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• Method of transforming 3D vectors with a matrix

  - by Drew Noakes

  I've been doing some reading on transforming Vector3 with matrices, and am tossing up digging deeper into the math and coding this myself versus using existing code. For whatever reason my school curriculum never included matrices, so I'm filling a gap in my knowledge. Thankfully I only need a few simple things, I think. Context is that I'm programming a robot for the RoboCup 3D league. I'm coding it in C# but it'll have to run on Mono. Ideally I wouldn't use any existing graphics libraries for this (WinForms/WPF/XNA) as all I really need is a neat subset of matrix transformations. Specifically, I need translation and x/y/z rotations, and a way of combining multiple transformations into a single matrix. This will then be applied to my own Vector3 type to produce the transformed Vector3. I've read different advice about this. For example, some model the transformation with a 4x3 matrix, others with a 4x4 matrix. Also, some examples show that you need a forth value for the vector's matrix of 1. What happens to this value when it's included in the output? [1 0 0 0] [x y z 1] * [0 1 0 0] = [a b c d] [0 0 1 0] [2 4 6 1] The parts I'm missing are: What sizes my matrices should be Compositing transformations by multiplying the transformation matrices together Transforming 3D vectors with the resulting matrix As I mostly just want to get this running, any psuedo-code would be great. Information about what matrix values perform what transformations is quite clearly defined on many pages, so need not be discussed here unless you're very keen :)

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• List<object>.RemoveAll - How to create an appropriate Predicate

  - by CJM

  This is a bit of noob question - I'm still fairly new to C# and generics and completely new to predicates, delegates and lamda expressions... I have a class 'Enquiries' which contains a generic list of another class called 'Vehicles'. I'm building up the code to add/edit/delete Vehicles from the parent Enquiry. And at the moment, I'm specifically looking at deletions. From what I've read so far, it appears that I can use Vehicles.RemoveAll() to delete an item with a particular VehicleID or all items with a particular EnquiryID. My problem is understanding how to feed .RemoveAll the right predicate - the examples I have seen are too simplistic (or perhaps I am too simplistic given my lack of knowledge of predicates, delegates and lambda expressions). So if I had a List<Of Vehicle> Vehicles where each Vehicle had an EnquiryID, how would I use Vehicles.RemoveAll() to remove all vehicles for a given EnquiryID? I understand there are several approaches to this so I'd be keen to hear the differences between approaches - as much as I need to get something working, this is also a learning exercise. As an supplementary question, is a Generic list the best repository for these objects? My first inclination was towards a Collection, but it appears I am out of date. Certainly Generics seem to be preferred, but I'm curious as to other alternatives. Thanks

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• tipfy for Google App Engine: Is it stable? Can auth/session components of tipfy be used with webapp?

  - by cv12

  I am building a web application on Google App Engine that requires users to register with the application and subsequently authenticate with it and maintain sessions. I don't want to force users to have Google accounts. Also, the target audience for the application is the average non-geek, so I'm not very keen on using OpenID or OAuth. I need something simple like: User registers with an e-mail and password, and then can log back in with those credentials. I understand that this approach does not provide the security benefits of Google or OpenID authentication, but I am prepared to trade foolproof security for end-user convenience and hassle-free experience. I explored Django, but decided that consecutive deprecations from appengine-helper to app-engine-patch to django-nonrel may signal that path may be a bit risky in the long-term. I'd like to use a code base that is likely to be maintained consistently. I also explored standalone session/auth packages like gaeutilities and suas. GAEUtilities looked a bit immature (e.g., the code wasn't pythonic in places, in my opinion) and SUAS did not give me a lot of comfort with the cookie-only sessions. I could be wrong with my assessment of these two, so I would appreciate input on those (or others that may serve my objective). Finally, I recently came across tipfy. It appears to be based on Werkzeug and Alex Martelli spoke highly of it here on stackoverflow. I have two primary questions related to tipfy: As a framework, is it as mature as webapp? Is it stable and likely to be maintained for some time? Since my primary interest is the auth/session components, can those components of the tipfy framework be used with webapp, independent of the broader tipfy framework? If yes, I would appreciate a few pointers to how I could go about doing that.

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• Would anybody recommend learning J/K/APL?

  - by ozan

  I came across J/K/APL a few months ago while working my way through some project euler problems, and was intrigued, to say the least. For every elegant-looking 20 line python solution I produced, there'd be a gobsmacking 20 character J solution that ran in a tenth of the time. I've been keen to learn some basic J, and have made a few attempts at picking up the vocabulary, but have found the learning curve to be quite steep. To those who are familiar with these languages, would you recommend investing some time to learn one (I'm thinking J in particular)? I would do so more for the purpose of satisfying my curiosity than for career advancement or some such thing. Some personal circumstances to consider, if you care to: I love mathematics, and use it daily in my work (as a mathematician for a startup) but to be honest I don't really feel limited by the tools that I use (like python + NumPy) so I can't use that excuse. I have no particular desire to work in the finance industry, which seems to be the main port of call for K users at least. Plus I should really learn C# as a next language as it's the primary language where I work. So practically speaking, J almost definitely shouldn't be the next language I learn. I'm reasonably familiar with MATLAB so using an array-based programming language wouldn't constitute a tremendous paradigm shift. Any advice from those familiar with these languages would be much appreciated.

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• A Newbie question regarding Software Development

  - by Sharif

  Hi, I'm going to complete my B.pharm (Hons.) degree and, you know, I don't have much knowledge about programing. I was wondering to build a software on my own. Could you guys tell me what to learn first for that? Is it too hard for a student of other discipline to build a software? Let me know please. The software I want to make is like a dictionary (or more specifically like "Physician's Desk Reference"). It should find the generic name, company name, indication, price etc. of a drug when I enter the brand name and vice versa. To build a software like that what programing language could help me most and what (and how many) language should I learn first? In my country, there is no practice of Community pharmacy (most of the pharmacy stores are run by unskilled people), that's why this type of thing could help them sell drugs. Would you please tell me what I'm to do and how tough it is? I'm very keen to learn programming. Thanks in advance NB: I started this post in ASKREDDIT section but it seems that was not the right place for poll type question, so I post it again in this section

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• How do I swallow the dropdown behavior inside an Expander.Header?

  - by Peter Seale

  Hello, I would like to prevent an Expander from expanding/collapsing when users click inside the header area. This is basically the same question as Q 1396153, but I'd appreciate a more favorable answer :) Is there a non-invasive way to do this? I am not sure exactly how to attach behavior to the Expander.Header content to prevent mouseclicks. I'm willing to float in content outside the expander itself via a fixed grid layout, but I'm not keen on the solution. Ideas? XamlPad sample XAML: <Page xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:sys="clr-namespace:System;assembly=mscorlib" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" > <Expander> <Expander.Header><TextBlock>When I click this text, I don't want to trigger expansion/collapse! Only when I click the expander button do I want to trigger an expand/collapse!</TextBlock></Expander.Header> <Grid Background="Red" Height="100" Width="100" > </Grid> </Expander> </Page>

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• To what extent should code try to explain fatal exceptions?

  - by Andrzej Doyle

  I suspect that all non-trivial software is likely to experience situations where it hits an external problem it cannot work around and thus needs to fail. This might be due to bad configuration, an external server being down, disk full, etc. In these situations, especially if the software is running in non-interactive mode, I expect that all one can really do is log an error and wait for the admin to read the logs and fix the problem. If someone happens to interact with the software in the meantime, e.g. a request comes in to a server that failed to initialize properly, then perhaps an appropriate hint can be given to check the logs and maybe even the error can be echoed (depending on whether you can tell if they're a technical guy as opposed to a business user). For the moment though let's not think too hard about this part. My question is, to what extent should the software be responsible for trying to explain the meaning of the fatal error? In general, how much competence/knowledge are you allowed to presume on administrators of the software, and how much should you include troubleshooting information and potential resolution steps when logging fatal errors? Of course if there's something that's unique to the runtime context this should definitely be logged; but lets assume your software needs to talk to Active Directory via LDAP and gets back an error "[LDAP: error code 49 - 80090308: LdapErr: DSID-0C090334, comment: AcceptSecurityContext error, data 525, vece]". Is it reasonable to assume that the maintainers will be able to Google the error code and work out what it means, or should the software try to parse the error code and log that this is caused by an incorrect user DN in the LDAP config? I don't know if there is a definitive best-practices answer for this, so I'm keen to hear a variety of views.

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• Windows Azure - access webrole local storage from separate workerrole

  - by Brett Smith

  I'm running an application on windows azure, the MVC views need to be dynamic, I started by storing them as records in the database, but am quite keen to move them to a physical location. My concept was to create the physical file via code... which worked great and speeds up the page load dramatically. This was of course before I realised that the files were only available for the duration of the role Next I looked at a start up task to create the files when the role was started - however I then realised that any separate instances weren't going to sync up unless I monitored the database for changes. So I moved from a start up task to a function in the run method of the role that checks the database every 10 minutes to see if changes have occurred. The problem is that this seems to choke up the application (at least in the warm up stage). Ideally I would like to move the run function to it's own worker role that can sit there and push files out to web role instances, but I'm unsure on how I would go about accessing the web roles local storage from the worker role. Can anybody tell me whether this is actually possible? and hopefully point me in the right direction to achieve this? Just to clarify what I'm trying to achieve -View is created in user interface running on web role and stored in database -Separate web role (front end) has clientside application with virtualpath provider pointing Views requests to local storage (localresource) -separate worker role to create View structure and load this into clientside web role local storage

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• How to display objects with dynamic fields in wpf data grid?

  - by Oliver Hanappi

  Hi! I want to display and edit some objects in a WPF data grid and I'm looking for a good way to do so. All objects I want to display have the same fields, but every execution the fields of my objects can differ. Here is a piece of the interface to illustrate what I mean: public interface IMyObject { IEnumerable<string> GetFieldNames(); IEnumerable<Type> GetFieldTypes(); object GetField(string name); void SetField(string name, object value); } How can I generate a data grid which displays this kind of objects? I thought of XAML generation to define the columns, but I'm still facing the problem of accessing the fields. I think I could realize this with value converters, another option would be to dynamically create a type which exposes the dynamic fields with properties. Are there any other ways and which should I favor? I'm keen on hearing your opinions. Best Regards, Oliver Hanappi

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• Firefox add-on development: Register global dynamic custom keyboard shortcuts

  - by dezwart

  I have been tasked with developing a Firefox add-on that is capable of registering global keyboard shortcuts (ones that will work throughout all areas of Firefox) that will open up the side-bar and execute an XMLRPC request based on previously recorded input. The idea here is that there will be many potential XMLRPC requests that the user will want to execute via a keyboard shortcut. Currently, the add-on is capable of handling pre-defined static keyboard shortcuts via the Firefox overlay. What I would like to achieve, is to allow the user to register their own dynamic custom keyboard shortcut. There is an add-on that currently has some of this functionality, called Keyconfig. I'm not keen on having to ask users to install a second add-on to define their own shortcuts. It also seems that using the dynamic keyboard shortcut registration method in Keyconfig would require the user to close all Firefox windows before the dynamic shortcut is made available. What I would like to know is: Is an XPCOM component the best way to register dynamic keyboard shortcuts from within a Firefox add-on? Is there a way to register the keyboard shortcut so that it is immediately available to all Firefox windows, without having to close the windows beforehand?

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• Apache console accesses network drives, service does not?

  - by danspants

  I have an apache 2.2 server running Django. We have a network drive T: which we need constant access to within our Django app. When running Apache as a service, we cannot access this drive, as far as any django code is concerned the drive does not exist. If I add... <Directory "t:/"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride None Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> to the httpd.conf file the service no longer runs, but I can start apache as a console and it works fine, Django can find the network drive and all is well. Why is there a difference between the console and the service? Should there be a difference? I have the service using my own log on so in theory it should have the same access as I do. I'm keen to keep it running as a service as it's far less obtrusive when I'm working on the server (unless there's a way to hide the console?). Any help would be most appreciated.

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• Enterprise integration of disparate systems

  - by Chris Latta

  We're about to embark on a fairly large integration effort to kill off a bunch of Access and Sql Server databases and get everything into one coherent enterprise system. There are also a number of other systems (accounting, CRM, payroll, MS Exchange) that hold critical data that we need to integrate (use for data validation in other systems), report on and otherwise expose. It is likely that some of these systems will change in the next few years, so we need to isolate our systems to be ready for change. Ideally we would be able to expose our forms in a consistent manner across as many of our our systems as possible without having to re-develop them for each system. We are currently targeting SharePoint (2007 and soon 2010), Office (2007 and soon 2010 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook), Reporting Services, .Net console applications, .Net Windows applications, shell extensions, and with the possibility of exposing some functionality on mobile devices (BlackBerries currently, maybe iPhones later) and via our website. We're moving development to Visual Studio 2010 (from 2005) ahead of migrating to SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. Given that most of our development is presently targeted to the .Net framework (mostly in C#) it seems logical to stick with this unless there is some compelling reason to switch frameworks/platform for some aspects. We're thinking of your standard Database-Data Integration layer-Business Objects Layer-Web Services (or REST) layer-Client Application plus doing our own client application with WPF (or something else?) forms that can also be exposed in the MS systems (SharePoint, Office, Windows). So, we don't want much, just everything :) Basically we need to isolate ourselves from database and systems changes, create an API that can be used throughout our systems and then make this functionality available in our client applications. I'm very keen to get pointers from anyone who has tips on how to pull this off. Should we look at the Enterprise Library as a place to start? Is REST with ASP.Net MVC2 a better solution than Web Services for a system like this? Will WPF deliver forms re-use or is there something better?

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• Are Java developers really paid more than .Net developers? Also, should I just try and work with C?(

  - by Jon

  Ok, so I graduated about a year and a half ago. In college days I used to be really good (and keen) on C/C++. I've even done some multithreading and socket programming in C. Created networked GUI apps for linux using GTK etc.Now,I've been working since I graduated and well, let's say, I've been stereotyped with .net. That's all I have experience with in these years (Vb.net,asp.net,javascript). I'm pretty comfortable with all of the above and also SQL server.a)Cutting to the chase, I've begun to notice how .net jobs don't seem to pay all that well as Java. Jobs seeking similar number of yrs of experience offer almost twice for java developers. Does it mean I should consider switching?b)My heart still goes out for C. As a surrogate I've tried working with VC++ 6.0 (I know they aren't the same!). I've tried my hand with DDK,SDK,COM etc. Should I try finding jobs there or am I too inexperienced. Somehow, I can't find any openings for C. Where are they? Sometimes I get frustrated and feel that maybe I should just go for MS or something. Possibly that'll help me in landing with 'fatter paying jobs' in the field that I wish to work.

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• Is Domain Anaemia appropriate in a Service Oriented Architecture?

  - by Stimul8d

  I want to be clear on this. When I say domain anaemia, I mean intentional domain anaemia, not accidental. In a world where most of our business logic is hidden away behind a bunch of services, is a full domain model really necessary? This is the question I've had to ask myself recently since working on a project where the "domain" model is in reality a persistence model; none of the domain objects contain any methods and this is a very intentional decision. Initially, I shuddered when I saw a library full of what are essentially type-safe data containers but after some thought it struck me that this particular system doesn't do much but basic CRUD operations, so maybe in this case this is a good choice. My problem I guess is that my experience so far has been very much focussed on a rich domain model so it threw me a little. The remainder of the domain logic is hidden away in a group of helpers, facades and factories which live in a separate assembly. I'm keen to hear what people's thoughts are on this. Obviously, the considerations for reuse of these classes are much simpler but is really that great a benefit?

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• What is a good use case for static import of methods?

  - by Miserable Variable

  Just got a review comment that my static import of the method was not a good idea. The static import was of a method from a DA class, which has mostly static methods. So in middle of the business logic I had a da activity that apparently seemed to belong to the current class: import static some.package.DA.*; class BusinessObject { void someMethod() { .... save(this); } } The reviewer was not keen that I change the code and I didn't but I do kind of agree with him. One reason given for not static-importing was it was confusing where the method was defined, it wasn't in the current class and not in any superclass so it too some time to identify its definition (the web based review system does not have clickable links like IDE :-) I don't really think this matters, static-imports are still quite new and soon we will all get used to locating them. But the other reason, the one I agree with, is that an unqualified method call seems to belong to current object and should not jump contexts. But if it really did belong, it would make sense to extend that super class. So, when does it make sense to static import methods? When have you done it? Did/do you like the way the unqualified calls look? EDIT: The popular opinion seems to be that static-import methods if nobody is going to confuse them as methods of the current class. For example methods from java.lang.Math and java.awt.Color. But if abs and getAlpha are not ambiguous I don't see why readEmployee is. As in lot of programming choices, I think this too is a personal preference thing. Thanks for your response guys, I am closing the question.

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• XNA - Keyboard text input

  - by Sekhat

  Okay, so basically I want to be able to retrieve keyboard text. Like entering text into a text field or something. I'm only writing my game for windows. I've disregarded using Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput because it breaks the feel of a self contained game, and the fact that the Guide always shows XBOX buttons doesn't seem right to me either. Yes it's the easiest way, but I don't like it. Next I tried using System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow. I created a class that inherited from it, and passed it the Games window handle, implemented the WndProc function to catch WM_CHAR (or WM_KEYDOWN) though the WndProc got called for other messages, WM_CHAR and WM_KEYDOWN never did. So I had to abandon that idea, and besides, I was also referencing the whole of Windows forms, which meant unnecessary memory footprint bloat. So my last idea was to create a Thread level, low level keyboard hook. This has been the most successful so far. I get WM_KEYDOWN message, (not tried WM_CHAR yet) translate the virtual keycode with Win32 funcation MapVirtualKey to a char. And I get my text! (I'm just printing with Debug.Write at the moment) A couple problems though. It's as if I have caps lock on, and an unresponsive shift key. (Of course it's not however, it's just that there is only one Virtual Key Code per key, so translating it only has one output) and it adds overhead as it attaches itself to the Windows Hook List and isn't as fast as I'd like it to be, but the slowness could be more due to Debug.Write. Has anyone else approached this and solved it, without having to resort to an on screen keyboard? or does anyone have further ideas for me to try? thanks in advance. note: This is cross posted from the XNA Creators Forums, so if I get an answer there I'll post it here and Vice-Versa Question asked by Jimmy Maybe I'm not understanding the question, but why can't you use the XNA Keyboard and KeyboardState classes? My comment: It's because though you can read keystates, you can't get access to typed text as and how it is typed by the user. So let me further clarify. I want to implement being able to read text input from the user as if they are typing into textbox is windows. The keyboard and KeyboardState class get states of all keys, but I'd have to map each key and combination to it's character representation. This falls over when the user doesn't use the same keyboard language as I do especially with symbols (my double quotes is shift + 2, while american keyboards have theirs somewhere near the return key).

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• Best practices concerning view model and model updates with a subset of the fields

  - by Martin

  By picking MVC for developing our new site, I find myself in the midst of "best practices" being developed around me in apparent real time. Two weeks ago, NerdDinner was my guide but with the development of MVC 2, even it seems outdated. It's an thrilling experience and I feel privileged to be in close contact with intelligent programmers daily. Right now I've stumbled upon an issue I can't seem to get a straight answer on - from all the blogs anyway - and I'd like to get some insight from the community. It's about Editing (read: Edit action). The bulk of material out there, tutorials and blogs, deal with creating and view the model. So while this question may not spell out a question, I hope to get some discussion going, contributing to my decision about the path of development I'm to take. My model represents a user with several fields like name, address and email. All the names, in fact, on field each for first name, last name and middle name. The Details view displays all these fields but you can change only one set of fields at a time, for instance, your names. The user expands a form while the other fields are still visible above and below. So the form that is posted back contains a subset of the fields representing the model. While this is appealing to us and our layout concerns, for various reasons, it is to be shunned by serious MVC-developers. I've been reading about some patterns and best practices and it seems that this is not in key with the paradigm of viewmodel == view. Or have I got it wrong? Anyway, NerdDinner dictates using FormCollection och UpdateModel. All the null fields are happily ignored. Since then, the MVC-community has abandoned this approach to such a degree that a bug in MVC 2 was not discovered. UpdateModel does not work without a complete model in your formcollection. The view model pattern receiving most praise seems to be Dedicated view model that contains a custom view model entity and is the only one that my design issue could be made compatible with. It entails a tedious amount of mapping, albeit lightened by the use of AutoMapper and the ideas of Jimmy Bogard, that may or may not be worthwhile. He also proposes a 1:1 relationship between view and view model. In keeping with these design paradigms, I am to create a view and associated view for each of my expanding sets of fields. The view models would each be nearly identical, differing only in the fields which are read-only, the views also containing much repeated markup. This seems absurd to me. In future I may want to be able to display two, more or all sets of fields open simultaneously. I will most attentively read the discussion I hope to spark. Many thanks in advance.

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• Autoloading Development or Production configs (best practices)

  - by Xeoncross

  When programming sites you usually have one set of config files for the development environment and another set for the production server (or one file with both settings). I am assuming all projects should be handled by version control like git or svn. Manual file transfers (like FTP) is wrong on so many levels. How you enable/disable the correct settings (so that your system knows which ones to use) is a problem for me. Each system I work on just kind of jimmy-rigs a solution. Below are the 3 methods I know of and I am hoping that someone can submit a more elegant solutions. 1) File Based The system loads a folder structure based on the URL requested. /site.com /site.fakeTLD /lib index.php For example, if the url is http://site.com then the system loads the production config files located in the site.com folder. However, if I'm working on the site locally I visit http://site.fakeTLD to work on the local copy of the site. To setup this I edit my hosts file and add site.fakeTLD to point to my own computer (127.0.0.1/localhost) and then create a vhost in apache. So now I can work on the codebase locally and then push to the server without any trouble. The problem is that this is susceptible to a "host" injection attack. So someone loading site.com could set the host to site.fakeTLD and then the system would load my development config files instead of production. 2) Config Based The config files contain on section for development - and one for production. The problem is that each time you go to push your changes to the repo you have to edit the file to specify which set of config options should be used. $use = 'production'; //'development'; This leaves the repo open to human error should one of the developers forget to enable the right setting. 3) File System Check Based All the development machines have an extra empty file called "development.txt" or something. Each time the system loads it checks for this file - if found then it knows it is in development mode - if missing then it knows it is in production mode. Since the file is NEVER ADDED to the repo then it will never be pushed (and checked out) on the production machine. However, this just doesn't feel right and causes a slight slow down since all filesystem checks are slow. Is there anyway that the server can auto-detect wither to use the development or production configs?

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• Normalizing Item Names & Synonyms

  - by RabidFire

  Consider an e-commerce application with multiple stores. Each store owner can edit the item catalog of his store. My current database schema is as follows: item_names: id | name | description | picture | common(BOOL) items: id | item_name_id | picture | price | description | picture item_synonyms: id | item_name_id | name | error(BOOL) Notes: error indicates a wrong spelling (eg. "Ericson"). description and picture of the item_names table are "globals" that can optionally be overridden by "local" description and picture fields of the items table (in case the store owner wants to supply a different picture for an item). common helps separate unique item names ("Jimmy Joe's Cheese Pizza" from "Cheese Pizza") I think the bright side of this schema is: Optimized searching & Handling Synonyms: I can query the item_names & item_synonyms tables using name LIKE %QUERY% and obtain the list of item_name_ids that need to be joined with the items table. (Examples of synonyms: "Sony Ericsson", "Sony Ericson", "X10", "X 10") Autocompletion: Again, a simple query to the item_names table. I can avoid the usage of DISTINCT and it minimizes number of variations ("Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10", "Sony Ericsson - Xperia X10", "Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson") The down side would be: Overhead: When inserting an item, I query item_names to see if this name already exists. If not, I create a new entry. When deleting an item, I count the number of entries with the same name. If this is the only item with that name, I delete the entry from the item_names table (just to keep things clean; accounts for possible erroneous submissions). And updating is the combination of both. Weird Item Names: Store owners sometimes use sentences like "Harry Potter 1, 2 Books + CDs + Magic Hat". There's something off about having so much overhead to accommodate cases like this. This would perhaps be the prime reason I'm tempted to go for a schema like this: items: id | name | picture | price | description | picture (... with item_names and item_synonyms as utility tables that I could query) Is there a better schema you would suggested? Should item names be normalized for autocomplete? Is this probably what Facebook does for "School", "City" entries? Is the first schema or the second better/optimal for search? Thanks in advance! References: (1) Is normalizing a person's name going too far?, (2) Avoiding DISTINCT

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• &ldquo;My life at Oracle&rdquo;

  - by cristian.condurache(at)oracle.com

  Hello everybody! My name is Eva and I currently work in Oracle Italy as Sales Programs Manager for the Technology Sales organization. Since 2009, I also proudly represent the Oracle Education Foundation within my country as the Ambassador for Italy. My career path in this amazing company began 5 years ago as a fresh graduate: after various years studying abroad, in Germany and Ireland mainly, I was looking for a valuable and concrete opportunity which could fulfill my energetic spirit. I wanted to develop myself inside a stimulating and “fast” business environment.. and here came Oracle and I really couldn’t ask for anything better!  THE PARTNER EXPERIENCE The first department I had the chance to work into was the Alliances and Channels organization, where I had the opportunity to join a brilliant team of great and visionary guys. I began having the responsibility to analyze and rationalize the portfolio of Oracle business partners and to identify potential cross-area solutions, which had to be highlighted both on the local market and internationally: this ended up with the implementation of the “Partner Community” model, a business environment of selected Oracle partners, specialized on the different technology focus areas. This new concept was then recognized as an EMEA Best Practice and replicated internationally. Having the opportunity to strengthen day after day strategic relationships with several business partners and study the market positioning of their technology solutions, I was given the role to develop the “Oracle Partner Network Innovation Award” in Italy: the EMEA competition encouraging and rewarding proven and successful technology innovations, creating high value for our common customers and generating new business potential. Several Italian partner solutions won different prizes and I decided that it was worth collecting all those valuable projects, winners and short-listed, inside two specific books in order also to provide them an international market visibility: OPN Innovation Award Booklet 2007 and OPN Innovation Award Booklet 2008 Inside the Alliances and Channels department I really had the opportunity to do    amazing things, like for example working side-by-side with one of the most exceptional teams in Oracle I have ever worked with: the EMEA Recruitment Team. Together, in fact, we conceived a brand new business initiative for our partners, called “Oracle Campus Joint Program”. This program was awarded as an EMEA Best Practice and acknowledged by both Italian public institutions and press media. Italy   is currently running its 5th edition.   Briefly, the “Oracle Campus Joint Program” aims at facing the growing issue of lack of  technology competences and skills on the market. By identifying a specific technology area and developing an intensive 4-6 week Oracle University training course and by collaborating with important academic institutes, international “gurus” and professionals, our business partners are able to benefit from a pool of brilliant top talented young consultants and offer them a significant career opportunity. BUSINESS BUT NOT ONLY: THE NO-PROFIT EXPERIENCE OF ORACLE Currently my mission in Oracle is to continue driving the implementation of strategic business development and sales programs for the entire Oracle Technology stack, involving both partners and the end-customers. But as a completely distinguished role from the day-today business, I’m also honored to represent in Italy the charity global organization founded by Oracle - the Oracle Education Foundation - and drive its corporate citizenship and marketing programs. Oracle Education Foundation is an independent charitable organization funded by Oracle and is dedicated to helping students develop 21st century skills through project learning and the use of technology. It provides “ThinkQuest” as a free program to primary and secondary (K12) schools. Just some significant numbers: today 548,000 students/teachers in 47 countries use ThinkQuest and the Oracle Education Foundation partners with 40+ no-profit or government organizations globally. ABOUT MYSELF AND MY INTERESTS About myself…I’m very enthusiastic and positive, trying always to transform difficult issues in challenging opportunities. My day usually begins very early in the morning with running, swimming or when I need to collect some “zen” energies with a yoga session or better with a long walk with my dog. I definitely love animals and generally speaking I’m very keen on environmental issues and try, as much as I can, to carry out a healthy and “planet respectful” lifestyle. My thirst for knowledge pushed me some time ago to begin a new personal challenge: I decided to enroll, dedicating a good part of my free time, for a second university degree: I chose “Neuroeconomics”, an innovative academic path which combines psychology, economics, and neuroscience and studies how people make decisions and the role of the brain when people evaluate these decisions, categorizing risks and rewards and generally interacting with each other. I’ve been very glad to talk about my experience in this article, as working for Oracle is something very stimulating. This company ensures you the opportunity to face new challenges, work with highly talented people and be professionally highlighted also globally. Motivation, good results and innovation is always pursued, recognized and fully supported. Thanks and wish you all an amazing career! If you have any question please contact [email protected]. For our job opportunities, please look at http://campus.oracle.com.   Technorati Tags: EMEA,Oracle Partners,Oracle Campus,Oracle Education,experience,EMEA Recruitment Team

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• Selling Visual Studio ALM

  - by Tarun Arora

  Introduction As a consultant I have been selling Application Lifecycle Management services using Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. I’ve been contacted various times by friends working in organization telling me that ALM processes in their company were benchmarked when dinosaurs walked the earth. Most of these individuals already know the great features Microsoft ALM tools offer and are keen to start a conversation with the CIO but don’t exactly know where to start. It is very important how you engage in your first conversation, if you start the conversation with ‘There is this great tooling from Microsoft which offers amazing features to boost developer productivity, … ‘ from experience I can tell you the reply from your CIO would be ‘I already know! Our existing landscape has a combination of bleeding edge open source and cutting edge licensed tools which already cover these features quite well, more over Microsoft products have a high licensing cost associated to them.’ You will always find it harder to sell by feature, the trick is to highlight the gap in the existing processes & tools and then highlight the impact of these gaps to the overall development processes, by now you would have captured enough attention to show off how the ALM tooling offered by Microsoft not only fills those gaps but offers great value adds to take their development practices to the next level. Rangers ALM Assessment Guide Image 1 – Welcome! First look at the Rangers ALM assessment guide Most organization already have some processes in place to cover aspects of ALM. How do you go about proving that there isn’t enough cover in place? This is where Visual Studio ALM Rangers ALM Assessment guide can help. The ALM assessment guide is really a tool that helps you gather information about Development practices and processes within a customer's environment. Several questionnaires are used to identify the current state of individual development lifecycle areas and decide on a desired state for those processes. It also presents guidance and roll-up summaries to help with recommendations moving forward. The ALM Rangers assessment guide can be downloaded from here. Image 2 – ALM Assessment guide divided into different functions of SDLC The assessment guide is divided into different functions of Software Development Lifecycle (listed below), this gives you the ability to access how mature the company is in different areas of SDLC. Architecture & Design Requirement Engineering & UX Development Software Configuration Management Governance Deployment & Operations Testing & Quality Assurance Project Planning & Management Each section has a set of questions, fill in the assessment by selecting “Never/Sometimes/Always” from the Answer column in the question sheets.  Each answer has weightage to the overall score. Each question has a link next to it, clicking the link takes you to the Reference sheet which gives you more details about the question along with a reason for “why you need to ask this question?”, “other ways to phrase the question” and “what to expect as an answer from the customer”. The trick is to engage the customer in a discussion. You need to probe a lot, listen to the customer and have a discussion with several team members, preferably without management to ensure that you receive candid feedback. This reminds me of a funny incident when during an ALM review a customer told me that they have a sophisticated semi-automated application deployment process, further discussions revealed that deployment actually involved 72 manual configuration steps per production node. Such observations can be recorded in the Issue Brainstorming worksheet for further consideration later. It is also worth mentioning the different levels of ALM maturity to the customer. By default the desired state of ALM maturity is set to Standard, it is possible to set a desired state by area, you should strive for Advanced or Dynamic, it always helps by explaining the classification and advantages. Image 3 – ALM levels by description The ALM assessment guide helps you arrive at a quantitative measure of the company’s ALM maturity. The resultant graph plotted on a spider’s web shows you the company’s current state of ALM maturity and the desired state of ALM maturity. Further since the results are classified by area you can immediately spot the areas where the customer needs immediate help. Image 4 – The spiders web! The red cross icons are areas shouting out for immediate attention, the yellow exclamation icons are areas that need improvement. These icons are calculated on the difference between the Current State of ALM maturity VS the Desired state of ALM maturity. Image 5 – Results by area Conclusion To conclude the Rangers ALM assessment guide gives you the ability to, Measure the customer’s current ALM maturity level Understand the ALM maturity level the customer desires to achieve Capture a healthy list of issues the customer wants to brainstorm further Now What’s next…? Download and get started with the Rangers ALM Assessment Guide. If you have successfully captured the above listed three pieces of information you are in a great state to make recommendations on the identified areas highlighting the benefits that Visual Studio ALM tools would offer. In the next post I will be covering how to take the ALM assessment results as the base to actually convert your recommendation into a sell.  Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. *** A special thanks goes out to fellow ranges Willy, Ethem and Philip for reviewing the blog post and providing valuable feedback. ***

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• CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, Please recommendation for further education of the former performing art manager seeking career in IT industries? [on hold]

  - by Baek Seungjoo

  IT specialists there J Thank you very much for your collective efforts here, and I got huge help reading your professional comments and advices on each questions I have searched so far! This time, I would like to ask for your practical advices or recommendation on what I am struggling on at this moment. I am currently seeking higher education for my career transition from performing art manager and director to “IT software and/or service development and management specialist”. However, as this field is quite new to me, and there are lots of different work positions, I have no idea which grad major I better pursue in order to get qualification. Of course I know this question could sounds wired as it is kind of personal choice. But my lack of understanding on how IT software companies work in general, your practical and experience-based advice will be great help to me, who spent more than two months of self-research on net. OK. Before my question, here is my plan and history, which are quite different from those currently in IT industry I think… 1) Target Firstly, get career transition into IT service or products companies and get experiences. Eventually, pursue IT entrepreneurship in combination with my arts and cultural production and business expertise. 2) Background Career: performing arts director and manager in theatre-based scale opera and musical Art education in youth BA in literature and Chinese studies (Art & Humanities) MA in Cultural & Creative Industries (Art & Humanities) – dissertation with focus on digital prosumption and the lived experience of the prosumer. (a qualitative research on the agents in the digital world) 2) Personally Huge interest in IT hardware and software, and their trend. Skills to build up, repair, tune PCs -of course this is no more than personal hobby, but shows my interests in this field. 4) Problem Encounter a question “So, what do you think you can contribute practically in this position”. This question turn me down everytime I go through job interviews, and I decided more education in the relevant area. Here are my questions. 1) In terms of work positions in IT software companies, I wonder if I can put the comparison of what “Artists” is to “Arts Manager or Director” is what “Developer” is to “Product Manager”. (Of course, this stereotypical division of Artist-Art Manager is out of sense because the domain overlaps to some extent, and is blurring at least in my field, and they are in different contexts, but just speaking easily.) Normally, artist comes with special arts educations, and they live in their own world of artistic inspiration and creation, and they feel alive in practice and on stages. Meanwhile, from the point of staging and managing productions, the role of art manager is critical as well. Our role cares how the production appeals to the audience in effective way, how to make profit and future sustainable management through that, how to set up future strategy in consideration of the external conditions such as political and social circumstances, audience trend and level, other production trends from on-going and historical perspectives, how and what the production make voice to the society from political, economic, humanitarian stances. So, we need keen eyes on economic, political, and societal environment, have to understand human-being and their desires, must know how to make presentation and attract investors, must have sense in managing and fighting over the limited financial resource, how to extend networking and so on. It is common that the two agents create productions in collaboration (normally not in that ideal way but in conflict and fight though J ). So, we need to know each other’s expertise to some extent, for better production. What are the work positions in IT software industries equivalent to the role of “art manager” in performing arts? From my view, considering developers come with special education in the world of computer science, software engineering, or others (self-education sometimes), and they express themselves with the arts of coding, computer languages on the black screen, and make sort of their artistic production online to the audience, I guess there might be someone who collaborate with developers in creating, managing, and launching IT services or products. 2) Which education among CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, is needed for those seeking such work position? Especially for person like me. (At this moment, Information Science has the highest possibility to get in, since I lack Calculus and Math in undergrad educaiton. But please let me know irrespective of this concern, I think there are ways to back it up if CS or SE education needed in my case) 3) Which field between Information Science and HCI can be more practical background regarding job hungting? And which of them have more demands in job market? AS I checked, HCI is more close to CS than IS in its focus of study area. Thank you very much for your patience reading such a long inquiry, and I appreciate to your efforts in advance. Have a nice day in this beautiful summer.

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• The most efficient method of drawing multiple quads in OpenGL

  - by CPatton

  I'm not very keen with OpenGL and I was wondering if someone could give me some insight on this. I'm a 'seasoned' programmer, I've read the redbook about VBOs and the like, but I was wondering from a more experienced person about the best/most efficient way of achieving this. I've been producing this 2d tile-based game engine to be used in several projects. I have a class called "ScreenObject" which is mainly composed of a Dictionary<Point, Tile> The Point key is to show where to render the Tile on the screen, and the Tile contains one or more textures to be drawn at that point. This ScreenObject is where the tiles will be modified, deleted, added, etc.. My original method of drawing the tiles in the testing I've done was to iterate through the ScreenObject and draw each quad at each location separately. From what I've read, this is a massive waste of resources. It wasn't horribly slow in the testing, but after I've completed the animation classes and effect classes, I'm sure it would be extremely slow. And one last thing, if you wouldn't mind.. As I said before, the Tile class can contain multiple textures to be drawn at the Point location on the screen. I recognize possibly two options for me here. Either add a quad at that location for each texture to be drawn, or, somehow.. use a multiple texture for the same quad (if it's possible). Even if each tile contained one texture only, that would be 64 quads to be drawn on the screen. Most of the tiles will contain 2-5 textures, so the number of total quads would increase dramatically with this method. Would it be feasible to add a quad for each new texture, or am I ignoring a better way to do this? Just need some help understanding this if you don't mind :) I've tried to be as concise as possible, and I'd greatly appreciate any responses.. and even some criticism. Programming is often a learning process and one who develops seems to never stops learning. Thanks for your time.

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• Lightbox image / link URL

  - by GSTAR

  Basically I have a slightly non-standard implementation of FancyBox. By default you have to include a link to the large version of the image so that the Lightbox can display it. However, in my implementation, the image link URLs point to a script rather than directly to the image file. So for example, instead of: <a href="mysite/images/myimage.jpg" rel="gallery"> I have: <a href="mysite/photos/view/abc123" rel="gallery"> The above URL points to a function: public function actionPhotos($view) { $photo=Photo::model()->find('name=:name', array(':name'=>$view)); if(!empty($photo)) { $this->renderPartial('_photo', array('photo'=>$photo, true)); } } The "$this-renderPartial()" bit simply calls a layout file which includes a standard HTML tag to output. Now when the user clicks on a thumbnail, the above function is called and the large image is displayed in the Lightbox. Now if the user right clicks on the thumbnail and selects "open in new tab/window" then the image is displayed in the browser as per normal, i.e. just the image. I want to change this so that it displays the image within a layout. In the above code I can include the following and put it in an IF statement: $this->render('photos', array('photo'=>$photo)); This will call the layout file "photos" which contains the layout to display the image in. I have a specific limitation for this - the image URL must remain the same, i.e. no additional GET variables in the URL. However if we can pass in a GET variable in the background then that is OK. I will most likely need to change my function above so that it calls a different file for this functionality. EDIT: To demonstrate exactly what I am trying to do, check out the following: http://www.starnow.co.uk/KimberleyMarren Go to the photos tab and hover over a thumbnail - note the URL. Click the thumbnail and it will open up in the Lightbox. Next right click on that same thumbnail and select "open in new tab/new window". You will notice that the image is now displayed in a layout. So that same URL is used for displaying the image in the Lightbox and on its own page. The way StarNow have done this is using some crazy long JavaScript functionality, which I'm not too keen on replicating.

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• How do I reward my developers for the little things they get right?

  - by Nat

  I am in a tech lead role and my developers get stuff right most of the time. How do I communicate to them thier value to me? (I.e. they have value because I do not have to go through and point out mistakes which means I do not have to watch them like a hawk which frees me to do more useful things). In summary For doing the mundane well on a day to day basis, it is good to recognise the developers effort verbally to them. An honest thankyou that mentions the specific behaviour and its positive repercussions to you personally will be well received, adjust the language to suite each individual. (Note that other developers within earshot may also respond to this by increasing their efforts in this specific activity.) Other things that should be done regularly are: Team drinks In many cultures this is an entirely worthy way of giving the team some time to socialise and relax. Be sure that you do not exclude people who do not drink or are not keen on pub culture. Shared meals are another option. Formal written (email) acknowledgment and praise to senior managers of the teams efforts and successes. (Note that acknowledging individuals alone may damage team spirit) Work the hours you expect your team to do. If they absolutely must work late for a deadline, be there in support Go to bat for the team. Refuse to let them be forced to work long periods of overtime without compensation. Protect them from level politics and stress. Give your team the best equipment you can afford. Good tools show respect and improve productivity. Small or large team rewards where appropriate can consist of many interesting activities/ items. If it allows the team to get together in a fun and even lightly competitive manner it will work (foosball table, go-karting, darts board, video game console etc). Don’t forget to listen to what the team wants, each team will have different ideas. Ensure they are getting a fair deal financially from the company. While different people may have different expectations of their pay, someone being paid unfairly will rot morale for the entire team

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