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• Compiler turning a string& into a basic_string<>&

  - by Shtong

  Hello I'm coming back to C++ after long years spent on other technologies and i'm stuck on some weird behavior when calling some methods taking std::string as parameters : An example of call : LocalNodeConfiguration *LocalNodeConfiguration::ReadFromFile(std::string & path) { // ... throw configuration_file_error(string("Configuration file empty"), path); // ... } When I compile I get this (I cropped file names for readability) : /usr/bin/g++ -g -I/home/shtong/Dev/OmegaNoc/build -I/usr/share/include/boost-1.41.0 -o CMakeFiles/OmegaNocInternals.dir/configuration/localNodeConfiguration.cxx.o -c /home/shtong/Dev/OmegaNoc/source/configuration/localNodeConfiguration.cxx .../localNodeConfiguration.cxx: In static member function ‘static OmegaNoc::LocalNodeConfiguration* OmegaNoc::LocalNodeConfiguration::ReadFromFile(std::string&)’: .../localNodeConfiguration.cxx:72: error: no matching function for call to ‘OmegaNoc::configuration_file_error::configuration_file_error(std::string, std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >&)’ .../configurationManager.hxx:25: note: candidates are: OmegaNoc::configuration_file_error::configuration_file_error(std::string&, std::string&) .../configurationManager.hxx:22: note: OmegaNoc::configuration_file_error::configuration_file_error(const OmegaNoc::configuration_file_error&) So as I understand it, the compiler is considering that my path parameter turned into a basic_string at some point, thus not finding the constructor overload I want to use. But I don't really get why this transformation happened. Some search on the net suggested me to use g++ but I was already using it. So any other advice would be appreciated :) Thanks

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• When should I implement globalization and localization in C#?

  - by Geo Ego

  I am cleaning up some code in a C# app that I wrote and really trying to focus on best practices and coding style. As such, I am running my assembly through FXCop and trying to research each message it gives me to decide what should and shouldn't be changed. What I am currently focusing on are locale settings. For instance, the two errors that I have currently are that I should be specifying the IFormatProvider parameter for Convert.ToString(int), and setting the Dataset and Datatable locale. This is something that I've never done, and never put much thought into. I've always just left that overload out. The current app that I am working on is an internal app for a small company that will very likely never need to run in another country. As such, it is my opinion that I do not need to set these at all. On the other hand, doing so would not be such a big deal, but it seems like it is unneccessary and could hinder readability to a degree. I understand that Microsoft's contention is to use it if it's there, period. Well, I'm technically supposed to call Dispose() on every object that implements IDisposable, but I don't bother doing that with Datasets and Datatables, so I wonder what the practice is "in the wild."

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• XCode enum woes

  - by Raconteur

  Hi gang, I thought I had this sorted, but I am still missing something. Very simply, I have a Settings class that hold a DAO (sitting on a plist). I want to have a couple of enums for the settings for convenience and readability, such as GamePlayType and DifficultyLevel. Right now I am defining them in the Settings.h file above the @interface line as such: typedef enum { EASY, NORMAL, HARD } DifficultyLevel; and typedef enum { SET_NUMBER_OF_MOVES, TO_COMPLETION } GamePlayType; If I access them from within the Settings class like: - (int)gridSizeForLOD { switch ([self difficultyLevel]) { case EASY: return GRID_SIZE_EASY; case NORMAL: return GRID_SIZE_NORMAL; case HARD: return GRID_SIZE_HARD; default: return GRID_SIZE_NORMAL; } } everything is fine. But, if I try to access them outside of the Settings class, let's say in my main view controller class, like this: if (([settings gameType] == SET_NUMBER_OF_MOVES) && (numMoves == [settings numMovesForLOD])) { [self showLoseScreen]; } I get errors (like EXC_BAD_ACCESS) or the condition always fails. Am I doing something incorrectly? Also, I should point out that I have this code for the call to gameType (which lives in the Settings class): - (GamePlayType)gameType { return [dao gameType]; } and the DAO implements gameType like this: - (int)gameType { return (settingsContent != nil) ? [[settingsContent objectForKey:@"Game Type"] intValue] : 0; } I know I have the DAO returning an int instead of a GamePlayType, but A) the problem I am describing arose there when I tried to use the "proper" data type, and B) I did not think it would matter since the enum is just a bunch of named ints, right? Any help, greatly appreciated. I really want to understand this thoroughly, and something is eluding me... Cheers, Chris

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• SQL Server: String Manipulation, Unpivoting

  - by OMG Ponies

  I have a column called body, which contains body content for our CMS. The data looks like: ...{cloak:id=1.1.1}...{cloak}...{cloak:id=1.1.2}...{cloak}...{cloak:id=1.1.3}...{cloak}... A moderately tweaked for readability example: ## h5. A formal process for approving and testing all external network connections and changes to the firewall and router configurations? {toggle-cloak:id=1.1.1}{tree-plus-icon} *Compliance:* {color:red}{*}Partial{*}{color} (?) {cloak:id=1.1.1} || Date: | 2010-03-15 || || Owner: | Brian || || Researched by: | || || Narrative: | Jira tickets are normally used to approve and track network changes\\ || || Artifacts: | Jira.bccampus.ca\\ || || Recommendation: | Need to update policy that no Jira = no change\\ || || Proposed Remedy(ies): | || || Approved Remedy(ies): | || || Date: | || || Reviewed by: | || || Remarks/comments: | || {cloak}## h5. Current network diagrams with all connections to cardholder data, including any wireless networks? {toggle-cloak:id=1.1.2}{tree-plus-icon} *Compliance:* {color:red}{*}TBD{*}{color} (?) {cloak:id=1.1.2} I'd like to get the cloak values out in the following format: requirement_num ----------------- 1.1.1 1.1.2 1.1.3 I'm looking at using UNIONs - does anyone have a better recommendation? Forgot to mention: I can't use regex, because CLR isn't enabled on the database. The numbers aren't sequencial. The current record jumps from 1.1.6 to 1.2.1

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• Number of characters recommended for a statement

  - by liaK

  Hi, I have been using Qt 4.5 and so do C++. I have been told that it's a standard practice to maintain the length of each statement in the application to 80 characters. Even in Qt creator we can make a right border visible so that we can know whether we are crossing the 80 characters limit. But my question is, Is it really a standard being followed? Because in my application, I use indenting and all, so it's quite common that I cross the boundary. Other cases include, there might be a error statement which will be a bit explanatory one and which is in an inner block of code, so it too will cross the boundary. Usually my variable names look bit lengthier so as to make the names meaningful. When I call the functions of the variable names, again I will cross. Function names will not be in fewer characters either. I agree a horizontal scroll bar shows up and it's quite annoying to move back and forth. So, for function calls including multiple arguments, when the boundary is reached I will make the forth coming arguments in the new line. But besides that, for a single statement (for e.g a very long error message which is in double quotes " " or like longfun1()->longfun2()->...) if I use an \ and split into multiple lines, the readability becomes very poor. So is it a good practice to have those statement length restrictions? If this restriction in statement has to be followed? I don't think it depends on a specific language anyway. I added C++ and Qt tags since if it might. Any pointers regarding this are welcome.

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• Debug.Assert-s use the same error message. Should I promote it to a static variable?

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  I love Asserts and code readability but not code duplication, and in several places I use a Debug.Assert which checks for the same condition like so: Debug.Assert(kosherBaconList.SelectedIndex != -1, "An error message along the lines - you should not ever be able to click on edit button without selecting a kosher bacon first."); This is in response to an actual bug, although the actual list does not contain kosher bacon. Anyhow, I can think of two approaches: private static readonly mustSelectKosherBaconBeforeEditAssertMessage = "An error message along the lines - you should not ever be able to " + "click on edit button without selecting a something first."; ... Debug.Assert( kosherBaconList.SelectedIndex != -1, mustSelectKosherBaconBeforeEditAssertMessage) or: if (kosherBaconList.SelectedIndex == -1) { AssertMustSelectKosherBaconBeforeEdit(); } ... [Conditional("DEBUG")] private void AssertMustSelectKosherBaconBeforeEdit() { // Compiler will optimize away this variable. string errorMessage = "An error message along the lines - you should not ever be able to " + "click on edit button without selecting a something first."; Debug.Assert(false, errorMessage); } or is there a third way which sucks less than either one above? Please share. General helpful relevant tips are also welcome.

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• Which is faster: Appropriate data input or appropriate data structure?

  - by Anon

  I have a dataset whose columns look like this: Consumer ID | Product ID | Time Period | Product Score 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 and so on. As part of a program (written in C) I need to process the product scores given by all consumers for a particular product and time period combination for all possible combinations. Suppose that there are 3 products and 2 time periods. Then I need to process the product scores for all possible combinations as shown below: Product ID | Time Period 1 | 1 1 | 2 2 | 1 2 | 2 3 | 1 3 | 2 I will need to process the data along the above lines lots of times ( 10k) and the dataset is fairly large (e.g., 48k consumers, 100 products, 24 time periods etc). So speed is an issue. I came up with two ways to process the data and am wondering which is the faster approach or perhaps it does not matter much? (speed matters but not at the cost of undue maintenance/readability): Sort the data on product id and time period and then loop through the data to extract data for all possible combinations. Store the consumer ids of all consumers who provided product scores for a particular combination of product id and time period and process the data accordingly. Any thoughts? Any other way to speed up the processing? Thanks

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• Tracking a fragment of a file in two places with git

  - by mabraham

  Hi, I have code such as void myfunc() { introduction(); while(condition()) { complex(); loop(); interior(); code(); } cleanup(); } which I wish to duplicate into two versions, viz: void myfuncA() { introduction(); minorchangeA(); while(condition()) { complex(); loop(); interior(); code(); } cleanup(); } void myfuncB() { introduction(); minorchangeB(); while(condition()) { complex(); modifiedB(); loop(); interior(); code(); } cleanup(); extracleanupB(); } git claims to track content rather than files, so do I need to tell it that there are chunks here that are common to both myfuncA and myfuncB so that when merging with upstream changes to myfunc that those changes should propagate to both myfuncA and myfuncB? If so, how? The code could be written so that myfuncAB did the correct thing at each point by testing for condition A or B, but that could seriously hinder readability or performance.

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• Overhead of calling tiny functions from a tight inner loop? [C++]

  - by John

  Say you see a loop like this one: for(int i=0; i<thing.getParent().getObjectModel().getElements(SOME_TYPE).count(); ++i) { thing.getData().insert( thing.GetData().Count(), thing.getParent().getObjectModel().getElements(SOME_TYPE)[i].getName() ); } if this was Java I'd probably not think twice. But in performance-critical sections of C++, it makes me want to tinker with it... however I don't know if the compiler is smart enough to make it futile. This is a made up example but all it's doing is inserting strings into a container. Please don't assume any of these are STL types, think in general terms about the following: Is having a messy condition in the for loop going to get evaluated each time, or only once? If those get methods are simply returning references to member variables on the objects, will they be inlined away? Would you expect custom [] operators to get optimized at all? In other words is it worth the time (in performance only, not readability) to convert it to something like: ElementContainer &source = thing.getParent().getObjectModel().getElements(SOME_TYPE); int num = source.count(); Store &destination = thing.getData(); for(int i=0;i<num;++i) { destination.insert(thing.GetData().Count(), source[i].getName(); } Remember, this is a tight loop, called millions of times a second. What I wonder is if all this will shave a couple of cycles per loop or something more substantial? Yes I know the quote about "premature optimisation". And I know that profiling is important. But this is a more general question about modern compilers, Visual Studio in particular.

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• Can I modify the way Windows draws the Aero UI?

  - by LonelyPixel

  Windows 7 with Aero Glass basically looks quite nice I think. But it has some major drawbacks regarding readability: I cannot easily tell whether a window is currently active or not. I've been tweaking the colours and transparency levels a lot recently but the only safe indicator is the close button: it's red when the window is active, it's colourless otherwise. Then there's the window title text. It is always painted black, on however dark a background. Again, regardless of whether the window is active or not. I've seen WindowBlinds and the tons of available themes you can use with it. Browsing through the most popular or highest rated in several categories I was really scared. I don't want to face Terminator every day, feel like in the Jungle or be fooled that I had an Apple computer which I do not. All I want to change is to make a greater colour difference between active and inactive windows and to invert the window title text colour for dark backgrounds. (Including that visibility hack of a spray brush background.) Is there some Windows API to alter the way Windows draws its windows or does it take the years of private research from Stardock to hook into that? I mean they say it's approved by Microsoft, so I assume there's some official documentation for that, I just couldn't find any.

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• Writing JavaScript from a Custom Control

  - by coffeeaddict

  I'm new to writing custom controls. I have MyCustomControl.cs and in my Render method I want to render out about 50 lines of JavaScript. What's the best way to do this, use the writer? protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) { writer.write(@"<script type....rest of opening tag here"); writer.Write(@" function decode(s) { return s.replace(/&amp;/g, ""&"") .replace(/&quot;/g, '""') .replace(/&#039;/g, ""'"") .replace(/&lt;/g, ""<"") .replace(/&gt;/g, "">""); };" ); I plan on having around 6 more writer.Write to write out some more sections here. Is that the best approach to actually perform the writing of JavaScript in this manor? or should I use ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock? So what's the best practice or common way people are writing javascript from a custom control? (I'm not talking about a user control here!!, custom control/Class!) I also want to keep any indentation for readability once it's spit out/rendered on the client when viewing source.

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• naming a function that exhibits "set if not equal" behavior

  - by Chris Sears

  This might be an odd question, but I'm looking for a word to use in a function name. I'm normally good at coming up with succinct, meaningful function names, but this one has me stumped so I thought I'd appeal for help. The function will take some desired state as an argument and compare it to the current state. If no change is needed, the function will exit normally without doing anything. Otherwise, the function will take some action to achieve the desired state. For example, if wanted to make sure the front door was closed, i might say: my_house.<something>_front_door('closed') What word or term should use in place of the something? I'd like it to be short, readable, and minimize the astonishment factor. A couple clarifying points... I would want someone calling the function to intuitively know they didn't need to wrap the function an 'if' that checks the current state. For example, this would be bad: if my_house.front_door_is_open(): my_house.<something>_front_door('closed') Also, they should know that the function won't throw an exception if the desired state matches the current state. So this should never happen: try: my_house.<something>_front_door('closed') except DoorWasAlreadyClosedException: pass Here are some options I've considered: my_house.set_front_door('closed') my_house.setne_front_door('closed') # ne=not equal, from the setne x86 instruction my_house.ensure_front_door('closed') my_house.configure_front_door('closed') my_house.update_front_door('closed') my_house.make_front_door('closed') my_house.remediate_front_door('closed') And I'm open to other forms, but most I've thought of don't improve readability. Such as... my_house.ensure_front_door_is('closed') my_house.conditionally_update_front_door('closed') my_house.change_front_door_if_needed('closed') Thanks for any input!

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• Data transformation question

  - by tkm

  I have data composed of a list of employers and a list of workers. Each has a many-to-many relationship with the other (so an employer can have many workers, and a worker can have many employers). The way the data is retrieved (and given to me) is as follows: each employer has an array of workers. In other words: employer n has: worker x, worker y etc. So I have a bunch of employer objects each containing an array of workers. I need to transform this data (and basically invert the relationship). I need to have a bunch of worker objects, each containing and array of employers. In other words: worker x has: employer n1, employer n2 etc. The context is hypothetical so please don't comment on why I need this or why I am doing it this way. I would really just like help on the algorithm to perform this transformation (there isn't that much data so I would prefer readability over complex optimizations which reduce complexity). (Oh and I am using Java, but pseudocode would be fine). Thanks!

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• for loop vs std::for_each with lambda

  - by Andrey

  Let's consider a template function written in C++11 which iterates over a container. Please exclude from consideration the range loop syntax because it is not yet supported by the compiler I'm working with. template <typename Container> void DoSomething(const Container& i_container) { // Option #1 for (auto it = std::begin(i_container); it != std::end(i_container); ++it) { // do something with *it } // Option #2 std::for_each(std::begin(i_container), std::end(i_container), [] (typename Container::const_reference element) { // do something with element }); } What are pros/cons of for loop vs std::for_each in terms of: a) performance? (I don't expect any difference) b) readability and maintainability? Here I see many disadvantages of for_each. It wouldn't accept a c-style array while the loop would. The declaration of the lambda formal parameter is so verbose, not possible to use auto there. It is not possible to break out of for_each. In pre- C++11 days arguments against for were a need of specifying the type for the iterator (doesn't hold any more) and an easy possibility of mistyping the loop condition (I've never done such mistake in 10 years). As a conclusion, my thoughts about for_each contradict the common opinion. What am I missing here?

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• Is there any good reason for private methods existence in C# (and OOP in general)?

  - by Piotr Lopusiewicz

  I don't mean to troll but I really don't get it. Why would language designers allow private methods instead of some naming convention (see __ in Python) ? I searched for the answer and usual arguments are: a) To make the implementation cleaner/avoid long vertical list of methods in IDE autocompletion b) To announce to the world which methods are public interface and which may change and are just for implementation purpose c) Readability Ok so now, all of those could be achieved by naming all private methods with __ prefix or by "private" keyword which doesn't have any implications other than be information for IDE (don't put those in autocompletion) and other programers (don't use it unless you really must). Hell, one could even require unsafe-like keyword to access private methods to really discourage this. I am asking this because I work with some c# code and I keep changing private methods to public for test purposes as many in-between private methods (like string generators for xml serialization) are very useful for debugging purposes (like writing some part of string to log file etc.). So my question is: Is there anything which is achieved by access restriction but couldn't be achieved by naming conventions without restricting the access ?

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• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – book review

  - by DigiMortal

     Writing code that is easy read and test is not something that is easy to achieve. Unfortunately there are still way too much programming students who write awful spaghetti after graduating. But there is one really good book that helps you raise your code to new level – your code will be also communication tool for you and your fellow programmers. “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin is excellent book that helps you start writing the easily readable code. Of course, you are the one who has to learn and practice but using this book you have very good guide that keeps you going to right direction. You can start writing better code while you read this book and you can do it right in your current projects – you don’t have to create new guestbook or some other simple application to start practicing. Take the project you are working on and start making it better! My special thanks to Robert C. Martin I want to say my special thanks to Robert C. Martin for this book. There are many books that teach you different stuff and usually you have markable learning curve to go before you start getting results. There are many books that show you the direction to go and then leave you alone figuring out how to achieve all that stuff you just read about. Clean Code gives you a lot more – the mental tools to use so you can go your way to clean code being sure you will be soon there. I am reading books as much as I have time for it. Clean Code is top-level book for developers who have to write working code. Before anything else take Clean Code and read it. You will never regret your decision. I promise. Fragment of editorial review “Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft. Readers will come away from this book understanding How to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.” Table of contents Clean code Meaningful names Functions Comments Formatting Objects and data structures Error handling Boundaries Unit tests Classes Systems Emergence Concurrency Successive refinement JUnit internals Refactoring SerialDate Smells and heuristics A Concurrency II org.jfree.date.SerialDate Cross references of heuristics Epilogue Index

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• 6 Prominent Features of New GMail User Interface

  - by Gopinath

  GMail’s user interface has got a big make over today and the new user interface is available to everyone. We can switch to the new user interface by click on “Switch to the new look” link available at the bottom right of GMail (If you are on IE 6 or similar type of bad browsers, you will not see the option!). I switched to the new user interface as soon I noticed the link and played with it for sometime. In this post I want to share the prominent features of all new GMail interface. 1. All New Conversations Interface GMail’s threaded conversations is a game changing feature when it was first introduced by Google. For  a long time we have not seen much updates to the threaded conversation views. In the new GMail interface, threaded conversation sports a great new look – conversations are always visible in a horizontal fashion as opposed to stack interface of earlier version. When you open a conversation, you get a quick glance of individual thread without expanding the thread. Readability is improved a lot now.  Check image after the break 2. Sender Profile Photos In Email Threads Did you observe the above screenshot of conversations view? It has profile images of the participants in the thread. Identifying person of a thread is much more easy. 3. Advanced Search Box Search is the heart of Google’s business and it’s their flagship technology. GMail’s search interface is enhanced to let you quickly find the required e-mails. Also you can create mail filters from the search box without leaving the screen or opening up a new popup. 4. Gmail Automatically Resizing To Fit Multiple Devices There is no doubt that this is post PC era where people started using more of tablets and big screen smartphones than ever. The new user interface of GMail automatically resizes itself to fit the size of screen seamlessly. 5. HD Images For Your Themes, Sourced from iStockphoto Are you bored with minimalistic GMail interface and the few flashy themes? Here comes GMail HD themes backed by stock photographs sourced from iStockPhoto website. If you have a widescreen HD monitor then decorate your inbox with beautiful themes. 6. Resize Labels & Chat Panels Now you got a splitter between Labels & Chat panel that lets resize their height as you prefer. Also Label panel auto expands its height when you mouse over to show you hidden labels if any. Video – overview of new GMail features This article titled,6 Prominent Features of New GMail User Interface, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• SQL SERVER – Renaming Index – Index Naming Conventions

  - by pinaldave

  If you are regular reader of this blog, you must be aware of that there are two kinds of blog posts 1) I share what I learn recently 2) I share what I learn and request your participation. Today’s blog post is where I need your opinion to make this blog post a good reference for future. Background Story Recently I came across system where users have changed the name of the few of the table to match their new standard naming convention. The name of the table should be self explanatory and they should have explain their purpose without either opening it or reading documentations. Well, not every time this is possible but again this should be the goal of any database modeler. Well, I no way encourage the name of the tables to be too long like ‘ContainsDetailsofNewInvoices’. May be the name of the table should be ‘Invoices’ and table should contain a column with New/Processed bit filed to indicate if the invoice is processed or not (if necessary). Coming back to original story, the database had several tables of which the name were changed. Story Continues… To continue the story let me take simple example. There was a table with the name  ’ReceivedInvoices’, it was changed to new name as ‘TblInvoices’. As per their new naming standard they had to prefix every talbe with the words ‘Tbl’ and prefix every view with the letters ‘Vw’. Personally I do not see any need of the prefix but again, that issue is not here to discuss.  Now after changing the name of the table they faced very interesting situation. They had few indexes on the table which had name of the table. Let us take an example. Old Name of Table: ReceivedInvoice Old Name of Index: Index_ReceivedInvoice1 Here is the new names New Name of Table: TblInvoices New Name of Index: ??? Well, their dilemma was what should be the new naming convention of the Indexes. Here is a quick proposal of the Index naming convention. Do let me know your opinion. If Index is Primary Clustered Index: PK_TableName If Index is  Non-clustered Index: IX_TableName_ColumnName1_ColumnName2… If Index is Unique Non-clustered Index: UX_TableName_ColumnName1_ColumnName2… If Index is Columnstore Non-clustered Index: CL_TableName Here ColumnName is the column on which index is created. As there can be only one Primary Key Index and Columnstore Index per table, they do not require ColumnName in the name of the index. The purpose of this new naming convention is to increase readability. When any user come across this index, without opening their properties or definition, user can will know the details of the index. T-SQL script to Rename Indexes Here is quick T-SQL script to rename Indexes EXEC sp_rename N'SchemaName.TableName.IndexName', N'New_IndexName', N'INDEX'; GO Your Contribute Please Well, the organization has already defined above four guidelines, personally I follow very similar guidelines too. I have seen many variations like adding prefixes CL for Clustered Index and NCL for Non-clustered Index. I have often seen many not using UX prefix for Unique Index but rather use generic IX prefix only. Now do you think if they have missed anything in the coding standard. Is NCI and CI prefixed required to additionally describe the index names. I have once received suggestion to even add fill factor in the index name – which I do not recommend at all. What do you think should be ideal name of the index, so it explains all the most important properties? Additionally, you are welcome to vote if you believe changing the name of index is just waste of time and energy.  Note: The purpose of the blog post is to encourage all to participate with their ideas. I will write follow up blog posts in future compiling all the suggestions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Clever memory usage through the years

  - by Ben Emmett

  A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

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• Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]

  - by Wes Miller

  More social curiosity than actual programming question... (I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.) Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends. A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion. Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons. As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc. Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y ); Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer. Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go? And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...) I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading. Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB. Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?

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• Is there an easy way to type in common math symbols?

  - by srcspider

  Disclaimer: I'm sure someone is going to moan about easy-of-use, for the purpose of this question consider readability to be the only factor that matters So I found this site that converts to easting northing, it's not really important what that even means but here's how the piece of javascript looks. /** * Convert Ordnance Survey grid reference easting/northing coordinate to (OSGB36) latitude/longitude * * @param {OsGridRef} gridref - easting/northing to be converted to latitude/longitude * @returns {LatLonE} latitude/longitude (in OSGB36) of supplied grid reference */ OsGridRef.osGridToLatLong = function(gridref) { var E = gridref.easting; var N = gridref.northing; var a = 6377563.396, b = 6356256.909; // Airy 1830 major & minor semi-axes var F0 = 0.9996012717; // NatGrid scale factor on central meridian var f0 = 49*Math.PI/180, ?0 = -2*Math.PI/180; // NatGrid true origin var N0 = -100000, E0 = 400000; // northing & easting of true origin, metres var e2 = 1 - (b*b)/(a*a); // eccentricity squared var n = (a-b)/(a+b), n2 = n*n, n3 = n*n*n; // n, n², n³ var f=f0, M=0; do { f = (N-N0-M)/(a*F0) + f; var Ma = (1 + n + (5/4)*n2 + (5/4)*n3) * (f-f0); var Mb = (3*n + 3*n*n + (21/8)*n3) * Math.sin(f-f0) * Math.cos(f+f0); var Mc = ((15/8)*n2 + (15/8)*n3) * Math.sin(2*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(2*(f+f0)); var Md = (35/24)*n3 * Math.sin(3*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(3*(f+f0)); M = b * F0 * (Ma - Mb + Mc - Md); // meridional arc } while (N-N0-M >= 0.00001); // ie until < 0.01mm var cosf = Math.cos(f), sinf = Math.sin(f); var ? = a*F0/Math.sqrt(1-e2*sinf*sinf); // nu = transverse radius of curvature var ? = a*F0*(1-e2)/Math.pow(1-e2*sinf*sinf, 1.5); // rho = meridional radius of curvature var ?2 = ?/?-1; // eta = ? var tanf = Math.tan(f); var tan2f = tanf*tanf, tan4f = tan2f*tan2f, tan6f = tan4f*tan2f; var secf = 1/cosf; var ?3 = ?*?*?, ?5 = ?3*?*?, ?7 = ?5*?*?; var VII = tanf/(2*?*?); var VIII = tanf/(24*?*?3)*(5+3*tan2f+?2-9*tan2f*?2); var IX = tanf/(720*?*?5)*(61+90*tan2f+45*tan4f); var X = secf/?; var XI = secf/(6*?3)*(?/?+2*tan2f); var XII = secf/(120*?5)*(5+28*tan2f+24*tan4f); var XIIA = secf/(5040*?7)*(61+662*tan2f+1320*tan4f+720*tan6f); var dE = (E-E0), dE2 = dE*dE, dE3 = dE2*dE, dE4 = dE2*dE2, dE5 = dE3*dE2, dE6 = dE4*dE2, dE7 = dE5*dE2; f = f - VII*dE2 + VIII*dE4 - IX*dE6; var ? = ?0 + X*dE - XI*dE3 + XII*dE5 - XIIA*dE7; return new LatLonE(f.toDegrees(), ?.toDegrees(), GeoParams.datum.OSGB36); } I found that to be a really nice way of writing an algorythm, at least as far as redability is concerned. Is there any way to easily write the special symbols. And by easily write I mean NOT copy/paste them.

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• A proposal for #DAX Code Formatting #ssas #powerpivot #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I recently published a set of rules for DAX code formatting. The following is an example of what I obtain: CALCULATE (     SUMX (         Orders,         Orders[Amount]     ),     FILTER (         ALL ( Customers ),         CALCULATE (             COUNTROWS ( Sales ),             ALL ( Calendar[Date] )         ) > 42 + 8 – 25 * ( 3 - 1 )             + 2 – 1 + 2 – 1             + CALCULATE (                   2 + 2 – 2                   + 2 - 2               )             – CALCULATE ( 4 )     ) ) The goal is to improve code readability and I look forward to implement a code formatting feature in DAX Studio. The DAX Editor already supports the rules described in the article. I am also considering whether to add a rule specific for ADDCOLUMNS / SUMMARIZE because I would like to see the “pairs” of arguments to define a column in the same row or with a special indentation rule (DAX expression for a column is indented in the line following the column name). EVALUATE CALCULATETABLE (        CALCULATETABLE (         SUMMARIZE (             Audience,             'Date'[Year],             Individuals[Gender],             Individuals[AgeRange],             "Num of Rows", FORMAT (COUNTROWS (Audience), "#,#"),             "Weighted Mean Age",                 SUMX (Audience, Audience[Weight] * Audience[Age]) / SUM (Audience[Weight])         ),         SUMMARIZE (             BridgeIndividualsTargets,             Individuals[ID_Individual]         ),         Audience[Weight] > 0        ),        Targets[Target] = "Maschi",     'Date'[Year] = 2010,     'Date'[MonthName] = "January" ) I would like to get feedback for that – you can use comments here or comments in original article. Thanks!

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• Tuple - .NET 4.0 new feature

  - by nmarun

  Something I hit while playing with .net 4.0 – Tuple. MSDN says ‘Provides static methods for creating tuple objects.’ and the example below is: 1: var primes = Tuple.Create(2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19); Honestly, I’m still not sure with what intention MS provided us with this feature, but the moment I saw this, I said to myself – I could use it instead of anonymous types. In order to put this to test, I created an XML file: 1: <Activities> 2: <Activity id="1" name="Learn Tuples" eventDate="4/1/2010" /> 3: <Activity id="2" name="Finish Project" eventDate="4/29/2010" /> 4: <Activity id="3" name="Attend Birthday" eventDate="4/17/2010" /> 5: <Activity id="4" name="Pay bills" eventDate="4/12/2010" /> 6: </Activities> In my console application, I read this file and let’s say I want to pull all the attributes of the node with id value of 1. Now, I have two ways – either define a class/struct that has these three properties and use in the LINQ query or create an anonymous type on the fly. But if we go the .NET 4.0 way, we can do this using Tuples as well. Let’s see the code I’ve written below: 1: var myActivity = (from activity in loaded.Descendants("Activity") 2:       where (int)activity.Attribute("id") == 1 3:       select Tuple.Create( 4: int.Parse(activity.Attribute("id").Value), 5: activity.Attribute("name").Value, 6: DateTime.Parse(activity.Attribute("eventDate").Value))).FirstOrDefault(); Line 3 is where I’m using a Tuple.Create to define my return type. There are three ‘items’ (that’s what the elements are called) in ‘myActivity’ type.. aptly declared as Item1, Item2, Item3. So there you go, you have another way of creating anonymous types. Just out of curiosity, wanted to see what the type actually looked like. So I did a: 1: Console.WriteLine(myActivity.GetType().FullName); and the return was (formatted for better readability): "System.Tuple`3[                            [System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],                            [System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],                            [System.DateTime, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]                           ]" The `3 specifies the number of items in the tuple. The other interesting thing about the tuple is that it knows the data type of the elements it’s holding. This is shown in the above snippet and also when you hover over myActivity.Item1, it shows the type as an int, Item2 as string and Item3 as DateTime. So you can safely do: 1: int id = myActivity.Item1; 2: string name = myActivity.Item2; 3: DateTime eventDate = myActivity.Item3; Wow.. all I can say is: HAIL 4.0.. HAIL 4.0.. HAIL 4.0

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• How can a developer realize the full value of his work [closed]

  - by Jubbat

  I, honestly, don't want to work as a developer in a company anymore after all I have seen. I want to continue developing software, yes, but not in the way I see it all around me. And I'm in London, a city that congregates lots of great developers from the whole world, so it shouldn't be a problem of location. So, what are my concerns? First of all, best case scenario: you are paying managers salary out of yours. You are consistently underpaid by making up for the average manager negative net return plus his whole salary. Typical scenario. I am a reasonably good developer with common sense who cares for readable code with attention to basic principles. I have found way too often, overconfident and arrogant developers with a severe lack of common sense. Personally, I don't want to follow TDD or Agile practices like all the cool kids nowadays. I would read about them, form my own opinion and take what I feel is useful, but don't follow it sheepishly. I want to work with people who understand that you have to design good interfaces, you absolutely have to document your code, that readability is at the top of your priorities. Also people who don't have a cargo cult mentality too. For instance, the same person who asked me about design patterns in a job interview, later told me that something like a List of Map of Vector of Map of Set (in Java) is very readable. Why would someone ask me about design patterns if they can't even grasp encapsulation? These kind of things are the norm. I've seen many examples. I've seen worse than that too, from very well paid senior devs, by the way. Every second that you spend working with people with such lack of common sense and clear thinking, you are effectively losing money by being terribly inefficient with your time. Yet, with all these inefficiencies, the average developer earns a high salary. So I tried working on my own then, although I don't like the idea. I prefer healthy exchange of opinions and ideas and task division. I then did a bit of online freelancing for a while but I think working in a sweatshop might be more enjoyable. Also, I studied computer engineering and you are in an environment in which your client will presume you don't have any formal education because there is no way to prove it. Again, you are undervalued. You could try building a product, yes. But, of course, luck is a big factor. I wonder if there is a way to work in something you can do well, software development, and be valued for the quality of your work and be paid accordingly, and where you and only you get fairly paid for the value you generate. I know that what I have written seems somehow unlikely but I strongly feel this way. Hopefully someone will understand me and has already figured this out. I don't think I'm alone in this kind of feeling.

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• Documentation and Test Assertions in Databases

  - by Phil Factor

  When I first worked with Sybase/SQL Server, we thought our databases were impressively large but they were, by today’s standards, pathetically small. We had one script to build the whole database. Every script I ever read was richly annotated; it was more like reading a document. Every table had a comment block, and every line would be commented too. At the end of each routine (e.g. procedure) was a quick integration test, or series of test assertions, to check that nothing in the build was broken. We simply ran the build script, stored in the Version Control System, and it pulled everything together in a logical sequence that not only created the database objects but pulled in the static data. This worked fine at the scale we had. The advantage was that one could, by reading the source code, reach a rapid understanding of how the database worked and how one could interface with it. The problem was that it was a system that meant that only one developer at the time could work on the database. It was very easy for a developer to execute accidentally the entire build script rather than the selected section on which he or she was working, thereby cleansing the database of everyone else’s work-in-progress and data. It soon became the fashion to work at the object level, so that programmers could check out individual views, tables, functions, constraints and rules and work on them independently. It was then that I noticed the trend to generate the source for the VCS retrospectively from the development server. Tables were worst affected. You can, of course, add or delete a table’s columns and constraints retrospectively, which means that the existing source no longer represents the current object. If, after your development work, you generate the source from the live table, then you get no block or line comments, and the source script is sprinkled with silly square-brackets and other confetti, thereby rendering it visually indigestible. Routines, too, were affected. In our system, every routine had a directly attached string of unit-tests. A retro-generated routine has no unit-tests or test assertions. Yes, one can still commit our test code to the VCS but it’s a separate module and teams end up running the whole suite of tests for every individual change, rather than just the tests for that routine, which doesn’t scale for database testing. With Extended properties, one can get the best of both worlds, and even use them to put blame, praise or annotations into your VCS. It requires a lot of work, though, particularly the script to generate the table. The problem is that there are no conventional names beyond ‘MS_Description’ for the special use of extended properties. This makes it difficult to do splendid things such ensuring the integrity of the build by running a suite of tests that are actually stored in extended properties within the database and therefore the VCS. We have lost the readability of database source code over the years, and largely jettisoned the use of test assertions as part of the database build. This is not unexpected in view of the increasing complexity of the structure of databases and number of programmers working on them. There must, surely, be a way of getting them back, but I sometimes wonder if I’m one of very few who miss them.

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