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• Business Insight, IT Execution: 9 Project Management Tips

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from Profit Magazine - by David Rosenbaum When Marcos Baccetto was first asked to be the business-side project lead on Eaton Corporation’s Vehicle Group South America (VGSA) Oracle project, the operations services manager responsible for running manufacturing was, he confesses, “a little afraid” because of his lack of IT experience. Today, Baccetto calls the project “a fantastic experience,” and he is a true believer in the benefits of a close relationship between IT implementers and their line-of-business peers. Through his partnership with Jesiele Lima, then VGSA IT manager, Baccetto and Eaton’s South American operations team came to understand several important principles of business and IT. Here he shares nine tips managers should consider when working on an enterprise technology project. 1. Make it a business project, not an IT project. All levels of functional management must have ownership, responsibility, and accountability for the success of the implementation. 2. Share responsibility. Business owners should sign off on tests and data conversion. 3. Clean your data. Dedicating a team to improve core data quality prior to project launch can be a significant time-saver. 4. Select resources properly. Have functional people who can translate business needs to IT and can influence organizational change. 5. Manage scope. Follow project management methodologies and disciplines. 6. Adopt common processes, global solutions. Avoid customized, local solutions. The big-picture business goals can get lost in the details. 7. Implement processes prior to the go-live date. Change management can be key. Keep the workforce informed and train users in advance. 8. Define metrics milestones. Assume there will be a crisis during deployment. Having baseline metrics to compare against will help implementers keep their cool—and the project moving forward. 9. The sponsor’s commitment is critical. It is needed to support the truly difficult decisions.

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

  - by Sam Abraham

  In the next few lines, I would like to briefly review ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0.  I was honored to be extended the opportunity to review this valuable tool as part of the GeeksWithBlogs influencers Program, a quarterly award providing its recipients access to valuable tools and enabling them with an opportunity to provide a brief write-up reviewing the complimentary tools they receive.   Typical Usage   ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 is very intuitive and easy to use for any user be it novice or expert. A simple yet comprehensive menu screen enables the selection of the appropriate program type to profile as well as the executable or site for this program.   A typical use case starts with establishing a baseline memory snapshot, which tells us the initial memory cost used by the program under normal or low activity conditions. We would then take a second snapshot after the program has performed an activity which we want to investigate for memory leaks. We can then compare the initial baseline snapshot against the snapshot when the program has completed processing the activity in question to study anomalies in memory that did not get freed-up after the program has completed its performed function. The following are some screenshots outlining the selection of the program to profile (an executable for this demonstration’s purposes).   Figure 1 - Getting Started   Figure 2 - Selecting an Application to Profile     Features and Options   Right after the second snapshot is generated, Memory Profiler gives us immediate access to information on memory fragmentation, size differences between snapshots, unmanaged memory allocation and statistics on the largest classes taking up un-freed memory space.   We would also have the option to itemize objects held in memory grouped by object types within which we can study the instances allocated of each type. Filtering options enable us to quickly narrow object instances we are interested in.   Figure 3 - Easily accessible Execution Memory Information   Figure 4 - Class List   Figure 5 - Instance List   Figure 6-  Retention Graph for a Particular Instance   Conclusion I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to evaluate ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0. The tool's intuitive User Interface design and easily accessible menu options enabled me to quickly identify problem areas where memory was left unfreed in my code.     Tutorials and References  FInd out more About ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 http://www.red-gate.com/supportcenter/Product?p=ANTS Memory Profiler   Checkout what other reviewers of this valuable tool have already shared: http://geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder/archive/2011/03/10/ants-memory-profiler-7.0.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/28/ants-memory-profiler-7.0-review.aspx

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• Play or Lift: which one is more explicit?

  - by Andrea

  I am going to investigate web development with Scala, and the choice is between learning Lift or Play: probably I will not have enough time to try both, at least at first. Now, many comparisons between the two are available on the internet, but I would like to know how do they compare with respect to being explicit and involving less magic. Let me explain what I mean by example. I have used, to various degrees, CakePHP, symfony2, Django and Grails. I feel a very clear distinction between Django and symfony2, which are very explicit about what you are doing, and Grails and CakePHP, which try to do their best to guess what you are trying to achieve and often feel "magical". Let me give some examples comparing Django and Grails. In Django, views are functions that take a request as input and return a response. You can instantiate explicitly an instance of HttpResponse and populate its body with a string, or you can use shortcut functions to leverage the template system. In any case the return value from your view always has the same type. In contrast, the render method from Grails is highly polymorphic. You can throw a context at it and it will try to render a template which is found by convention using that context. Or you can pass it a pair of a template path and a context and that will work too. Or a string. Or XML. Grails tries hard to make sense of whatever you return from your controller. In the Django ORM, each model class has a static attribute representing the manager for that class. That manager exposes a fluent interface to build querysets. In Grails, you can have a similar functionality by composing detached criteria. Still, the most common way to query objects seems to be the use of runtime-generated methods like FindUserByEmailNotNull or FindPostByDateGreaterThan. I will not go further, but my point is that in Django-like frameworks you have control over the whole flow of the request/response process, while in Grails-like ones I feel I only have to feel the blanks and the framework will manage the rest of the flow for me. This is not to criticize Grails or CakePHP; which type you prefer is mainly a matter of preference. In fact, I happen to like some aspects of Grails, but I feel more comfortable with a framework which does less for me. Back to the point of the question: which one among Play and Lift is more explicit about what you do and which one tries to simplify more what you have to do with a layer of "magic"?

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• Install 32-bit gstreamer plugins on 64-bit

  - by Rua

  I am trying to install the 32-bit gstreamer plugins on my 64-bit system (Ubuntu 12.10 based). I can install the packages gstreamer0.10-plugins-base:i386 and gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386. However, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad:i386, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse:i386 and gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly:i386 conflict with 64-bit packages already installed on my system: $ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad:i386 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad:i386 : Depends: libass4:i386 (>= 0.9.7) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libdca0:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libdvdnav4:i386 (>= 4.2.0+20120524) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libdvdread4:i386 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libslv2-9:i386 (>= 0.6.4-1~) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. ... $ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse:i386 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: libavcodec53:i386 libavutil51:i386 libfaac0:i386 libfaad2:i386 libgsm1:i386 libmjpegtools-1.9:i386 libmp3lame0:i386 libquicktime2:i386 libschroedinger-1.0-0:i386 libswscale2:i386 libva1:i386 libvpx1:i386 libx264-123:i386 libxvidcore4:i386 The following packages will be REMOVED: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse libfaac0 libmjpegtools-1.9 mint-meta-codecs The following NEW packages will be installed: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse:i386 libavcodec53:i386 libavutil51:i386 libfaac0:i386 libfaad2:i386 libgsm1:i386 libmjpegtools-1.9:i386 libmp3lame0:i386 libquicktime2:i386 libschroedinger-1.0-0:i386 libswscale2:i386 libva1:i386 libvpx1:i386 libx264-123:i386 libxvidcore4:i386 0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 4 to remove and 5 not upgraded. Need to get 9,198 kB of archives. After this operation, 23.3 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? ... $ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly:i386 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly:i386 : Depends: libdvdread4:i386 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. This means that I can't play mp3s (among other things) in 32-bit applications that use gstreamer. Is there a way around this?

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• The Other Side of XBRL

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  With the United States SEC's mandate for XBRL filings entering its third year, and impacting over 7000 additional companies in 2011, there's a lot of buzz in the industry about how companies should address the new reporting requirements.  Should they outsource the XBRL tagging process to a third party publisher, handle the process in-house with a bolt-on XBRL tool, or should they integrate XBRL tagging with the financial close and reporting process?  Oracle is recommending the latter approach, in fact  here's a link to a recent webcast that I did with CFO.com on this topic: http://www.cfo.com/webcasts/index.cfm/l_eventarchive/14548560 But production of XBRL-based filings is only half of the story. The other half is consumption of XBRL by regulators, academics, financial analysts and investors.  As I mentioned in my December article on the XBRL US conference, the feedback from these groups is that they are not really leveraging XBRL for analysis of companies due to a lack of tools and historic XBRL-based data on public companies.   The good news here is that the historic data problem is getting better as large, accelerated filers enter their third year of XBRL filings.  And the situation is getting better on the reporting and analysis tools side of the equation as well - and Oracle is leading the way. In early January, Oracle released the Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g.  This is a "no cost option" on top of the latest Oracle Database 11.2.0.2.0 release. With this added functionality organizations will have the ability to create one or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, which provide XBRL storage and query-ability with a set of XBRL-specific services.  The XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB integrates easily with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for analytics and with interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies. The Oracle XBRL Extension to Oracle Database 11g should be attractive to regulators, stock exchanges, universities and other organizations that need to collect, analyze and disseminate XBRL-based filings.  It should also be attractive to organizations that produce XBRL filings, and need a way to store and compare their own XBRL-based financial filings to those of their peers and competitors. If you would like more information, here's a link to a web page on the Oracle Technology Network with the details about Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g, including data sheet, white paper, presentation, demos and other information: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html

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• JGridView (Part 2)

  - by Geertjan

  The second sample in the JGrid download is a picture viewer that needs to be seen to be believed. Here it is, integrated into a NetBeans Platform application (click to enlarge it): When you mouse over the images, they change, showing several different images instantaneously. Here's the explorer view above, mainly making use of code from the sample: public class JGridView extends JScrollPane { @Override public void addNotify() { super.addNotify(); final ExplorerManager em = ExplorerManager.find(this); if (em != null) { final JGrid grid = new JGrid(); Node root = em.getRootContext(); final Node[] nodes = root.getChildren().getNodes(); final PicViewerObject[] pics = new PicViewerObject[nodes.length]; for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) { Node node = nodes[i]; pics[i] = node.getLookup().lookup(PicViewerObject.class); } grid.getCellRendererManager().setDefaultRenderer(new PicViewerRenderer()); grid.setModel(new DefaultListModel() { @Override public int getSize() { return pics.length; } @Override public Object getElementAt(int i) { return pics[i]; } }); grid.setFixedCellDimension(160); grid.addMouseMotionListener(new MouseAdapter() { int lastIndex = -1; @Override public void mouseMoved(MouseEvent e) { if (lastIndex >= 0) { Object o = grid.getModel().getElementAt(lastIndex); if (o instanceof PicViewerObject) { Rectangle r = grid.getCellBounds(lastIndex); if (r != null && !r.contains(e.getPoint())) { ((PicViewerObject) o).setMarker(false); grid.repaint(r); } } } int index = grid.getCellAt(e.getPoint()); if (index >= 0) { Object o = grid.getModel().getElementAt(index); if (o instanceof PicViewerObject) { Rectangle r = grid.getCellBounds(index); if (r != null) { ((PicViewerObject) o).setFraction(((float) e.getPoint().x - (float) r.x) / (float) r.width); ((PicViewerObject) o).setMarker(true); lastIndex = index; grid.repaint(r); } } } } }); grid.getSelectionModel().addListSelectionListener(new ListSelectionListener() { @Override public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e) { //Somehow compare the selected item //with the list of books and find a matching book: int selectedIndex = grid.getSelectedIndex(); for (int i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) { int picId = pics[i].getId(); if (selectedIndex == picId) { try { em.setSelectedNodes(new Node[]{nodes[i]}); } catch (PropertyVetoException ex) { Exceptions.printStackTrace(ex); } } } } }); setViewportView(grid); } } } The next step is to create a generic JGridView that will handle any kind of object automatically.

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• 3 Reasons You Need To Know Something About Every Technology

  - by Tim Murphy

  I make my living as a consultant and a general technologist.  I credit my success to the fact that I have never been afraid to pick up any product, language or platform needed to get the job done.  While Microsoft technologies I my mainstay, I have done work on mainframe and UNIX platforms and have worked with a wide variety of database engines.  Each one has it’s use and most times it is less expensive to find a way to communicate with an existing system than to replace it. So what are the main benefits of expending the effort to learn a new technology? New ways to solve problems Accelerate development Advise clients and get new business opportunities By new technology I mean ones that you haven’t had experience with before.  They don’t have to be the the one that just came out yesterday.  As they say, those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.  If you can learn something from an older technology it can be just as valuable as the shiny new one.  Either way, when you add another tool to your kit you get a new view on each problem you face.  This makes it easier to create a sound solution. The next thing you can learn from working with different products and techniques is how to more efficiently develop solve problems.  Many times if you are working with a new language you will find that there are specific design patterns that are used with it in normal use.  These can usually be applied with most languages.  You just needed to be exposed to them. The last point is about helping your clients and helping yourself.  If you can get in on technologies early you will have advantage over your competition in the market.  You will also be able to honestly advise you client on why they should or should not go with a new product.  Being able to compare products and their features is always an ability that stake holders appreciate. You don’t need to learn every detail of a product.  Learn enough to function and get an idea of how to use the technology.  Keep eating those technology Wheaties and you will be ready to go the distance in any project. del.icio.us Tags: Technology,technologists,technology generalist,Software Architecture

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• Agile Documentation

  - by Nick Harrison

  We all know that one of the premises of the agile manifesto is to value Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation. This is a wonderful idea and it takes a tremendous burden off of project implementations. I have seen as many projects fail because of the maintenance weight of the project documentations as I have for any reason. But this goal as important as it is may not always be practical. Sometimes the client will simply insist on tedious documentation despite the arguments against it. This may be to calm a nervous client. This may be to satisfy an audit / compliance requirement. This may be a non-too subtle attempt at sabotaging the project. Ok, it is probably not an all out attempt to sabotage the project, but it will probably feel that way. So what can we do to keep to the spirit of the Agile Manifesto but still meet the needs of the client wanting the documentation? This is a good question that I have been puzzling over lately! I hope to explore some possible answers more fully here. A common theme that my solutions are likely to follow is the same theme that I often follow with simplifying complex business logic. Make it table driven! My thought is that the sought after documentation could be a report or reports out of a metadata repository. Reports are much easier to maintain than hand written documentation. Here are a few additional advantages that we can explore over time: Reports will take advantage of the fact that different people have different needs and different format requirements Reports and the supporting metadata are more easily validated and the validation can be automated. If the application itself uses this metadata than there never has to be a question as to whether or not the metadata is up to date. It is up to date or the application would not work. In many cases we should be able to automatically gather most of the Meta data that we need using reflection, system tables, etc. I think that this will lower the total cost of ownership for the documentation and may provide something useful beyond having a pretty document to look at.  What are your thoughts?

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• What's the best way to create a static utility class in python? Is using metaclasses code smell?

  - by rsimp

  Ok so I need to create a bunch of utility classes in python. Normally I would just use a simple module for this but I need to be able to inherit in order to share common code between them. The common code needs to reference the state of the module using it so simple imports wouldn't work well. I don't like singletons, and classes that use the classmethod decorator do not have proper support for python properties. One pattern I see used a lot is creating an internal python class prefixed with an underscore and creating a single instance which is then explicitly imported or set as the module itself. This is also used by fabric to create a common environment object (fabric.api.env). I've realized another way to accomplish this would be with metaclasses. For example: #util.py class MetaFooBase(type): @property def file_path(cls): raise NotImplementedError def inherited_method(cls): print cls.file_path #foo.py from util import * import env class MetaFoo(MetaFooBase): @property def file_path(cls): return env.base_path + "relative/path" def another_class_method(cls): pass class Foo(object): __metaclass__ = MetaFoo #client.py from foo import Foo file_path = Foo.file_path I like this approach better than the first pattern for a few reasons: First, instantiating Foo would be meaningless as it has no attributes or methods, which insures this class acts like a true single interface utility, unlike the first pattern which relies on the underscore convention to dissuade client code from creating more instances of the internal class. Second, sub-classing MetaFoo in a different module wouldn't be as awkward because I wouldn't be importing a class with an underscore which is inherently going against its private naming convention. Third, this seems to be the closest approximation to a static class that exists in python, as all the meta code applies only to the class and not to its instances. This is shown by the common convention of using cls instead of self in the class methods. As well, the base class inherits from type instead of object which would prevent users from trying to use it as a base for other non-static classes. It's implementation as a static class is also apparent when using it by the naming convention Foo, as opposed to foo, which denotes a static class method is being used. As much as I think this is a good fit, I feel that others might feel its not pythonic because its not a sanctioned use for metaclasses which should be avoided 99% of the time. I also find most python devs tend to shy away from metaclasses which might affect code reuse/maintainability. Is this code considered code smell in the python community? I ask because I'm creating a pypi package, and would like to do everything I can to increase adoption.

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• cloud programming for OpenStack in C / C++

  - by Basile Starynkevitch

  (Sorry for such a fuzzy question, I am very newbie to cloud programming) I am interested in designing (and developing) a (free software) program in C or C++ (probably, most of it being meta-programmed, i.e. part of the C code code being generated). I am still in the thinking / designing phase. And I might perhaps give up. For reference, I am the main architect and implementor of GCC MELT, a domain specific language to extend the GCC compiler (the MELT language is translated to C/C++ and is bootstrapped: the MELT to C/C++ translator being written in MELT). And I am dreaming of extending it with some cloud computing abilities. But I am a newbie in cloud computing. (I am only interested in free-software, GPLv3 friendly, based cloud computing, which probably means openstack). I believe that "compiling on the cloud with some enhanced GCC" could make sense (for super-optimizations or static analysis of e.g. an entire Linux distribution, or at least a massive GCC compiled free software like Qt, GCC itself, or the Linux kernel). I'm dreaming of a MELT specific monitoring program which would store, communicate, and and enhance GCC compilation (extended by MELT). So the picture would be that each GCC process (actually the cc1 or cc1plus started by the gcc driver, suitably extended by some MELT extension) would communicate with some monitor. That "monitoring/persisting" program would run "on the cloud" (and probably manage some information produced by GCC e.g. on NoSQL bases). So, how should some (yet to be written) C program (some Linux daemon) be designed to be cloud-friendly? So far, I understood that it should provide some Web service, probably thru a RESTful service, so should use an HTTP server library like onion. And that OpenStack is able to start (e.g. a dozen of) such services. But I don't have a clear picture of what OpenStack brings. So far, I noticed the ability to manage (and distribute) virtual machines (with some Python API). It is less clear how can it distribute some ELF executable, how can it start it, etc. Do you have any references or examples of C / C++ programming on the cloud? How should a "cloud-friendly" (actually, OpenStack friendly) C/C++ server application be designed?

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• Enabling EUS support in OUD 11gR2 using command line interface

  - by Sylvain Duloutre

  Enterprise User Security (EUS) allows Oracle Database to use users & roles stored in LDAP for authentication and authorization.Since the 11gR2 release, OUD natively supports EUS. EUS can be easily configured during OUD setup. ODSM (the graphical admin console) can also be used to enable EUS for a new suffix. However, enabling EUS for a new suffix using command line interface is currently not documented, so here is the procedure: Let's assume that EUS support was enabled during initial setup.Let's o=example be the new suffix I want to use to store Enterprise users. The following sequence of command must be applied for each new suffix: // Create a local database holding EUS context infodsconfig create-workflow-element --set base-dn:cn=OracleContext,o=example --set enabled:true --type db-local-backend --element-name exampleContext -n // Add a workflow element in the call path to generate on the fly attributes required by EUSdsconfig create-workflow-element --set enabled:true --type eus-context --element-name eusContext --set next-workflow-element:exampleContext -n // Add the context to a workflow for routingdsconfig create-workflow --set base-dn:cn=OracleContext,o=example --set enabled:true --set workflow-element:eusContext --workflow-name exampleContext_workflow -n //Add the new workflow to the appropriate network groupdsconfig set-network-group-prop --group-name network-group --add workflow:exampleContext_workflow -n // Create the local database for o=exampledsconfig create-workflow-element --set base-dn:o=example --set enabled:true --type db-local-backend --element-name example -n // Create a workflow element in the call path to the user data to generate on the fly attributes expected by EUS dsconfig create-workflow-element --set enabled:true --set eus-realm:o=example --set next-workflow-element:example --type eus --element-name eusWfe// Add the db to a workflow for routingdsconfig create-workflow --set base-dn:o=example --set enabled:true --set workflow-element:eusWfe --workflow-name example_workflow -n //Add the new workflow to the appropriate network groupdsconfig set-network-group-prop --group-name network-group --add workflow:example_workflow -n  // Add the appropriate acis for EUSdsconfig set-access-control-handler-prop \           --add global-aci:'(target="ldap:///o=example")(targetattr="authpassword")(version 3.0; acl "EUS reads authpassword"; allow (read,search,compare) userdn="ldap:///??sub?(&(objectclass=orclservice)(objectclass=orcldbserver))";)' dsconfig set-access-control-handler-prop \       --add global-aci:'(target="ldap:///o=example")(targetattr="orclaccountstatusevent")(version 3.0; acl "EUS writes orclaccountstatusenabled"; allow (write) userdn="ldap:///??sub?(&(objectclass=orclservice)(objectclass=orcldbserver))";)' Last but not least you must adapt the content of the ${OUD}/config/EUS/eusData.ldif  file with your suffix value then inport it into OUD.

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• Managing Regulated Content in WebCenter: USDM and Oracle Offer a New Part 11 Compliant Solution for Life Sciences

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post today provided by Oracle partner, USDM  Regulated Content in WebCenterUSDM and Oracle offer a new Part 11 compliant solution for Life Sciences (White Paper) Life science customers now have the ability to take advantage of all of the benefits of Oracle’s WebCenter Content, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management.   For the past year, USDM has been developing best practice compliance solutions to meet regulated content management requirements for 21 CFR Part 11 in WebCenter Content. USDM has been an expert in ECM for life sciences since 1999 and in 2011, certified that WebCenter was a 21CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform (White Paper).  In addition, USDM has built Validation Accelerators Packs for WebCenter to enable life science organizations to quickly and cost effectively validate this world class solution.With the Part 11 certification, Oracle’s WebCenter now provides regulated life science organizations  the ability to manage REGULATORY content in WebCenter, as well as the ability to take advantage of ALL of the additional functionality of WebCenter, including  a complete, open, and integrated portfolio of portal, web experience management, content management and social networking technology.  Here are a few screen shot examples of Part 11 functionality included in the product: E-Sign, E-Sign Rendor, Meta Data History, Audit Trail Report, and Access Reporting. Gone are the days that life science companies have to spend millions of dollars a year to implement, maintain, and validate ECM systems that no longer meet the ever changing business and regulatory requirements.  Life science companies now have the ability to use WebCenter Content, an ECM system with a substantially lower cost of ownership and unsurpassed functionality.Oracle has been #1 in life sciences because of their ability to develop cost effective, easy-to-use, scalable solutions which help increase insight and efficiency to drive growth for their customers.  Adding a world class ECM solution to this product portfolio allows life science organizations the chance to get rid of costly ECM systems that no longer meet their needs and use WebCenter, part of the Oracle Fusion Technology stack, with their other leading enterprise applications.USDM provides:•    Expertise in Life Science ECM Business Processes•    Prebuilt Life Science Configuration in WebCenter •    Validation Accelerator Packs for WebCenterUSDM is very proud to support Oracle’s expanding commitment to Life Sciences…. For more information please contact:  [email protected] Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• How to interview a natural scientist for a dev position?

  - by Silas

  I already did some interviews for my company, mostly computer scientists for dev positions but also some testers and project managers. Now I have to fill a vacancy in our research group within the R&D department (side note: “research” means that we try to solve problems in our professional domain/market niche using software in research projects together with universities, other companies, research centres and end user organisations. It’s not computer science research; we’re not going to solve the P=NP problem). Now we invited a guy holding an MSc in chemistry (with a lot of physics in his CV, too), who never had any computer science lesson. I already talked with him about half an hour at a local university’s career days and there’s no doubt the guy is smart. Also his marks are excellent and he graduated with distinction. For his BSc he needed to teach himself programming in Mathematica and told me believably that he liked programming a lot. Also he solved some physical chemistry problem that I probably don’t understand using his own software, implemented in Mathematica, for his MSc thesis. It includes a GUI and a notable size of 8,000 LoC. He seems to be very attracted by what we’re doing in our research group and to be honest it’s quite difficult for an SME like us to get good people. I also am very interested in hiring him since he could assist me in writing project proposals, reports, doing presentations and so on. He would probably fit to our team, too. The only question left is: How can I check if he will get the programming skills he needs to do software implementation in our projects since this will be a significant part of the job? Of course I will ask him what it is, that is fascinating him about programming. I’ll also ask how he proceeded to write his natural science software and how he structured it. I’ll ask about how he managed to obtain the skills and information about software development he needed. But is there something more I could ask? Something more concrete perhaps? Should I ask him to explain his Mathematica solution? To be clear: I’m not looking for knowledge in a particular language or technology stack. We’re a .NET shop in product development but I want to have a free choice for our research projects. So I’m interested in the meta-competence being able to learn whatever is actually needed. I hope this question is answerable and not open-ended since I really like to know if there is a default way to check for the ability to get further programming skills on the job. If something is not clear to you please give me some comments and let me improve my question.

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• So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• Methodology to understanding JQuery plugin & API's developed by third parties

  - by Taoist

  I have a question about third party created JQuery plug ins and API's and the methodology for understanding them. Recently I downloaded the JQuery Masonry/Infinite scroll plug in and I couldn't figure out how to configure it based on the instructions. So I downloaded a fully developed demo, then manually deleted everything that wouldn't break the functionality. The code that was left allowed me to understand the plug in much greater detail than the documentation. I'm now having a similar issue with a plug in called JQuery knob. http://anthonyterrien.com/knob/ If you look at the JQuery Knob readme file it says this is working code: $(function() { $('.dial') .trigger( 'configure', { "min":10, "max":40, "fgColor":"#FF0000", "skin":"tron", "cursor":true } ); }); But as far as I can tell it isn't at all. The read me also says the Plug in uses Canvas. I am wondering if I am suppose to wrap this code in a canvas context or if this functionality is already part of the plug in. I know this kind of "question" might not fit in here but I'm a bit confused on the assumptions around reading these kinds of documentation and thought I would post the query regardless. Curious to see if this is due to my "newbi" programming experience or if this is something seasoned coders also fight with. Thank you. Edit In response to Tyanna's reply. I modified the code and it still doesn't work. I posted it below. I made sure that I checked the Google Console to insure the basics were taken care of, such as not getting a read-error on the library. <!DOCTYPE html> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>knob</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/themes/hot-sneaks/jquery-ui.css" type="text/css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.21/jquery-ui.min.js"></script> <script src="js/jquery.knob.js"></script> <div id="button1">test </div> <script> $(function() { $("#button1").click(function () { $('.dial').trigger( 'configure', { "min":10, "max":40, "fgColor":"#FF0000", "skin":"tron", "cursor":true } ); }); }); </script>

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• Showrooming: What's the big deal?

  - by David Dorf

  There's been lots of chatter recently on how retailers will combat showrooming this holiday season.  Best Buy and Target, for example, plan to price-match certain online sites.  But from my perspective, the whole showrooming concept is overblown.  Yes, mobile phones make is easier to comparison-shop, but consumers have been doing that all along.  Retailers have to work hard to merchandise their stores with the right products at the right price with the right promotions.  Its Retail 101. Yeah ok, many websites don't have to charge tax so they have an advantage, but they also have to cover shipping costs. Brick-and-mortar stores have the opportunity to provide expertise, fit, and instant gratification all of which are pretty big advantages. I see lots of studies that claim a large percentage of shoppers are showrooming.  Now I don't do much shopping, but when I do I rarely see anyone scanning UPC codes in the aisles.  If you dig into those studies, the question is usually something like, "have you used your mobile phone to price compare while shopping in the last year."  Well yeah, I did it once -- out of the 20 shopping trips.  And by the way, the in-store price was close enough to just buy the item.  Based on casual observation and informal surveys of friends, showrooming is not the modus-operandi for today's busy shoppers. I never see people showrooming in grocery stores, and most people don't bother for fashion.  For big purchases like appliances and furniture, I bet most people do their research online before entering the store.  The cases where I've done it was to see if a promotion was in fact a good deal.  Or even to make sure the in-store price is the same as the online price for the same brand. So, if you think you're a victim of showrooming, I suggest you look at the bigger picture.  Are you providing an engaging store experience?  Are you allowing customers to shop the way they want to shop, using various touchpoints?  Are you monitoring the competition to ensure prices are competitive?  Are your promotions attracting the right customers? Hubert Jolly, CEO of Best Buy, recently commented that showrooming might just get more people into his stores. "Once customers are in our stores, they're ours to lose."

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• More on Map Testing

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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• Validate if aTextBox Value Start with a Specific Letter

  - by Vincent Maverick Durano

  In case you will be working on a page that needs to validate the first character of the TextBox entered by a user then here are two options that you can use: Option 1: Using an array   1: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent" runat="server"> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: function CheckFirstChar(o) { 4: var arr = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']; 5: if (o.value.length > 0) { 6: for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { 7: if (o.value.charAt(0) == arr[i]) { 8: alert('Valid'); 9: return true; 10: } 11: else { 12: alert('InValid'); 13: return false; 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } 18: </script> 19: </asp:Content> 20: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 21: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" onblur="return CheckFirstChar(this);"></asp:TextBox> 22: </asp:Content>   The example above uses an array of string for storing the list of  characters that a TextBox value should start with. We then iterate to the array and compare the first character of TextBox value to see if it matches any characters from the array. Option 2: Using Regular Expression (Preferred way)   1: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent" runat="server"> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: function CheckFirstChar(o) { 4: pattern = /^(A|B|C|D)/; 5: if (!pattern.test(o.value)) { 6: alert('InValid'); 7: return false; 8: } else { 9: alert('Valid'); 10: return true; 11: } 12: } 13: </script> 14: </asp:Content> 15: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 16: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" onblur="return CheckFirstChar(this);"></asp:TextBox> 17: </asp:Content>   The example above uses regular expression with the pattern  /^(A|B|C|D)/. This will check if the TextBox value starts with A,B,C or D. Please note that it's case sensitive. If you want to allow lower case then you can alter the patter to this /^(A|B|C|D)/i. The i in the last part will cause a case-insensitive search.   That's it! I hope someone find this post useful!

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• Chrome trims the last <li> element in a row [closed]

  - by Paul

  Ok guys, I give up. Here's the code I'm struggling with: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> <title>Blah</title> <style type="text/css"> #container { margin: 0 auto; width: 350px; border: 1px solid #ccc; } ul { list-style-type: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center; } ul li { display: inline; padding: 5px; margin: 0 1px; background-color: lime; line-height: 2em; /* border: 1px solid red; */ } </style> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <ul> <li>Element A</li> <li>Element B</li> <li>Element C</li> <li>Element D</li> <li>Element E</li> <li>Element F</li> </ul> </div> </body> </html> Why the heck does Chrome trim the right side of "Element D" (even though there is enough space to display whole item), while Firefox and even Internet Explorer render this code properly? It becomes more visible when we apply the commented border. In other words, is there a way to tell the browser that I want every single <li> element to be autonomic, and thus to move it to the next row if it doesn't fit entirely in the previous one? Can't wait to see the solution, thanks in advance.

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• 5.1 surround sound

  - by rocker9455

  Ok, So i've always had trouble with enabling 5.1 in ubuntu. Running 'alsamixer': I have: Master, Heaphones, PCM, Front, Front Mi, Front Mi, Surround, Center All are at 100% Card:HDA Intel Chip:Realtek ALC888 (This is my onboard sound, Its a dell studio, with 7.1 integrated sound) Running "speaker-test -c6 -twav" I only get the front 2 speakers (Right/Left) making any noise. The others make no noise at all. I have no other sound card to use as all my PCI slots are used up. Daemon.conf: ; daemonize = no ; fail = yes ; allow-module-loading = yes ; allow-exit = yes ; use-pid-file = yes ; system-instance = no ; enable-shm = yes ; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB ; lock-memory = no ; cpu-limit = no ; high-priority = yes ; nice-level = -11 ; realtime-scheduling = yes ; realtime-priority = 5 ; exit-idle-time = 20 ; scache-idle-time = 20 ; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture) ; load-default-script-file = yes ; default-script-file = ; log-target = auto ; log-level = notice ; log-meta = no ; log-time = no ; log-backtrace = 0 resample-method = speex-float-1 ; enable-remixing = yes ; enable-lfe-remixing = no flat-volumes = no ; rlimit-fsize = -1 ; rlimit-data = -1 ; rlimit-stack = -1 ; rlimit-core = -1 ; rlimit-as = -1 ; rlimit-rss = -1 ; rlimit-nproc = -1 ; rlimit-nofile = 256 ; rlimit-memlock = -1 ; rlimit-locks = -1 ; rlimit-sigpending = -1 ; rlimit-msgqueue = -1 ; rlimit-nice = 31 ; rlimit-rtprio = 9 ; rlimit-rttime = 1000000 ; default-sample-format = s16le ; default-sample-rate = 44100 ; default-sample-channels = 6 ; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right default-fragments = 8 default-fragment-size-msec = 10

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• WHERE x = @x OR @x IS NULL

  - by steveh99999

  Every SQL DBA and developer should read the blog of MVP Erland Sommarskog – but particularly  his article on dynamic search conditions in T-SQL. I’ve linked above to his SQL 2005 article but his 2008 version is also a must-read. I seem to regularly come across uses of the SQL in the title above… Erland’s article explains in detail why this is inefficient, but I came across a nice example recently… A stored procedure contained the following code :- WHERE @Name is null or [Name] like @Name as a nonclustered index exists on the Name column, you might assume this would be handled efficiently by SQL Server. However, I got the following output from SET STATISTICS IO Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 15, logical reads 47760, physical reads 9, read-ahead reads 13872, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Note the high number of logical reads… After a bit of investigation, we found that @Name could never actually be set to NULL in this particular example. ie the @x IS NULL was spurious… So, we changed the call to WHERE  [Name] like @Name Now, how much more efficient is this code ? Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 3, logical reads 24, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0 A nice easy win in this case…… a full index scan has been replaced by a significantly more efficient index seek. I managed to recreate the same behaviour on Adventureworks – here’s a quick query to demonstrate :- USE adventureworks SET STATISTICS IO ON DECLARE @id INT = 51721 SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE @id IS NULL OR salesorderid = @id SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE salesorderid = @id Take a look at the STATISTICS IO output and compare the actual query plans used to prove the impact of  WHERE @id IS NULL. And just to follow some of Erland’s advice – here’s how you could get similar performance if it was possible that @id could actually sometimes contain NULL. DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000), @parameterlist NVARCHAR(4000) DECLARE @id INT = 51721 – or change to NULL to prove query is functionally correct SET @sql = 'SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE 1 = 1' IF @id IS NOT NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid = @id' IF @id IS NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid IS NULL' SET @parameterlist = '@id INT' EXEC sp_executesql @sql, @parameterlist,@id Sometimes I think we focus too much on hardware and SQL Server configuration – when really the answer is focus on writing efficient SQL.

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• C# Preprocessor Directives

  - by MarkPearl

  Going back to my old c++ days at university where we had all our code littered with preprocessor directives - I thought it made the code ugly and could never understand why it was useful. Today though I found a use in my C# application. The scenario – I had made various security levels in my application and tied my XAML to the levels by set by static accessors in code. An example of my XAML code for a Combobox to be enabled would be as follows… <ComboBox IsEnabled="{x:Static security:Security.SecurityCanEditDebtor}" />   And then I would have a static method like this… public static bool SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress { get { if (SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress) { return true; } else { return false; } } } My only problem was that my XAML did not like the if statement – which meant that while my code worked during runtime, during design time in VS2010 it gave some horrible error like… NullReferenceException was thrown on “StatiucExtension”: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation… If however my C# method was changed to something like this… public static bool SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress { get { return true; } }   My XAML viewer would be happy. But of course this would bypass my security… <Drum Roll> Welcome preprocessor directives… what I wanted was during my design experience to totally remove the “if” code so that my accessor would return true and not have any if statements, but when I release my project to the big open world, I want the code to have the is statement. With a bit of searching I found the relevant MSDN sample and my code now looks like this… public static bool SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress { get { #if DEBUG return true; #else if (Settings.GetInstance().CurrentUser.SecurityCanEditDebtorPostalAddress) { return true; } else { return false; } #endif } }   Not the prettiest beast, but it works. Basically what is being said here is that during my debug mode compile my code with just the code between the #if … #else block, but what I can now do is if I want to universally switch everything to the “if else” statement, I just go to my project properties –> Build and change the “Debug” flag as illustrated in the picture below. Also note that you can define your own conditional compilation symbols, and if you even wanted to you could skip the whole properties page and define them in code using the #define & #undef directives. So while I don’t like the way the code works and would like to look more into AOP and compare it to this method, it works for now.

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• Modelling highly specific business requirements

  - by AndyBursh

  How can one go about modelling highly specific business requirements, which have no precedent in the system? Take for example the following requirement: When a purchase order contains N lines, is over X value in total and is being recorded against project Y, an email needs to be sent to persons A and B with the details This requirement supplements other requirements surrounding purchase orders, but comes in at a much later date in response to some ongoing problem elsewhere in the business. Persons A and B are not part of any role or group in the system, and don't hold any specific responsibility; they are simply the two people the business has appointed to receive these emails in this very specific case. Projects are also data driven, so project Y has no special properties to distinguish it from any other project. The only way to identify it is to compare its identifier to a magic number. How can one go about modelling this kind of case without introducing too much additional complexity? That I can think of right now, there are a couple of options. Perform the checks and actions inline with the existing code. Here we find the correct spot in the code, check the conditions in the requirement and send the emails to hardcoded addresses. Of course this is fraught with issues. At the very least it stops working if one of these people leaves or changes their email address. At worst you have to ensure that any tests and test data are aware that additional actions are taken for a specific set of criteria. Introduce some form of events system. Here we introduce an eventing system, so that we might react to some event, and fulfil the requirement outside of the usual path of execution. This sounds like a cleaner solution than option 1, but the work involved is ultimately probably slightly overkill for this one small requirement. That said, having it in place does allow the system to handle these kinds of specific requirements consistently and easily in the future. Are there any other (good/better) ways of handling highly specific requirements? I mean other than telling the other parts of the business no!

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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