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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

  - by Pinal Dave

  Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• USB software protection dongle for Java with an SDK which is cross-platform “for real”. Does it exist?

  - by Unai Vivi

  What I'd like to ask is if anybody knows about an hardware USB-dongle for software protection which offers a very complete out-of-the-box API support for cross-platform Java deployments. Its SDK should provide a jar (only one, not one different library per OS & bitness) ready to be added to one's project as a library. The jar should contain all the native stuff for the various OSes and bitnesses From the application's point of view, one should continue to write (api calls) once and run everywhere, without having to care where the end-user will run the software The provided jar should itself deal with loading the appropriate native library Does such a thing exist? With what I've tried so far, you have different APIs and compiled libraries for win32, linux32, win64, linux64, etc (or you even have to compile stuff yourself on the target machine), but hey, we're doing Java here, we don't know (and don't care) where the program will run! And we can't expect the end-user to be a software engineer, tweak (and break!) its linux server, link libraries, mess with gcc, litter the filesystem, etc... In general, Java support (in a transparent cross-platform fashion) is quite bad with the dongle SDKs I've evaluated so far (e.g. KeyLok and SecuTech's UniKey). I even purchased (no free evaluation kit available) SecureMetric SDKs&dongles (they should've been "soooo" straighforward to integrate -- according to marketing material :\ ) and they were the worst ever: SecureDongle X has no 64bit support and SecureDongle SD is not cross-platform at all. So, has anyone out there been through this and found the ultimate Java security usb dongle for cross-platform deployments? Note: software is low-volume, high-value; application is off-line (intranet with no internet access), so no online-activation alternatives and the like. -- EDIT Tried out HASP dongles (used to be called "Aladdin"), and added them to the no-no list: here, too, there is no out-of-the-box (out-of-the-jar) support: e.g. end-linux-user has to manually put the .so library (the specific file for the appropriate bitness) in the right place on his filesystem, and export an env. variable accordingly. -- EDIT 2 I really don't understand all the negativity and all the downvoting: is this a taboo topic? Is it so hard to understand that a freelance developer has to put food on the table everyday to feed its family and pay the bills at the end of the month? Please don't talk about "adding value" as a supplier, because that'd be off-topic. Furthermore I'm not in direct contact with end-customers, but there's an intermediate reselling entity: it's this entity I want to prevent selling copies of the software without sharing the revenue. -- EDIT 3 I'd like to emphasize the fact that the question is looking for a technical answer, not one about opinions concerning business models, philosophical lucubrations on the concept of value, resellers' reliability, etc. I cannot change resellers, because this isn't a "general purpose" kind of sw, but a very vertical one and (for some reasons it's not worth explaining here) I must go through them. I just need to prevent the "we sold 2 copies, here's your share [bwahaha we sold 10]" scenario.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is MapReduce – Day 7 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is Hadoop. In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – MapReduce. What is MapReduce? MapReduce was designed by Google as a programming model for processing large data sets with a parallel, distributed algorithm on a cluster. Though, MapReduce was originally Google proprietary technology, it has been quite a generalized term in the recent time. MapReduce comprises a Map() and Reduce() procedures. Procedure Map() performance filtering and sorting operation on data where as procedure Reduce() performs a summary operation of the data. This model is based on modified concepts of the map and reduce functions commonly available in functional programing. The library where procedure Map() and Reduce() belongs is written in many different languages. The most popular free implementation of MapReduce is Apache Hadoop which we will explore tomorrow. Advantages of MapReduce Procedures The MapReduce Framework usually contains distributed servers and it runs various tasks in parallel to each other. There are various components which manages the communications between various nodes of the data and provides the high availability and fault tolerance. Programs written in MapReduce functional styles are automatically parallelized and executed on commodity machines. The MapReduce Framework takes care of the details of partitioning the data and executing the processes on distributed server on run time. During this process if there is any disaster the framework provides high availability and other available modes take care of the responsibility of the failed node. As you can clearly see more this entire MapReduce Frameworks provides much more than just Map() and Reduce() procedures; it provides scalability and fault tolerance as well. A typical implementation of the MapReduce Framework processes many petabytes of data and thousands of the processing machines. How do MapReduce Framework Works? A typical MapReduce Framework contains petabytes of the data and thousands of the nodes. Here is the basic explanation of the MapReduce Procedures which uses this massive commodity of the servers. Map() Procedure There is always a master node in this infrastructure which takes an input. Right after taking input master node divides it into smaller sub-inputs or sub-problems. These sub-problems are distributed to worker nodes. A worker node later processes them and does necessary analysis. Once the worker node completes the process with this sub-problem it returns it back to master node. Reduce() Procedure All the worker nodes return the answer to the sub-problem assigned to them to master node. The master node collects the answer and once again aggregate that in the form of the answer to the original big problem which was assigned master node. The MapReduce Framework does the above Map () and Reduce () procedure in the parallel and independent to each other. All the Map() procedures can run parallel to each other and once each worker node had completed their task they can send it back to master code to compile it with a single answer. This particular procedure can be very effective when it is implemented on a very large amount of data (Big Data). The MapReduce Framework has five different steps: Preparing Map() Input Executing User Provided Map() Code Shuffle Map Output to Reduce Processor Executing User Provided Reduce Code Producing the Final Output Here is the Dataflow of MapReduce Framework: Input Reader Map Function Partition Function Compare Function Reduce Function Output Writer In a future blog post of this 31 day series we will explore various components of MapReduce in Detail. MapReduce in a Single Statement MapReduce is equivalent to SELECT and GROUP BY of a relational database for a very large database. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – HDFS. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Converting Openfire IM datetime values in SQL Server to / from VARCHAR(15) and DATETIME data types

  - by Brian Biales

  A client is using Openfire IM for their users, and would like some custom queries to audit user conversations (which are stored by Openfire in tables in the SQL Server database). Because Openfire supports multiple database servers and multiple platforms, the designers chose to store all date/time stamps in the database as 15 character strings, which get converted to Java Date objects in their code (Openfire is written in Java).  I did some digging around, and, so I don't forget and in case someone else will find this useful, I will put the simple algorithms here for converting back and forth between SQL DATETIME and the Java string representation. The Java string representation is the number of milliseconds since 1/1/1970.  SQL Server's DATETIME is actually represented as a float, the value being the number of days since 1/1/1900, the portion after the decimal point representing the hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds... as a fractional part of a day.  Try this and you will see this is true:     SELECT CAST(0 AS DATETIME) and you will see it returns the date 1/1/1900. The difference in days between SQL Server's 0 date of 1/1/1900 and the Java representation's 0 date of 1/1/1970 is found easily using the following SQL:   SELECT DATEDIFF(D, '1900-01-01', '1970-01-01') which returns 25567.  There are 25567 days between these dates. So to convert from the Java string to SQL Server's date time, we need to convert the number of milliseconds to a floating point representation of the number of days since 1/1/1970, then add the 25567 to change this to the number of days since 1/1/1900.  To convert to days, you need to divide the number by 1000 ms/s, then by  60 seconds/minute, then by 60 minutes/hour, then by 24 hours/day.  Or simply divide by 1000*60*60*24, or 86400000.   So, to summarize, we need to cast this string as a float, divide by 86400000 milliseconds/day, then add 25567 days, and cast the resulting value to a DateTime.  Here is an example:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   SET @tmp = '1268231722123'   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, CAST((CAST(@tmp AS FLOAT) / 86400000) + 25567 AS DATETIME) as SQLTime   To convert from SQL datetime back to the Java time format is not quite as simple, I found, because floats of that size do not convert nicely to strings, they end up in scientific notation using the CONVERT function or CAST function.  But I found a couple ways around that problem. You can convert a date to the number of  seconds since 1/1/1970 very easily using the DATEDIFF function, as this value fits in an Int.  If you don't need to worry about the milliseconds, simply cast this integer as a string, and then concatenate '000' at the end, essentially multiplying this number by 1000, and making it milliseconds since 1/1/1970.  If, however, you do care about the milliseconds, you will need to use DATEPART to get the milliseconds part of the date, cast this integer to a string, and then pad zeros on the left to make sure this is three digits, and concatenate these three digits to the number of seconds string above.  And finally, I discovered by casting to DECIMAL(15,0) then to VARCHAR(15), I avoid the scientific notation issue.  So here are all my examples, pick the one you like best... First, here is the simple approach if you don't care about the milliseconds:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + '000'   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime If you want to keep the milliseconds:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   DECLARE @ms as int   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SET @ms as DATEPART(ms, @dt)   SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15))           + RIGHT('000' + CAST(@ms AS VARCHAR(3)), 3)   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime Or, in one fell swoop:   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SELECT @dt as SQLTime     , CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15))           + RIGHT('000' + CAST( DATEPART(ms, @dt) AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) as JavaTime   And finally, a way to simply reverse the math used converting from Java date to SQL date. Note the parenthesis - watch out for operator precedence, you want to subtract, then multiply:   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SELECT @dt as SQLTime     , CAST(CAST((CAST(@dt as Float) - 25567.0) * 86400000.0 as DECIMAL(15,0)) as VARCHAR(15)) as JavaTime Interestingly, I found that converting to SQL Date time can lose some accuracy, when I converted the time above to Java time then converted  that back to DateTime, the number of milliseconds is 120, not 123.  As I am not interested in the milliseconds, this is ok for me.  But you may want to look into using DateTime2 in SQL Server 2008 for more accuracy.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 08, 2010 -- #877

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov, Chris Klug, Beau, Christian Schormann(-2-), Dan Wahlin, Pete Brown, Michael S. Scherotter, Philipp Sumi, Andy Wigley, and Phil Middlemiss. Shoutouts: Mark Tucker set about learning Caliburn, and in the process is writing a Caliburn Book: Chapters 1-3 Jesse Liberty has a great link-laden post up about why we should all be learning/using Blend: Why Developers Should, Must, Do Care About The New Expression Blend be sure to read what he says about WP7 development, however! Charlie Kindel announced an Install problem with the Developer Tools CTP Refresh and the WP7 tools... check this out if you're having problems. John Papa has a good post up on the happenings yesterday: Expression Studio 4 Launch of Blend, SketchFlow, Encoder and More! Erik Mork & Company's latest "This Week in Silverlight" is titled First Drop: Prism v4 – First Drop is Available From SilverlightCream.com: Animated navigation between Pages Miroslav Miroslavov has Part 8 of his "Silverlight in Action" series up, detailing cool things from the CompleteIT site... this one is on Animated navigation between pages. Subtitling videos Chris Klug got a gig adding subtitles to videos for Microsoft (sweet) ... and no, not *that* kind of subtitles... read how he approached the final solution. Silverlight Watermark TextBox I'm not sure we can have too many Watermark TextBoxes, and neither does Beau , who sent me a link to this one... give it a dance and decide. Blend 4: Collaborative SketchFlow Feedback with SharePoint With the new Blend release, Christian Schormann has a post up describing the lashup to Sharepoint for sharing Sketchflow and getting feedback. New Utility, Links, and Tutorials for Path-Based Layout Christian Schormann also has a collection of resources for Path-Based Layouts, including a utility "that lets you apply a whole bunch of position-specific effects without having to write any code"... lots of links to resources here. Tales from the Trenches – Building a Real-World Silverlight Line of Business Application Dan Wahlin draws on his recent experience and lays out some of the fun and pitfalls of building LOB apps in Silverlight... WCF, MVVM, slides, and code included WPF (and Silverlight): Choose your Fonts and Text Rendering Options Wisely Pete Brown has a great post up on using fonts wisely across multiple platforms... lots of info and good discussion in the comments as well. Ball Watch USA Remember the awesome watch Michael S. Scherotter did in Silverlight 1 and then converted to Updated Ball Trainmaster Cannonball Watch to Silverlight 2? Well... there's now a contest underfoot and 8 videos to help you get started... all good stuff, and good luck! ... Michael has a post up about the contest: Enter to Win a Ball Watch by Creating One in Silverlight Announcing Sketchables – Rapid Mockup Creation with SketchFlow By way of Jesse Libertyhttp://jesseliberty.com/2010/06/08/why-developers-should-must-do-care-about-the-new-expression-blend/, this is a cool production by Philipp Sumi about a simple mockup framework he's created. Perst - a database for Windows Phone 7 Silverlight I think one of my first comments to Michael Washington back at the MVP Summit 2010 was that we'd need a database engine, and too cool, but we've got one, Andy Wigley discusses Perst in this post... to save you some time, here's the Perst site A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 7 Phil Middlemiss has part 7 of his great theme-building series up... this time he's giving the accordian control a once-over. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• What’s the use of code reuse?

  - by Tony Davis

  All great developers write reusable code, don’t they? Well, maybe, but as with all statements regarding what “great” developers do or don’t do, it’s probably an over-simplification. A novice programmer, in particular, will encounter in the literature a general assumption of the importance of code reusability. They spend time worrying about DRY (don’t repeat yourself), moving logic into specific “helper” modules that they can then reuse, agonizing about the minutiae of the class structure, inheritance and interface design that will promote easy reuse. Unfortunately, writing code specifically for reuse often leads to complicated object hierarchies and inheritance models that are anything but reusable. If, instead, one strives to write simple code units that are highly maintainable and perform a single function, in a concise, isolated fashion then the potential for reuse simply “drops out” as a natural by-product. Programmers, of course, care about these principles, about encapsulation and clean interfaces that don’t expose inner workings and allow easy pluggability. This is great when it helps with the maintenance and development of code but how often, in practice, do we actually reuse our code? Most DBAs and database developers are familiar with the practical reasons for the limited opportunities to reuse database code and its potential downsides. However, surely elsewhere in our code base, reuse happens often. After all, we can all name examples, such as date/time handling modules, which if we write with enough care we can plug in to many places. I spoke to a developer just yesterday who looked me in the eye and told me that in 30+ years as a developer (a successful one, I’d add), he’d never once reused his own code. As I sat blinking in disbelief, he explained that, of course, he always thought he would reuse it. He’d often agonized over its design, certain that he was creating code of great significance that he and other generations would reuse, with grateful tears misting their eyes. In fact, it never happened. He had in his head, most of the algorithms he needed and would simply write the code from scratch each time, refining the algorithms and tailoring the code to meet the specific requirements. It was, he said, simply quicker to do that than dig out the old code, check it, correct the mistakes, and adapt it. Is this a common experience, or just a strange anomaly? Viewed in a certain light, building code with a focus on reusability seems to hark to a past age where people built cars and music systems with the idea that someone else could and would replace and reuse the parts. Technology advances so rapidly that the next time you need the “same” code, it’s likely a new technique, or a whole new language, has emerged in the meantime, better equipped to tackle the task. Maybe we should be less fearful of the idea that we could write code well suited to the system requirements, but with little regard for reuse potential, and then rewrite a better version from scratch the next time.

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• A temporary disagreement

  - by Tony Davis

  Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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• SQL SERVER – Discard Results After Query Execution – SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  The first thing I do any day is to turn on the computer. Today I woke up and as soon as I turned on the computer I saw a chat message from a friend. He was a bit confused and wanted me to help him. Just as usual I am keeping the relevant conversation in focus and documenting our conversation as chat. Let us call him Ajit. Ajit: Pinal, every time I run a query there is no result displayed in the SSMS but when I run the query in my application it works and returns an appropriate result. Pinal:  Have you tried with different parameters? Ajit: Same thing. However, it works from another computer when I connect to the same server with the same query parameters? Pinal: What? That is new and I believe it is something to do with SSMS and not with the server. Send me screenshot please. Ajit: I believe so, let me send you a screenshot, Pinal: (looking at the screenshot) Oh man, there is no result-tab at all. Ajit: That is what the problem is. It does not have the tab which displays the result. This works just fine from another computer. Pinal: Have you referred Nakul’s blog post – SSMS – Query result options – Discard result after query executes, that talks about setting which can discard the query results after execution. (After a while) Ajit: I think it seems like on the computer where I am running the query my SSMS seems to have the option enabled related to discarding results. I fixed it by following Nakul’s blog post. Pinal: Great! Quite often I get the question what is the importance of the feature. Let us first see how to turn on or turn off this feature in SQL Server Management Studio 2012. In SSMS 2012 go to Tools >> Options >> Query Results > SQL Server >> Results to Grid >> Discard Results After Query Execution. When enabled this option will discard results after the execution. The advantage of disabling the option is that it will improve the performance by using less memory. However the real question is why would someone enable or disable the option. What are the cases when someone wants to run the query but do not care about the result? Matter of the fact, it does not make sense at all to run query and not care about the result. The matter of the fact, I can see quite a few reasons for using this option. I often enable this option when I am doing performance tuning exercise. During performance tuning exercise when I am working with execution plans and do not need results to verify every time or when I am tuning Indexes and its effect on execution plan I do not need the results. In this kind of situations I do keep this option on and discard the results. It always helps me big time as in most of the performance tuning exercise I am dealing with huge amount of the data and dealing with this data can be expensive. Nakul’s has done the experiment here already but I am going to repeat the same again using AdventureWorks Database. Run following T-SQL Script with and without enabling the option to discard the results. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail GO 10 After enabling Discard Results After Query Execution After disabling Discard Results After Query Execution Well, this is indeed a good option when someone is debugging the execution plan or does not want the result to be displayed. Please note that this option does not reduce IO or CPU usage for SQL Server. It just discards the results after execution and a good help for debugging on the development server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Who Makes a Good Product Owner

  - by Robert May

  In general, the best product owners are those that care passionately about the customer of the product.  Note that I didn’t say about the product itself.  Actually, people that only care about the product, generally do not make good product owners.  Products only matter in relationship to their customers.  If a product doesn’t provide value to the customer, then the product has no value, no matter what a person might think of the product, and no matter what cool technologies exist inside of the product. A good product owner is also a good negotiator.  They recognize that many different priorities exist inside of a corporation, but that there can be only one list that developers work from.  A good product owner recognizes that its their job to help others around them prioritize (perhaps with a Product Council), but also understand that they alone have the final say about priorities and are willing to make the tough decisions required.  Deciding the priority between two perfectly valid stories is very difficult, especially when the stories are from two different departments! A good product owner is deeply interested in helping the team be successful.  They don’t seek to control the team, but instead seek to understand what the team can do and then work with the team to get the best product possible for the Customer.  A good product owner is never denigrating to team members, ever.  They recognize that such behavior would damage the trust that needs to be present between team members and product owners and will avoid it at all costs. In general, technical people (i.e. former or current developers) make poor product owners.  In their minds, they can’t separate implementation details from user functionality, so their stories end up sounding like implementation details.  For example, “The user enters their username on the password screen” is something that a technical product owner would write.  The proper wording for that story is “A user supplies the system with their credentials.”  Because technical people think different from the rest of the population, they are generally not a good fit. A good product owner is also a good writer.  Writing good stories demands good writing.  The art of persuasion, descriptiveness and just general good grammar are all required.  A good Product Owner must also be well spoken, since most of what will be conveyed will be conveyed with the spoken word, not just written word. A good product owner is a “People Person.”  They like talking to people and are very patient.  They don’t mind having questions repeated or fielding many questions, because they want to make sure that the ideas they’re conveying are properly understood so the customer gets the best product possible.  They are happy to answer any questions a team member may have and invite feedback and criticism of designs and stories, since they want a good product.  They really have little ego that gets in the way of building a great product. All of these qualities can be hard to find, but if you look close enough, you’ll find the right person in your organization.  Product owners can be found anywhere, not just in upper management.  Some of the best product owners are those that are very close to the customer.  In fact, check your customer support staff.  I’d bet that several great product owners are lurking there. Final note about what makes a good product owner.  You’re probably NOT going to find a good product owner in a manager, especially if they consider themselves a “Manager.”  Product owners don’t manage anything but the backlog, so be especially careful if the person you’re selecting for Product Owner is a manager. Up Next, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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• Why I&rsquo;m Getting an iPad

  - by andrewbrust

  I have never purchased an Apple product in my life.  That’s a “true fact.”  And, for that matter, the last Apple product I really wanted was an Apple IIe, back in the 1980s.  I couldn’t afford it though (I was in high school), so I got a Commodore 64 instead…it had the same microprocessor, after all.  If the iPhone were on Verizon, I probably would have picked one up in December, when I got my Droid.  And if the iPod Touch worked with my Napster subscription (which of course it does not, but my Sonos does) I might have picked on of those instead. That’s three strikes, but Apple’s not out.  I’ve decided I want the iPad.  Why?  Well, to start with, my birthday is March 31st…the iPad comes out on April 3rd, and my wife wanted to know what to get me.  Also, my house is a 7-minute walk from the Apple Store on West 14th Street in Manhattan.  This makes it easy to get my pre-ordered device on launch day, and get home quickly with it.  Oh, and I agreed to write an article for Redmond Magazine, the fee for which will pay for the device…that way the birthday present doesn’t have to be an extravagant expense.  Plus, I’m a contrarian, so I want to buy the one device from Apple that the fanboys have actually panned. Think those are bad reasons? How about this: I want to experience iPhone and iPad development and, although my app will probably never hit the App Store and run on the actual device, I still think owning one will help me develop something better.  i want to see if the slate form factor has good business usage scenarios.  I want to see if Business Intelligence technology on a device like this can work.  Imagine a dashboard on this thing. And, for the consumer experience, I really want a touch device on which I can surf the Web while I’m in the kitchen, or on the couch.  I don’t want the small form factor of my phone, I don’t want to use my TV, and I don’t want a keyboard that will get dirty or in my way. I don’t want to watch movies on it (my TV is good for that), so I don’t care that the iPad has a 4:3 screen.  I don’t want to read books on it, so I don’t care that the display is backlit LCD, rather than eInk. But really what I want is to understand, first hand, why people have such brand loyalty to Apple.  I know the big reasons; I’m not detached from society.  But I want to know the subtle points of what Apple does really well, and also what they do poorly.  And I’d like to know, once and for all, if Microsoft can beat Apple, if Microsoft can think the right way to beat Apple and if Microsoft should  even try to beat Apple. I expect to share my thoughts on these questions, as they develop.

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• regarding the Windows Phone 7 series, XNA and Visual Basic

  - by Chris Williams

  as long as we're talking about VB... I figured I would share this as well. Hi everyone, I'm about to express a sentiment that might ruffle a few feathers, but I think most of you know me well enough to know I love like accept VB for what it is and that what I'm about to say is with good intentions. (The rest of you, who don't know me, please take my word for it.) The world is full of VB developers, I was one of them for a long time. I think it's safe to assume that none of us are ignorant people who require handholding. We're working professionals, making a living by using our skills as developers. I'm also willing to bet that quite a few of us are fluent in C# as well as VB. It may not be your preferred language, but many of you can do it and you prove that nearly every day. Honestly, I don't know ANY developers or consultants that have only known ONE language ever. So it pains me greatly when I see the word "CAN'T" being tossed around like a crutch... as in "we CAN'T develop for the windows phone or we CAN'T develop XNA games." At MIX, Microsoft hath decreed that C# is the language of choice for developing for the Windows Phone 7. I think it's a safe bet that you won't see VB support if it isn't there already. (Just like XNA... which is up to version 4.0 by now.)  So what? (Yeah... I said it.) I think everyone here can agree that actual coding is only one part of software design and development. There is nothing stopping ANY of you from beginning the process of designing your killer phone app, writing up specs, requirements, doing UI design, workflow, mockups, storyboards, art, etc.... None of these things are language dependent. IF by the time you've got that stuff out of the way, and there's still no VB support, then start doing some rapid prototyping of your app in C# (I know, I know... heresy!)  You still have to spend time learning how the phone does things, what UI tricks do what, what paradigms make sense, how to use to accelerometer and the tilt and the multitouch functionality. I can guarantee you that time spent doing this is a great investment, no matter WHAT extension your code files have. Eventually, you may have a working prototype. IF by this time, there's STILL no VB support... fret not, you've made significant progress on your app. You've designed it, prototyped it, figured out how to use the phone specific features... so you might as well finish it and pat yourself on the back for learning something new... and possibly being first to market with your new app. I'll be happy to argue any and all of these points online or off with anyone who cares to do so, but there is one undeniable point that you simply can't argue:  Your potential customers do not care AT ALL what programming language you used to write the app they are about to purchase. They care that it works. If your biggest concern is being first to market, than stop complaining and get busy because you're running out of time and the 3000+ people who were at MIX certainly aren't waiting for you. They've already started working on their apps.

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• Silverlight Cream for January 12, 2011 -- #1025

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Amyo Kabir, Rob Eisenberg, Doug Rathbone, John Papa, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Mike Taulty, Peter Kuhn, Laurent Bugnion, Vangos Pterneas, and Senthil Kumar. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Popup sample" Amyo Kabir WP7: "Navigation in a #WP7 application with MVVM Light" Laurent Bugnion XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 0 - Why should I care?" Peter Kuhn Shoutouts: Mohamed Mosallem posted a video of an Expression Blend demo he gave recently: Expression Blend Demo Rob Eisenberg posted the winners of the Caliburn.Micro Contest he was running .. and a nice bunch of swag too! Announcing the Caliburn.Micro Contest Winners! Dan Moyer is a LightSwitch enthusiast and writes Why I Believe Visual Studio LightSwitch will be a Win... good well-thought-out and written take on Lightswitch. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Popup sample Amyo Kabir has a post up that is short on description but long on demo and the code is available... put this in the 'a picture is worth 1,000 words category' :) Caliburn.Micro Soup to Nuts Part 7 - All About Conventions The 7th episode of Rob Eisenberg's tutorial series on Caliburn.Micro is up. This episode about some of the conventions that you get out-of-the-box with Caliburn.Micro, what it'll do for you, and how you can modify the behavior of the convention to suit your own taste/style. Two little tips for working with Silverlight chart DateTime Axes Doug Rathbone has been working with the Toolkit Charts for WP7 and finding it difficult to get the info he needs, and now that he's worked it out... he's sharing... particularly information about DateTimeAxis. Silverlight TV 56: WCF RIA Services and Azure The first Silverlight TV of 2011 was John Papa discussing WCF RIA Services and Azure with Saurabh Plant. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue 14 As usual, Jeff Blankenburg is a couple ahead of me... his Issue 14 is about some panorama trickery... like navigating to a specific place in one, or preventing wrapping. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue 15 In Jeff Blankenburg's latest WP7 post, he's sharing some interesting insight into Trial Mode and app sales... from the standpoint of someone selling apps. Blend Bits 20–Group Into Mike Taulty has Part 20 of his Blend Bits series up. This one is demonstrating grouping, and what all can be accomplished (or not) with grouping in Blend. XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 0 - Why should I care? Peter Kuhn has the beginning of a series on WP7 and XNA up at SilverlightShow... this looks to be a good intro and way to get your head wrapped around XNA on the phone. Navigation in a #WP7 application with MVVM Light Laurent Bugnion discusses WP7 navigation via MVVM Light, resolving many of the communication/navigation complexities you can get involved in without a tool like his. Motion detection in Silverlight Vangos Pterneas has a followup postto the one on facial detection... this one is on Motion Detection in Silverlight. If you've got a webcam hooked up, you can give a demo app a dance via a link he has in the post. Adding ApplicationBar in Windows Phone 7 using Expression Blend Senthil Kumar follows up a post about using VS to add an application bar to a WP7 app with this one using Expression Blend Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Today's Links (6/30/2011)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  James Gosling Says He Doesn't Care About Java But here's the rest of the story: "What I really care about is the Java Virtual Machine as a concept," says Gosling, "because that is the thing that ties it all together; it's the thing that makes Java the language possible; it's the thing that makes things work on all kinds of different platforms; and it makes all kinds of languages able to coexist." Virtual Developer Day: SOA Accelerate Your Development with Oracle SOA Suite. Learn how in this FREE on-line workshop with Hands-on labs July 12th 9 am to 1:30 PM PST" July 12th 9 am to 1:30 PM PST Podcast: Toronto Architect Day Panel Discussion Part 3 (of 4) is now available, in which the panel (including Oracle ACE Director Cary Millsap and InfoQ editor and co-founder Floyd Marinescu) discusses public vs private cloud as the best strategy for small businesses and start-ups. WebLogic Weekly for June 27th, 2011 | James Bayer Bayer shares the latest resources for those with WebLogic on the brain. Griffiths Waite at Oracle Open World | Mark Simpson Oracle ACE Director Mark Simpson share information on the presentations he's scheduled to give at Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco 2011. Kscope Solid Service Bus Implementations Peter Paul van de Beek's Kscope11 presentation "is aimed at supporting architects and especially developers to choose the right integration infrastructure for a job." Migration To Java EE 6 With Spring 3 - ...Could Become "Interesting" | Adam Bien "Put simply, big data implies datasets so large they can't normally be processed using a standard transactional database," says David Dorf. "The term 'noSQL' is often used in this context as well." Book Review: "Designing With the Mind In Mind" | Abhinav Agarwal According to Abhinav Agarwal, Jeff Johnson's new book is about "the theory of how the mind perceives information, of how humans understand what they read, and how our eyes are attuned to paying attention to not just what's happening in front of us but also at the periphery of our vision." BPM 11g Advanced Workshop | Martien van den Akker Martien van den Akker shares his thoughts on both the workshop he recently attended and on the Oracle BPM 11g product. Fusion Applications - What You Need To Know: Product Families | Floyd Teter "Fusion Applications are organized into seven groups of related products called Product Families," observes Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter. "While the product features are organized according to the Business Process Model and can cross the boundaries of product families, the product family groupings are an easy way to wrap your mind around Fusion Apps." Grid Control: Refreshing Weblogic Domains | Dave Best Dave Best shares tips for avoiding problems when using grid control to centrally manage/monitor your environment. Webcast: Oracle to Announce Datanomic Integration Plans The combination of Datanomic technology and the previous acquisition of Silver Creek Systems will deliver a complete, integrated and best-of-breed solution for Data Quality. Learn about Oracle’s strategy and product plans and how the new products acquired from Datanomic will impact your organization. July 19, 2011, 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET. Speakers include Michael Weingartner (Vice President, Product Development, Oracle), Martin Boyd (Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle), and Dain Hansen (Director, Product Marketing, Fusion Middleware, Oracle).

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• My Dog, Cross-Channel Shopping, and Fusion SCM

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Mark Carson, Director, Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management I was walking my dog Max in an open space behind my house. As we tromped through the tall weeds I remembered it is tick season and that I should get Max some protection. While he sniffed merrily in the tick infested brush, I started shopping in the middle of an open field on my phone. I thought it would be convenient to pick up the tick medicine from a pet store on the way home. Searching the pet store website I saw that they had the medicine, but there was no information on whether the store had any in stock and there were no options for shipping it to the store for pickup. I could return it, but not pick it up which seamed kind of odd. I really didn't feel like making calls to the local stores to find out if they had it. Since the product is popular, I tried one of the large 'everything' stores. Browsing its website I could see that it could be shipped to me, shipped to the store for free, and that the store nearest to me had it in stock. Needless to say, this store became a better option. This experience is a small example of why retailers, distributors, and manufactures have placed a high priority on enabling 'cross-channel commerce.' Shoppers like you and me expect to be able to search, compare, buy and return products on-line and over the phone using a variety of devices including PDAs, tablets and in-store kiosks. The pet store lost my business because its web channel had limited information about its stores. I have spoken with many customers and prospects about cross-channel commerce. They all realize the business implications and urgency behind cross-channel commerce but recognize there are challenges to enable it. New and existing applications must be integrated together globally through a consistent cross-channel business process. Integration is required between applications that provide the initial shopping experience and delivery applications associated with warehouses, stores, and partners. The enablement must be accomplished in a flexible way to react to fast-changing product portfolios and new acquisitions, while at the same time minimizing costs through reuse of existing systems. Meanwhile, the business must continue to grow and decision makers need to balance new capability with peak seasons. The challenges above are not unique to retail. Any customer in any industry who has multiple points for capturing orders and multiple points for fulfilling orders will face these challenges. With this in mind, we had a unique opportunity in Fusion SCM to re-think how to build a set of modular and flexible applications in the order management space that would make these challenges easier to conquer. The results are Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Global Order Promising. These applications can help companies, such as the pet store, enable true cross-channel commerce. The apps provide highly adaptable and flexible business processes to automate order orchestration across multiple cross-channel systems. They also show a global view of supply across warehouses, stores, and partners for real-time availability and more accurate order promising. Additional capability includes a standards-based integration framework for seamless execution and the ability to reuse existing systems for faster and lower cost implementations. OK, that was a mouthful of features and benefits. As Max waited to cross the street (he can do basic math too), I wondered if he could relate. He does not care about leash laws, pick-up courtesy, where he can/can't walk, what time of day it is, or even ticks. He does not care about how all these things could make walking complicated. He just wants to walk. Similarly, customers just want to shop and companies just want to make it easier to sell and deliver. You can learn more about Distributed Order Orchestration and Global Order Promising in cross-channel here.

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• Planning development when academic research is involved

  - by Another Anonymous User

  Dear fellow programmers, how do you do "software planning" when academic research is involved? And, on a side note, how do you convince your boss that writing software is not like building a house and it's more like writing a novel? The gory details are below. I am in charge of a small dev team working in a research lab. We started developing a software with the purpose of going public one day (i.e. sell and make money off that). Such software depends on, amongst other things, at least two independent research lines: that is, there are at least two Ph.D. candidates that will, hopefully, one day come out with a working implementation of what we need. The main software depends also on other, more concrete resources that we as developers can take care of: graphics rendering, soft bodies deformation, etc. My boss asked me to write the specifications, requirements AND a bloody GANTT chart of the entire project. Faced with the fact that I don't have a clue about the research part, and that such research is fundamental for the software, he said "make assumptions." For the clarity of the argument, he is a professor whose Ph.D. students should come up with the research we need. And he comes from a strictly engineering background: plan everything first, write down specifications and only then write down code that "it's the last part". What I am doing now: I broke down the product in features; each 'feature' is, de facto, a separate product; Each feature is built on top of the previous one; Once a feature (A) has a working prototype the team can start working on the next feature (B), while QA for is being done for A (if money allows, more people can be brought in, etc.); Features that depend on research will come last: by then, hopefully, the research part will be completed (when is still a big question) ; Also, I set the team to use SCRUM for the development of 'version 1.0', due in a few months. This deadline could be set based on reasonable assumptions: we listed all required features, we counted our availability, and we gave a reasonable estimate. So my questions, again, are: How do I make my boss happy while at the same time get something out the door? How do I write specifications for something we -the developers- have no clue whether it's possible to do or not? (We still haven't decided which libraries to use for some tasks; we'll do so when we'll need to) How do I get the requirements for that, given that there are yet no clients nor investors, just lots of interests and promises? How do I get peace in the world? I am sure at least one of my questions will be answered :) ps: I am writing this anonymously since a potential investor might backfire if this is discovered. Hope you'll understand. However I must say I do not like this mentality of 'hiding the truth': this program will likely benefit many, and not being able to talk openly about this (with my name and my reputation attached) feels like censorship. But alas, I care more about your suggestions now.

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• Workflow versioning

  - by Nitra

  I believe I have a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to workflow engines which I would appreciate if you could help me sort out. I'm not sure if my misunderstanding is specific to the workflow engine I'm using, or if it's a general misunderstanding. I happen to use Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). TLDR-version WWF allows you to implement business processes in long-running workflows (think months or even years). When started, the workflows can't be changed. But what business process can't change at any time? And if a business process changes, wouldn't you want your software to reflect this change for already started 'instances' of the business process? What am I missing? Background In WWF you define a workflow by combining a set of activites. There are different types of activities - some of them are for flow control, such as the IfElseActivity and the WhileActivty while others allows you to perform actual tasks, such as the CodeActivity wich allows you to run .NET code and the InvokeWebServiceActivity which allows you to call web services. The activites are combined to a workflow using a visual designer. You pretty much drag-and-drop activities from a toolbox to a designer area and connect the activites to each other. The workflow and activities have input paramters, output parameters and variables. We have a single workflow which sometimes runs in a matter of a few days, but it may run for 5-6 months. WWF takes care of persisting the workflow state (what activity are we currently executing, what are the variable values and so on). So far I think WWF makes sense. Some people will prefer to implement a software representation of a business process using a visual designer over writing all of it in code. So what's the issue then? What I don't really get is the following: WWF is designed to take care of long-running workflows. But at the same time, WWF has no built-in functionality which allows you to modify the running workflows. So if you model a business process using a workflow and run that for 6 months, you better hope that the business process does not change. Because if it do, you'll have to have multiple versions of the workflow executing at the same time. This seems like a fundamental design mistake to me, but at the same time it seems more likely that I've misunderstood something. For us, this has had some real-world effects: We release new versions every month, but some workflows may run for a year. This means that we have several versions of the workflow running in parallell, in other words several versions of the business logics. This is the same as having many differnt versions of your code running in production in the same system at the same time, which becomes a bit hard to understand for users. (depending on on whether they clicked a 'Start' button 9 or 10 months ago, the software will behave differently) Our workflow refers to different types of entities and since WWF now has persisted and serialized these we can't really refactor the entities since then existing workflows can't be resumed (deserialization will fail We've received some suggestions on how to handle this When we create a new version of the workflow, cancel all running workflows and create new ones. But in our workflows there's a lot of manual work involved and if we start from scratch a lot of people has to re-do their work. Track what has been done in the workflow and when you create a new one skip activites which have already been executed. I feel that this alternative may work for simple workflows, but it becomes hairy to automatically figure out what activities to skip if there's major refactoring done to a workflow. When we create a new version of the workflow, upgrade old versions using the new WWF 4.5 functionality for upgrading workflows. But then we would have to skip using the visual designer and write code to inject activities in the right places in the workflow. According to MSDN, this upgrade functionality is only intended for minor bug fixes and not larger changes. What am I missing?

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• Designing status management for a file processing module

  - by bot

  The background One of the functionality of a product that I am currently working on is to process a set of compressed files ( containing XML files ) that will be made available at a fixed location periodically (local or remote location - doesn't really matter for now) and dump the contents of each XML file in a database. I have taken care of the design for a generic parsing module that should be able to accommodate the parsing of any file type as I have explained in my question linked below. There is no need to take a look at the following link to answer my question but it would definitely provide a better context to the problem Generic file parser design in Java using the Strategy pattern The Goal I want to be able to keep a track of the status of each XML file and the status of each compressed file containing the XML files. I can probably have different statuses defined for the XML files such as NEW, PROCESSING, LOADING, COMPLETE or FAILED. I can derive the status of a compressed file based on the status of the XML files within the compressed file. e.g status of the compressed file is COMPLETE if no XML file inside the compressed file is in a FAILED state or status of the compressed file is FAILED if the status of at-least one XML file inside the compressed file is FAILED. A possible solution The Model I need to maintain the status of each XML file and the compressed file. I will have to define some POJOs for holding the information about an XML file as shown below. Note that there is no need to store the status of a compressed file as the status of a compressed file can be derived from the status of its XML files. public class FileInformation { private String compressedFileName; private String xmlFileName; private long lastModifiedDate; private int status; public FileInformation(final String compressedFileName, final String xmlFileName, final long lastModified, final int status) { this.compressedFileName = compressedFileName; this.xmlFileName = xmlFileName; this.lastModifiedDate = lastModified; this.status = status; } } I can then have a class called StatusManager that aggregates a Map of FileInformation instances and provides me the status of a given file at any given time in the lifetime of the appliciation as shown below : public class StatusManager { private Map<String,FileInformation> processingMap = new HashMap<String,FileInformation>(); public void add(FileInformation fileInformation) { fileInformation.setStatus(0); // 0 will indicates that the file is in NEW state. 1 will indicate that the file is in process and so on.. processingMap.put(fileInformation.getXmlFileName(),fileInformation); } public void update(String filename,int status) { FileInformation fileInformation = processingMap.get(filename); fileInformation.setStatus(status); } } That takes care of the model for the sake of explanation. So whats my question? Edited after comments from Loki and answer from Eric : - I would like to know if there are any existing design patterns that I can refer to while coming up with a design. I would also like to know how I should go about designing the status management classes. I am more interested in understanding how I can model the status management classes. I am not interested in how other components are going to be updated about a change in status at the moment as suggested by Eric.

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• News From EAP Testing

  - by Fatherjack

  There is a phrase that goes something like “Watch the pennies and the pounds/dollars will take care of themselves”, meaning that if you pay attention to the small things then the larger things are going to fare well too. I am lucky enough to be a Friend of Red Gate and once in a while I get told about new features in their tools and have a test copy of the software to trial. I got one of those emails a week or so ago and I have been exploring the SQL Prompt 6 EAP since then. One really useful feature of long standing in SQL Prompt is the idea of a code snippet that is automatically pasted into the SSMS editor when you type a few key letters. For example I can type “ssf” and then press the tab key and the text is expanded to SELECT * FROM. There are lots of these combinations and it is possible to create your own really easily. To create your own you use the Snippet Manager interface to define the shortcut letters and the code that you want to have put in their place. Let’s look at an example. Say I am writing a blog about something and want to have the demo code create a temporary table. It might looks like this; The first time you run the code everything is fine, a lovely set of dates fill the results grid but run it a second time and this happens.   Yep, we didn’t destroy the temporary table so the CREATE statement fails when it finds the table already exists. No matter, I have a snippet created that takes care of this.   Nothing too technical here but you will see that in the Code section there is $CURSOR$, this isn’t a TSQL keyword but a marker for SQL Prompt to place the cursor in that position when the Code is pasted into the SSMS Editor. I just place my cursor above the CREATE statement and type “ifobj” – the shortcut for my code to DROP the temporary table – which has been defined in the Snippet Manager as below. This means I am right-away ready to type the name of the offending table. Pretty neat and it’s been very useful in saving me lots of time over many years.   The news for SQL Prompt 6 is that Red Gate have added a new Snippet Command of $PASTE$. Let’s alter our snippet to the following and try it out   Once again, we will type type “ifobj” in the SSMS Editor but first of all, highlight the name of the table #TestTable and copy it to your clipboard. Now type “ifobj” and press Tab… Wherever the string $PASTE$ is placed in the snippet, the contents of your clipboard are merged into the pasted TSQL. This means I don’t need to type the table name into the code snippet, it’s already there and I am seeing a fully functioning piece of TSQL ready to run. This means it is it even easier to write TSQL quickly and consistently. Attention to detail like this from Red Gate means that their developer tools stay on track to keep winning awards year after year and help take the hard work out of writing neat, accurate TSQL. If you want to try out SQL Prompt all the details are at http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-prompt/.

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• Planning development when academic research is involved

  - by Another Anonymous User

  Dear fellow programmers, how do you do "software planning" when academic research is involved? And, on a side note, how do you convince your boss that writing software is not like building a house and it's more like writing a novel? The gory details are below. I am in charge of a small dev team working in a research lab. We started developing a software with the purpose of going public one day (i.e. sell and make money off that). Such software depends on, amongst other things, at least two independent research lines: that is, there are at least two Ph.D. candidates that will, hopefully, one day come out with a working implementation of what we need. The main software depends also on other, more concrete resources that we as developers can take care of: graphics rendering, soft bodies deformation, etc. My boss asked me to write the specifications, requirements AND a bloody GANTT chart of the entire project. Faced with the fact that I don't have a clue about the research part, and that such research is fundamental for the software, he said "make assumptions." For the clarity of the argument, he is a professor whose Ph.D. students should come up with the research we need. And he comes from a strictly engineering background: plan everything first, write down specifications and only then write down code that "it's the last part". What I am doing now: I broke down the product in features; each 'feature' is, de facto, a separate product; Each feature is built on top of the previous one; Once a feature (A) has a working prototype the team can start working on the next feature (B), while QA for is being done for A (if money allows, more people can be brought in, etc.); Features that depend on research will come last: by then, hopefully, the research part will be completed (when is still a big question) ; Also, I set the team to use SCRUM for the development of 'version 1.0', due in a few months. This deadline could be set based on reasonable assumptions: we listed all required features, we counted our availability, and we gave a reasonable estimate. So my questions, again, are: How do I make my boss happy while at the same time get something out the door? How do I write specifications for something we -the developers- have no clue whether it's possible to do or not? (We still haven't decided which libraries to use for some tasks; we'll do so when we'll need to) How do I get the requirements for that, given that there are yet no clients nor investors, just lots of interests and promises? How do I get peace in the world? I am sure at least one of my questions will be answered :) ps: I am writing this anonymously since a potential investor might backfire if this is discovered. Hope you'll understand. However I must say I do not like this mentality of 'hiding the truth': this program will likely benefit many, and not being able to talk openly about this (with my name and my reputation attached) feels like censorship. But alas, I care more about your suggestions now.

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• Delphi Prism and LINQ to SQL / Entity Framework

  - by Vegar

  I have found many posts and examples of using LINQ-syntax in Delphi Prism (Oxygene), but I have never found anything on LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. Is it possible to use LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework together with Prism? Where can I found such an example? Update: Olaf is giving an answer through his blog The question is now if any visual tools and code generation is provided, or if everything must be done by hand... Second update: Olaf has answered the tool/code generation-question in a comment on his site: The class designer is there, but there is no Pascal code gen. According to marc hoffman that is currently not on their list. For now you have to live with manual mapping. I guess, if you had Visual Studio (not just the VS shell), that you could add a C# library project to your solution, reference that from your Prism project. Then create the Table-Class mapping in the C# project using the visual designer. Maybe somewhat ugly, but possibly the key to get the Designer + CodeGen integrated into Prism. Who cares what language is used for the mapping . I will say this is a 1 - 0 to c# vs prism. If I did not care which language is used for the mapping - why should I care about which language is used for the rest?

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• Chart controls for ASP.NET

  - by tolism7

  I am looking people's opinion and experience on using chart controls within an ASP.NET application (web forms or MVC) primarily but also in any kind of project. I am currently doing my research and I have a pretty big list of controls to evaluate. My list includes (in no particular order): ASP.NET controls: DevExpress XtraCharts (http://demos.devexpress.com/XtraChartsDemos/) Dundas Chart for .NET (http://www.dundas.com/) Telerik RadChart for ASP.NET AJAX (http://www.telerik.com/) ComponentArt Charting & Visualization for ASP.NET (http://www.componentart.com/) Infragistics WebChart (http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/aspnet.aspx#Overview) .net Charting (http://www.dotnetcharting.com/) Chart Control for .Net Framework (Microsoft's) (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/24/new-asp-net-charting-control-lt-asp-chart-runat-quot-server-quot-gt.aspx) Flash controls: FusionCharts v3 (http://www.fusioncharts.com/) XML/SWF Charts (http://www.maani.us/xml%5Fcharts/index.php) amCharts (http://www.amcharts.com/) AnyChart (http://www.anychart.com/home/) Javascript: Flot (http://code.google.com/p/flot/) Flotr (http://solutoire.com/flotr/) jqPlot (http://www.jqplot.com/index.php) (If I missed some that worth to be compared against the above please let me know.) What I am looking is opinions on using any of the above so I can form my own and help others do the same, based on what I read here. I do not care which one is better. What I care for is why someone likes one of the above and what do these controls offer as a distinct advantage. I am interested in developer's opinion and I would like to find out which things are difficult doing with any of the above controls and which things are easy to achieve. AJAX compatibility (build in to the controls but also manual), ASP.NET compatibility, input capabilities, data binding options, performance, how much code does one need to write in order to create a chart, are some of the things that I would want to read about. I have already done my research on StackOverflow for relevant questions but there is nothing on the level of detail that I would want to read in order to make a responsible decision.

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• C++ smart pointers: sharing pointers vs. sharing data

  - by Eli Bendersky

  In this insightful article, one of the Qt programmers tries to explain the different kinds of smart pointers Qt implements. In the beginning, he makes a distinction between sharing data and sharing the pointers themselves: First, let’s get one thing straight: there’s a difference between sharing pointers and sharing data. When you share pointers, the value of the pointer and its lifetime is protected by the smart pointer class. In other words, the pointer is the invariant. However, the object that the pointer is pointing to is completely outside its control. We don’t know if the object is copiable or not, if it’s assignable or not. Now, sharing of data involves the smart pointer class knowing something about the data being shared. In fact, the whole point is that the data is being shared and we don’t care how. The fact that pointers are being used to share the data is irrelevant at this point. For example, you don’t really care how Qt tool classes are implicitly shared, do you? What matters to you is that they are shared (thus reducing memory consumption) and that they work as if they weren’t. Frankly, I just don't undersand this explanation. There was a clarification plea in the article comments, but I didn't find the author's explanation sufficient. If you do understand this, please explain. What is this distinction, and how are other shared pointer classes (i.e. from boost or the new C++ standards) fit into this taxonomy? Thanks in advance

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• ResolveUrl Problem in Master Page

  - by Tarik

  Okay, I know it is weird but when I put this code between <head runat="server"></head> in master.page, this is how it renders into: <link id="ctl00_Link1" rel="shortcut icon" href="../%3C%25%20ResolveUrl(%22~/Resources/Pictures/Shared/Misc/favicon.ico%22);%20%25%3E" type="image/x-icon" /> It doesn't see something asp.net needs to take care of. This is the original code : <link id="Link1" rel="shortcut icon" href='<%=ResolveUrl("~/Resources/Pictures/Shared/Misc/favicon.ico") %>' type="image/x-icon" runat="server" /> Basically Asp.Net doesn't take care of the code below and renders as a normal html. How can I get over this problem? Thanks in advance... Edit and Resolved Okay people, there is no way for doing this. I've finally figured out because ResolveUrl or ResolveClientUrl is only working for these below : @import '<%= ResolveUrl("~/Resources/Styles/MainMaster/MainDesign.css") %>'; <script src='Resources/Scripts/Libraries/jquery-1.4.2.js' type="text/javascript"</script> it is too literal for link so you need to put link elements in body tag like : <body> <link id="iconOne" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="Resources/Pictures/Shared/Misc/favicon.ico"/> <link id="iconTwo" rel="icon" href='Resources/Pictures/Shared/Misc/favicon.ico' type="image/ico" /> </body>

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• Java (Tomcat): how to configure a cookieless subdomain to serve static content

  - by Webinator

  One of the tip given by both Google and Yahoo! to speed up webpages loading is to configure a cookieless subdomain to server static content. How do you configure a "cookieless subdomain" using Tomcat in standalone mode (this question is not about how to use Apache to serve static content in a cookieless-way, but about how to do it in Tomcat-standalone mode)? Note that I don't care about filters supporting If-Modified-Since nor care about filters supporting gzipping: the static content I'm serving is forever cacheable (or its name will change) and it is already compressed data (so gzip would only slow down the transfer). Do I need two different Tomcat webapps? (one "cookiefull" and one "cookieless") Do I need two different servlets? (as of now I've got only one dispatcher/controller servlet). Why would a "regular" link to, say, a static image be called in a cookiefull way when it would be on the same domain as the main webapp and then be called in a "cookie-less" way when it is on a subdomain? I don't understand exactly what is going on: is it the browser that decides to append or not cookies to the query? If so, why would it not append the cookies to a static query on a "cookieless" subdomain. Any example as to what is going on behind the scene is most welcome :)

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• Django: Using 2 different AdminSite instances with different models registered

  - by omat

  Apart from the usual admin, I want to create a limited admin for non-staff users. This admin site will have different registered ModelAdmins. I created a folder /useradmin/ in my project directory and similar to contrib/admin/_init_.py I added an autodiscover() which will register models defined in useradmin.py modules instead of admin.py: # useradmin/__init__.py def autodiscover(): # Same as admin.autodiscover() but registers useradmin.py modules ... for app in settings.INSTALLED_APPS: mod = import_module(app) try: before_import_registry = copy.copy(site._registry) import_module('%s.useradmin' % app) except: site._registry = before_import_registry if module_has_submodule(mod, 'useradmin'): raise I also cretated sites.py under useradmin/ to override AdminSite similar to contrib/admin/sites: # useradmin/sites.py class UserAdminSite(AdminSite): def has_permission(self, request): # Don't care if the user is staff return request.user.is_active def login(self, request): # Do the login stuff but don't care if the user is staff if request.user.is_authenticated(): ... else: ... site = UserAdminSite(name='useradmin') In the project's URLs: # urls.py from django.contrib import admin import useradmin admin.autodiscover() useradmin.autodiscover() urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)), (r'^useradmin/', include(useradmin.site.urls)), ) And I try to register different models in admin.py and useradmin.py modules under app directories: # products/useradmin.py import useradmin class ProductAdmin(useradmin.ModelAdmin): pass useradmin.site.register(Product, ProductAdmin) But when registering models in useradmin.py like useradmin.site.register(Product, ProductAdmin), I get 'module' object has no attribute 'ModelAdmin' exception. Though when I try this via shell; import useradmin from useradmin import ModelAdmin does not raise any exception. Any ideas what might be wrong? Edit: I tried going the @Luke way and arranged the code as follows as minimal as possible: (file paths are relative to the project root) # admin.py from django.contrib.admin import autodiscover from django.contrib.admin.sites import AdminSite user_site = AdminSite(name='useradmin') # urls.py (does not even have url patterns; just calls autodiscover()) import admin admin.autodiscover() # products/admin.py import admin from products.models import Product admin.user_site.register(Product) As a result I get an AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'user_site' when admin.user_site.register(Product) in products/admin.py is called. Any ideas? Solution: I don't know if there are better ways but, renaming the admin.py in the project root to useradmin.py and updating the imports accordingly resolved the last case, which was a naming and import conflict.

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