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• ASP.Net layered communication

  - by Chris Klepeis

  Hi, We're developing a layered web application. The specs: 3 layers, data layer, business layer, ui layer. Programmed in C# Data Layer uses the entity framework Currently we plan on having the data layer return IEnumerable<T> to the business layer via linq 2 entities, and the business layer will return data to the ui layer. Since the ui layer has no knowledge of the existance of the data layer, how would it handle a result of IEnumerable passed to it from the BLL, where T is defined in the data layer? Are there any GOOD example out there on how to do this. Please note that I'm extremely new to factories / interfaces / abstraction to loosely couple layers. I saw the question here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/917457/passing-data-in-an-ntier-application and it was recommended to have the entity layer shared amongst all layers... however I do not want the other layers to be able to query the database.

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• Yahoo Astra flash component error BaseScrollPane not found

  - by Chris

  I'm trying to use the Astra library from Yahoo but I'm getting an error saying the base class BaseScrollPane is not found. It appears to be imported from fl.containers.BaseScrollPane, which leads me to believe it should be a part of the base flash 10 library and therefore should be available, but it appears to be missing. Is this part of a separate package from somewhere? Update: For what it's worth, I found the actual class files in the Configuration/Component Source folder on my hard drive, but adding that to the class path (as well as the Components directory) did no good. I ended up fixing the issue by dragging a scroll pane component to the stage from the Components window and then deleting it, but I'm not sure what exactly that action changed that made it work, and would like to know for future reference.

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• How to provide an API client with 1,000,000 database results?

  - by Chris Dutrow

  What is a good way to provide an API client with 1,000,000 database results? We are cureently using PostgreSQL. A few suggested methods: Paging using Cursors Paging using random numbers ( Add "GREATER THAN ORDER BY " to each query ) Save information to a file and let the client download it Iterate through results, then POST the data to the client server Return only keys to the client, then let the client request the objects from Cloud files like Amazon S3 (still may require paging just to get the file names ). What haven't I thought of that is stupidly simple and way better than any of these options?

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• privacy, c++, firefox... big bug!!!

  - by Delirium tremens

  How to reproduce: open Firefox visit a good TGP click History click Show All History select the name of the good TGP you already know Delete This Page, but there is an other feature, a super secret feature, click Forget All About This Page --- if you had cookies, cache, active logins etc that came from the good TGP, it's correctly deleted, because it's a different feature from delete this page visit TWO good TGPs click History click Show All History select the names of the TWO good TGPs --- where is Forget All About These Pages??? That is the bug... It used to be all-or-nothing, but now... now??? oh, now there's a bug and it's still all-or-nothing.

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• SQL Query to select upcoming events with a start and end date

  - by Chris T

  I need to display upcoming events from a database. The problem is when I use the query I'm currently using any events with a start day that has passed will show up lower on the list of upcoming events regardless of the fact that they are current My table (yaml): columns: title: type: string(255) notnull: true default: Untitled Event start_time: type: time end_time: type: time start_day: type: date notnull: true end_day: type: date description: type: string(500) default: This event has no description category_id: integer My query (doctrine): $results = Doctrine_Query::create() ->from("sfEventItem e, e.Category c") ->select("e.title, e.start_day, e.description, e.category_id, e.slug") ->addSelect("c.title, c.slug") ->orderBy("e.start_day, e.start_time, e.title") ->limit(5) ->execute(array(), Doctrine_Core::HYDRATE_ARRAY); Basically I'd like any events that is currently going on (so if today is in between start_day and end_day) to be at the top of the list. How would I go about doing this if it's even possible? Raw sql queries are good answers too because they're pretty easy to turn into DQL.

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• If you could remove one feature of php ti help newbies what would it be?

  - by Chris

  If you could remove one feature from PHP so as to discourage, prevent or otherwise help stop newer programmers develop bad habits or practices, or, to stop them falling into traps that might hinder their development skills what would it be and why? Now, before the votes to close it's not as open-ended as you might think. I'm not asking purely what is the worst feature or what feature would you really like to remove purely arbitrarily. Yes, there may not be one correct answer but I suspect there will be many similar answers which will provide me with a good idea of things I might be doing wrong, even inadvertently.

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• If you could remove one feature of php to help newbies what would it be?

  - by Chris

  If you could remove one feature from PHP so as to discourage, prevent or otherwise help stop newer programmers develop bad habits or practices, or, to stop them falling into traps that might hinder their development skills what would it be and why? Now, before the votes to close it's not as open-ended as you might think. I'm not asking purely what is the worst feature or what feature would you really like to remove purely arbitrarily. Yes, there may not be one correct answer but I suspect there will be many similar answers which will provide me with a good idea of things I might be doing wrong, even inadvertently.

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• Java swing center JDialog over parent

  - by Chris Drappier

  I have a Java swing application with a button that produces a popup window when a certain action is performed. I'd like to align the center point of the popup window with the center point of the parent window when it is rendered. How can I calculate the x,y coordinates to plug into setLocation() for the popup window? EDIT: just to clarify. I do not want the behavior of setLocationRelativeTo() because that sets the top-left pixel of the popup over the center pixel of the parent frame. I want to set the center pixel of the popup over the center pixel of the parent frame. Also, I'm not interested in whether or not a popup window is good practice. I'm past that now. thanks

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• Compress small strings, With what to create external dictionary?

  - by Chris

  I want to compress much small strings (about 75-100 length c# string). At the time the dictionary is created I already know all short strings (nearly a trillion). There will no additional short strings in future. I need to extra exactly one string without decompress other strings. Now I am looking for a library or the best way to do the following: Create a dictionary using all strings I have Using this dictionary to compress each string a way to compress one string using the dictionary from 1. I found a good related question, but this is not c# specific. Maybe there is something for c# I do not know, or a fancy library or someone has already done that. That is the reason I ask this question.

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• April 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing blog series: ASP.NET Easily overlooked features in VS 11 Express for Web: Good post by Scott Hanselman that highlights a bunch of easily overlooked improvements that are coming to VS 11 (and specifically the free express editions) for web development: unit testing, browser chooser/launcher, IIS Express, CSS Color Picker, Image Preview in Solution Explorer and more. Get Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms: Good 5-part tutorial that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET Web Forms and highlights some of the nice improvements coming with ASP.NET 4.5. What is New in Razor V2 and What Else is New in Razor V2: Great posts by Andrew Nurse, a dev on the ASP.NET team, about some of the new improvements coming with ASP.NET Razor v2. ASP.NET MVC 4 AllowAnonymous Attribute: Nice post from David Hayden that talks about the new [AllowAnonymous] filter introduced with ASP.NET MVC 4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API: Great tutorial by Stephen Walher that covers how to use the new ASP.NET Web API support built-into ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Comprehensive List of ASP.NET Web API Tutorials and Articles: Tugberk Ugurlu links to a huge collection of articles, tutorials, and samples about the new ASP.NET Web API capability. Async Mashups using ASP.NET Web API: Nice post by Henrik on how you can use the new async language support coming with .NET 4.5 to easily and efficiently make asynchronous network requests that do not block threads within ASP.NET. ASP.NET and Front-End Web Development Visual Studio 11 and Front End Web Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3: Nice post by Scott Hanselman that highlights some of the great improvements coming with VS 11 (including the free express edition) for front-end web development. HTML5 Drag/Drop and Async Multi-file Upload with ASP.NET Web API: Great post by Filip W. that demonstrates how to implement an async file drag/drop uploader using HTML5 and ASP.NET Web API. Device Emulator Guide for Mobile Development with ASP.NET: Good post from Rachel Appel that covers how to use various device emulators with ASP.NET and VS to develop cross platform mobile sites. Fixing these jQuery: A Guide to Debugging: Great presentation by Adam Sontag on debugging with JavaScript and jQuery.  Some really good tips, tricks and gotchas that can save a lot of time. ASP.NET and Open Source Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Fantastic post by Henrik (an architect on the ASP.NET team) that provides step by step instructions on how to work with the ASP.NET source code we recently open sourced. Contributing to ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Follow-on to the post above (also by Henrik) that walks-through how you can submit a code contribution to the ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor projects. Overview of the WebApiContrib project: Nice post by Pedro Reys on the new open source WebApiContrib project that has been started to deliver cool extensions and libraries for use with ASP.NET Web API. Entity Framework Entity Framework 5 Performance Improvements and Performance Considerations for EF5:  Good articles that describes some of the big performance wins coming with EF5 (which will ship with both .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4). Automatic compilation of LINQ queries will yield some significant performance wins (up to 600% faster). ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF Database Migrations: Good post by David Hayden that covers the new database migrations support within EF 4.3 which allows you to easily update your database schema during development - without losing any of the data within it. Visual Studio What's New in Visual Studio 11 Unit Testing: Nice post by Peter Provost (from the VS team) that talks about some of the great improvements coming to VS11 for unit testing - including built-in VS tooling support for a broad set of unit test frameworks (including NUnit, XUnit, Jasmine, QUnit and more) Hope this helps, Scott

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• Developer Training – Importance and Significance – Part 1

  - by pinaldave

  Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Beginning in Real World However, many former-students will be disappointed to find out that once they become employees, learning is not over.  Many companies are discovering the importance and benefits to training their employees.  You can breathe a sigh of relief, though, because much for this kind of training there are not usually tests! We often think that we go to school for our younger years so that we do all our learning all at once, and then for the rest of our lives we use that knowledge.  But in so many cases, but especially for developers, the opposite is true.  It takes many years of schools to learn the basics of a field, and then our careers are spent learning to become experts. For this, and so many other reasons, training is very important.  Example one: developer training leads to better employees.  A company is only as good as the people it employs, and one way to ensure that you have employed the right candidate is through training.  Training can take a regular “stone” and polish it into a “diamond.”  Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product. Most Expensive Resource Did you know that one of the most expensive operating costs for any company is not buying goods, or advertising, but its employees – especially having to hire new employees.  Bringing in new people, getting them up to speed, and providing them with perks to attract them to a company is a huge cost for companies.  So employee retention – keep the employees you already have, and keeping them happy – is incredibly important from a business aspect.  And research shows that a well-trained employee is a happy employee.  They feel more confident in their job, happier with their position, and more cared-about – and therefore less likely to leave in search of a better job.  Employee training leads to better retention. Good Moral On the subject of keeping employees happy in order to keep them at a company, the complement to that research shows that happier employees are more efficient and overall better at their jobs.  You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out why this is true.  An employee who feel that his company cares about him and his educational future will work harder for the company.  He or she will put in that extra hour during the busy season that makes all the difference in the end.  Good morale is good for the company. If good morale is better for the company, you know that it goes hand-in-hand with something even better – better efficiency.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects.  That means when a problem crops up – and they inevitably do – this employee will be well-equipped to deal with that problem with fewer problems, and no need to go searching for help from higher up.  When employees are well trained, companies run more smoothly. A Better Product Of course, all of these “pros” for employee training are leading up to the one thing that companies truly care about – a better product.  We have shown that employees who have been trained to be competitive in the market are happier at the company, they are more efficient, and their morale is better.  The overall result is that the company’s product – whether it is a database, piece of equipment, or even a physical good – is better.  And a better product will always be more competitive on the market. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• More SQL Smells

  - by Nick Harrison

  Let's continue exploring some of the SQL Smells from Phil's list. He has been putting together. Datatype mis-matches in predicates that rely on implicit conversion.(Plamen Ratchev) This is a great example poking holes in the whole theory of "If it works it's not broken" Queries will this probably will generally work and give the correct response. In fact, without careful analysis, you probably may be completely oblivious that there is even a problem. This subtle little problem will needlessly complicate queries and slow them down regardless of the indexes applied. Consider this example: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Page](     [PageId] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,     [Title] [varchar](75) NOT NULL,     [Sequence] [int] NOT NULL,     [ThemeId] [int] NOT NULL,     [CustomCss] [text] NOT NULL,     [CustomScript] [text] NOT NULL,     [PageGroupId] [int] NOT NULL;  CREATE PROCEDURE PageSelectBySequence ( @sequenceMin smallint , @sequenceMax smallint ) AS BEGIN SELECT [PageId] , [Title] , [Sequence] , [ThemeId] , [CustomCss] , [CustomScript] , [PageGroupId] FROM [CMS].[dbo].[Page] WHERE Sequence BETWEEN @sequenceMin AND @SequenceMax END  Note that the Sequence column is defined as int while the sequence parameter is defined as a small int. The problem is that the database may have to do a lot of type conversions to evaluate the query. In some cases, this may even negate the indexes that you have in place. Using Correlated subqueries instead of a join   (Dave_Levy/ Plamen Ratchev) There are two main problems here. The first is a little subjective, since this is a non-standard way of expressing the query, it is harder to understand. The other problem is much more objective and potentially problematic. You are taking much of the control away from the optimizer. Written properly, such a query may well out perform a corresponding query written with traditional joins. More likely than not, performance will degrade. Whenever you assume that you know better than the optimizer, you will most likely be wrong. This is the fundmental problem with any hint. Consider a query like this:  SELECT Page.Title , Page.Sequence , Page.ThemeId , Page.CustomCss , Page.CustomScript , PageEffectParams.Name , PageEffectParams.Value , ( SELECT EffectName FROM dbo.Effect WHERE EffectId = dbo.PageEffects.EffectId ) AS EffectName FROM Page INNER JOIN PageEffect ON Page.PageId = PageEffects.PageId INNER JOIN PageEffectParam ON PageEffects.PageEffectId = PageEffectParams.PageEffectId  This can and should be written as:  SELECT Page.Title , Page.Sequence , Page.ThemeId , Page.CustomCss , Page.CustomScript , PageEffectParams.Name , PageEffectParams.Value , EffectName FROM Page INNER JOIN PageEffect ON Page.PageId = PageEffects.PageId INNER JOIN PageEffectParam ON PageEffects.PageEffectId = PageEffectParams.PageEffectId INNER JOIN dbo.Effect ON dbo.Effects.EffectId = dbo.PageEffects.EffectId  The correlated query may just as easily show up in the where clause. It's not a good idea in the select clause or the where clause. Few or No comments. This one is a bit more complicated and controversial. All comments are not created equal. Some comments are helpful and need to be included. Other comments are not necessary and may indicate a problem. I tend to follow the rule of thumb that comments that explain why are good. Comments that explain how are bad. Many people may be shocked to hear the idea of a bad comment, but hear me out. If a comment is needed to explain what is going on or how it works, the logic is too complex and needs to be simplified. Comments that explain why are good. Comments may explain why the sql is needed are good. Comments that explain where the sql is used are good. Comments that explain how tables are related should not be needed if the sql is well written. If they are needed, you need to consider reworking the sql or simplify your data model. Use of functions in a WHERE clause. (Anil Das) Calling a function in the where clause will often negate the indexing strategy. The function will be called for every record considered. This will often a force a full table scan on the tables affected. Calling a function will not guarantee that there is a full table scan, but there is a good chance that it will. If you find that you often need to write queries using a particular function, you may need to add a column to the table that has the function already applied.

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• Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

  - by DigiMortal

  Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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• Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Design Patterns: Feeling the Love after Launch

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceIn the first video by the Oracle Applications User Experience team on the Oracle Partner Network, Vice President Jeremy Ashley said that Oracle is looking to expand the ecosystem of support for Oracle’s applications customers as they begin to assess their investment and adoption of Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle has made a massive investment to maintain the benefits of the Fusion Applications User Experience. This summer, the Applications User Experience team released the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns.Design patterns help create consistent experiences across devices.The launch has been very well received:Angelo Santagata, Senior Principal Technologist and Fusion Middleware evangelist for Oracle,  wrote this to the system integrator community: “The web site is the result of many years of Oracle R&D into user interface design for Fusion Applications and features a really cool web app which allows you to visualise the UI components in action.”  Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, Application Development Framework (ADF) said: “It’s a science I don't understand, but now I don't have to ... Now you can learn from the UX experience of Fusion Applications.”Frank Nimphius, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle (ADF) wrote about the launch of the design patterns for the ADF Code Corner, and Jürgen Kress, Senior Manager EMEA Alliances & Channels for Fusion MiddleWare and Service Oriented Architecture, (SOA), shared the news with his Partner Community. Oracle Twitter followers also helped spread the message about the design patterns launch: ?@bex – Brian Huff, founder and Chief Software Architect for Bezzotech, and Oracle ACE Director:“Nifty! The Oracle Fusion UX team just released new ADF design patterns.”@maiko_rocha, Maiko Rocha, Oracle Consulting Solutions Architect and Oracle FMW engineer: “Haven't seen any other vendor offer such comprehensive UX Design Patterns catalog for free!”@zirous_chad, Chad Thompson, Senior Solutions Architect for Zirous, Inc. and ADF Developer:Wow - @ultan and company did a great job with the Fusion UX PatternsWhat is a user experience design pattern?A user experience design pattern is a re-usable, usability tested functional blueprint for a particular user experience.  Some examples are guided processes, shopping carts, and search and search results.  Ultan O’Broin discusses the top design patterns every developer should know.The patterns that were just released are based on thousands of hours of end-user field studies, state-of-the-art user interface assessments, and usability testing.  To be clear, these are functional design patterns, not technical design patterns that developers may be used to working with.  Because we know there is a gap, we are putting together some training that will help close that gap.Who should care?This is an offering targeted primarily at Application Development Framework (ADF) developers. If you are faced with the following questions regarding Fusion Applications, you will want to know and learn more:•    How do I build something that looks like Fusion Applications?•    How do I build a next-generation application?•    How do I extend a Fusion Application and maintain the user experience?•    I don’t want to re-invent the wheel on the user interface, so where do I start?•    I need to build something that will eventually co-exist with Fusion Applications. How do I do that?These questions are relevant to partners with an ADF competency, individual practitioners, or small consultancies with an ADF specialization, and customers who are trying to shift their IT staff over to supporting Fusion Applications.Where you can find out more?OnlineOur Fusion User Experience design patterns maven is Ultan O’Broin. The Oracle Partner Network is helping our team bring this first e-seminar to you in order to go into a more detail on what this means and how to take advantage of it:? Webinar: Build a Better User Experience with Oracle: Oracle Fusion Applications Functional Design PatternsSept 20, 2012 , 10:30am-11:30am PacificDial-In:  1. 877-664-9137 / Passcode 102546?International:  706-634-9619  http://www.intercall.com/national/oracleuniversity/gdnam.htmlAccess the Live Event Or Via Webconference Access http://ouweb.webex.com  ?and enter this session number: 598036234At a Usergroup eventThe Fusion User Experience Advocates (FXA) are also going to be getting some deep-dive training on this content and can share it with local user groups.At OpenWorld Ultan O’Broin               Chris MuirIf you will be at OpenWorld this year, our own Ultan O’Broin will be visiting the ADF demopod to say hello, thanks to Shay Shmeltzer, Senior Group Manager for ADF outbound communication and at the OTN lounge: Monday 10-10:45, Tuesday 2:15-2:45, Wednesday 2:15-3:30 ?  Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF,  Moscone South, Right - S-207? “ADF Meet and Greett”, OTN Lounge, Wednesday 4:30 And I cannot talk about OpenWorld and ADF without mentioning Chris Muir’s ADF EMG event: the Year After the Year Of the ADF Developer – Sunday, Sept 30 of OpenWorld. Chris has played host to Ultan and the Applications user experience message for his online community and is now a seasoned UX expert.Expect to see additional announcements about expanded and training on similar topics in the future.

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• The theory of evolution applied to software

  - by Michel Grootjans

  I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits.   Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices.   Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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• WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

  - by alexhildyard

  I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

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• Problem with ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript in WebControl nested in UpdatePanel

  - by Chris

  Hello, I am having what I believe should be a fairly simple problem, but for the life of me I cannot see my problem. The problem is related to ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript, something I have used many times before. The scenario I have is that I have a custom web control that has been inserted into a page. The control (and one or two others) are nested inside an UpdatePanel. They are inserted onto the page onto a PlaceHolder: <asp:UpdatePanel ID="pnlAjax" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="placeholder" runat="server"> </asp:PlaceHolder> ... protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e){ placeholder.Controls.Add(Factory.CreateControl()); base.OnInit(e); } This is the only update panel on the page. The control requires some initial javascript be run for it to work correctly. The control calls: ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, GetType(), Guid.NewGuid().ToString(), script, true); and I have also tried: ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(Page, Page.GetType(), Guid.NewGuid().ToString(), script, true); The problem is that the script runs correctly when the page is first displayed, but does not re-run after a partial postback. I have tried the following: Calling RegisterStartupScript from CreateChildControls Calling RegisterStartupScript from OnLoad / OnPreRender Using different combinations of parameters for the first two parameters (in the example above the Control is Page and Type is GetType(), but I have tried using the control itself, etc). I have tried using persistent and new ids (not that I believe this should have a major impact either way). I have used a few breakpoints and so have verified that the Register line is being called correctly. The only thing I have not tried is using the UpdatePanel itself as the Control and Type, as I do not believe the control should be aware of the update panel (and in any case there does not seem to be a good way of getting the update panel?). Can anyone see what I might be doing wrong in the above? Thanks :)

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• asp.net mvc, IIS 6 vs IIS7.5, and integrated windows authentication causing javascript errors?

  - by chris

  This is a very strange one. I have an asp.net MVC 1 app. Under IIS6, with no anon access - only integrated windows auth - every thing works fine. I have the following on most of my Foo pages: <% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> Show All: <%= Html.CheckBox("showAll", new { onClick = "$(this).parent('form:first').submit();" })%> <% } %> Clicking on the checkbox causes a post, the page is reloaded, everything is good. When I look at the access logs, that's what I see, with one oddity - the js library is requested during the page first request, but not for any subsequent page requests. Log looks like: GET / 401 GET / 200 GET /Content/Site.css 304 GET /Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js 401 GET /Scripts/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js 401 GET /Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.min.js 401 GET /Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js 304 GET /Scripts/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js 304 GET /Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.min.js 304 GET /Content/Images/logo.jpg 401 GET /Content/Images/logo.jpg 304 GET /Foo 401 GET /Foo 200 POST /Foo/Delete 302 GET /Foo/List 200 POST /Foo/List 200 This corresponds to home page, click on "Foo", delete a record, click a checkbox (which causes the 2nd POST). Under IIS7.5, it sometimes fails - the click on the check box doesn't cause a postback, but there are no obvious reasons why. I've noticed under IIS7.5 that every single page request re-issues the requests for the js libraries - the first one a 401, followed by either a 200 (OK) or 304 (not modified), as opposed to the above log extract where that only happened during the 1st request. Is there any way to eliminate the 401 requests? Could a timing issue have something to do with the click being ignored? Would increasing the number of concurrent connections help? Any other ideas? I'm at a bit of a loss to explain this.

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• How do you keep all your languages straight?

  - by Chris Blackwell

  I think I'm going a little crazy. Right now, I'm working with the following languages (I was just doing a mental inventory): C++ - our game engine Assembler - low level debugging and a few co-processor specific routines Lua - our game engine scripting language HLSL - for shaders Python - our build system and utility tools Objective C/C++ - game engine platform code for Mac and iPhone C# - A few tools developed in our overseas office ExtendScript - Photoshop exporting tools ActionScript - UI scripting VBScript - some spreadsheet related stuff PHP - some web related stuff SQL - some web and tool related stuff On top of this are the plethora of API's that often have many different ways of doing the same thing: std library, boost, .NET, wxWidgets, Cocoa, Carbon, native script libraries for Python, Lua, etc, OpenGL, Direct3d, GDI, Aqua, augh! I find myself inadvertently conflating languages and api's, not realizing what I'm doing until I get syntax errors. I feel like I can't possibly keep up with it, and I can't possibly be proficient in all of these areas. Especially outside the realm of C++ and Python, I find myself programming more by looking at manuals that from memory. Do you have a similar problem? Ideas for compartmentalizing so you're more efficient? Deciding where you want to stay proficient? Organizational tips? Good ways to remember when you switch from Lua to C++ you need to start using semi-colons again? Rants on how complicated we programmers have made things for ourselves? Any ideas welcome!

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• Is there any open source tool that automatically 'detects' email threading like Gmail?

  - by Chris W.

  For instance, if the original message (message 1) is... Hey Jon, Want to go get some pizza? -Bill And the reply (message 2) is... Bill, Sorry, I can't make lunch today. Jonathon Parks, CTO Acme Systems On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Bill Waters wrote: Hey John, Want to go get some pizza? -Bill In Gmail, the system (a) detects that message 2 is a reply to message 1 and turns this into a 'thread' of sorts and (b) detects where the replied portion of the message actually is and hides it from the user. (In this case the hidden portion would start at "On Wed, Feb..." and continue to the end of the message.) Obviously, in this simple example it would be easy to detect the "On <Date, <Name wrote:" or the "" character prefixes. But many email systems have many different style of marking replies (not to mention HTML emails). I get the feeling that you would have to have some damn smart string parsing algorithms to get anywhere near how good GMail's is. Does this technology already exist in an open source project somewhere? Either in some library devoted to this exclusively or perhaps in some open source email client that does similar message threading? Thanks.

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• Executing MSYS from cmd.exe with arguments

  - by Chris Allison

  Hi, I am trying to learn wxWidgets library, using mingw and msys to compile the code. So far so good, but I can not find a way to send a command to MSYS through CMD.exe. I use SublimeText to edit files, and it has an option to run makefiles. I want my makefiles to be able to open an instance of MSYS and send the g++ command and arguments to it. Example: Right now my makefile is: test.exe : main.cpp g++ -s main.cpp -o test.exe `wx-config --cxxflags` `wx-config --libs` When mingw32-make goes to run the g++ command, it sends it to cmd.exe, which doesn't handle the back-ticks and wx-config jazz. (But the command does work when run from inside MSYS and the directory holding main.cpp) I want to be able to use something like... msys --command g++ -s main.cpp*...etc..* so it will load the msys enviroment, and run the command. Is this possible? I am a huge makefile newbie, so if there is an easier way, please show me! TIA!

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• what is the best way to stream a audio file to website users/listners

  - by Naveen Chamikara Gamage

  I'm developing a music site which will stream audio files stored in a server to users, audio files will be played through flash player placed in a webpage.. As I heard I need to use a streaming media server for streaming audio files ( like 2mb to 3mb in size).. Do I need to use one? I found some streaming media server softwares like http://www.icecast.org - but as in their documentation, It is used for streaming radio stations and live streaming purposes, but I just need to stream audio files faster and in low size (low bandwidth) with good quality.. I heard I need to encode the audio files first and then send them to listeners and in their end audio files need to be decoded again. Is that true? How can I do that? if I need to use a special web server, where should I host my files? Any good hosting providers? if I host audio files in a normal web server, they will use HTTP or TCP to deliver my audio files to users/ listners but I found that HTTP and TCP are not good ways to use for multi media purposes like streaming audio and video files, and they are used for delivering HTML and stuff. I found I should use RSTP or UDP for streaming audio files.. What should I use? I know that .MP3 files has much better quality than the other formats but it also gives huge size to the audio files.. which format should I use for audio files? Most of the best quality audio files are more than 7mb so I'm planning to convert them my self using a software so I could get low size files with some level of good quality. If I'm converting my audio files what is the good BITRATE I should use for my files? Any known best softwares for converting audio files while keeping quality in a good level? Note** - I know that I will not need complex requirements at the beginning of the site but I wanted to what are the best ways like they are using for soundcloud.com

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• Making dtSearch highlight one hit per phrase, rather than one hit per word-in-a-phrase

  - by Chris

  I'm using dtSearch to highlight text search matches within a document. The code to do this, minus some details and cleanup, is roughly along these lines: SearchJob sj = new SearchJob(); sj.Request = "\"audit trail\""; // the user query sj.FoldersToSearch.Add(path_to_src_document); sj.Execute(); FileConverter fileConverter = new FileConverter(); fileConverter.SetInputItem(sj.Results, 0); fileConvert.BeforeHit = "<a name=\"HH_%%ThisHit%%\"/><b>"; fileConverter.AfterHit = "</b>"; fileConverter.Execute(); string myHighlightedDoc = fileConverter.OutputString; If I give dtSearch a quoted phrase query like "audit trail" then dtSearch will do hit highlighting like this: An <a name="HH_0"/><b>audit</b> <a name="HH_1"/><b>trail</b> is a fun thing to have an <a name="HH_2"/><b>audit</b> <a name="HH_last"/><b>trail</b> about! Note that each word of the phrase is highlighted separately. Instead, I would like phrases to get highlighted as whole units, like this: An <a name="HH_0"/><b>audit trail</b> is a fun thing to have an <a name="HH_last"/><b>audit trail</b> about! This would A) make highlighting look better, B) improve behavior of my javascript that helps users navigate from hit to hit, and C) give more accurate counts of total # hits. Is there good ways to make dtSearch highlight phrases this way?

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• Help me understand entity framework 4 caching for lazy loading

  - by Chris

  I am getting some unexpected behaviour with entity framework 4.0 and I am hoping someone can help me understand this. I am using the northwind database for the purposes of this question. I am also using the default code generator (not poco or self tracking). I am expecting that anytime I query the context for the framework to only make a round trip if I have not already fetched those objects. I do get this behaviour if I turn off lazy loading. Currently in my application I am breifly turning on lazy loading and then turning it back off so I can get the desired behaviour. That pretty much sucks, so please help. Here is a good code example that can demonstrate my problem. Public Sub ManyRoundTrips() context.ContextOptions.LazyLoadingEnabled = True Dim employees As List(Of Employee) = context.Employees.Execute(System.Data.Objects.MergeOption.AppendOnly).ToList() 'makes unnessesary round trip to the database, I just loaded the employees' MessageBox.Show(context.Employees.Where(Function(x) x.EmployeeID < 10).ToList().Count) context.Orders.Execute(System.Data.Objects.MergeOption.AppendOnly) For Each emp As Employee In employees 'makes unnessesary trip to database every time despite orders being pre loaded.' Dim i As Integer = emp.Orders.Count Next End Sub Public Sub OneRoundTrip() context.ContextOptions.LazyLoadingEnabled = True Dim employees As List(Of Employee) = context.Employees.Include("Orders").Execute(System.Data.Objects.MergeOption.AppendOnly).ToList() MessageBox.Show(employees.Where(Function(x) x.EmployeeID < 10).ToList().Count) For Each emp As Employee In employees Dim i As Integer = emp.Orders.Count Next End Sub Why is the first block of code making unnessesary round trips?

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• PHP Post Count in Forum

  - by Chris

  I'm currently desiging a forum application, I considered using a premade but decided against it as it's useful for me to learn some of the techniques. So I've written a fairly full featured forum... great. One of the problems I want to solve is to include user data for each post, at the minute the post table includes the poster ID (obviously) and I added the poster's username at a later date so I didn't have to query the User DB for X number of posts in a thread. However, it's become apparent I now want to do this, usernames don't need to update retrospectively, however avatars, sigs, and especially post counts need to update actively, so data in some form needs keeping up to date somewhere... What would be a good way of implementing this? I obviously don't want to include any more user data on the Posts DB table than necessary, but I'm struggling to find an easy way to do this short of querying the DB for each post in a thread, which is potentially going to create a lot of traffic. How have other people solved this, I've been examining the code on some other open source apps but I can't find what I'm looking for. Is it possible to select multiple records in one query? In which case I could build an array dynamically on each page request (eg 'SQL blah blah' then a for each loop to insert the ID's). Could I join the tables each time? Do I submit a query for each post? Hmm.

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