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  • Experience vs. versatility

    - by Florin Bombeanu
    Let's say a .NET programmer works at a company which provides software on demand, not as a product. The programmer works in WPF for a period of time and he/she invests lots of time in it. He/she get very good at WPF and Windows Forms and desktop development in general. But the company has to provide a web application now, so the developer has to learn MVC or Web Forms. He/she is not experienced in web development so he/she starts investing time in this new technology and in time they get good at it. But this time the company has to provide a Sharepoint solution, and so on. What is more important: Being very very good at a certain technology, Or be as versatile as possible knowing less in each technology but covering a greater area of expertise? Should the programmer keep studying and working in WPF until he/she reaches a guru level or is it a good thing that they had to learn other technologies as well? I agree with those of you who will say that when learning different technologies you will also learn things which are useful no matter the technology you're programming in. But eventually, when the programmer will want to change jobs, will it matter more that he/she knows some WPF, MVC or Sharepoint than the fact that he/she is insanely good at one of them? I would think the second one is more important since most companies are looking for a developer for a certain technology. I don't think there are many companies looking for technical know-it-all people. What do you think?

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  • Two new Visual WebGui released simultaneously

    - by Webgui
    Two new Visual WebGui versions were released simultaneously. Downloads are available here. The first is a revision to the beta version of the upcoming 6.4 which brings all-new developer/designer interface and capabilities. The second release is the latest enhancement of the current 6.3.x version. The new 6.3.15 includes the following changes over 6.3.14: Breaking Changes [1] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VWG-6132 - [v6.3.15] Deploy language resource assemblies next to the Gizmox.WebGUI.Forms assembly location Installation puts the resources in the assemblies folder rather thatn the GAC. That way they are copied to the output folder of the app, thus enabling their deployment to the server. Bugs fixes [7] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VWG-5714 - Help.ShowHelp of .CHM file with images should show the images VWG-6132 - [v6.3.15] Deploy language resource assemblies next to the Gizmox.WebGUI.Forms assembly location VWG-6401 - Radiobutton: The DoubleClick event should fire. VWG-6409 - The Hourglass (white/blue) Spinner icon should not display to the left on LTR cultures VWG-6452 - Calling/Causing an update on a scrollable container should not reset the scroll position. VWG-6463 - Redrawing a scrollable container does not preserve last scrolling position. VWG-6867 - Listbox: The Items selection in run time should be work correctly Enhancements [1] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VWG-6610 - Visifire - Add a click event handler on the graph

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  • how do I write a functional spec quickly and efficiently

    - by giddy
    So I just read some fabulous articles by Joel on specs here. (Was written in 2000!!) I read all 4 parts, but Im looking for some methodical approaches to writing my specs. Im the only lonely dev, working on this fairly complicated app (or family of apps) for a very well known finance company. I've never made something this serious, I started out writing something like a bad spec, an overview of some sorts, and it has wasted a LOT of my time. Ive also made 3 mockup-kinda-thingies for my client so I have a good understanding of what they want. Also released a preview (a throw away working app with the most basic workflow), and Ive only written and tested some of the very core/base systems. I think the mistake Ive been making so far is not writing a detailed spec, so Im getting to it now. So the whole thing comprises of An MVC website (for admins & data viewing) 2 Silverlight modules (For 2 specific tasks) 1 Desktop Application Im totally short on time, resources and need to get this done quick, also, need to make sure these guys read it up equally quick and painlessly. So how do I go about it, Im looking for any tips, any real world stuff, how do you guys usually do it? Do you make a mock screenie of every dialog/form/page? Im thinking of making a dummy asp.net web forms project, then filling in html files in folders and making it look like my mvc url structure. Then having a section in the spec for the website and write up a page for every URL Ive got with a screenie. For my win forms app, Ive made somewhat of a demo Win Form project, would I then put in a dialog or stucture everything as I would in the real app and then screen shot it?

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013Popular ReleasesVG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.43: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgTiger.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImageDax.net" links NEW: Added Support for "HosterBin.com" links FIXED: "ImgServe.net" linksWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SSTA.WinForms 1.0.0: Latest stable releaseAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0: Release notes: Implemented bone/armature animation Refactored class hierarchy and naming Addressed high CPU usage issue during animation Updated the Blender exporter and Ascend model format (now XML) Created AscendViewer, a tool for viewing Ascend modelsIndent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012 (v1.0.1.126): Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseOutlook 2013 Add-In: Email appointments: This new version includes the following changes: - Ability to drag emails to the calendar to create appointments. Will gather all the recipients from all the emails and create an appointment on the day you drop the emails, with the text and subject of the last selected email (if more than one selected). - Increased maximum of numbers to display appointments to 30. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it before. Before unzipping the file...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.5.2: v1.5.2 - This is a service release. We've fixed a number of issues with Tasks and IoC. We've made some consistency improvements across platforms and fixed a number of minor bugs. See changes.txt for details. Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro inversion of control container (IoC); source code...SQL Compact Query Analyzer: 1.0.1.1511: Beta build of SQL Compact Query Analyzer Bug fixes: - Resolved issue where the application crashes when loading a database that contains tables without a primary key Features: - Displays database information (database version, filename, size, creation date) - Displays schema summary (number of tables, columns, primary keys, identity fields, nullable fields) - Displays the information schema views - Displays column information (database type, clr type, max length, allows null, etc) - Support...CODE Framework: 4.0.30618.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.18): XrmToolbox improvement Use new connection controls (use of Microsoft.Xrm.Client.dll) New display capabilities for tools (size, image and colors) Added prerequisites check Added Most Used Tools feature Tools improvementNew toolSolution Transfer Tool (v1.0.0.0) developed by DamSim Updated toolView Layout Replicator (v1.2013.6.17) Double click on source view to display its layoutXml All tools list Access Checker (v1.2013.6.17) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.6.18) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.6.1...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.570b: New* Movie - using XBMC TMDB - now renames movies if option selected. * Movie - using Xbmc Tmdb - Actor images saved from TMDb if option selected. Fixed* Movie - Checks for poster.jpg against missing poster filter * Movie - Fixed continual scraping of vob movie file (not DVD structure) * Both - Correctly display audio channels * Both - Correctly populate audio info in nfo's if multiple audio tracks. * Both - added icons and checked for DTS ES and Dolby TrueHD audio tracks. * Both - Stream d...Document.Editor: 2013.24: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.24: Improved Video Editing support Improved Link Editing support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v3.3.0: ??FineUI ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ???。 FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript,No CSS,No UpdatePanel,No ViewState,No WebServices ???????。 ?????? IE 7.0、Firefox 3.6、Chrome 3.0、Opera 10.5、Safari 3.0+ ???? Apache License v2.0 ?:ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license)。 ???? ??:http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??:http://fineui.com/demo/ ??:http://fineui.com/doc/ ??:http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI???? ExtJS ?????????,???? ExtJS ?。 ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ?:http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthrea...BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.0: Check Version History for more information about this release.ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler v1.5: [+] added Start time, End time event columns [+] added SP:StmtStarting, SP:StmtCompleted events [*] fixed bug with Audit:Logout eventpatterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop4 2013.06.17: Drop 4New ProjectsActivity Injector: Activity Injector is mainly used in unit testing workflow activities.Application Starter Tremens: Application for starting ApplicationaAudiwikiREF: This project is created to finish my referral assignment because i faced many problems with the previous one where i couldn't connect the project and commit. AVTS GLUCK ANTIVIRUS SYSTEM: AVTS Gluck AntiVirus System - the best antivirus made by young developers from Ukraine. It was writed in C#, C++, VB.NET, Excutable files, PHP DS, .and more....Base64 File Converter: File converting tool that converts any file into Base64 TXT file and vice versa just by drag-and-drop gesture.Basket Builders Umbraco bootstrap packages: Our umbraco packages to speed up project Bugzy Bug Tracking and Work Management: Creating Bug Tracking and Work Managment system while helping the JSON-RPC standard become as strong as the Bloated XML-RPC(SOAP)Dalmatian Build Script: Dalmatian allows you to automate your build using C# of VB.NETDécouverte Majeure MISN Chrono-courses: Chronocourses projectDocToolTip Library: DocToolTip library allows creating screenshots of winform forms with the name and type of component controls.DotaPick: SummaryHiUpdateTools - easy publish and update your app: HiUpdateTools is a easy tools to use publish new version of your application Kinect Skeleton Recorder: Records and shows XBox 360 Kinect skeleton data using windows forms. Saves the data as XML that can be read by other applications for use in animation.MARIT (BETA): MARIT is a simple drawing app for Android. More features are on the todo-list so stay tuned! Feedback and requests are appreciated. MvcToolbox: MVC Toolbox is a library which contains lots of usefull methods which will help developer to write less code and to be more productive.PrototypeRef: list of testing toolsSmartPlay: SmartPlaySolid Geometry Simulation: Implements a simple fur/hair dynamic engine using physBAM. This package includes a semi-implicit solver for hair simulation and plugins for maya/houdini.Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SearchableListBox control built on the Window,Form.ListBox renders a list box items with multiple search terms highlighted.YiLeSystem: This is a dining system.

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  • Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

    - by Eric P
    So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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  • EPM Planning 11.1.2 - MassGridStatistics

    - by Keith Rosenthal
    A utility is available for Oracle Hyperion Planning that determines web form load times.  This utility, MassGridStatistics, opens all web forms within the Planning application.  After the forms are opened, an html page will appear showing the form options, suppression, number of row column and page members, and load times.  Any form having a load time longer than one second could potentially have scalability issues in a multi-user environment and should be considered for re-design.  Adding suppression (especially block suppression) and reducing the number of rows and columns are potential fixes that will reduce load times. The MassGridStatistics utility is located in a .7z file called MassGridStatistics.7z.  Extract the file using 7-Zip.  A readme file is provided listing the installation instructions and the steps to run the utility. MassGridStatistics is included with the 11.1.2.1.101 patch set and will also be in all future releases starting with 11.1.2.2.  For earlier Planning releases, an SR will be necessary to have Support provide the utility.

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  • Class Design for special business rules

    - by Samuel Front
    I'm developing an application that allows people to place custom manufacturing orders. However, while most require similar paperwork, some of them have custom paperwork that only they require. My current class design has a Manufacturer class, of which of one of the member variables is an array of RequiredSubmission objects. However, there are two issues that I am somewhat concerned about. First, some manufacturers are willing to accept either a standard form or their own custom form. I'm thinking of storing this in the RequiredSubmission object, with an array of alternate forms that are a valid substitute. I'm not sure that this is ideal, however. The major issue, however, is that some manufacturers have deadline cycles. For example, forms A, B and C have to be delivered by January 1, while payment must be rendered by January 10. If you miss those, you'll have to wait until the next cycle. I'm not exactly sure how I can get this to work with my existing classes—how can I say "this set of dates all belong to the same cycle, with date A for form A, date B for form B, etc." I would greatly appreciate any insights on how to best design these classes.

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  • Architecture- Tracking lead origin when data is submitted by a server

    - by Kevin
    I'm looking for some assistance in determining the least complex strategy for tracking leads on an affiliate's website. The idea is to make the affiliate's integration with my application as easy as possible. I've run into theoretical barriers, so i'm here to explore other options. Application Overview: This is a lead aggregation / distribution platform. We will be focusing on the affiliate portion of this website. Essentially affiliates sign up, enter in marketing campaigns and sell us their conversions. Problem to be solved: We want to track a lead's origin and other events on the affiliate site. We want to know what pages, ads, and forms they viewed before they converted. This can easily be solved with pixel tracking. Very straightforward. Theoretical Issues: I thought I would ask affiliates to place the pixel where I could log impressions and set a third party cookie when the pixel is first called. Then I could associate future impressions with this cookie. The problem is that when the visitor converts on the affiliate's site and I receive their information via HTTP POST from the Affiliate's server I wouldn't be able to access the cookie and associate it with the lead record unless the lead lands on my processor via a redirect and is then redirected back to the affiliate's landing page. I don't want to force the affiliates to submit their forms directly to my tracking site, so allowing them to make an HTTP POST from their server side form processor would be ideal. I've considered writing JavaScript to set a First Party cookie but this seems to make things more complicated for the affiliate. I also considered having the affiliate submit the lead's data via a conversion pixel. This seems to be the most ideal scenario so far as almost all pixels are as easy as copy/paste. The only complication comes from the conversion pixel- which would submit all of the lead information and the request would come from the visitor's machine so I could access my third party cookie.

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  • DotNetNuke + PayPal

    - by Nuri Halperin
    A DotNetNuke i'm supporting has had a paypal "buy now" button and other variations with custom fields for a while now. About 2 weeks ago (somewhere in March 2010) they all stopped working. The problem manifested such that once you clicked the "buy now" button, Paypal site would throw a scary error page to the effect of: "Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log" Once I verified no cheeky content editor changed the page, I went digging for answers. The main source incompatibility of PayPal's simple HTML forms is that DNN includes a form on every page, and nested forms are not really supported. As blogged here and lamented here, the solution I came up with is simply to modify the form enctype to 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' as illustrated below: 1: <input type="image" border="0" 2: src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" 3: name="submit" 4: alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" 5: onClick="this.form.action='https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr'; this.form.enctype='application/x-www-form-urlencoded';this.form.submit();" /> One would think that PayPal would want the masses submitting HTML in all manners of "enctype", but I guess every company has it's quirks. At least my favorite non-profit can now continue and accept payments. Sigh.

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  • How to properly structure a project in winform?

    - by user850010
    A while ago I started to create a winform application and at that time it was small and I did not give any thought of how to structure the project. Since then I added additional features as I needed and the project folder is getting bigger and bigger and now I think it is time to structure the project in some way, but I am not sure what is the proper way, so I have few questions. How to properly restructure the project folder? At the moment I am thinking of something like this: Create Folder for Forms Create Folder for Utility classes Create Folder for Classes that contain only data What is the naming convention when adding classes? Should I also rename classes so that their functionality can be identified by just looking at their name? For example renaming all forms classes, so that their name ends with Form. Or is this not necessary if special folders for them are created? What to do, so that not all the code for main form ends up in Form1.cs Another problem I encountered is that as the main form is getting more massive with each feature I add, the code file (Form1.cs) is getting really big. I have for example a TabControl and each tab has bunch of controls and all the code ended up in Form1.cs. How to avoid this? Also, Do you know any articles or books that deal with these problems?

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  • Microsoft Access as a Weapon of War

    - by Damon
    A while ago (probably a decade ago, actually) I saw a report on a tracking system maintained by a U.S. Army artillery control unit.  This system was capable of maintaining a bearing on various units in the field to help avoid friendly fire.  I consider the U.S. Army to be the most technologically advanced fighting force on Earth, but to my terror I saw something on the title bar of an application displayed on a laptop behind one of the soldiers they were interviewing: Tracking.mdb Oh yes.  Microsoft Office Suite had made it onto the battlefield.  My hope is that it was just running as a front-end for a more proficient database (no offense Access people), or that the soldier was tracking something else like KP duty or fantasy football scores.  But I could also see the corporate equivalent of a pointy-haired boss walking into a cube and asking someone who had piddled with Access to build a database for HR forms.  Except this pointy-haired boss would have been a general, the cube would have been a tank, and the HR forms would have been targets that, if something went amiss, would have been hit by a 500lb artillery round. Hope that solider could write a good query :)

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  • Microsoft Access as a Weapon of War

    - by Damon Armstrong
    A while ago (probably a decade ago, actually) I saw a report on a tracking system maintained by a U.S. Army artillery control unit.  This system was capable of maintaining a bearing on various units in the field to help avoid friendly fire.  I consider the U.S. Army to be the most technologically advanced fighting force on Earth, but to my terror I saw something on the title bar of an application displayed on a laptop behind one of the soldiers they were interviewing: Tracking.mdb Oh yes.  Microsoft Office Suite had made it onto the battlefield.  My hope is that it was just running as a front-end for a more proficient database (no offense Access people), or that the soldier was tracking something else like KP duty or fantasy football scores.  But I could also see the corporate equivalent of a pointy-haired boss walking into a cube and asking someone who had piddled with Access to build a database for HR forms.  Except this pointy-haired boss would have been a general, the cube would have been a tank, and the HR forms would have been targets that, if something went amiss, would have been hit by a 500lb artillery round. Hope that solider could write a good query

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  • Disable JRE Auto-Update for All E-Business Suite End-Users

    - by cwarticki
    All EBS desktop administrators must disable JRE Auto-Update for their end-users immediately. See this externally-published article: URGENT BULLETIN: Disable JRE Auto-Update for All E-Business Suite End-Users https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/bulletin_disable_jre_auto_update   Why is this required? If you have Auto-Update enabled, your JRE 1.6 version will be updated to JRE 7.  This may happen as early as July 3, 2012.  This will definitely happen after Sept. 7, 2012, after the release of 1.6.0_35 (6u35).  Oracle Forms is not compatible with JRE 7 yet.  JRE 7 has not been certified with Oracle E-Business Suite yet. Oracle E-Business Suite functionality based on Forms -- e.g. Financials -- will stop working if you upgrade to JRE 7. Related News Java 1.6.0_33 is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite.  See this externally-published article: Java JRE 1.6.0_33 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/jre_1_6_0_33

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  • Java JRE 7 Automatic Upgrade and Demantra Requirements - Action Required

    - by user702295
    The following applies to ALL Demantra, EBS and Demantra Oracle Integrations: All EBS desktop administrators must disable JRE Auto-Update for their end-users immediately. See this externally-published article:     URGENT BULLETIN: Disable JRE Auto-Update for All E-Business Suite End-Users     https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/bulletin_disable_jre_auto_update Why is this required? If you have Auto-Update enabled, your JRE 1.6 version will be updated to JRE 7.     This may happen as early as July 3, 2012.     This will definitely happen after Sept. 7, 2012, after the release of 1.6.0_35 (6u35).  Oracle Forms is not compatible with JRE 7 yet.  JRE 7 has not been certified with Oracle E-Business Suite yet. Oracle E-Business Suite functionality based on Forms -- e.g. Financials -- will stop working if you upgrade to JRE 7. Related News Java 1.6.0_33 is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite.  See this externally-published article:     Java JRE 1.6.0_33 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite     https://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/jre_1_6_0_33

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  • Microsoft Access as a Weapon of War

    - by Damon
    A while ago (probably a decade ago, actually) I saw a report on a tracking system maintained by a U.S. Army artillery control unit.  This system was capable of maintaining a bearing on various units in the field to help avoid friendly fire.  I consider the U.S. Army to be the most technologically advanced fighting force on Earth, but to my terror I saw something on the title bar of an application displayed on a laptop behind one of the soldiers they were interviewing: Tracking.mdb Oh yes.  Microsoft Office Suite had made it onto the battlefield.  My hope is that it was just running as a front-end for a more proficient database (no offense Access people), or that the soldier was tracking something else like KP duty or fantasy football scores.  But I could also see the corporate equivalent of a pointy-haired boss walking into a cube and asking someone who had piddled with Access to build a database for HR forms.  Except this pointy-haired boss would have been a general, the cube would have been a tank, and the HR forms would have been targets that, if something went amiss, would have been hit by a 500lb artillery round. Hope that solider could write a good query :)

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  • Proper XAML for Windows 8 Applications [closed]

    - by Jaapjan
    Traditionally, my programs do their work in the background and when I do have to make an interface for some reason, they often do not need to be complex which means I can use a simple Windows Forms or console application. But lets be honest-- Windows Forms? That is so ... ancient! Instead I have been looking at Windows 8. A new interface, different, maybe better-- but fun to give a try. Which means XAML. Now, XAML isn't all that hard in concept. Panel here, button there-- A smattering of XML. My question in short: Where can I find resources that teach me how to write good XAML code for Windows 8 applications? The long version: How do I combine XAML constructs to achieve effects? Horizontal panels with multiple sections you can scroll through with your finger, the proper way? How should you use default style resources Windows 8 might give you by default? How do I properly create a panel with user info on the right? Left aligned stackpanels with embedded dockpanels? Yes? No? Why?

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  • Is it a good idea to dynamically position and size controls on a form or statically set them?

    - by CrystalBlue
    I've worked mostly with interface building tools such as xCode's Interface Builder and Visual Studio's environment to place forms and position them on screens. But I'm finding that with my latest project, placing controls on the form through a graphical interface is not going to work. This more has to do with the number of custom controls I have to create that I can't visually see before hand. When I first tackled this, I began to position all of my controls relative to the last ones that I created. Doing this had its own pros and cons. On the one hand, this gave me the opportunity to set one number (a margin for example) and when I changed the margin, the controls all sized correctly to one another (such as shortening controls in the center while keeping controls next to the margin the same). But this started to become a spiders-web of code that I knew wouldn't go very far before getting dangerous. Change one number and everything re sizes, but remove one control and you've created many more errors and size problems for all the other controls. It became more surgery then small changes to controls and layout. Is there a good way or maybe a preferred way to determine when I should be using relative or absolute positioning in forms?

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  • Best practice for storing information from a php script for future use

    - by tRudgeF3llow
    My employer uses forms to help people search for products. The product lists can change from time to time and the forms need to be updated again. The product information can be accessed through a third party API which I started tinkering with, I've recently built a script that retrieves the information with PHP and creates and populates a form dynamically with Javascript. So far so good, but... There are limitations to the API, mainly it can only be accessed a certain number of times per hour, it is probably more than my form/script would use but I want to create a script that is minimally intrusive. My main question is... What is the best practice for accessing the information once and storing it long enough to let the API reset? I was wondering about creating a cookie but there is the possibility of users that have them disabled. (Also, I am doing this as a personal project but I like the people I work for and I think this would help them out.) Thanks in advance.

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  • Professional Scrum Developer (.NET) Training in London

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    On the 26th - 30th July in Microsoft’s offices in London Adam Cogan from SSW will be presenting the first Professional Scrum Developer course in the UK. I will be teaching this course along side Adam and it is a fantastic experience. You are split into teams and go head-to-head to deliver units of potentially shippable work in four two hour sprints. The Professional Scrum Developer course is the only course endorsed by both Microsoft and Ken Schwaber and they have worked together very effectively in brining this course to fruition. This course is the brain child of Richard Hundhausen, a Microsoft Regional Director, and both Adam and I attending the Trainer Prep in Sydney when he was there earlier this year. He is a fantastic trainer and no matter where you do this course you can be safe in the knowledge that he has trained and vetted all of the teachers. A tools version of Ken if you will Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide What is the Professional Scrum Developer course all about? Professional Scrum Developer course is a unique and intensive five-day experience for software developers. The course guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using the Scrum framework, Visual Studio 2010, and modern software engineering practices. Attendees will work in self-organizing, self-managing teams using a common instance of Team Foundation Server 2010. Who should attend this course? This course is suitable for any member of a software development team – architect, programmer, database developer, tester, etc. Entire teams are encouraged to attend and experience the course together, but individuals are welcome too. Attendees will self-organize to form cross-functional Scrum teams. These teams require an aggregate of skills specific to the selected case study. Please see the last page of this document for specific details. Product Owners, ScrumMasters, and other stakeholders are welcome too, but keep in mind that everyone who attends will be expected to commit to work and pull their weight on a Scrum team. What should you know by the end of the course? Scrum will be experienced through a combination of lecture, demonstration, discussion, and hands-on exercises. Attendees will learn how to do Scrum correctly while being coached and critiqued by the instructor, in the following topic areas: Form effective teams Explore and understand legacy “Brownfield” architecture Define quality attributes, acceptance criteria, and “done” Create automated builds How to handle software hotfixes Verify that bugs are identified and eliminated Plan releases and sprints Estimate product backlog items Create and manage a sprint backlog Hold an effective sprint review Improve your process by using retrospectives Use emergent architecture to avoid technical debt Use Test Driven Development as a design tool Setup and leverage continuous integration Use Test Impact Analysis to decrease testing times Manage SQL Server development in an Agile way Use .NET and T-SQL refactoring effectively Build, deploy, and test SQL Server databases Create and manage test plans and cases Create, run, record, and play back manual tests Setup a branching strategy and branch code Write more maintainable code Identify and eliminate people and process dysfunctions Inspect and improve your team’s software development process What does the week look like? This course is a mix of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, simulation, and hands-on software development. The bulk of the course will be spent working as a team on a case study application delivering increments of new functionality in mini-sprints. Here is the week at a glance: Monday morning and most of the day Friday will be spent with the computers powered off, so you can focus on sharpening your game of Scrum and avoiding the common pitfalls when implementing it. The Sprints Timeboxing is a critical concept in Scrum as well as in this course. We expect each team and student to understand and obey all of the timeboxes. The timebox duration will always be clearly displayed during each activity. Expect the instructor to enforce it. Each of the ½ day sprints will roughly follow this schedule: Component Description Minutes Instruction Presentation and demonstration of new and relevant tools & practices 60 Sprint planning meeting Product owner presents backlog; each team commits to delivering functionality 10 Sprint planning meeting Each team determines how to build the functionality 10 The Sprint The team self-organizes and self-manages to complete their tasks 120 Sprint Review meeting Each team will present their increment of functionality to the other teams = 30 Sprint Retrospective A group retrospective meeting will be held to inspect and adapt 10 Each team is expected to self-organize and manage their own work during the sprint. Pairing is highly encouraged. The instructor/product owner will be available if there are questions or impediments, but will be hands-off by default. You should be prepared to communicate and work with your team members in order to achieve your sprint goal. If you have development-related questions or get stuck, your partner or team should be your first level of support. Module 1: INTRODUCTION This module provides a chance for the attendees to get to know the instructors as well as each other. The Professional Scrum Developer program, as well as the day by day agenda, will be explained. Finally, the Scrum team will be selected and assembled so that the forming, storming, norming, and performing can begin. Trainer and student introductions Professional Scrum Developer program Agenda Logistics Team formation Retrospective Module 2: SCRUMDAMENTALS This module provides a level-setting understanding of the Scrum framework including the roles, timeboxes, and artifacts. The team will then experience Scrum firsthand by simulating a multi-day sprint of product development, including planning, review, and retrospective meetings. Scrum overview Scrum roles Scrum timeboxes (ceremonies) Scrum artifacts Simulation Retrospective It’s required that you read Ken Schwaber’s Scrum Guide in preparation for this module and course. MODULE 3: IMPLEMENTING SCRUM IN VISUAL STUDIO 2010 This module demonstrates how to implement Scrum in Visual Studio 2010 using a Scrum process template*. The team will learn the mapping between the Scrum concepts and how they are implemented in the tool. After connecting to the shared Team Foundation Server, the team members will then return to the simulation – this time using Visual Studio to manage their product development. Mapping Scrum to Visual Studio 2010 User Story work items Task work items Bug work items Demonstration Simulation Retrospective Module 4: THE CASE STUDY In this module the team is introduced to their problem domain for the week. A kickoff meeting by the Product Owner (the instructor) will set the stage for the why and what that will take during the upcoming sprints. The team will then define the quality attributes of the project and their definition of “done.” The legacy application code will be downloaded, built, and explored, so that any bugs can be discovered and reported. Introduction to the case study Download the source code, build, and explore the application Define the quality attributes for the project Define “done” How to file effective bugs in Visual Studio 2010 Retrospective Module 5: HOTFIX This module drops the team directly into a Brownfield (legacy) experience by forcing them to analyze the existing application’s architecture and code in order to locate and fix the Product Owner’s high-priority bug(s). The team will learn best practices around finding, testing, fixing, validating, and closing a bug. How to use Architecture Explorer to visualize and explore Create a unit test to validate the existence of a bug Find and fix the bug Validate and close the bug Retrospective Module 6: PLANNING This short module introduces the team to release and sprint planning within Visual Studio 2010. The team will define and capture their goals as well as other important planning information. Release vs. Sprint planning Release planning and the Product Backlog Product Backlog prioritization Acceptance criteria and tests Sprint planning and the Sprint Backlog Creating and linking Sprint tasks Retrospective At this point the team will have the knowledge of Scrum, Visual Studio 2010, and the case study application to begin developing increments of potentially shippable functionality that meet their definition of done. Module 7: EMERGENT ARCHITECTURE This module introduces the architectural practices and tools a team can use to develop a valid design on which to develop new functionality. The teams will learn how Scrum supports good architecture and design practices. After the discussion, the teams will be presented with the product owner’s prioritized backlog so that they may select and commit to the functionality they can deliver in this sprint. Architecture and Scrum Emergent architecture Principles, patterns, and practices Visual Studio 2010 modeling tools UML and layer diagrams SPRINT 1 Retrospective Module 8: TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT This module introduces Test Driven Development as a design tool and how to implement it using Visual Studio 2010. To maximize productivity and quality, a Scrum team should setup Continuous Integration to regularly build every team member’s code changes and run regression tests. Refactoring will also be defined and demonstrated in combination with Visual Studio’s Test Impact Analysis to efficiently re-run just those tests which were impacted by refactoring. Continuous integration Team Foundation Build Test Driven Development (TDD) Refactoring Test Impact Analysis SPRINT 2 Retrospective Module 9: AGILE DATABASE DEVELOPMENT This module lets the SQL Server database developers in on a little secret – they can be agile too. By using the database projects in Visual Studio 2010, the database developers can join the rest of the team. The students will see how to apply Agile database techniques within Visual Studio to support the SQL Server 2005/2008/2008R2 development lifecycle. Agile database development Visual Studio database projects Importing schema and scripts Building and deploying Generating data Unit testing SPRINT 3 Retrospective Module 10: SHIP IT Teams need to know that just because they like the functionality doesn’t mean the Product Owner will. This module revisits acceptance criteria as it pertains to acceptance testing. By refining acceptance criteria into manual test steps, team members can execute the tests, recording the results and reporting bugs in a number of ways. Manual tests will be defined and executed using the Microsoft Test Manager tool. As the Sprint completes and an increment of functionality is delivered, the team will also learn why and when they should create a branch of the codeline. Acceptance criteria Testing in Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft Test Manager Writing and running manual tests Branching SPRINT 4 Retrospective Module 11: OVERCOMING DYSFUNCTION This module introduces the many types of people, process, and tool dysfunctions that teams face in the real world. Many dysfunctions and scenarios will be identified, along with ideas and discussion for how a team might mitigate them. This module will enable you and your team to move toward independence and improve your game of Scrum when you depart class. Scrum-butts and flaccid Scrum Best practices working as a team Team challenges ScrumMaster challenges Product Owner challenges Stakeholder challenges Course Retrospective What will be expected of you and you team? This is a unique course in that it’s technically-focused, team-based, and employs timeboxes. It demands that the members of the teams self-organize and self-manage their own work to collaboratively develop increments of software. All attendees must commit to: Pay attention to all lectures and demonstrations Participate in team and group discussions Work collaboratively with other team members Obey the timebox for each activity Commit to work and do your best to deliver All teams should have these skills: Understanding of Scrum Familiarity with Visual Studio 201 C#, .NET 4.0 & ASP.NET 4.0 experience*  SQL Server 2008 development experience Software testing experience * Check with the instructor ahead of time for the exact technologies Self-organising teams Another unique attribute of this course is that it’s a technical training class being delivered to teams of developers, not pairs, and not individuals. Ideally, your actual software development team will attend the training to ensure that all necessary skills are covered. However, if you wish to attend an open enrolment course alone or with just a couple of colleagues, realize that you may be placed on a team with other attendees. The instructor will do his or her best to ensure that each team is cross-functional to tackle the case study, but there are no guarantees. You may be required to try a new role, learn a new skill, or pair with somebody unfamiliar to you. This is just good Scrum! Who should NOT take this course? Because of the nature of this course, as explained above, certain types of people should probably not attend this course: Students requiring command and control style instruction – there are no prescriptive/step-by-step (think traditional Microsoft Learning) labs in this course Students who are unwilling to work within a timebox Students who are unwilling to work collaboratively on a team Students who don’t have any skill in any of the software development disciplines Students who are unable to commit fully to their team – not only will this diminish the student’s learning experience, but it will also impact their team’s learning experience Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide Technorati Tags: Scrum,SSW,Pro Scrum Dev

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  • Install the Ajax Control Toolkit from NuGet

    - by Stephen Walther
    The Ajax Control Toolkit is now available from NuGet. This makes it super easy to add the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit to any Web Forms application. If you haven’t used NuGet yet, then you are missing out on a great tool which you can use with Visual Studio to add new features to an application. You can use NuGet with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. NuGet is compatible with both Websites and Web Applications and it works with both C# and VB.NET applications. For example, I habitually use NuGet to add the latest version of ELMAH, Entity Framework, jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Templates to applications that I create. To download NuGet, visit the NuGet website at: http://NuGet.org Imagine, for example, that you want to take advantage of the Ajax Control Toolkit RoundedCorners extender to create cross-browser compatible rounded corners in a Web Forms application. Follow these steps. Right click on your project in the Solution Explorer window and select the option Add Library Package Reference. In the Add Library Package Reference dialog, select the Online tab and enter AjaxControlToolkit in the search box: Click the Install button and the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit will be installed. Installing the Ajax Control Toolkit makes several modifications to your application. First, a reference to the Ajax Control Toolkit is added to your application. In a Web Application Project, you can see the new reference in the References folder: Installing the Ajax Control Toolkit NuGet package also updates your Web.config file. The tag prefix ajaxToolkit is registered so that you can easily use Ajax Control Toolkit controls within any page without adding a @Register directive to the page. <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" /> </controls> </pages> </system.web> </configuration> You should do a rebuild of your application by selecting the Visual Studio menu option Build, Rebuild Solution so that Visual Studio picks up on the new controls (You won’t get Intellisense for the Ajax Control Toolkit controls until you do a build). After you add the Ajax Control Toolkit to your application, you can start using any of the 40 Ajax Control Toolkit controls in your application (see http://www.asp.net/ajax/ajaxcontroltoolkit/samples/ for a reference for the controls). <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="WebForm1.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm1" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Rounded Corners</title> <style type="text/css"> #pnl1 { background-color: gray; width: 200px; color:White; font: 14pt Verdana; } #pnl1_contents { padding: 10px; } </style> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <asp:Panel ID="pnl1" runat="server"> <div id="pnl1_contents"> I have rounded corners! </div> </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="sm1" runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:RoundedCornersExtender TargetControlID="pnl1" runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> The page contains the following three controls: Panel – The Panel control named pnl1 contains the content which appears with rounded corners. ToolkitScriptManager – Every page which uses the Ajax Control Toolkit must contain a single ToolkitScriptManager. The ToolkitScriptManager loads all of the JavaScript files used by the Ajax Control Toolkit. RoundedCornersExtender – This Ajax Control Toolkit extender targets the Panel control. It makes the Panel control appear with rounded corners. You can control the “roundiness” of the corners by modifying the Radius property. Notice that you get Intellisense when typing the Ajax Control Toolkit tags. As soon as you type <ajaxToolkit, all of the available Ajax Control Toolkit controls appear: When you open the page in a browser, then the contents of the Panel appears with rounded corners. The advantage of using the RoundedCorners extender is that it is cross-browser compatible. It works great with Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari even though different browsers implement rounded corners in different ways. The RoundedCorners extender even works with an ancient browser such as Internet Explorer 6. Getting the Latest Version of the Ajax Control Toolkit The Ajax Control Toolkit continues to evolve at a rapid pace. We are hard at work at fixing bugs and adding new features to the project. We plan to have a new release of the Ajax Control Toolkit each month. The easiest way to get the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit is to use NuGet. You can open the NuGet Add Library Package Reference dialog at any time to update the Ajax Control Toolkit to the latest version.

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  • Microsoft, jQuery, and Templating

    - by Stephen Walther
    About two months ago, John Resig and I met at Café Algiers in Harvard square to discuss how Microsoft can contribute to the jQuery project. Today, Scott Guthrie announced in his second-day MIX keynote that Microsoft is throwing its weight behind jQuery and making it the primary way to develop client-side Ajax applications using Microsoft technologies. What does this announcement mean? It means that Microsoft is shifting its resources to invest in jQuery. Developers on the ASP.NET team are now working full-time to contribute features to the core jQuery library. Furthermore, we are working with other teams at Microsoft to ensure that our technologies work great with jQuery. We are contributing to the open-source jQuery project in the exact same way that any other company or individual from the community can contribute to jQuery. We are writing proposals, submitting the proposals to the jQuery forums, and revising the proposals in response to community feedback. The jQuery team can decide to reject or accept any feature that we propose. Any feature that Microsoft contributes to jQuery will be platform neutral. In other words, Microsoft contributions will benefit PHP and RAILS developers just as much as they benefit ASP.NET developers. Microsoft contributions to jQuery will improve the web for everyone. Contributing Support for Templates to jQuery Core Our first proposal concerns templating. We want to contribute support for templates to jQuery so that JavaScript developers can use jQuery to easily display a set of database records. You can read our templating proposal here: http://wiki.github.com/nje/jquery/jquery-templates-proposal You can download and play with our prototype for templating here: http://github.com/nje/jquery-tmpl The following code illustrates how you can use a template to display a set of products in a bulleted list: <script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(function(){ var products = [ { name: "Product 1", price: 12.99}, { name: "Product 2", price: 9.99}, { name: "Product 3", price: 35.59} ]; $("ul").append("#template", products); }); </script> <script id="template" type="text/html"> <li>{%= name %} - {%= price %}</li> </script> <ul></ul> The template is contained in a SCRIPT element that has a TYPE=”text/html” attribute. Browsers ignore the contents of a SCRIPT element when they don’t understand the content type. Notice that the placeholder {%=...%} is used within the template to indicate where the name and price of a product should appear. The delimiters {%=…%} are used for expressions and the delimiters {%...%} are used for code. Finally, the products are rendered using the template with the call to $(“ul”).append(“#template”, products). The standard jQuery DOM manipulation methods have been modified to support templates. When the page above is rendered, you get the bulleted list displayed in the following figure. Our goal is to keep our proposal for templates as simple as possible. After support for templating has been added to jQuery, plug-in authors can take advantage of templating when building complex data-driven plug-ins such as a DataGrid plug-in. The Ajax Control Toolkit Over 100,000 developers download the Ajax Control Toolkit every month. That’s a mind-boggling number of downloads. We realize that the Ajax Control Toolkit is extremely popular among ASP.NET Web Forms developers and we want to continue to invest in the Ajax Control Toolkit. If you are adding JavaScript interactivity to an ASP.NET Web Forms application, and you don’t want to write JavaScript, then we recommend that you use the server controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit. Using the Ajax Control Toolkit does not require knowledge of JavaScript and the toolkit enables you to build applications with the concepts familiar to ASP.NET Web Forms applications developers. If, however, you are interested in creating client-side interactivity without server controls then we recommend that you use jQuery. We plan to continue to release new versions of the Ajax Control Toolkit every few months. Our goal is to continue to improve the quality of the Ajax Control Toolkit and to make it easier for the community to contribute code, bug fixes, and documentation. The ASP.NET Ajax Library We are moving the ASP.NET Ajax Library into the Ajax Control Toolkit. If you currently use ASP.NET Ajax Library client templates, client data-binding, or the client script loader then you can continue to use these features by downloading the Ajax Control Toolkit. Be aware that our focus with the Ajax Control Toolkit is server-side Ajax.  For client-side Ajax, we are shifting our focus to jQuery. For example, if you have been using ASP.NET Ajax Library client templates then we recommend that you shift to using jQuery instead. Conclusion Our plan is to focus on jQuery as the primary technology for building client-side Ajax applications moving forward. We want to adapt Microsoft technologies to work great with jQuery and we want to contribute features to jQuery that will make the web better for everyone. We are very excited to be working with the jQuery core team.

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  • Independence Day for Software Components &ndash; Loosening Coupling by Reducing Connascence

    - by Brian Schroer
    Today is Independence Day in the USA, which got me thinking about loosely-coupled “independent” software components. I was reminded of a video I bookmarked quite a while ago of Jim Weirich’s “Grand Unified Theory of Software Design” talk at MountainWest RubyConf 2009. I finally watched that video this morning. I highly recommend it. In the video, Jim talks about software connascence. The dictionary definition of connascence (con-NAY-sense) is: 1. The common birth of two or more at the same time 2. That which is born or produced with another. 3. The act of growing together. The brief Wikipedia page about Connascent Software Components says that: Two software components are connascent if a change in one would require the other to be modified in order to maintain the overall correctness of the system. Connascence is a way to characterize and reason about certain types of complexity in software systems. The term was introduced to the software world in Meilir Page-Jones’ 1996 book “What Every Programmer Should Know About Object-Oriented Design”. The middle third of that book is the author’s proposed graphical notation for describing OO designs. UML became the standard about a year later, so a revised version of the book was published in 1999 as “Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design in UML”. Weirich says that the third part of the book, in which Page-Jones introduces the concept of connascence “is worth the price of the entire book”. (The price of the entire book, by the way, is not much – I just bought a used copy on Amazon for $1.36, so that was a pretty low-risk investment. I’m looking forward to getting the book and learning about connascence from the original source.) Meanwhile, here’s my summary of Weirich’s summary of Page-Jones writings about connascence: The stronger the form of connascence, the more difficult and costly it is to change the elements in the relationship. Some of the connascence types, ordered from weak to strong are: Connascence of Name Connascence of name is when multiple components must agree on the name of an entity. If you change the name of a method or property, then you need to change all references to that method or property. Duh. Connascence of name is unavoidable, assuming your objects are actually used. My main takeaway about connascence of name is that it emphasizes the importance of giving things good names so you don’t need to go changing them later. Connascence of Type Connascence of type is when multiple components must agree on the type of an entity. I assume this is more of a problem for languages without compilers (especially when used in apps without tests). I know it’s an issue with evil JavaScript type coercion. Connascence of Meaning Connascence of meaning is when multiple components must agree on the meaning of particular values, e.g that “1” means normal customer and “2” means preferred customer. The solution to this is to use constants or enums instead of “magic” strings or numbers, which reduces the coupling by changing the connascence form from “meaning” to “name”. Connascence of Position Connascence of positions is when multiple components must agree on the order of values. This refers to methods with multiple parameters, e.g.: eMailer.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "Your order is complete", "Order completion notification"); The more parameters there are, the stronger the connascence of position is between the component and its callers. In the example above, it’s not immediately clear when reading the code which email addresses are sender and receiver, and which of the final two strings are subject vs. body. Connascence of position could be improved to connascence of type by replacing the parameter list with a struct or class. This “introduce parameter object” refactoring might be overkill for a method with 2 parameters, but would definitely be an improvement for a method with 10 parameters. This points out two “rules” of connascence:  The Rule of Degree: The acceptability of connascence is related to the degree of its occurrence. The Rule of Locality: Stronger forms of connascence are more acceptable if the elements involved are closely related. For example, positional arguments in private methods are less problematic than in public methods. Connascence of Algorithm Connascence of algorithm is when multiple components must agree on a particular algorithm. Be DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself. If you have “cloned” code in multiple locations, refactor it into a common function.   Those are the “static” forms of connascence. There are also “dynamic” forms, including… Connascence of Execution Connascence of execution is when the order of execution of multiple components is important. Consumers of your class shouldn’t have to know that they have to call an .Initialize method before it’s safe to call a .DoSomething method. Connascence of Timing Connascence of timing is when the timing of the execution of multiple components is important. I’ll have to read up on this one when I get the book, but assume it’s largely about threading. Connascence of Identity Connascence of identity is when multiple components must reference the entity. The example Weirich gives is when you have two instances of the “Bob” Employee class and you call the .RaiseSalary method on one and then the .Pay method on the other does the payment use the updated salary?   Again, this is my summary of a summary, so please be forgiving if I misunderstood anything. Once I get/read the book, I’ll make corrections if necessary and share any other useful information I might learn.   See Also: Gregory Brown: Ruby Best Practices Issue #24: Connascence as a Software Design Metric (That link is failing at the time I write this, so I had to go to the Google cache of the page.)

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  • Messaging Systems – Handshaking, Reconciliation and Tracking for Data Transparency

    - by Ahsan Alam
    As many corporations build business partnerships with other organizations, the need to share information becomes necessary. Large amount of data sharing using snail mail, email and/or fax are quickly becoming a thing of the past. More and more organizations are relying heavily on Ftp and/or Web Service to exchange data. Corporations apply wide range of technologies and techniques based on available resources and data transfer needs. Sometimes, it involves simple home-grown applications. Other times, large investments are made on products like BizTalk, TIBCO etc. Complexity of information management also varies significantly from one organizations to another. Some may deal with handful of simple steps to process and manage shared data; whereas others may rely on fairly complex processes with heavy interaction with internal and external systems in order to serve the business needs. It is not surprising that many of these systems end up becoming black boxes over a period of time. Consequently, people and business start to rely more and more on developers and support personnel just to extract simple information adding to the loss of productivity. One of the most important factor in any business is transparency to data irrespective of technology preferences and the complexity of business processes. Not knowing the state of data could become very costly to the business. Being involved in messaging systems for some time now, I have heard the same type of questions over and over again. Did we transmit messages successfully? Did we get responses back? What is the expected turn-around-time? Did the system experience any errors? When one company transmits data to one or more company, it may invoke a set of processes that could complete in matter of seconds, or it could days. As data travels from one organizations to another, the uncertainty grows, and the longer it takes to track uncertain state of the data the costlier it gets for the business, So, in every business scenario, it's extremely important to be aware of the state of the data.   Architects of messaging systems can take several steps to aid with data transparency. Some forms of data handshaking and reconciliation mechanism as well as extensive data tracking can be incorporated into the system to provide clear visibility to the data. What do I mean by handshaking and reconciliation? Some might consider these to be a single concept; however, I like to consider them in two unique categories. Handshaking serves as message receipts or acknowledgment. When one transmits messages to another, the receiver must acknowledge each message by sending immediate responses for each transaction. Whenever we use Web Services, handshaking is often achieved utilizing request/reply pattern. Similarly, if Ftp is used, a receiver can acknowledge by dropping messages for the sender as soon as the files are picked up. These forms of handshaking or acknowledgment informs the message sender and receiver that a successful transaction has occurred. I have mentioned earlier that it could take anywhere from a few seconds to a number of days before shared data is completely processed. In addition, whenever a batched transaction is used, processing time for each data element inside the batch could also vary significantly. So, in order to successfully manage data processing, reconciliation becomes extremely important; otherwise it may result into data loss or in some cases hefty penalty. Reconciliation can be done in many ways. Partner organizations can share and compare ad hoc reports to achieve reconciliation. On the other hand, partners can agree on some type of systematic reconciliation messages. Systems within responsible parties can trigger messages to partners as soon as the data process completes.   Next step in the data transparency is extensive data tracking. Some products such as BizTalk and TIBCO provide built-in functionality for data tracking; however, built-in functionality may not always be adequate. Sometimes additional tracking system (or databases) needs to be built in order monitor all types of data flow including, message transactions, handshaking, reconciliation, system errors and many more. If these types of data are captured, then these can be presented to business users in any forms or fashion. When business users are empowered with such information, then the reliance on developers and support teams decreases dramatically.   In today's collaborative world of information sharing, data transparency is key to the success of every business. The state of business data will constantly change. However, when people have easier access to various states of data, it allows them to make better and quicker decisions. Therefore, I feel that data handshaking, reconciliation and tracking is very important aspect of messaging systems.

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  • Server Controls in ASP.NET MVC without ViewState

    - by imran_ku07
      Introduction :           ASP.NET Web Forms provides a development environment just like GUI or windows application and try to hide statelessness nature of HTTP protocol. For accomplishing this target, Web Forms uses ViewState (a hidden field) to remove the gap between HTTP statelessness and GUI applications. But the problem with this technique is that ViewState size which grows quickly and also go back and forth with every request, as a result it will degrade application performance. In this article i will try to use existing ASP.NET server controls without ViewState.   Description :           When you add a server control which needs viewstate, in the presentation view in ASP.NET MVC application without a form tag, for example,            <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>            It will shows the following exception,            Control 'TextBox1' of type 'TextBox' must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server             When you place this textbox inside a form tag with runat=server, this will add the following ViewState even when you disable ViewState by using EnableViewState="false"            <input type="hidden" value="/wEPDwUJMjgzMDgzOTgzZGQ6u9CwikhHEW39ObrHyLTPFSboPA==" id="__VIEWSTATE" name="__VIEWSTATE"/>             The solution to this problem is to use the RenderControl method of server control which is simply renders HTML without any ViewState hidden field.         <% TextBox txt = new TextBox();          txt.Text = "abc";          StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();          System.IO.StringWriter textwriter = new System.IO.StringWriter(sb);          HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter(textwriter);          txt.RenderControl(htmlwriter);  %>        <%= sb.ToString() %>             This will render <input type="text" > without any View State. This technique become very useful when you are using rich server controls like GridView. For example, let's say you have List of Recalls in Model.Recalls, then you will show your tabular data as,     <%  GridView gv = new GridView();          gv.AutoGenerateColumns = true;          gv.DataSource = Model.Recalls;          gv.DataBind();         StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();         System.IO.StringWriter textwriter = new System.IO.StringWriter(sb);         HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter(textwriter);         gv.RenderControl(htmlwriter);%>            <%= sb.ToString() %>             This code might looks odd in your presentation view. A more better approach is to create a HTML Helper method which contains the above code. Summary :        In some cases you might needs to use existing ASP.NET Web Forms server controls but also dislikes ViewState. In this article i try to solve this gap by using the RenderControl method of Control class. Hopefully you enjoyed and become ready to create HTML helpers for many of the existing server controls.

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  • Content in Context: The right medicine for your business applications

    - by Lance Shaw
    For many of you, your companies have already invested in a number of applications that are critical to the way your business is run. HR, Payroll, Legal, Accounts Payable, and while they might need an upgrade in some cases, they are all there and handling the lifeblood of your business. But are they really running as efficiently as they could be? For many companies, the answer is no. The problem has to do with the important information caught up within documents and paper. It’s everywhere except where it truly needs to be – readily available right within the context of the application itself. When the right information cannot be easily found, business processes suffer significantly. The importance of this recently struck me when I recently went to meet my new doctor and get a routine physical. Walking into the office lobby, I couldn't help but notice rows and rows of manila folders in racks from floor to ceiling, filled with documents and sensitive, personal information about various patients like myself.  As I looked at all that paper and all that history, two things immediately popped into my head.  “How do they find anything?” and then the even more alarming, “So much for information security!” It sure looked to me like all those documents could be accessed by anyone with a key to the building. Now the truth is that the offices of many general practitioners look like this all over the United States and the world.  But it had me thinking, is the same thing going on in just about any company around the world, involving a wide variety of important business processes? Probably so. Think about all the various processes going on in your company right now. Invoice payments are being processed through Accounts Payable, contracts are being reviewed by Procurement, and Human Resources is reviewing job candidate submissions and doing background checks. All of these processes and many more like them rely on access to forms and documents, whether they are paper or digital. Now consider that it is estimated that employee’s spend nearly 9 hours a week searching for information and not finding it. That is a lot of very well paid employees, spending more than one day per week not doing their regular job while they search for or re-create what already exists. Back in the doctor’s office, I saw this trend exemplified as well. First, I had to fill out a new patient form, even though my previous doctor had transferred my records over months previously. After filling out the form, I was later introduced to my new doctor who then interviewed me and asked me the exact same questions that I had answered on the form. I understand that there is value in the interview process and it was great to meet my new doctor, but this simple process could have been so much more efficient if the information already on file could have been brought directly together with the new patient information I had provided. Instead of having a highly paid medical professional re-enter the same information into the records database, the form I filled out could have been immediately scanned into the system, associated with my previous information, discrepancies identified, and the entire process streamlined significantly. We won’t solve the health records management issues that exist in the United States in this blog post, but this example illustrates how the automation of information capture and classification can eliminate a lot of repetitive and costly human entry and re-creation, even in a simple process like new patient on-boarding. In a similar fashion, by taking a fresh look at the various processes in place today in your organization, you can likely spot points along the way where automating the capture and access to the right information could be significantly improved. As you evaluate how content-process flows through your organization, take a look at how departments and regions share information between the applications they are using. Business applications are often implemented on an individual department basis to solve specific problems but a holistic approach to overall information management is not taken at the same time. The end result over the years is disparate applications with separate information repositories and in many cases these contain duplicate information, or worse, slightly different versions of the same information. This is where Oracle WebCenter Content comes into the story. More and more companies are realizing that they can significantly improve their existing application processes by automating the capture of paper, forms and other content. This makes the right information immediately accessible in the context of the business process and making the same information accessible across departmental systems which has helped many organizations realize significant cost savings. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, one of our primary goals is to help customers find new ways to be more effective, more cost-efficient and manage information as effectively as possible. We have a series of three webcasts occurring over the next few weeks that are focused on the integration of enterprise content management within the context of business applications. We hope you will join us for one or all three and that you will find them informative. Click here to learn more about these sessions and to register for them. There are many aspects of information management to consider as you look at integrating content management within your business applications. We've barely scratched the surface here but look for upcoming blog posts where we will discuss more specifics on the value of delivering documents, forms and images directly within applications like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards Enterprise One, Siebel CRM and many others. What do you think?  Are your important business processes as healthy as they can be?  Do you have any insights to share on the value of delivering content directly within critical business processes? Please post a comment and let us know the value you have realized, the lessons learned and what specific areas you are interested in.

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