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  • Creating a dummy design before the development starts

    - by NLV
    Hello How can i create a dummy design of an application before the actual development starts? How to simulate the UI of the application. After completing the analysis phase do i need to start the design directly using dev tools or can i create some dummies (even images, using Visio or something) with other tools? Thank you

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  • Learn Domain-Driven Design

    - by Ben Griswold
    I just wrote about how I like to present on unfamiliar topics. With this said, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is no exception. This is yet another area I knew enough about to be dangerous but I certainly was no expert.  As it turns out, researching this topic wasn’t easy. I could be wrong, but it is as if DDD is a secret to which few are privy. If you search the Interwebs, you will likely find little information about DDD until you start rolling over rocks to find that one great write-up, a handful of podcasts and videos and the Readers’ Digest version of the Blue Book which apparently you must read if you really want to get the complete, unabridged skinny on DDD.  Even Wikipedia’s write-up is skimpy which I didn’t know was possible…   Here’s a list of valuable resources.  If you, too, are interested in DDD, this is a good starting place.  Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans Domain-Driven Design Quickly, by Abel Avram & Floyd Marinescu An Introduction to Domain-Driven Design by David Laribee Talking Domain-Driven Design with David Laribee Part 1, Deep Fried Bytes Talking Domain-Driven Design with David Laribee Part 2, Deep Fried Bytes Eric Evans on Domain Driven Design, .NET Rocks Domain-Driven Design Community Eric Evans on Domain Driven Design Jimmy Nilsson on Domain Driven Design Domain-Driven Design Wikipedia What I’ve Learned About DDD Since the Book, Eric Evans Domain Driven Design, Alt.Net Podcast Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET, Jimmy Nilsson Domain-Driven Design Discussion Group DDD: Putting the Model to Work by Eric Evans The Official DDD Site

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  • Best way to load application settings

    - by enzom83
    A simple way to keep the settings of a Java application is represented by a text file with ".properties" extension containing the identifier of each setting associated with a specific value (this value may be a number, string, date, etc..). C# uses a similar approach, but the text file must be named "App.config". In both cases, in source code you must initialize a specific class for reading settings: this class has a method that returns the value (as string) associated with the specified setting identifier. // Java example Properties config = new Properties(); config.load(...); String valueStr = config.getProperty("listening-port"); // ... // C# example NameValueCollection setting = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings; string valueStr = setting["listening-port"]; // ... In both cases we should parse strings loaded from the configuration file and assign the ??converted values to the related typed objects (parsing errors could occur during this phase). After the parsing step, we must check that the setting values ??belong to a specific domain of validity: for example, the maximum size of a queue should be a positive value, some values ??may be related (example: min < max), and so on. Suppose that the application should load the settings as soon as it starts: in other words, the first operation performed by the application is to load the settings. Any invalid values for the settings ??must be replaced automatically with default values??: if this happens to a group of related settings, those settings are all set with default values. The easiest way to perform these operations is to create a method that first parses all the settings, then checks the loaded values ??and finally sets any default values??. However maintenance is difficult if you use this approach: as the number of settings increases while developing the application, it becomes increasingly difficult to update the code. In order to solve this problem, I had thought of using the Template Method pattern, as follows. public abstract class Setting { protected abstract bool TryParseValues(); protected abstract bool CheckValues(); public abstract void SetDefaultValues(); /// <summary> /// Template Method /// </summary> public bool TrySetValuesOrDefault() { if (!TryParseValues() || !CheckValues()) { // parsing error or domain error SetDefaultValues(); return false; } return true; } } public class RangeSetting : Setting { private string minStr, maxStr; private byte min, max; public RangeSetting(string minStr, maxStr) { this.minStr = minStr; this.maxStr = maxStr; } protected override bool TryParseValues() { return (byte.TryParse(minStr, out min) && byte.TryParse(maxStr, out max)); } protected override bool CheckValues() { return (0 < min && min < max); } public override void SetDefaultValues() { min = 5; max = 10; } } The problem is that in this way we need to create a new class for each setting, even for a single value. Are there other solutions to this kind of problem? In summary: Easy maintenance: for example, the addition of one or more parameters. Extensibility: a first version of the application could read a single configuration file, but later versions may give the possibility of a multi-user setup (admin sets up a basic configuration, users can set only certain settings, etc..). Object oriented design.

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  • DB Schema for ACL involving 3 subdomains

    - by blacktie24
    Hi, I am trying to design a database schema for a web app which has 3 subdomains: a) internal employees b) clients c) contractors. The users will be able to communicate with each other to some degree, and there may be some resources that overlap between them. Any thoughts about this schema? Really appreciate your time and thoughts on this. Cheers! -- -- Table structure for table locations CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS locations ( id bigint(20) NOT NULL, name varchar(250) NOT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; -- -- Table structure for table privileges CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS privileges ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(255) NOT NULL, resource_id int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=10 ; -- -- Table structure for table resources CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS resources ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(255) NOT NULL, user_type enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ; -- -- Table structure for table roles CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS roles ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(255) NOT NULL, type enum('position','department') NOT NULL, parent_id int(11) DEFAULT NULL, user_type enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ; -- -- Table structure for table role_perms CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS role_perms ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, role_id int(11) NOT NULL, privilege_id int(11) NOT NULL, mode varchar(250) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ; -- -- Table structure for table users CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users ( id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, email varchar(255) NOT NULL, password varchar(255) NOT NULL, salt varchar(255) NOT NULL, type enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, first_name varchar(255) NOT NULL, last_name varchar(255) NOT NULL, location_id int(11) NOT NULL, phone varchar(255) NOT NULL, status enum('active','inactive') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'active', PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=4 ; -- -- Table structure for table user_perms CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS user_perms ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, user_id int(11) NOT NULL, privilege_id int(11) NOT NULL, mode varchar(250) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ; -- -- Table structure for table user_roles CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS user_roles ( id int(11) NOT NULL, user_id int(11) NOT NULL, role_id int(11) NOT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

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  • Using PDO with MVC

    - by mister martin
    I asked this question at stackoverflow and received no response (closed as duplicate with no answer). I'm experimenting with OOP and I have the following basic MVC layout: class Model { // do database stuff } class View { public function load($filename, $data = array()) { if(!empty($data)) { extract($data); } require_once('views/header.php'); require_once("views/$filename"); require_once('views/footer.php'); } } class Controller { public $model; public $view; function __construct() { $this->model = new Model(); $this->view = new View(); // determine what page we're on $page = isset($_GET['view']) ? $_GET['view'] : 'home'; $this->display($page); } public function display($page) { switch($page) { case 'home': $this->view->load('home.php'); break; } } } These classes are brought together in my setup file: // start session session_start(); require_once('Model.php'); require_once('View.php'); require_once('Controller.php'); new Controller(); Now where do I place my database connection code and how do I pass the connection onto the model? try { $db = new PDO('mysql:host='.DB_HOST.';dbname='.DB_DATABASE.'', DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD); $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION); } catch(PDOException $err) { die($err->getMessage()); } I've read about Dependency Injection, factories and miscellaneous other design patterns talking about keeping SQL out of the model, but it's all over my head using abstract examples. Can someone please just show me a straight-forward practical example?

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  • Are first-class functions a substitute for the Strategy pattern?

    - by Prog
    The Strategy design pattern is often regarded as a substitute for first-class functions in languages that lack them. So for example say you wanted to pass functionality into an object. In Java you'd have to pass in the object another object which encapsulates the desired behavior. In a language such as Ruby, you'd just pass the functionality itself in the form of an annonymous function. However I was thinking about it and decided that maybe Strategy offers more than a plain annonymous function does. This is because an object can hold state that exists independently of the period when it's method runs. However an annonymous function by itself can only hold state that ceases to exist the moment the function finishes execution. So my question is: when using a language that features first-class functions, would you ever use the Strategy pattern (i.e. encapsulate the functionality you want to pass around in an explicit object), or would you always use an annonymous function? When would you decide to use Strategy when you can use a first-class function?

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  • What type of pattern would be used in this case

    - by Admiral Kunkka
    I want to know how to tackle this type of scenario. We are building a person's background, from scratch, and I want to know, conceptually, how to proceed with a secure object pattern in both design and execution... I've been reading on Factory patterns, Model-View-Controller types, Dependency injection, Singleton approaches... and I can't seem to grasp or 'fit' these types of designs decisions into what I'm trying to do.. First and foremost, I started with having a big jack-of-all-trades class, then I read some more, and some tips were to make sure your classes only have a single purpose.. which makes sense and I started breaking down certain things into other classes. Okay, cool. Now I'm looking at dependency injection and kind of didn't really know what's going on. Example/insight of what kind of heirarchy I need to accomplish... class Person needs to access and build from a multitude of different classes. class Culture needs to access a sub-class for culture benefits class Social needs to access class Culture, and other sub-classes class Birth needs to access Social, Culture, and other sub-classes class Childhood/Adolescence/Adulthood need to access everything. Also, depending on different rolls, this class heirarchy needs to create multiple people as well, such as Family, and their backgrounds using some, if not all, of these same classes. Think of it as a people generator, all random, with backgrounds and things that happen to them. Ageing, death of loved ones, military careers, e.t.c. Most of the generation is done randomly, making calls to a mt_rand function to pick from most of the selections inside the classes, guaranteeing the data to be absolutely random. I have most of the bulk-data down, and was looking for some insight from fellow programmers, what do you think?

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  • Is wrapping a third party code the only solution to unit test its consumers? [closed]

    - by Songo
    I'm doing unit testing and in one of my classes I need to send a mail from one of the methods, so using constructor injection I inject an instance of Zend_Mail class which is in Zend framework. Now some people argue that if a library is stable enough and won't change often then there is no need to wrap it. So assuming that Zend_Mail is stable and won't change and it fits my needs entirely, then I won't need a wrapper for it. Now take a look at my class Logger that depends on Zend_Mail: class Logger{ private $mailer; function __construct(Zend_Mail $mail){ $this->mail=$mail; } function toBeTestedFunction(){ //Some code $this->mail->setTo('some value'); $this->mail->setSubject('some value'); $this->mail->setBody('some value'); $this->mail->send(); //Some } } However, Unit testing demands that I test one component at a time, so I need to mock the Zend_Mail class. In addition I'm violating the Dependency Inversion principle as my Logger class now depends on concretion not abstraction. Now is wrapping Zend_Mail the only solution or is there a better approach to this problem? The code is in PHP, but answers doesn't have to be. This is more of a design issue than a language specific feature

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  • How to implement isValid correctly?

    - by Songo
    I'm trying to provide a mechanism for validating my object like this: class SomeObject { private $_inputString; private $_errors=array(); public function __construct($inputString) { $this->_inputString = $inputString; } public function getErrors() { return $this->_errors; } public function isValid() { $isValid = preg_match("/Some regular expression here/", $this->_inputString); if($isValid==0){ $this->_errors[]= 'Error was found in the input'; } return $isValid==1; } } Then when I'm testing my code I'm doing it like this: $obj = new SomeObject('an INVALID input string'); $isValid = $obj->isValid(); $errors=$obj->getErrors(); $this->assertFalse($isValid); $this->assertNotEmpty($errors); Now the test passes correctly, but I noticed a design problem here. What if the user called $obj->getErrors() before calling $obj->isValid()? The test will fail because the user has to validate the object first before checking the error resulting from validation. I think this way the user depends on a sequence of action to work properly which I think is a bad thing because it exposes the internal behaviour of the class. How do I solve this problem? Should I tell the user explicitly to validate first? Where do I mention that? Should I change the way I validate? Is there a better solution for this? UPDATE: I'm still developing the class so changes are easy and renaming functions and refactoring them is possible.

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  • DB Object passing between classes singleton, static or other?

    - by Stephen
    So I'm designing a reporting system at work it's my first project written OOP and I'm stuck on the design choice for the DB class. Obviously I only want to create one instance of the DB class per-session/user and then pass it to each of the classes that need it. What I don't know it what's best practice for implementing this. Currently I have code like the following:- class db { private $user = 'USER'; private $pass = 'PASS'; private $tables = array( 'user','report', 'etc...'); function __construct(){ //SET UP CONNECTION AND TABLES } }; class report{ function __construct ($params = array(), $db, $user) { //Error checking/handling trimed //$db is the database object we created $this->db = $db; //$this->user is the user object for the logged in user $this->user = $user; $this->reportCreate(); } public function setPermission($permissionId = 1) { //Note the $this->db is this the best practise solution? $this->db->permission->find($permissionId) //Note the $this->user is this the best practise solution? $this->user->checkPermission(1) $data=array(); $this->db->reportpermission->insert($data) } };//end report I've been reading about using static classes and have just come across Singletons (though these appear to be passé already?) so what's current best practice for doing this?

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  • Avoiding Object Oriented Pitfalls, Migrating from C, What Worked for You?

    - by Stephen
    I've been programming in procedural languages for quite some time now, and my first reaction to a problem is to start breaking it down into tasks to perform rather than to consider the different entities (objects) that exist and their relationships. I have had a university course in OOP, and understand the fundamentals of encapsulation, data abstraction, polymorphism, modularity and inheritance. I read Learning to think in the Object Oriented Way and Learning object oriented thinking, and will be looking at some of the books pointed to in those answers. I think that several of my medium to large sized projects will benefit from effective use of OOP but as a novice I would like to avoid time consuming, common errors. Based on your experiences, what are these pitfalls and what are reasonable ways around them? If you could explain why they are pitfalls, and how your suggestion is effective in addressing the issue it'd be appreciated. I'm thinking along the lines of something like "Is it common to have a fair number of observer and modifier methods and use private variables or are there techniques for consolidating/reducing them?" I'm not worried about using C++ as a pure OO language, if there are good reasons to mix methods. (Reminiscent of the reasons to use GOTOs, albeit sparingly.) Thank you!

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  • who are software design engineers?

    - by Sepala
    My question is, who are software design engineers? And, what is the meaning of the following statement (from a software design engineer job ad)? "Application domain knowledge is essential and....." What is application domain? SDLC? My hope is to become a software engineer one day (OK, to be honest, more than that. I need to be a legend), that who do programming (They say this job has no programming). I am following final year of my Bsc(Hons) in computing and I have completed a foreign diploma, majoring software engineering - Java technologies. Will this job experience help me out to get a job in my desired position, which is mentioned above, after the degree? Wikipedia and google never gave a clear straight forward answer!! Please help!

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  • Code Structure / Level Design: Plants vs Zombies game level dissection

    - by lalan
    Hi Friends, I am interested in learning the class structure of Plants vs Zombies, particularly level design; for those who haven't played it - this video contains nice play-through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DfdOIJ4xw. How would I go ahead and design the code, mostly structure & classes, which allows for maximum flexibility & clean development? I am familiar with data driven design concepts, and would use events to handle most of dynamic behavior. Dissection at macro level: (Once every Level) Load tilemap, props, etc -- basically build the map (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) Show Enemies you'll face during present level (Once every Level) Unit Selection Window/Panel - selection of defensive plants (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) HUD Creation - based on unit selection (Level Loop) Enemy creation - based on types of zombies allowed (Level Loop) Sun/Resource generation (Level Loop) Show messages like 'huge wave of zombies coming', 'final wave' (Level Loop) Other unique events - Spawn gifts, money, tombstones, etc (Once every Level) Unlock new plant Potential game scripts: a) Level definitions: Level_1_1.xml, Level_1_2.xml, etc. Level_1_1.xml :: Sample script <map> <tilemap>tilemapFrontLawn</tilemap> <SpawnPoints> tiles where particular type of zombies (land vs water) may spawn</spawnPoints> <props> position, entity array -- lawnmower, </props> </map> <zombies> <... list of zombies who gonna attack by ids...> </zombies> <plants> <... list by plants which are available for defense by ids...> </plants> <progression> <ZombieWave name='first wave' spawnScript='zombieLightWave.lua' unlock='null'> <startMessages time=1.5>Ready</startMessages> <endMessages time=1.5>Huge wave of zombies incoming</endMessages> </ZombieWave> </progression> b) Entities definitions: .xmls containing zombies, plants, sun, lawnmower, coins, etc description. Potential classes: //LevelManager - Based on the level under play, it will load level script. Few of the // functions it may have: class LevelManager { public: bool load(string levelFileName); bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); private: LevelData* mLevelData; } // LevelData - Contains the details of level loaded by LevelManager. class LevelData { private: string file; // array of camera,dialog,attackwaves, etc in active level LevelCutSceneCamera** mArrayCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog** mArrayCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave** mArrayAttackWave; .... // which camera,dialog,attackwave is active in level uint mCursorCutSceneCamera; uint mCursorCutSceneDialog; uint mCursorAttackWave; public: // based on cursor, get the next camera,dialog,attackwave,etc in active level // return false/true based on failure/success bool nextCutSceneCamera(LevelCutSceneCamera**); bool nextCutSceneDialog(LevelCutSceneDialog**); } // LevelUnderPlay- LevelManager class LevelUnderPlay { private: LevelCutSceneCamera* mCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog* mCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave* mAttackWave; Entities** mSelectedPlants; Entities** mAllowedZombies; bool isCutSceneCameraActive; public: bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); } I am totally confused.. :( Does it make sense of using class composition (have flat class hierarchy) for managing levels. Is it a good idea to just add/remove/update sprites (or any drawable stuff) to current scene from LevelManager or LevelUnderPlay? If I want to make non-linear level design, how should I go ahead? Perhaps I would need a LevelProgression class, which would decide what to do based on decision tree. Any suggestions would be appreciated very much. Thank for your time, lalan

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  • Relationship between TDD and Software Architecture/Design

    - by Christopher Francisco
    I'm new to TDD and have been reading the theory since applying it is more complicated than it sounds when you're learning by yourself. As far as I know, the objective is to write test cases for each requirement and run the test so it fails (to prevent a false positive). Afterward, you should write the minimum amount of code that can pass the test and move to the next one. That being said, is it true that you get a fast development, but what about the code itself? this theory makes me think you are not considering things like abstraction, delegation of responsibilities, design patterns, architecture and others since you're just writing "the minimum amount of code that can pass the test". I know I'm probably wrong because if this were true, we'd have a lot of crappy developers with poor software architecture and documentation so I'm asking for a guide here, what's the relationship between TDD and Software Architecture/Design?

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  • Design patterns frequently seen in embedded systems programming

    - by softwarelover
    I don't have any question related to coding. My concerns are about embedded systems programming independent of any particular programming language. Because I am new in the realm of embedded programming, I would quite appreciate responses from those who consider themselves experienced embedded systems programmers. I basically have 2 questions. Of the design patterns listed below are there any seen frequently in embedded systems programming? Abstraction-Occurrence pattern General Hierarchy pattern Player-Role pattern Singleton pattern Observer pattern Delegation pattern Adapter pattern Facade pattern Immutable pattern Read-Only Interface pattern Proxy pattern As an experienced embedded developer, what design patterns have you, as an individual, come across? There is no need to describe the details. Only the pattern names would suffice. Please share your own experience. I believe the answers to the above questions would work as a good starting point for any novice programmers in the embedded world.

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  • Modified Strategy Design Pattern

    - by Samuel Walker
    I've started looking into Design Patterns recently, and one thing I'm coding would suit the Strategy pattern perfectly, except for one small difference. Essentially, some (but not all) of my algorithms, need an extra parameter or two passed to them. So I'll either need to pass them an extra parameter when I invoke their calculate method or store them as variables inside the ConcreteAlgorithm class, and be able to update them before I call the algorithm. Is there a design pattern for this need / How could I implement this while sticking to the Strategy Pattern? I've considered passing the client object to all the algorithms, and storing the variables in there, then using that only when the particular algorithm needs it. However, I think this is both unwieldy, and defeats the point of the strategy pattern. Just to be clear I'm implementing in Java, and so don't have the luxury of optional parameters (which would solve this nicely).

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  • Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Design review for application facing memory issues

    - by Mr Moose
    I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I want to paint an accurate picture of the problems my app is facing and then pose some questions below; I am trying to address some self inflicted design pain that is now leading to my application crashing due to out of memory errors. An abridged description of the problem domain is as follows; The application takes in a “dataset” that consists of numerous text files containing related data An individual text file within the dataset usually contains approx 20 “headers” that contain metadata about the data it contains. It also contains a large tab delimited section containing data that is related to data in one of the other text files contained within the dataset. The number of columns per file is very variable from 2 to 256+ columns. The original application was written to allow users to load a dataset, map certain columns of each of the files which basically indicating key information on the files to show how they are related as well as identify a few expected column names. Once this is done, a validation process takes place to enforce various rules and ensure that all the relationships between the files are valid. Once that is done, the data is imported into a SQL Server database. The database design is an EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) model used to cater for the variable columns per file. I know EAV has its detractors, but in this case, I feel it was a reasonable choice given the disparate data and variable number of columns submitted in each dataset. The memory problem Given the fact the combined size of all text files was at most about 5 megs, and in an effort to reduce the database transaction time, it was decided to read ALL the data from files into memory and then perform the following; perform all the validation whilst the data was in memory relate it using an object model Start DB transaction and write the key columns row by row, noting the Id of the written row (all tables in the database utilise identity columns), then the Id of the newly written row is applied to all related data Once all related data had been updated with the key information to which it relates, these records are written using SqlBulkCopy. Due to our EAV model, we essentially have; x columns by y rows to write, where x can by 256+ and rows are often into the tens of thousands. Once all the data is written without error (can take several minutes for large datasets), Commit the transaction. The problem now comes from the fact we are now receiving individual files containing over 30 megs of data. In a dataset, we can receive any number of files. We’ve started seen datasets of around 100 megs coming in and I expect it is only going to get bigger from here on in. With files of this size, data can’t even be read into memory without the app falling over, let alone be validated and imported. I anticipate having to modify large chunks of the code to allow validation to occur by parsing files line by line and am not exactly decided on how to handle the import and transactions. Potential improvements I’ve wondered about using GUIDs to relate the data rather than relying on identity fields. This would allow data to be related prior to writing to the database. This would certainly increase the storage required though. Especially in an EAV design. Would you think this is a reasonable thing to try, or do I simply persist with identity fields (natural keys can’t be trusted to be unique across all submitters). Use of staging tables to get data into the database and only performing the transaction to copy data from staging area to actual destination tables. Questions For systems like this that import large quantities of data, how to you go about keeping transactions small. I’ve kept them as small as possible in the current design, but they are still active for several minutes and write hundreds of thousands of records in one transaction. Is there a better solution? The tab delimited data section is read into a DataTable to be viewed in a grid. I don’t need the full functionality of a DataTable, so I suspect it is overkill. Is there anyway to turn off various features of DataTables to make them more lightweight? Are there any other obvious things you would do in this situation to minimise the memory footprint of the application described above? Thanks for your kind attention.

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  • C++ Library API Design

    - by johannes
    I'm looking for a good resource for learning about good API design for C++ libraries, looking at shared objects/dlls etc. There are many resources on writing nice APIs, nice classes, templates and so on at source level, but barely anything about putting things together in shared libs and executables. Books like Large-Scale C++ Software Design by John Lakos are interesting but massively outdated. What I'm looking for is advice i.e. on handling templates. With templates in my API I often end up with library code in my executable (or other library) so if I fix a bug in there I can't simply roll out the new library but have to recompile and redistribute all clients of that code. (and yes, I know some solutions like trying to instantiate at least the most common versions inside the library etc.) I'm also looking for other caveats and things to mind for keeping binary compatibility while working on C++ libraries. Is there a good website or book on such things?

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  • How do you approach database design?

    - by bron
    I am primarily a web developer and I have a couple of personal projects which I want to kick off. One thing that is bugging me is database design. I have gone through in school db normalization and stuff like that but it has been a couple of years ago and I have never had experience with relational database design except for school. So how you do you approach database from a web app perspective? How do you begin and what do you look out for? What are flags for caution?

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  • How to design software when using BDD?

    - by Léster
    I'm working on a project right now and it's my first project using BDD. Up till now, the user stories have proven themselves a very valuable weapon to understand requirements and to specify the solution in a comprehensive, easy to understand language. My question is this: now that my user stories are complete, how do I design my solution? I understand that I derive behavior tests from my user stories, and I have to do UI design, but am I supposed to use good ol' UML? I'm under the impression that when using user stories, UML is left out; is this correct? Léster

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  • How to fill certain application design learning "gaps"?

    - by e4rthdog
    In life it doesnt matter if you do one thing for 15 years. You will end up waking one day and asking stuff that are equal to "how do i walk?" :) My specific question is that as a new entrant to C# and OOP i am stepping into many little "details" that need to be addressed. Written a lot of code in VB.NET / cobol / simple php e.t.c surely does not help much into the OOP world... So , even after reading entry level books for C# and watching some videos i recently found out about the "factory model design" for applications. I would appreciate if any of you guys recomment some reading on application design architecture for further reading...

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  • Online examples for software design diagrams

    - by Gerenuk
    Do you know where I can find a good example of software design diagrams and specs on the internet? Like UML, specs and similar. I'd like to understand this approach better. Before I just started coding and now I'd like plan more in advance. By diagrams I don't mean made-up examples, but something that would actually be used. Also it shouldn't be so trivial that there is no use of using diagrams. Ideally it shouldn't be too large either. Do you know a good online source? (this question is about online resources and specific examples only. it is not asking about books or advise how to learn software design.)

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  • C# Open Source software that is useful for learning Design Patterns

    - by Fathom Savvy
    In college I took a class in Expert Systems. The language the book taught (CLIPS) was esoteric - Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition. I remember having a tough time with it. So, after almost failing the class, I needed to create the most awesome Expert System for my final presentation. I chose to create an expert system that would calculate risk analysis for a person's retirement portfolio. In short, the system would provide the services normally performed by one's financial adviser. In other words, based on personality, age, state of the macro economy, and other factors, should one's portfolio be conservative, moderate, or aggressive? In the appendix of the book (or on the CD-ROM), there was this in-depth example program for something unrelated to my presentation. Over my break, I read and re-read every line of that program until I understood it to the letter. Even though it was unrelated, I learned more than I ever could by reading all of the chapters. My presentation turned out to be pretty damn good and I received praises from my professor and classmates. So, the moral of the story is..., by understanding other people's code, you can gain greater insight into a language/paradigm than by reading canonical examples. Still, to this day, I am having trouble with everyday design patterns such as the Factory Pattern. I would like to know if anyone could recommend open source software that would help me understand the Gang of Four design patterns, at the very least. I have read the books, but I'm having trouble writing code for the concepts in the real world. Perhaps, by studying code used in today's real world applications, it might just "click". I realize a piece of software may only implement one kind of design pattern. But, if the pattern is an implementation you think is good for learning, and you know what pattern to look for within the source, I'm hoping you can tell me about it. For example, the System.Linq.Expressions namespace has a good example of the Visitor Pattern. The client calls Expression.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()), which calls ExpressionVisitor (VisitExtension), which calls back to Expression (VisitChildren), which then calls Expression (Accept) again - wooah, kinda convoluted. The point to note here is that VisitChildren is a virtual method. Both Expression and those classes derived from Expression can implement the VisitChildren method any way they want. This means that one type of Expression can run code that is completely different from another type of derived Expression, even though the ExpressionVisitor class is the same in the Accept method. (As a side note Expression.Accept is also virtual). In the end, the code provides a real world example that you won't get in any book because it's kinda confusing. To summarize, If you know of any open source software that uses a design pattern implementation you were impressed by, please list it here. I'm sure it will help many others besides just me. public class VisitorPatternTest { public void Main() { Expression normalExpr = new Expression(); normalExpr.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()); Expression binExpr = new BinaryExpression(); binExpr.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()); } } public class Expression { protected internal virtual Expression Accept(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { return visitor.VisitExtension(this); } protected internal virtual Expression VisitChildren(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { if (!this.CanReduce) { throw Error.MustBeReducible(); } return visitor.Visit(this.ReduceAndCheck()); } public virtual Expression Visit(Expression node) { if (node != null) { return node.Accept(this); } return null; } public Expression ReduceAndCheck() { if (!this.CanReduce) { throw Error.MustBeReducible(); } Expression expression = this.Reduce(); if ((expression == null) || (expression == this)) { throw Error.MustReduceToDifferent(); } if (!TypeUtils.AreReferenceAssignable(this.Type, expression.Type)) { throw Error.ReducedNotCompatible(); } return expression; } } public class BinaryExpression : Expression { protected internal override Expression Accept(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { return visitor.VisitBinary(this); } protected internal override Expression VisitChildren(ExpressionVisitor visitor) { return CreateDummyExpression(); } protected internal Expression CreateDummyExpression() { Expression dummy = new Expression(); return dummy; } } public class ExpressionVisitor { public virtual Expression Visit(Expression node) { if (node != null) { return node.Accept(this); } return null; } protected internal virtual Expression VisitExtension(Expression node) { return node.VisitChildren(this); } protected internal virtual Expression VisitBinary(BinaryExpression node) { return ValidateBinary(node, node.Update(this.Visit(node.Left), this.VisitAndConvert<LambdaExpression>(node.Conversion, "VisitBinary"), this.Visit(node.Right))); } }

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