine to deliver powerful capabilities for predictive segmentation and targeting by watching this on demand webcast introducing Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g or by reading IDC’s take on the latest release of Oracle’s web experience management solution.  Be sure to return to the Oracle WebCenter blog on Thursday for a closer look at how to optimize the online customer experience using these two products together.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 717 718 719 720 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 728  | Next Page >