Search Results

Search found 24900 results on 996 pages for 'call me steve'.

Page 114/996 | < Previous Page | 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121  | Next Page >

• Objective-C memory management issue

  - by Toby Wilson

  I've created a graphing application that calls a web service. The user can zoom & move around the graph, and the program occasionally makes a decision to call the web service for more data accordingly. This is achieved by the following process: The graph has a render loop which constantly renders the graph, and some decision logic which adds web service call information to a stack. A seperate thread takes the most recent web service call information from the stack, and uses it to make the web service call. The other objects on the stack get binned. The idea of this is to reduce the number of web service calls to only those appropriate, and only one at a time. Right, with the long story out of the way (for which I apologise), here is my memory management problem: The graph has persistant (and suitably locked) NSDate* objects for the currently displayed start & end times of the graph. These are passed into the initialisers for my web service request objects. The web service call objects then retain the dates. After the web service calls have been made (or binned if they were out of date), they release the NSDate*. The graph itself releases and reallocates new NSDates* on the 'touches ended' event. If there is only one web service call object on the stack when removeAllObjects is called, EXC_BAD_ACCESS occurs in the web service call object's deallocation method when it attempts to release the date objects (even though they appear to exist and are in scope in the debugger). If, however, I comment out the release messages from the destructor, no memory leak occurs for one object on the stack being released, but memory leaks occur if there are more than one object on the stack. I have absolutely no idea what is going wrong. It doesn't make a difference what storage symantics I use for the web service call objects dates as they are assigned in the initialiser and then only read (so for correctness' sake are set to readonly). It also doesn't seem to make a difference if I retain or copy the dates in the initialiser (though anything else obviously falls out of scope or is unwantedly released elsewhere and causes a crash). I'm sorry this explanation is long winded, I hope it's sufficiently clear but I'm not gambling on that either I'm afraid. Major big thanks to anyone that can help, even suggest anything I may have missed?

  Read the article

• Display a flash message for a specific loggedin user upon receiving request.

  - by ShenoudaB

  Dears, how can i trigger a prompt (or flash message with links) display (notifying) for one of the logged in agent (specific agent screen) on my web application when receiving a request from a client. using rails and jquery. as my application is serving a call center, and the my client request ... when a call coming to the system a prompt appears to an agent this call dedicated to with some info from the call.

  Read the article

• Logged out from one tab. User should logged out from other tab.

  - by Anurag

  I am using jqury ajax call to update data. I logged in in two different tabs in firefox. I logged out from one tab. The second tab is not yet refreshed. When i tried to update data through ajax call the call executed properly. How do i catch the user is logged out and display error while executing the ajax call.

  Read the article

• Is there any way to do this without using '__init__'?

  - by zjm1126

  class a(object): c=b()# how to call the b method d=4 def __init__(self): print self.c def b(self): return self.d+1 a() how to call the 'b' method not in the __init__ thanks the error is : Traceback (most recent call last): File "D:\zjm_code\a.py", line 12, in <module> class a(object): File "D:\zjm_code\a.py", line 13, in a c=b()# how to call the b method NameError: name 'b' is not defined

  Read the article

• SBS 2003 to SBS 2011

  - by Steve

  We've migrated SBS 2003 to SBS 2011...so far everything has gone smoothly. We're in the final phase of migrating the last amount of data over. Is there a way I can check to be sure that our old server isn't restarting due to the 21 day grace period? As our 21 days is up on Thursday. Yet it's restarting on its own now...maybe a power supply issue...? Is there any way to extend the 21 days? or roll it back? or does this take a call to MSFT? Very odd...

  Read the article

• powershell indentation

  - by Steve B

  I'm writing a large script that deploys an application. This script is based on several nested functions call. Is there any way to "ident" the output based on the depth ? For example, I have : function myFn() { Write-Host "Start of myfn" myFnNested() Write-Host "End of myfn" } function myFnNested() { Write-Host "Start of myFnNested" Write-Host "End of myFnNested" } Write-Host "Start of myscript" Write-Host "End of myscript" The output of the script will be : Start of myscript Start of myfn Start of myfnNested End of myFnNested End of myFn End of myscript What I want to achieve is this output : Start of myscript Start of myfn Start of myfnNested End of myFnNested End of myFn End of myscript As I don't want to hardly code the number of spaces (since I does not know the depth level in complex script), how can I simply reach my goal ? Maybe something like this ? function myFn() { Indent() Write-Host "Start of myfn" myFnNested() Write-Host "End of myfn" UnIndent() } function myFnNested() { Indent() Write-Host "Start of myFnNested" Write-Host "End of myFnNested" UnIndent() } Write-Host "Start of myscript" Write-Host "End of myscript"

  Read the article

• JSESSIONID collision between two servers on same ip but different ports

  - by Steve Armstrong

  I've got a situation where I have two different webapps running on a single server, using different ports. They're both running Java's Jetty servlet container, so they both use a cookie parameter named JSESSIONID to track the session id. These two webapps are fighting over the session id. Open a Firefox tab, and go to WebApp1 WebApp1's HTTP response has a set-cookie header with JSESSIONID=1 Firefox now has a Cookie header with JSESSIONID=1 in all it's HTTP requests to WebApp1 Open a second Firefox tab, and go to WebApp2 The HTTP reqeust to WebApp2 also has a Cookie header with JSESSIONID=1, but in the doGet, when I call req.getSession(false); I get null. And if I call req.getSession(true) I get a new Session object, but then the HTTP response from WebApp2 has a set-cookie header with JSESSIONID=20 Now, WebApp2 has a working Session, but WebApp1's session is gone. Going to WebApp1 will give me a new session, blowing away WebApp2's session. Continue forever So the Sessions are thrashing between each web app. I'd really like for the req.getSession(false) to return a valid session if there's already a JSESSIONID cookie defined. One option is to basically reimplement the Session framework with a HashMap and cookies called WEBAPP1SESSIONID and WEBAPP2SESSIONID, but that sucks, and means I'll have to hack the new Session stuff into ActionServlet and a few other places. This must be a problem others have encountered. Is Jetty's HttpServletRequest.getSession(boolean) just crappy?

  Read the article

• Foo f = Foo(); // no matching function for call to 'Foo::Foo(Foo)' ... huh?!

  - by Kyle

  class Foo { public: explicit Foo() {} explicit Foo(Foo&) {} }; Foo d = Foo(); error: no matching function for call to 'Foo::Foo(Foo)' I tried changing Foo(Foo&) to Foo(Foo) as the error suggests, which AFAIK is not a valid constructor, and sure enough I get: error: invalid constructor; you probably meant ‘Foo (const Foo&)’ What gives? How do I resolve this? (This is on GCC by the way)

  Read the article

• How To? Use an Expression Tree to call a Generic Method when the Type is only known at runtime.

  - by David Williams

  Please bear with me; I am very new to expression trees and lambda expressions, but trying to learn. This is something that I solved using reflection, but would like to see how to do it using expression trees. I have a generic function: private void DoSomeThing<T>( param object[] args ) { // Some work is done here. } that I need to call from else where in my class. Now, normally, this would be be simple: DoSomeThing<int>( blah ); but only if I know, at design time that I am working with an int. When I do not know the type until runtime is where I need the help. Like I said, I know how to do it via reflection, but I would like to do it via expression trees, as my (very limited) understanding is that I can do so. Any suggestions or points to sites where I can get this understanding, preferably with sample code?

  Read the article

• With XSLT, how can I use this if-test with an array, when search element is returned by a template call inside the for loop?

  - by codesforcoffee

  I think this simple example might ask the question a lot more clearly. I have an input file with multiple products. There are 10 types of product (2 product IDs is fine enough for this example), but the input will have 200 products, and I only want to output the info for the first product of each type. (Output info for the lowest priced one, so the first one will be the lowest price because I sort by Price first.) So I want to read in each product, but only output the product's info if I haven't already output a product with that same ID. I couldn't figure out how to get the processID template to return a value that I need to do my if-check on, that uses parameters from inside the for-each Product loop -then properly close the if tag in the right place so it won't output the open Product tag unless it passes the if test. I know the following code does not work, but it illustrates the idea and gives me a place to start: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" cdata-section-elements="prod_name adv_notes"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <List> <xsl:for-each select="ProductGroup"> <xsl:sort select="ActiveProducts/Product/Rate"/> <xsl:variable name="IDarray"> <xsl:for-each select="ActiveProducts/Product"> <xsl:variable name="CurrentID"> <xsl:call-template name="processID"> <xsl:with-param name="ProductCode" select="ProductCode" /> </xsl:call-template> </xsl:variable> <xsl:if test="not(contains($IDarray, $CurrentID))"> <child elem="{@elem}"> <xsl:select value-of="$CurrentID" /> </child> <Product> <xsl:attribute name="ID"> <xsl:select value-of="$CurrentID" /> </xsl:attribute> <prod_name> <xsl:value-of select="../ProductName"/> </prod_name> <rate> <xsl:value-of select="../Rate"/> </rate> </Product> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:variable> </xsl:for-each> </List> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="processID"> <xsl:param name="ProductCode"/> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="starts-with($ProductCode, '515')">5</xsl:when> <xsl:when test="starts-with($ProductCode, '205')">2</xsl:when> </xsl:choose> </xsl:template> Thanks so much in advance, I know some of the awesome programmers here can help! :) -Holly An input would look like this: <ProductGroup> <ActiveProducts> <Product> <ProductCode> 5155 </ProductCode> <ProductName> House </ProductName> <Rate> 3.99 </Rate> </Product> <Product> <ProductCode> 5158 </ProductCode> <ProductName> House </ProductName> <Rate> 4.99 </Rate> </Product> </ActiveProducts> </ProductGroup> <ProductGroup> <ActiveProducts> <Product> <ProductCode> 2058 </ProductCode> <ProductName> House </ProductName> <Rate> 2.99 </Rate> </Product> <Product> <ProductCode> 2055 </ProductCode> <ProductName> House </ProductName> <Rate> 7.99 </Rate> </Product> </ActiveProducts> </ProductGroup> 200 of those with different attributes. I have the translation working, just needed to add that array and if statement somehow. Output would be this for only that simple input file:

  Read the article

• ILMerge - Unresolved assembly reference not allowed: System.Core

  - by Steve Michelotti

  ILMerge is a utility which allows you the merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single binary assembly more for convenient distribution. Recently we ran into problems when attempting to use ILMerge on a .NET 4 project. We received the error message: An exception occurred during merging: Unresolved assembly reference not allowed: System.Core.     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.GetAssemblyRefIndex(AssemblyNode assembly)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.GetTypeRefIndex(TypeNode type)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.VisitReferencedType(TypeNode type)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.GetMemberRefIndex(Member m)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.PopulateCustomAttributeTable()     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.SetupMetadataWriter(String debugSymbolsLocation)     at System.Compiler.Ir2md.WritePE(Module module, String debugSymbolsLocation, BinaryWriter writer)     at System.Compiler.Writer.WritePE(String location, Boolean writeDebugSymbols, Module module, Boolean delaySign, String keyFileName, String keyName)     at System.Compiler.Writer.WritePE(CompilerParameters compilerParameters, Module module)     at ILMerging.ILMerge.Merge()     at ILMerging.ILMerge.Main(String[] args) It turns out that this issue is caused by ILMerge.exe not being able to find the .NET 4 framework by default. The answer was ultimately found here. You either have to use the /lib option to point to your .NET 4 framework directory (e.g., “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319” or “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319”) or just use an ILMerge.exe.config file that looks like this: 1: <configuration> 2: <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> 3: <requiredRuntime safemode="true" imageVersion="v4.0.30319" version="v4.0.30319"/> 4: </startup> 5: </configuration> This was able to successfully resolve my issue.

  Read the article

• Dynamic connection for LINQ to SQL DataContext

  - by Steve Clements

  If for some reason you need to specify a specific connection string for a DataContext, you can of course pass the connection string when you initialise you DataContext object.  A common scenario could be a dev/test/stage/live connection string, but in my case its for either a live or archive database.   I however want the connection string to be handled by the DataContext, there are probably lots of different reasons someone would want to do this…but here are mine. I want the same connection string for all instances of DataContext, but I don’t know what it is yet! I prefer the clean code and ease of not using a constructor parameter. The refactoring of using a constructor parameter could be a nightmare.   So my approach is to create a new partial class for the DataContext and handle empty constructor in there. First from within the LINQ to SQL designer I changed the connection property to None.  This will remove the empty constructor code from the auto generated designer.cs file. Right click on the .dbml file, click View Code and a file and class is created for you! You’ll see the new class created in solutions explorer and the file will open. We are going to be playing with constructors so you need to add the inheritance from System.Data.Linq.DataContext public partial class DataClasses1DataContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext    {    }   Add the empty constructor and I have added a property that will get my connection string, you will have whatever logic you need to decide and get the connection string you require.  In my case I will be hitting a database, but I have omitted that code. public partial class DataClasses1DataContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext {    // Connection String Keys - stored in web.config    static string LiveConnectionStringKey = "LiveConnectionString";    static string ArchiveConnectionStringKey = "ArchiveConnectionString";      protected static string ConnectionString    {       get       {          if (DoIWantToUseTheLiveConnection) {             return global::System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[LiveConnectionStringKey].ConnectionString;          }          else {             return global::System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[ArchiveConnectionStringKey].ConnectionString;          }       }    }      public DataClasses1DataContext() :       base(ConnectionString, mappingSource)    {       OnCreated();    } }   Now when I new up my DataContext, I can just leave the constructor empty and my partial class will decide which one i need to use. Nice, clean code that can be easily refractored and tested.   Share this post :

  Read the article

• Show Notes: Architects in the Cloud

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Stephen G. Bennett and Archie Reed, the authors of Silver Clouds, Dark Linings: A Concise Guide to Cloud Computing,  discuss what’s new and what’s not so new about cloud computing, talk about how marketing hype has muddied understanding of what cloud is and what it can do, and explore other issues in the latest ArchBeat interview series. Listen to Part 1 Listen to Part 2 (December 22) Listen to Part 3 (December 29) Listen to Part 4 (January 5) Connect If you have questions, comments, or would otherwise like to interact directly with Steve or Archie, you can so through the following channels: Stephen G. Bennett Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn Archie Reed Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn Steve and Archie have also set up a Twitter account and blog specifically for their book: Twitter: @concisecloud Blog: concisecloud.com Of course, the book is available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/silverclouddarklinings Stay tuned: RSS Technorati Tags: oracle,otn,archbeat,cloud computing,podcast,. stephen bennett,archie reed del.icio.us Tags: oracle,otn,archbeat,cloud computing,podcast,. stephen bennett,archie reed

  Read the article

• Community Megaphone Podcast

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Community Megaphone Podcast with Andrew Duthie and Dane Morgridge. We discussed .NET 4, C# 4, MVC 2, “geek religious wars”, and of course community. You can check out Show #5 here or directly download it. Thanks to Dane and Andrew for having me on the show!

  Read the article

• What Gets Measured Gets Managed

  - by steve.diamond

  OK, so if I were to claim credit for inventing that expression, I guess I could share the mantle with Al Gore, creator of the Internet. But here's the point: How many of us acquire CRM systems without specifically benchmarking several key performance indicators across sales, marketing and service BEFORE and AFTER deployment of said system? Yes, this may sound obvious and it might provoke the, "Well of course, Diamond!" response, but is YOUR company doing this? Can you define in quantitative terms the delta across multiple parameters? I just trolled the Web site of one of my favorite sales consultancy firms, The Alexander Group. Right on their home page is a brief appeal citing the importance of benchmarking. The corresponding landing page states, "The fact that hundreds of sales executives now track how their sales forces spend time means they attach great value to understanding how much time sellers actually devote to selling." The opportunity is to extend this conversation to benchmarking the success that companies derive from the investment they make in CRM systems, i.e., to the automation side of the equation. To a certain extent, the 'game' is analogous to achieving optimal physical fitness. One may never quite get there, but beyond the 95% threshold of "excellence," she/he may be entering the realm of splitting infinitives. But at the very start, and to quote verbiage from the aforementioned Alexander Group Web page, what gets measured gets managed. And getting to that 95% level along several key indicators would be a high quality problem indeed, don't you think? Yes, this could be a "That's so 90's" conversation, but is it really?

  Read the article

• MVC Portable Areas &ndash; Web Application Projects

  - by Steve Michelotti

  This is the first post in a series related to build and deployment considerations as I’ve been exploring MVC Portable Areas: #1 – Using Web Application Project to build portable areas #2 – Conventions for deploying portable area static files #3 – Portable area static files as embedded resources Portable Areas is a relatively new feature available in MvcContrib that builds upon the new feature called Areas that was introduced in MVC 2. In short, portable areas provide a way to distribute MVC binary components as simple .NET assemblies rather than an assembly along with all the physical files for the views. At the heart of portable areas is a custom view engine that delivers the *.aspx pages by pulling them from embedded resources rather than from the physical file system. A portable area can be something as small as a tiny snippet of html that eventually gets rendered on a page, to something as large as an entire MVC web application. You should read this 4-part series to get up to speed on what portable areas are. Web Application Project In most of the posts to date, portable areas are shown being created with a simple C# class library. This is cool and it serves as an effective way to illustrate the simplicity of portable areas. However, the problem with that is that the developer loses out on the normal developer experience with the various tooling/scaffolding options that we’ve come to expect in visual studio like the ability to add controllers, views, etc. easily: I’ve had good results just using a normal web application project (rather than a class library) to develop portable areas and get the normal vs.net benefits. However, one gotcha that comes as a result is that it’s easy to forget to set the file to “Embedded Resource” every time you add a new aspx page. To mitigate this, simply add this MSBuild snippet shown below to your *.csproj file and all *.aspx, *ascx will automatically be set as embedded resources when your project compiles: 1: <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> 2: <ItemGroup> 3: <EmbeddedResource Include="**\*.aspx;**\*.ascx" /> 4: </ItemGroup> 5: </Target> Also, you should remove the Global.asax from this web application as it is not the host. Being able to have the normal tooling experience we’ve come to expect from Visual Studio makes creating portable areas quite simple. This even allows us to do things like creating a project template such as “MVC Portable Area Web Application” that would come pre-configured with routes set up in the PortableAreaRegistration and no Global.asax file.

  Read the article

• They Wrote The Book On It

  - by steve.diamond

  First of all, an apology to you all for my not posting this yesterday, when I should have. For those of you bloggers out there, you know the difference between "Save" and "Preview." But I temporarily forgot it. Nevertheless, while I'm not impressed with this mishap, I'm blown away by the initiative three of my colleagues have taken. Jeff Saenger, Tim Koehler, and Louis Peters, recently wrote a book, "Oracle CRM On Demand Deployment Guide." Not only that, they got this book PUBLISHED. These guys know their stuff. They have worked in the CRM industry for many years. And trust me, they command a lot of respect inside this organization. In the words of Louis Peters (who posted this verbiage yesterday on LinkedIn), "We've assembled all the best practices and lessons learned over the past six years working with CRM On Demand. The book covers a range of topics - working with SaaS-based applications, planning and executing a successful rollout, designing elegant and high-performing applications, and working effectively with Oracle. We even included several sample designs based on successful real-world deployments. Our main target audience is the CRM On Demand project team - sponsors, project managers, administrators, developers - really anyone planning, implementing or maintaining the application." Now these guys don't know it, but I'll be interviewing one of them and including audio excerpts of that conversation right here next Wednesday. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about successful CRM deployments in general, and working with Oracle CRM On Demand in particular, you should check out this book.

  Read the article

• Don't forget SQLSocial tonight with Brad

  - by simonsabin

  Don't forget there is a SQL Social event this evening with Brad M. McGehee founder of http://www.sql-server-performance.com/ and now works at Red Gate.Brad is a fascinating guy and amazingly lives in Hawaii. Can you imagine working with SQL Server and living in Hawii. How cool. We might also be graced by the one and only Steve Jones editor of SQLServerCentral.com. Steve's got a great insight into building your career and lots of the stuff that you don't often hear at usergroups so hopefully he can make it and we can discuss some of the things like what makes a good data person during the open Q&A session. Both are fellow SQL MVPs and so the evening should be good. You can still register for the event by going to http://sqlsocial.com/events.aspx. If you have any problems let me know.  

  Read the article

• AIS is hiring!

  - by Steve Michelotti

  My company, Applied Information Sciences (AIS), is currently hiring for multiple positions. AIS is growing and we have immediate needs for all levels of technologists with a focus developing on the Microsoft stack!  We are seeking .NET developers with a strong Object Oriented Foundation around the DC metro area.  Our goal is to find smart people that are technology enthusiasts and interested in staying on the bleeding edge.  If you have a passion for solving complex business problems by building flexible and scalable solutions, then we want to talk to you!  Our clients are demanding the latest technologies and we have upcoming projects using .NET 4.0, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 4, VS2010 with SharePoint 2010.  If you have been exposed to these technologies – great!  If not, then we will train you!  Bottom line…we want smart, capable people with a drive for success! See all of our open positions here. If you’re interested, feel free to send me a private message through my blog here.

  Read the article

• Why is IaaS important in Azure&hellip;

  - by Steve Loethen

  Three weeks ago, Microsoft released the next phase of Azure.  I have had several clients waiting on this release.  The fact that they have been waiting and are now more receptive to looking at the cloud.  Customers expressed fear of the unknown.  And a fear of lack of control, even when that lack of control also means a huge degree of flexibility to innovate with concerns about the underlying infrastructure.  I think IaaS will be that “gateway drug” to get customers who have been hesitant to take another look at the cloud.  The dialog can change from the cloud being this big scary unknown to a resource for workloads.  The conversations should have always been, and can know be even stronger, geared toward the following points: 1) The cloud is not unicorns and glitter, the cloud is resources.  Compute, storage, db’s, services bus, cache…..  Like many of the resources we have on-premise.  Not magic, just another resource with advantages and obstacles like any other resource. 2) The cloud should be part of the conversation for any new project.  All of the same criteria should be applied, on-premise or off.  Cost, security, reliability, scalability, speed to deploy, cost of licenses, need to customize image, complex workloads.  We have been having these discussions for years when we talk about on-premise projects.  We make decisions on OS’s, Databases, ESB’s, configuration and products based on a myriad of factors.  We use the same factors but now we have a additional set of resources to consider in our process. 3) The cloud is a great solution looking for some interesting problems.  It is our job to recognize the right problems that fit into the cloud, weigh the factors and decide what to do. IaaS makes this discussion easier, offers more choices, and often choices that many enterprises will find more better than PaaS.  Looking forward to helping clients realize the power of the cloud.

  Read the article

• MVC 2 Presentation &ndash; Final Demo

  - by Steve Michelotti

  In my presentation this past weekend at NoVa Code Camp, a member of the audience caught my final demo on video. In this demo, I combine multiple new features from MVC 2 to show how to build apps quickly with MVC 2. These features include: Template Helpers / Editor Templates Server-side/Client-side Validation Model Metadata for View Model HTML Encoding Syntax Dependency Injection Abstract Controllers Custom T4 Templates Custom MVC Visual Studio 2010 Code Snippets The projector screen is a little difficult to see during parts of the video – a video of the direct screencast can be seen here: MVC 2 in 2 Minutes.   Direct link to YouTube video here.

  Read the article

• Gimme Gimme Gimme!

  - by steve.diamond

  Today is my birthday. And you know, there used to be a time when I dreaded birthdays. But now, as I reach my 37th year (that's my Polar Body Test age), I'm re-learning to really really appreciate being here. Now, what the heck does any of this have to do with CRM or this blog? Easy! Here is the present I would like from you. 1) Please tell us how we're doing on this blog. Do you like what you're seeing? Do you NOT like what you're seeing? Why? What types of topics would you like to see more or less of from us? Do you think we're running too much of an Oracle infomercial here? Conversely, would you like us to spend more time focusing on Oracle solutions? If so, which ones are of most interest to you? 2) Let's assume you DO like what you're seeing and reading here. Please tell a friend. Pass it on. You can write a comment below or submit a comment on our Facebook Fan page (http://facebook.com/oraclecrm). If you're an Oracle employee, please simply send me an email. And if you work here at HQ, bring me some key lime pie. And last but not least, thank you!

  Read the article

• A Closer Look at the HiddenInput Attribute in MVC 2

  - by Steve Michelotti

  MVC 2 includes an attribute for model metadata called the HiddenInput attribute. The typical usage of the attribute looks like this (line #3 below): 1: public class PersonViewModel 2: { 3: [HiddenInput(DisplayValue = false)] 4: public int? Id { get; set; } 5: public string FirstName { get; set; } 6: public string LastName { get; set; } 7: } So if you displayed your PersonViewModel with Html.EditorForModel() or Html.EditorFor(m => m.Id), the framework would detect the [HiddenInput] attribute metadata and produce HTML like this: 1: <input id="Id" name="Id" type="hidden" value="21" /> This is pretty straight forward and allows an elegant way to keep the technical key for your model (e.g., a Primary Key from the database) in the HTML so that everything will be wired up correctly when the form is posted to the server and of course not displaying this value visually to the end user. However, when I was giving a recent presentation, a member of the audience asked me (quite reasonably), “When would you ever set DisplayValue equal to true when using a HiddenInput?” To which I responded, “Well, it’s an edge case. There are sometimes when…er…um…people might want to…um…display this value to the user.” It was quickly apparent to me (and I’m sure everyone else in the room) what a terrible answer this was. I realized I needed to have a much better answer here. First off, let’s look at what is produced if we change our view model to use “true” (which is equivalent to use specifying [HiddenInput] since “true” is the default) on line #3: 1: public class PersonViewModel 2: { 3: [HiddenInput(DisplayValue = true)] 4: public int? Id { get; set; } 5: public string FirstName { get; set; } 6: public string LastName { get; set; } 7: } Will produce the following HTML if rendered from Htm.EditorForModel() in your view: 1: <div class="editor-label"> 2: <label for="Id">Id</label> 3: </div> 4: <div class="editor-field"> 5: 21<input id="Id" name="Id" type="hidden" value="21" /> 6: <span class="field-validation-valid" id="Id_validationMessage"></span> 7: </div> The key is line #5. We get the text of “21” (which happened to be my DB Id in this instance) and also a hidden input element (again with “21”). So the question is, why would one want to use this? The best answer I’ve found is contained in this MVC 2 whitepaper: When a view lets users edit the ID of an object and it is necessary to display the value as well as to provide a hidden input element that contains the old ID so that it can be passed back to the controller. Well, that actually makes sense. Yes, it seems like something that would happen *rarely* but, for those instances, it would enable them easily. It’s effectively equivalent to doing this in your view: 1: <%: Html.LabelFor(m => m.Id) %> 2: <%: Model.Id %> 3: <%: Html.HiddenFor(m => m.Id) %> But it’s allowing you to specify it in metadata on your view model (and thereby take advantage of templated helpers like Html.EditorForModel() and Html.EditorFor()) rather than having to explicitly specifying everything in your view.

  Read the article

• Know Your Audience, And/Or Your Customer

  - by steve.diamond

  Yesterday I gave an internal presentation to about 20 Oracle employees on "messaging," not messaging technology, but embarking on the process of building messages. One of the elements I covered was the importance of really knowing and understanding your audience. As a humorous reference I included two side-by-side photos of Oakland A's fans and Oakland Raiders fans. The Oakland A's fans looked like happy-go-lucky drunk types. The Oakland Raiders fans looked like angry extras from a low budget horror flick. I then asked my presentation attendees what these two groups had in common. Here's what I heard. --They're human (at least I THINK they're human). --They're from Oakland. --They're sports fans. After that, it was anyone's guess. A few days earlier we were putting the finishing touches on a sales presentation for one of our product lines. We had included an upfront "lead in" addressing how the economy is improving, yet that doesn't mean sales executives will have any more resources to add to their teams, invest in technology, etc. This "lead in" included miscellaneous news article headlines and statistics validating the slowly improving economy. When we subjected this presentation to internal review two days ago, this upfront section in particular was scrutinized. "Is the economy really getting better? I (exclamation point) don't think it's really getting better. Haven't you seen the headlines coming out of Greece and Europe?" Then the question TO ME became, "Who will actually be in the audience that sees and hears this presentation? Will s/he be someone like me? Or will s/he be someone like the critic who didn't like our lead-in?" We took the safe route and removed that lead in. After all, why start a "pitch" with a component that is arguably subjective? What if many of our audience members are individuals at organizations still facing a strong headwind? For reasons I won't go into here, it was the right decision to make. The moral of the story: Make sure you really know your audience. Harness the wisdom of the information your organization's CRM systems collect to get that fully informed "customer view." Conduct formal research. Conduct INFORMAL research. Ask lots of questions. Study industries and scenarios that have nothing to do with yours to see "how they do it." Stop strangers in coffee shops and on the street...seriously. Last week I caught up with an old friend from high school who recently retired from a 25 year career with the USMC. He said, "I can learn something from every single person I come into contact with." What a great way of approaching the world. Then, think about and write down what YOU like and dislike as a customer. But also remember that when it comes to your company's products, you are most likely NOT the customer, so don't go overboard in superimposing your own world view. Approaching the study of customers this way adds rhyme, reason and CONTEXT to lengthy blog posts like this one. Know your audience.

  Read the article

• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121  | Next Page >