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• Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  I’m a developer, I like to write new exciting code everyday, my perfect day at work is a day that when I wake up, I know that I have to write some code that I haven’t done before or to use a new framework/language/platform that is unknown to me. The best days in the office is when a project is waiting for me to architect or write. In my 15 years in the development field, I had to in order to get a better salary to manage people, not just to lead developers, to actually manage people. Something that I found out when I get into a management position is that I’m not that good at managing people, and not afraid to say it. I do not enjoy that part of the job, the worse one, takes time away from what I really like. Leading developers and managing people are very different things. I do like teaching and leading developers in a project. Yet most people believe, and is true in most companies, the way to get a better salary is to be promoted to a manager position. In order to advance in your career you need to let go of the everyday writing code and become a supervisor or manager. This is the path for developers after they become senior developers. As you get older and your family grows, the only way to hit your salary requirements is to advance your career to become a manager and get that manager salary. That path is the common in most companies, the most intelligent companies out there, have learned that promoting good developers mean getting a crappy manager and losing a good resource. Now scratch everything I said, because as I previously stated, I don’t see myself going to the office everyday and just managing people until is time to go home. I like to spend hours working in some code to accomplish a task, learning new platforms and languages or patterns to existing languages. Being interrupted every 15 minutes by emails or people stopping by my office to resolve their problems, is not something I could enjoy. All the sudden riding my motorcycle to work one cold morning over the Redlands Canyon and listening to .NET Rocks podcast, Michael “Doc” Norton explaining how to take control of your development career without necessary going to the manager’s track. I know, I should not have headphones under my helmet when riding a motorcycle in California. His conversation with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell was just confirming everything I have ever did with actually more details and assuring that there are other paths. His method was simple yet most of us, already do many of those steps, Mr. Michael “Doc” Norton believe that it pays off on the long run, that finally companies prefer to pay higher salaries to those developers, yet I would actually think that many companies do not see developers that way, this is not true for bigger companies. However I do believe the value of those developers increase and most of the time, changing companies could increase their salary instead of staying in the same one. In short without even trying to get into the shadow of Mr. Norton and without following the steps in the order; you should love to learn new technologies, and then teach them to other geeks. I personally have learn many technologies and I haven’t stop doing that, I am a professor at UCR where I teach ASP.NET and Silverlight. Mr Norton continues that after than, you want to be involve in the development community, user groups, online forums, open source projects. I personally talk to user groups, I’m very active in forums asking and answering questions as well as for those I got awarded the Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. After you accomplish all those, you should also expose yourself for what you know and what you do not know, learning a new language will make you humble again as well as extremely happy. There is no better feeling that learning a new language or pattern in your daily job. If you love your job everyday and what you do, I really recommend you to follow Michael’s presentation that he kindly share it on the link below. His confirmation is a refreshing, knowing that my future is not behind a desk where the computer screen is on my right hand side instead of in front of me. Where I don’t have to spent the days filling up performance forms for people and the new platforms that I haven’t been using yet are just at my fingertips. Presentation here. http://www.slideshare.net/LeanDog/take-control-of-your-development-career-michael-doc-norton?from=share_email_logout3 Take Control of Your Development Career Welcome! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] Recovering Post Technical I love to learn I love to teach I love to work in teams I love to write code I really love to write code What about YOU? Do you love your job? Do you love your Employer? Do you love your Boss? What do you love? What do you really love? Take Control Take Control • Get Noticed • Get Together • Get Your Mojo • Get Naked • Get Schooled Get Noticed Get Noticed Know Your Business Get Noticed Get Noticed Understand Management Get Noticed Get Noticed Do Your Existing Job Get Noticed Get Noticed Make Yourself Expendable Get Together Get Together Join a User Group Get Together Help Run a User Group Get Together Start a User Group Get Your Mojo Get Your Mojo Kata Get Your Mojo Koans Get Your Mojo Breakable Toys Get Your Mojo Open Source Get Naked Get Naked Run with Group A Get Naked Do Something Different Get Naked Own Your Mistakes Get Naked Admit You Don’t Know Get Schooled Get Schooled Choose a Mentor Get Schooled Attend Conferences Get Schooled Teach a New Subject Get Started Read These (Again) Take Control of Your Development Career Thank You! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] In a short summary, I recommend any developer to check his blog and more important his presentation, I haven’t been lucky enough to watch him live, I’m looking forward the day I have the opportunity. He is giving us hope in the future of developers, when I see some of my geek friends moving to position that in short years they begin to regret, I get more unsure of my future doing what I love. I would say that now is looking at the spectrum of companies that understand and appreciate developers. There are a few there, hopefully with time code sweat shops will start disappearing and being a developer will feed a family of 4. Cheers Al tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/07/career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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• Sorting a list of numbers with modified cost

  - by David

  First, this was one of the four problems we had to solve in a project last year and I couldn’t find a suitable algorithm so we handle in a brute force solution. Problem: The numbers are in a list that is not sorted and supports only one type of operation. The operation is defined as follows: Given a position i and a position j the operation moves the number at position i to position j without altering the relative order of the other numbers. If i j, the positions of the numbers between positions j and i - 1 increment by 1, otherwise if i < j the positions of the numbers between positions i+1 and j decreases by 1. This operation requires i steps to find a number to move and j steps to locate the position to which you want to move it. Then the number of steps required to move a number of position i to position j is i+j. We need to design an algorithm that given a list of numbers, determine the optimal (in terms of cost) sequence of moves to rearrange the sequence. Attempts: Part of our investigation was around NP-Completeness, we make it a decision problem and try to find a suitable transformation to any of the problems listed in Garey and Johnson’s book: Computers and Intractability with no results. There is also no direct reference (from our point of view) to this kind of variation in Donald E. Knuth’s book: The art of Computer Programing Vol. 3 Sorting and Searching. We also analyzed algorithms to sort linked lists but none of them gives a good idea to find de optimal sequence of movements. Note that the idea is not to find an algorithm that orders the sequence, but one to tell me the optimal sequence of movements in terms of cost that organizes the sequence, you can make a copy and sort it to analyze the final position of the elements if you want, in fact we may assume that the list contains the numbers from 1 to n, so we know where we want to put each number, we are just concerned with minimizing the total cost of the steps. We tested several greedy approaches but all of them failed, divide and conquer sorting algorithms can’t be used because they swap with no cost portions of the list and our dynamic programing approaches had to consider many cases. The brute force recursive algorithm takes all the possible combinations of movements from i to j and then again all the possible moments of the rest of the element’s, at the end it returns the sequence with less total cost that sorted the list, as you can imagine the cost of this algorithm is brutal and makes it impracticable for more than 8 elements. Our observations: n movements is not necessarily cheaper than n+1 movements (unlike swaps in arrays that are O(1)). There are basically two ways of moving one element from position i to j: one is to move it directly and the other is to move other elements around i in a way that it reaches the position j. At most you make n-1 movements (the untouched element reaches its position alone). If it is the optimal sequence of movements then you didn’t move the same element twice.

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• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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• Book Review: Brownfield Application Development in .NET

  - by DotNetBlues

  I recently finished reading the book Brownfield Application Development in .NET by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham.  The book is available from Manning.  First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of Manning as a publisher.  I've found their books to be top-quality, over all.  As a Kindle owner, I also appreciate getting an ebook copy along with the dead tree copy.  I find ebooks to be much more convenient to read, but hard-copies are easier to reference. The book covers, surprisingly enough, working with brownfield applications.  Which is well and good, if that term has meaning to you.  It didn't for me.  Without retreading a chunk of the first chapter, the authors break code bases into three broad categories: greenfield, brownfield, and legacy.  Greenfield is, essentially, new development that hasn't had time to rust and is (hopefully) being approached with some discipline.  Legacy applications are those that are more or less stable and functional, that do not expect to see a lot of work done to them, and are more likely to be replaced than reworked. Brownfield code is the gray (brown?) area between the two and the authors argue, quite effectively, that it is the most likely state for an application to be in.  Brownfield code has, in some way, been allowed to tarnish around the edges and can be difficult to work with.  Although I hadn't realized it, most of the code I've worked on has been brownfield.  Sometimes, there's talk of scrapping and starting over.  Sometimes, the team dismisses increased discipline as ivory tower nonsense.  And, sometimes, I've been the ignorant culprit vexing my future self. The book is broken into two major sections, plus an introduction chapter and an appendix.  The first section covers what the authors refer to as "The Ecosystem" which consists of version control, build and integration, testing, metrics, and defect management.  The second section is on actually writing code for brownfield applications and discusses object-oriented principles, architecture, external dependencies, and, of course, how to deal with these when coming into an existing code base. The ecosystem section is just shy of 140 pages long and brings some real meat to the matter.  The focus on "pain points" immediately sets the tone as problem-solution, rather than academic.  The authors also approach some of the topics from a different angle than some essays I've read on similar topics.  For example, the chapter on automated testing is on just that -- automated testing.  It's all well and good to criticize a project as conflating integration tests with unit tests, but it really doesn't make anyone's life better.  The discussion on testing is more focused on the "right" level of testing for existing projects.  Sometimes, an integration test is the best you can do without gutting a section of functional code.  Even if you can sell other developers and/or management on doing so, it doesn't actually provide benefit to your customers to rewrite code that works.  This isn't to say the authors encourage sloppy coding.  Far from it.  Just that they point out the wisdom of ignoring the sleeping bear until after you deal with the snarling wolf. The other sections take a similarly real-world, workable approach to the pain points they address.  As the section moves from technical solutions like version control and continuous integration (CI) to the softer, process issues of metrics and defect tracking, the authors begin to gently suggest moving toward a zero defect count.  While that really sounds like an unreasonable goal for a lot of ongoing projects, it's quite apparent that the authors have first-hand experience with taming some gruesome projects.  The suggestions are grounded and workable, and the difficulty of some situations is explicitly acknowledged. I have to admit that I started getting bored by the end of the ecosystem section.  No matter how valuable I think a good project manager or business analyst is to a successful ALM, at the end of the day, I'm a gear-head.  Also, while I agreed with a lot of the ecosystem ideas, in theory, I didn't necessarily feel that a lot of the single-developer projects that I'm often involved in really needed that level of rigor.  It's only after reading the sidebars and commentary in the coding section that I had the context for the arguments made in favor of a strong ecosystem supporting the development process.  That isn't to say that I didn't support good product management -- indeed, I've probably pushed too hard, on occasion, for a strong ALM outside of just development.  This book gave me deeper insight into why some corners shouldn't be cut and how damaging certain sins of omission can be. The code section, though, kept me engaged for its entirety.  Many technical books can be used as reference material from day one.  The authors were clear, however, that this book is not one of these.  The first chapter of the section (chapter seven, over all) addresses object oriented (OO) practices.  I've read any number of definitions, discussions, and treatises on OO.  None of the chapter was new to me, but it was a good review, and I'm of the opinion that it's good to review the foundations of what you do, from time to time, so I didn't mind. The remainder of the book is really just about how to apply OOP to existing code -- and, just because all your code exists in classes does not mean that it's object oriented.  That topic has the potential to be extremely condescending, but the authors miraculously managed to never once make me feel like a dolt or that they were wagging their finger at me for my prior sins.  Instead, they continue the "pain points" and problem-solution presentation to give concrete examples of how to apply some pretty academic-sounding ideas.  That's a point worth emphasizing, as my experience with most OO discussions is that they stay in the academic realm.  This book gives some very, very good explanations of why things like the Liskov Substitution Principle exist and why a corporate programmer should even care.  Even if you know, with absolute certainty, that you'll never have to work on an existing code-base, I would recommend this book just for the clarity it provides on OOP. This book goes beyond just theory, or even real-world application.  It presents some methods for fixing problems that any developer can, and probably will, encounter in the wild.  First, the authors address refactoring application layers and internal dependencies.  Then, they take you through those layers from the UI to the data access layer and external dependencies.  Finally, they come full circle to tie it all back to the overall process.  By the time the book is done, you're left with a lot of ideas, but also a reasonable plan to begin to improve an existing project structure. Throughout the book, it's apparent that the authors have their own preferred methodology (TDD and domain-driven design), as well as some preferred tools.  The "Our .NET Toolbox" is something of a neon sign pointing to that latter point.  They do not beat the reader over the head with anything resembling a "One True Way" mentality.  Even for the most emphatic points, the tone is quite congenial and helpful.  With some of the near-theological divides that exist within the tech community, I found this to be one of the more remarkable characteristics of the book.  Although the authors favor tools that might be considered Alt.NET, there is no reason the advice and techniques given couldn't be quite successful in a pure Microsoft shop with Team Foundation Server.  For that matter, even though the book specifically addresses .NET, it could be applied to a Java and Oracle shop, as well.

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• Special thanks to everyone that helped me in 2010.

  - by mbcrump

  2010 has been a very good year for me and I wanted to create a list and thank everyone for what they have done for me.  I also wanted to thank everyone for reading and subscribing to my blog. It is hard to believe that people actually want to read what I write. I feel like I owe a huge thanks to everyone listed below. Looking back upon 2010, I feel that I’ve grown as a developer and you are part of that reason. Sometimes we get caught up in day to day work and forget to give thanks to those that helped us along the way. The list below is mine, it includes people and companies. This list is obviously not going to include everyone that has helped, just those that have stood out in my mind. When I think back upon 2010, their names keep popping up in my head. So here goes, in no particular order.  People Dave Campbell – For everything he has done for the Silverlight Community with his Silverlight Cream blog. I can’t think of a better person to get recognition at the Silverlight FireStarter event. I also wanted to thank him for spending several hours of his time helping me track down a bug in my feedburner account. Victor Gaudioso – For his large collection of video tutorials on his blog and the passion and enthusiasm he has for Silverlight. We have talked on the phone and I’ve never met anyone so fired up for Silverlight. Kunal Chowdhury – Kunal has always been available for me to bounce ideas off of. Kunal has also answered a lot of questions that stumped me. His blog and CodeProject article have green a great help to me and the Silverlight Community. Glen Gordon – I was looking frantically for a Windows Phone 7 several months before release and Glen found one for me. This allowed me to start a blog series on the Windows Phone 7 hardware and developing an application from start to finish that Scott Guthrie retweeted.  Jeff Blankenburg – For listening to my complaints in the early stages of Windows Phone 7. Jeff was always very polite and gave me his cell phone number to talk it over. He also walked me through several problems that I was having early on. Pete Brown – For writing Silverlight 4 in Action. This book is definitely a labor of love. I followed Pete on Twitter as he was writing it and he spent a lot of late nights and weekends working on it. I felt a lot smarter after reading it the first time. The second time was even better. John Papa – For all of his work on the Silverlight Firestarter and the Silverlight community in general. He has also helped me on a personal level with several things. Daniel Heisler – For putting up with me the past year while we worked on many .NET projects together in 2010. Alvin Ashcraft – For publishing a daily blog post on the best of .NET links. He has linked to my site many times and I really appreciate what he does for the community. Chris Alcock – For publishing the Morning Brew every weekday. I remember when I first appeared on his site, I started getting hundreds of hits on my site and wondered if I was getting a DOS attack or something. It was great to find out that Chris had linked to one of my articles. Joel Cochran – For spending a week teaching “Blend-O-Rama”. This was my one of my favorite sessions of this year. I learned a lot about Expression Blend from it and the best part was that it was free and during lunchtime. Jeremy Likness – Jeremy is smart – very smart. I have learned a lot from Jeremy over the past year. He is also involved in the Silverlight community in every way possible, from forums to blog post to screencast to open source. It goes on and on. The people that I met at VSLive Orlando 2010. I had a great time chatting with Walt Ritscher, Wallace McClure, Tim Huckabee and David Platt. Also a special thanks to all of my friends on Twitter like @wilhil, @DBVaughan, @DataArtist, @wbm, @DirkStrauss and @rsringeri and many many more. Software Companies / Events / May of gave me FREE stuff. =) Microsoft (3) – I was sent a free coupon code by Microsoft to take the Silverlight 4 Beta Exam. I jumped on the offer and took the exam. It was great being selected to try out the exam before it goes public even though Microsoft eventually published a universal coupon code for everyone. I am still waiting to find out if I passed the exam. My fingers are crossed. Microsoft reaching out to me with some questions regarding the .NET Community. I’ve never had a company contact me with such interest in the community. Having a contest where 75 people could win a $100 gift certificate and a T-Shirt for submitting a Windows Phone 7 app. I submitted my app and won. All of the free launch events this year (Windows Phone 7, Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET MVC). Wintellect – For providing an awesome day of free technical training called T.E.N. Where else can you get free training from some of the best programmers in the world? I also won a contest from them that included a NETAdvantage Ultimate License from Infragistics. VSLive – I attended the Orlando 2010 Conference and it was the best developer’s conference that I have ever attended. I got to know a lot of people at this conference and hang out with many wonderful speakers. I live tweeted the event and while it may have annoyed some, the organizers of VSLive loved it. I won the contest on Twitter and they invited me back to the 2011 session of my choice. This is a very nice gift and I really appreciate the generosity. BarcodeLib.com – For providing free barcode generating tools for a Non-Profit ASP.NET project that I was working on. Their third party controls really made this a breeze compared to my existing solution. NDepend – It is absolutely the best tool to improve code quality. The product is extremely large and I would recommend heading over to their site to check it out. Silverlight Spy – I was writing a blog post on Silverlight Spy and Koen Zwikstra provided a FREE license to me. If you ever wanted to peek inside of a Silverlight Application then this is the tool for you. He is also working on a version that will support OOB and Windows Phone 7. I would recommend checking out his site. Birmingham .NET Users Group / Silverlight Nights User Group – It takes a lot of time to put together a user group meeting every month yet it always seems to happen. I don’t want to name names for fear of leaving someone out but both of these User Groups are excellent if you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Publishing Companies Manning Publishing – For giving me early access to Silverlight 4 in Action by Pete Brown. It was really nice to be able to read this awesome book while Pete was writing it. I was also one of the first people to publish a review of the book. Sams Publishing and DZone – For providing a copy of Silverlight 4 Unleashed by Laurent Bugnion for me to review for their site. The review is coming in January 2011. Special Shoutout to the following 3rd Party Silverlight Controls It has been a great pleasure to work with the following companies on 3rd Party Control Giveaways every month. It always amazes me how every 3rd Party Control company is so eager to help out the community. I’ve never been turned down by any of these companies! These giveaways have sparked a lot of interest in Silverlight and hopefully I can continue giving away a new set every month. If you are a 3rd Party Control company and are interested in participating in these giveaways then please email me at mbcrump29[at]gmail[d0t].com. The companies below have already participated in my giveaways: Infragistics (December 2010) - Win a set of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization!  Mindscape (November 2010) - Mindscape Silverlight Controls + Free Mega Pack Contest Telerik (October 2010) - Win Telerik RadControls for Silverlight! ($799 Value) Again, I just wanted to say Thanks to everyone for helping me grow as a developer.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Error data: line 2 column 1 when using pycurl with gzip stream

  - by Sagar Hatekar

  Thanks for reading. Background: I am trying to read a streaming API feed that returns data in JSON format, and then storing this data to a pymongo collection. The streaming API requires a "Accept-Encoding" : "Gzip" header. What's happening: Code fails on json.loads and outputs - Extra data: line 2 column 1 - line 4 column 1 (char 1891 - 5597) (Refer Error Log below) This does NOT happen while parsing every JSON object - it happens at random. My guess is I am encountering some weird JSON object after every "x" proper JSON objects. I did reference how to use pycurl if requested data is sometimes gzipped, sometimes not? and Encoding error while deserializing a json object from Google but so far have been unsuccessful at resolving this error. Could someone please help me out here? Error Log: Note: The raw dump of the JSON object below is basically using the repr() method. '{"id":"tag:search.twitter.com,2005:207958320747782146","objectType":"activity","actor":{"objectType":"person","id":"id:twitter.com:493653150","link":"http://www.twitter.com/Deathnews_7_24","displayName":"Death News 7/24","postedTime":"2012-02-16T01:30:12.000Z","image":"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1834408513/deathnewstwittersquare_normal.jpg","summary":"Crashes, Murders, Suicides, Accidents, Crime and Naturals Death News From All Around World","links":[{"href":"http://www.facebook.com/DeathNews724","rel":"me"}],"friendsCount":56,"followersCount":14,"listedCount":1,"statusesCount":1029,"twitterTimeZone":null,"utcOffset":null,"preferredUsername":"Deathnews_7_24","languages":["tr"]},"verb":"post","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z","generator":{"displayName":"web","link":"http://twitter.com"},"provider":{"objectType":"service","displayName":"Twitter","link":"http://www.twitter.com"},"link":"http://twitter.com/Deathnews_7_24/statuses/207958320747782146","body":"Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Writers\xe2\x80\x99 Catalyst, Dies at 63 http://t.co/WBsNlNtA","object":{"objectType":"note","id":"object:search.twitter.com,2005:207958320747782146","summary":"Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Writers\xe2\x80\x99 Catalyst, Dies at 63 http://t.co/WBsNlNtA","link":"http://twitter.com/Deathnews_7_24/statuses/207958320747782146","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z"},"twitter_entities":{"urls":[{"display_url":"nytimes.com/2012/05/30/boo\xe2\x80\xa6","indices":[52,72],"expanded_url":"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/books/kathi-kamen-goldmark-writers-catalyst-dies-at-63.html","url":"http://t.co/WBsNlNtA"}],"hashtags":[],"user_mentions":[]},"gnip":{"language":{"value":"en"},"matching_rules":[{"value":"url_contains: nytimes.com","tag":null}],"klout_score":11,"urls":[{"url":"http://t.co/WBsNlNtA","expanded_url":"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/books/kathi-kamen-goldmark-writers-catalyst-dies-at-63.html?_r=1"}]}}\r\n{"id":"tag:search.twitter.com,2005:207958321003638785","objectType":"activity","actor":{"objectType":"person","id":"id:twitter.com:178760897","link":"http://www.twitter.com/Mobanu","displayName":"Donald Ochs","postedTime":"2010-08-15T16:33:56.000Z","image":"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1493224811/small_mobany_Logo_normal.jpg","summary":"","links":[{"href":"http://www.mobanuweightloss.com","rel":"me"}],"friendsCount":10272,"followersCount":9698,"listedCount":30,"statusesCount":725,"twitterTimeZone":"Mountain Time (US & Canada)","utcOffset":"-25200","preferredUsername":"Mobanu","languages":["en"],"location":{"objectType":"place","displayName":"Crested Butte, Colorado"}},"verb":"post","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z","generator":{"displayName":"twitterfeed","link":"http://twitterfeed.com"},"provider":{"objectType":"service","displayName":"Twitter","link":"http://www.twitter.com"},"link":"http://twitter.com/Mobanu/statuses/207958321003638785","body":"Mobanu: Can Exercise Be Bad for You?: Researchers have found evidence that some people who exercise do worse on ... http://t.co/mTsQlNQO","object":{"objectType":"note","id":"object:search.twitter.com,2005:207958321003638785","summary":"Mobanu: Can Exercise Be Bad for You?: Researchers have found evidence that some people who exercise do worse on ... http://t.co/mTsQlNQO","link":"http://twitter.com/Mobanu/statuses/207958321003638785","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z"},"twitter_entities":{"urls":[{"display_url":"nyti.ms/KUmmMa","indices":[116,136],"expanded_url":"http://nyti.ms/KUmmMa","url":"http://t.co/mTsQlNQO"}],"hashtags":[],"user_mentions":[]},"gnip":{"language":{"value":"en"},"matching_rules":[{"value":"url_contains: nytimes.com","tag":null}],"klout_score":12,"urls":[{"url":"http://t.co/mTsQlNQO","expanded_url":"http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/can-exercise-be-bad-for-you/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed"}]}}\r\n' json exception: Extra data: line 2 column 1 - line 4 column 1 (char 1891 - 5597) Header Output: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8 Vary: Accept-Encoding Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 22:14:48 UTC Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Encoding: gzip get_stream.py: #!/usr/bin/env python import sys import pycurl import json import pymongo STREAM_URL = "https://stream.test.com:443/accounts/publishers/twitter/streams/track/Dev.json" AUTH = "userid:passwd" DB_HOST = "127.0.0.1" DB_NAME = "stream_test" class StreamReader: def __init__(self): try: self.count = 0 self.buff = "" self.mongo = pymongo.Connection(DB_HOST) self.db = self.mongo[DB_NAME] self.raw_tweets = self.db["raw_tweets_gnip"] self.conn = pycurl.Curl() self.conn.setopt(pycurl.ENCODING, 'gzip') self.conn.setopt(pycurl.URL, STREAM_URL) self.conn.setopt(pycurl.USERPWD, AUTH) self.conn.setopt(pycurl.WRITEFUNCTION, self.on_receive) self.conn.setopt(pycurl.HEADERFUNCTION, self.header_rcvd) while True: self.conn.perform() except Exception as ex: print "error ocurred : %s" % str(ex) def header_rcvd(self, header_data): print header_data def on_receive(self, data): temp_data = data self.buff += data if data.endswith("\r\n") and self.buff.strip(): try: tweet = json.loads(self.buff, encoding = 'UTF-8') self.buff = "" if tweet: try: self.raw_tweets.insert(tweet) except Exception as insert_ex: print "Error inserting tweet: %s" % str(insert_ex) self.count += 1 if self.count % 10 == 0: print "inserted "+str(self.count)+" tweets" except Exception as json_ex: print "json exception: %s" % str(json_ex) print repr(temp_data) stream = StreamReader()

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 29, 2012Popular ReleasesWindows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryPDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????，????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.4: Session name is displayed in the UI. Changes data directory for clickonce deployment so that sessions files are persisted between versions. Added a delete button in the sessions list window. Allow opening of the sessions local folder from the session list widow. Display the session name in the main window Ability to select which diablo process to hook up to when pressing new () function BUT only if multi-process support is selected in the generals settings tab menu. Session picker...WPUtils: WPUtils 1.2: Just fixed an issue related to isolated storage path for ChoosePhotoBehavior. Specifically CreateDirectory method only accepts relative path, but was given a "/photos/" path which would result in exception. Please make sure you have this fix if you are using ChoosePhotoBehavior! NOTE: Windows Phone SDK 7.1 or higher is required.CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogFree Aspx Image Gallery: Free Aspx Image Gallery Release V1: This is first basic release of my free aspx image gallery project. It is free to use and modify by the user without any need of providing any credit to me.Simple Microsoft Excel Document Converter (Convert To XLS, XLSX, PDF, XPS): ExcelDocConverter 0.1 Beta: Initial Release Microsoft Excel Documents Converter. Microsoft Excel 1997-2003 (XLS) Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 (XLSX) Portable Document Format (PDF) Microsoft XPS Document (XPS) Difference between NET2.0 and NET3.5 This program uses .NET Framework runtime library to run. Basically, they are no differences. Only the runtime library version is different. For older computers, i.e. Windows XP, might not have .NET Framework 3.5 installed, then use NET2.0 in stead. But, some Windows XP SP2 mig...Chaos games: Chaos games: Small app for generating fractals using chaos games[ITFA GROUP] CODE GENER: Code Gener 3.0 Final (Professional for .NET): Code Gener 3.0 Final (Professional for .NET) ReleaseTumblen3: tumblen3 Version27Sep2012: updated: instagram viewerVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.16: Changelog for 2.2.16 (32bit and 64bit) Now a standalone remote client also available to control the Engine remotely. 1. Added support for remote connections for status and configuration. MCEBuddy now uses port 23332. The remote server name, remote server port and local server port can be updated from the MCEBuddy.conf file BUT the Service or GUI needs to be restarted (i.e. reboot or restart service or restart program) for it to take effect. Refer to documentation for more details http://mce...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.MVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.1: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. This release uses Entity Framework 5 for data access and Ninject 3 for dependency injection. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 6): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 5 Added separate samples download with .vsix dependencies instead of source dependencies Support for FreeWheel SmartXML ad responses Support for Smooth Streaming SDK DownloaderPlugins Support for VMAP and TTML polling for live scenarios Support for custom smooth streaming byte stream and scheme handlers Support for new play time and position tracking plugin Added IsLiveChanged event Added AdaptivePlugin.MaxBitrate property Add...New Projects1325: amosaidhauidhaudhawud1326: sefsefsfsfefAggravation: A computer version of the classic board game Aggravation. This was built in Silverlight 4, and makes use of Prism and Behaviors. bjyxl: A project for practice my exchallange.BombaJob-WP: Windows Phone app for BombaJob.bg website. Available at GitHub too - https://github.com/supudo/BombaJob-WPDNN Module Creator: DNN Module Creator allows you to simply and easily create custom DotNetNuke modules directly from within the DotNetNuke CMS environment.Knuth Bit Operations: C# implementation of most of the bit operations from Volume 4A of "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald Knuth.Machine Factory: Machine Factory is a PowerShell script module, which allows you to automate VHD-based deployment and configuration of virtual and physical machines.Neolog-WP: Neolog.bg official app for Windows Phone http://www.neolog.bg/Ngi.Scada: Ngi.ScadaPaging SharePoint ListItems using listitems position: This is a console application which will display the listitems in a paged manner using the SharePoint listitems position.Pentagon-XnaGamePrototype: Pentagon is a small prototype of a Xna and F# top-down shmup, made for an exam of the Master of Game Development in the University of Verona.Sharepoint sample - using feature upgrade: Sample demonstrating the use of SharePoint feature upgrades to add a new web part to existing pages, and add a new page to existing sites.Simple Permutations: A simple static class to provide easy to use extension methods to objects of type IEnumerable<T> which can generate Permutations and Combinations.SP SIN: SP SIN (from SharePoint Script/Style INjector) solves an age-old problem for developers and administrators; how to add script and style sheet resources to ShareTEST56: A simple Testtestproject0928: dfgdfgdThe Escape: The Escape is a 3D-First-Person Game written completely in XNA(C#).TreeViewWebPartForDocLib: ?????????????Web?????。 ????????????。?????、????????????????。Tube++: The one and only youtube HD player /downloader for your PC . Windows XP/ Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Window Server 2003 / Windows server 2008 / Windows Server 2012Unique SMS: This is a Unique School Management System Project.Who Is Watching Your Site: Who Is Watching Your Site is new!WinRTTriggers: WinRT Triggers - much like Expression triggers in Silverlight, but for WinRT Windows Store applications,

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• Java Generics, JPA 2, J2EE, JSF 2, GWT, Ajax, Oracle's Java Strategies, Flex, iPhone, Agile ALM, Gra

  - by Kim Won

  Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 – India's Biggest Polyglot Conference and Workshops for IT Software Professionals Bangalore, April 9, 2010: The GIDS.Java Conference and Workshops has announced the complete program of over 50 sessions on the present and future of the Java language and VM, how they are evolving to meet the community's ever-changing needs, and some of the cutting-edge tools, technologies & techniques used for building robust enterprise Java applications today. The GIDs.Java track at Great Indian Developer Summit takes place 22 and 23 April 2010, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. As one of the longest running independent developer conferences in India, GIDS.Java at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is uniquely positioned to provide a blend of practical, pragmatic and immediately applicable knowledge and a glimpse of the future of technology. During 22 and 23 April 2010, GIDS.Java offers a multi-track conference, workshops, expo show floor, and networking opportunities. The first keynote at GIDS.Java "Pointy Haired Bosses and Pragmatic Programmers" is led by Dr. Venkat Subramaniam. He speaks about how each of us has a professional responsibility to be objective and make decisions that will help us and our teams be productive and deliver results. Venkat will pick on some fallacies, lay down facts, and discuss how to stay professional and objective in our daily efforts. The second keynote of the day explains the practical features that make the Cloud so interesting, and why everyone should start using it in their everyday life. Simone Brunozzi, Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist, will detail technical examples, business details all mixed with a lot of Italian humor to ensure audience enjoy this talk without a single line of code. The third keynote of the day gives an exciting overview of directions in the Java space for Oracle, featuring concrete signs of Oracles heavy investment, a clear concise strategy overview, and deep dives into some of the most interesting pieces of technology being developed in the Java Platform Group today; such as JavaEE, JDK7, JavaFX, and our exciting new visual tools. Featuring demos by a Java evangelism team star, Simon Ritter, this talk takes you top to bottom in Java Technology. Featured talks at GID.Web include: Good, Bad, and Ugly of Java Generics, Venkat Subramaniam Pure Java Ajax: An Overview of GWT 2.0, Marty Hall How JPA 2.0 Makes a Good Thing Even Better, Mike Keith Building Enterprise RIAs with Adobe Flex and Java, Sujit Reddy G Integrated Ajax Support in JSF 2.0, Marty Hall Design Patterns in Java and Groovy, Venkat Subramaniam A Gentle Introduction to iPhone and Obj-C for Java Developers, Matthew McCullough Cloud Computing: Azure for Java Developers, Janakiram MSV Ajax Support in the Prototype JavaScript Library, Marty Hall First steps to IT Heaven Through the Cloud. Part III: .Java, Simone Brunozi Building Web 2.0 User Interfaces for Web Service Models using JSF, Frank Nimphius and Jobinesh P Acceptance Test Driven Development, John Tobin and Mohammed Mohsinali Architecting Your Java Applications for the Cloud, Praveen Srivatsa Effective Java, Venkat Subramaniam The Amazing Groovy Weight-loss Plan, Scott Davis Enterprise Modeling - from Conceptual Planning to Technical Blueprints, J Sripad Java Collections Renaissance, Donald Raab and Vlad Zakharov Power 7 and IBM J9VM, Himanshu Goyal A Whistle-stop Tour of Maven 3.0, Matthew McCullough Mass Volume Opportunities for Java Developers, Jouko Nuottila Emerging Technology Complex Event Processing, Duvvuri Srinivas Agile ALM for Distributed Development, Karthi Swaminathan Dim Sum Grails - A Sampler of Practical Non Database-Driven Grails Applications, Scott Davis Diagnosing Performance Bottlenecks in J2EE, Deepak Kaul Business Driven Identity Management, Suneet Agera Combining Java EE with OSGi using Eclipse Gemini, Mike Keith Workshop: Essence of Functional Programming, Venkat Subramaniam Workshop: Agile Development, Tools, and Teams and Scrum Certification, Stephen Forte Workshop: Cloud Computing Boot Camp on the Google App Engine, Matthew McCullough Workshop: Building Your First Amazon App, Simone Brunozzi Workshop: The 180-min AJAX and JSON Spike Class, Scott Davis Workshop: PHP + Adobe Flex = Killer RIA, Shyamprasad P Workshop: User Expereince Evaluation Model Walkthrough, Sanna Häiväläinen Workshop: Building Data Centric Applications using Adobe Flex and Java, Prashant Singh Workshop: Monetizing your Apps with PayPal X Payments Platform, Khurram Khan, Praveen Alavilli Sponsors of Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 include: Platinum sponsors Microsoft, Oracle Forum Nokia and Adobe; Gold sponsors Intel and SAP; Silver sponsors Quest Software, PayPal, Telerik and AMT. About Great Indian Developer Summit Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials - GIDS.Workshops, from 20 April to 24 April at the IISc campus in Bangalore. At GIDS you'll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world. For further information on GIDS 2010, please visit the summit on the web http://www.developersummit.com/ A Saltmarch Media Press Release E: [email protected] Ph: +91 80 4005 1000

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• Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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• Linked List manipulation, issues retrieving data c++

  - by floatfil

  I'm trying to implement some functions to manipulate a linked list. The implementation is a template typename T and the class is 'List' which includes a 'head' pointer and also a struct: struct Node { // the node in a linked list T* data; // pointer to actual data, operations in T Node* next; // pointer to a Node }; Since it is a template, and 'T' can be any data, how do I go about checking the data of a list to see if it matches the data input into the function? The function is called 'retrieve' and takes two parameters, the data and a pointer: bool retrieve(T target, T*& ptr); // This is the prototype we need to use for the project "bool retrieve : similar to remove, but not removed from list. If there are duplicates in the list, the first one encountered is retrieved. Second parameter is unreliable if return value is false. E.g., " Employee target("duck", "donald"); success = company1.retrieve(target, oneEmployee); if (success) { cout << "Found in list: " << *oneEmployee << endl; } And the function is called like this: company4.retrieve(emp3, oneEmployee) So that when you cout *oneEmployee, you'll get the data of that pointer (in this case the data is of type Employee). (Also, this is assuming all data types have the apropriate overloaded operators) I hope this makes sense so far, but my issue is in comparing the data in the parameter and the data while going through the list. (The data types that we use all include overloads for equality operators, so oneData == twoData is valid) This is what I have so far: template <typename T> bool List<T>::retrieve(T target , T*& ptr) { List<T>::Node* dummyPtr = head; // point dummy pointer to what the list's head points to for(;;) { if (*dummyPtr->data == target) { // EDIT: it now compiles, but it breaks here and I get an Access Violation error. ptr = dummyPtr->data; // set the parameter pointer to the dummy pointer return true; // return true } else { dummyPtr = dummyPtr->next; // else, move to the next data node } } return false; } Here is the implementation for the Employee class: //-------------------------- constructor ----------------------------------- Employee::Employee(string last, string first, int id, int sal) { idNumber = (id >= 0 && id <= MAXID? id : -1); salary = (sal >= 0 ? sal : -1); lastName = last; firstName = first; } //-------------------------- destructor ------------------------------------ // Needed so that memory for strings is properly deallocated Employee::~Employee() { } //---------------------- copy constructor ----------------------------------- Employee::Employee(const Employee& E) { lastName = E.lastName; firstName = E.firstName; idNumber = E.idNumber; salary = E.salary; } //-------------------------- operator= --------------------------------------- Employee& Employee::operator=(const Employee& E) { if (&E != this) { idNumber = E.idNumber; salary = E.salary; lastName = E.lastName; firstName = E.firstName; } return *this; } //----------------------------- setData ------------------------------------ // set data from file bool Employee::setData(ifstream& inFile) { inFile >> lastName >> firstName >> idNumber >> salary; return idNumber >= 0 && idNumber <= MAXID && salary >= 0; } //------------------------------- < ---------------------------------------- // < defined by value of name bool Employee::operator<(const Employee& E) const { return lastName < E.lastName || (lastName == E.lastName && firstName < E.firstName); } //------------------------------- <= ---------------------------------------- // < defined by value of inamedNumber bool Employee::operator<=(const Employee& E) const { return *this < E || *this == E; } //------------------------------- > ---------------------------------------- // > defined by value of name bool Employee::operator>(const Employee& E) const { return lastName > E.lastName || (lastName == E.lastName && firstName > E.firstName); } //------------------------------- >= ---------------------------------------- // < defined by value of name bool Employee::operator>=(const Employee& E) const { return *this > E || *this == E; } //----------------- operator == (equality) ---------------- // if name of calling and passed object are equal, // return true, otherwise false // bool Employee::operator==(const Employee& E) const { return lastName == E.lastName && firstName == E.firstName; } //----------------- operator != (inequality) ---------------- // return opposite value of operator== bool Employee::operator!=(const Employee& E) const { return !(*this == E); } //------------------------------- << --------------------------------------- // display Employee object ostream& operator<<(ostream& output, const Employee& E) { output << setw(4) << E.idNumber << setw(7) << E.salary << " " << E.lastName << " " << E.firstName << endl; return output; } I will include a check for NULL pointer but I just want to get this working and will test it on a list that includes the data I am checking. Thanks to whoever can help and as usual, this is for a course so I don't expect or want the answer, but any tips as to what might be going wrong will help immensely!

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