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• How hard programming is? Really. [closed]

  - by Bubba88

  Hi! The question is about your perception of programming activity. How hard/exacting this task is? There is much buzz about programming nowadays, people say that programmers are smart, very technical and abstract at a time, know much about world, psychology etc.. They say, that programmers got really powerful brain thing, cause there is much to keep in consideration simultaneously again with much information folded into each other associatively (up 10 levels of folding they say))) Still, there are some terms to specify at our own.. So that is the question: What do you think about programming in general? Is it hard? Is it 'for everyone' or for the particular kind of people only? How much non-CS background do you need to program (just to program, really; enterprise applications for example)? How long is the learning curve? (again, for programming in general) And another bunch of random questions: - If you were not to like/love programming, would that be a serious trouble bothering your current employment? - If you were to start from the beginning, would you chose that direction this time? - What other areas (jobs or maybe hobbies) are comparable to programming in the way they can explode someone's lovely brain? - Is 'non turing-complete programming' (SQL, XML, etc.) comparable to what we do or is it really way easier, less requiring, cheap and akin to cooking :)? Well, the essence is: How would you describe programming activity WRT to its difficulty? Or, on the other hand: Did you ever catch yourself thinking at some point: OMG, it's sooo hard! I don't know how would I ever program, even carried away this way and doing programming just for fun? It's very interesting to know your opinion, your'e the programmers after all. I mean much people must be exaggerating/speculating about the thing they do not really know about. But that musn't be the case here on SO :) P.S.: I'll try my best to update this post later, and you please edit it too. At least I'll get decent English in my question text :)

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• How to make this sub-sub-query work?

  - by Josh Weissbock

  I am trying to do this in one query. I asked a similar question a few days ago but my personal requirements have changed. I have a game type website where users can attend "classes". There are three tables in my DB. I am using MySQL. I have four tables: hl_classes (int id, int professor, varchar class, text description) hl_classes_lessons (int id, int class_id, varchar lessonTitle, varchar lexiconLink, text lessonData) hl_classes_answers (int id, int lesson_id, int student, text submit_answer, int percent) hl_classes stores all of the classes on the website. The lessons are the individual lessons for each class. A class can have infinite lessons. Each lesson is available in a specific term. hl_classes_terms stores a list of all the terms and the current term has the field active = '1'. When a user submits their answers to a lesson it is stored in hl_classes_answers. A user can only answer each lesson once. Lessons have to be answered sequentially. All users attend all "classes". What I am trying to do is grab the next lesson for each user to do in each class. When the users start they are in term 1. When they complete all 10 lessons in each class they move on to term 2. When they finish lesson 20 for each class they move on to term 3. Let's say we know the term the user is in by the PHP variable $term. So this is my query I am currently trying to massage out but it doesn't work. Specifically because of the hC.id is unknown in the WHERE clause SELECT hC.id, hC.class, (SELECT MIN(output.id) as nextLessonID FROM ( SELECT id, class_id FROM hl_classes_lessons hL WHERE hL.class_id = hC.id ORDER BY hL.id LIMIT $term,10 ) as output WHERE output.id NOT IN (SELECT lesson_id FROM hl_classes_answers WHERE student = $USER_ID)) as nextLessonID FROM hl_classes hC My logic behind this query is first to For each class; select all of the lessons in the term the current user is in. From this sort out the lessons the user has already done and grab the MINIMUM id of the lessons yet to be done. This will be the lesson the user has to do. I hope I have made my question clear enough.

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• Wordpress - related posts by custom taxonomy problem

  - by Nordin

  Hello, I'm trying to display related posts based on a custum taxonomy. I found a query at wordpress.org that kind of works. However the original post gets duplicated in the results multiple times. (words is the name of the custom taxonomy I use) What seems to happen is that the single post gets duplicated according to what amount showpost is set. Any idea's what could cause this? The code: <?php //for in the loop, display all "content", regardless of post_type, //that have the same custom taxonomy (e.g. words) terms as the current post $backup = $post; // backup the current object $found_none = '<h2>No related posts found!</h2>'; $taxonomy = 'words';// e.g. post_tag, category, custom taxonomy $param_type = 'words'; // e.g. tag__in, category__in, but genre__in will NOT work $post_types = get_post_types( array('public' => true), 'names' ); $tax_args=array('orderby' => 'none'); $tags = wp_get_post_terms( $post->ID , $taxonomy, $tax_args); if ($tags) { foreach ($tags as $tag) { $args=array( "$param_type" => $tag->slug, 'post__not_in' => array($post->ID), 'post_type' => $post_types, 'showposts'=>5, 'caller_get_posts'=>1 ); $my_query = null; $my_query = new WP_Query($args); if( $my_query->have_posts() ) { while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?> <h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3> <?php $found_none = ''; endwhile; } } } if ($found_none) { echo $found_none; } $post = $backup; // copy it back wp_reset_query(); // to use the original query again ?>

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• Stuck with Regular Expression code to apply HTML tag to text but exclude if inside <?> tag

  - by James Buckingham

  Hi there. I'm trying to write a bit of regex which would go through some text, written by our Editors, and apply an <acronym> tag to the first instance it finds of an abbreviation set we hold in our "Glossary of Terms". So for this example I've used the abbreviation ITS. 1st thing I thought I'd do is setup an example with a mix of scenerios I could test against, i.e. ITS sitting with punctuation, in HTML tags & ones that we've applied this to already (in other words the script has run through this before, so no need to do again). I'm almost there but just got stuck at the last point :-(. Here's the regex I've got so far - <[^<|]+?>?>ITS<[^<]+?>|ITS The Example - FROM ( EVERY ITS IN BOLD TO BE WRAPPED WITH ACRONYM ): I want you to tag thisITS, but not this wrapped one - <acronym title="ITS" id="thisIsATest">ITS</acronym> This is another test as I still want to update <p>ITS</p> that have other HTML tags wrapped around them.` ITS want ones that start sentences and ones that finish ITS. ITS, and ones which are wrapped in punctuation.` Test link: <a href="index.cfm>ITS</a> AND I WANT THIS CHANGE TO : I want you to tag this <acronym title="ITS">ITS</acronym>, but not this wrapped one - <acronym title="ITS">ITS</acronym> This is another test as I still want to update <acronym title="ITS">ITS</acronym> that have other HTML tags wrapped around them.` <acronym title="ITS">ITS</acronym> want ones that start sentences and ones that finish <acronym title="ITS">ITS</acronym>. <acronym title="ITS">ITS</acronym>, and ones which are wrapped in punctuation. Test link: <acronym title="ITS"><a href="index.cfm>ITS</a></acronym> Are there any Reg Ex experts out there that could help me finish this off? Any other hints tips would also be appreciated. Thanks a lot, James P.S. This is going to be placed in a ColdFusion application if that helps anyone in specific syntax.

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• Avoiding stack overflows in wrapper DLLs

  - by peachykeen

  I have a program to which I'm adding fullscreen post-processing effects. I do not have the source for the program (it's proprietary, although a developer did send me a copy of the debug symbols, .map format). I have the code for the effects written and working, no problems. My issue now is linking the two. I've tried two methods so far: Use Detours to modify the original program's import table. This works great and is guaranteed to be stable, but the user's I've talked to aren't comfortable with it, it requires installation (beyond extracting an archive), and there's some question if patching the program with Detours is valid under the terms of the EULA. So, that option is out. The other option is the traditional DLL-replacement. I've wrapped OpenGL (opengl32.dll), and I need the program to load my DLL instead of the system copy (just drop it in the program folder with the right name, that's easy). I then need my DLL to load the Cg framework and runtime (which relies on OpenGL) and a few other things. When Cg loads, it calls some of my functions, which call Cg functions, and I tend to get stack overflows and infinite loops. I need to be able to either include the Cg DLLs in a subdirectory and still use their functions (not sure if it's possible to have my DLLs import table point to a DLL in a subdirectory) or I need to dynamically link them (which I'd rather not do, just to simplify the build process), something to force them to refer to the system's file (not my custom replacement). The entire chain is: Program loads DLL A (named opengl32.dll). DLL A loads Cg.dll and dynamically links (GetProcAddress) to sysdir/opengl32.dll. I now need Cg.dll to also refer to sysdir/opengl32.dll, not DLL A. How would this be done? Edit: How would this be done easily without using GetProcAddress? If nothing else works, I'm willing to fall back to that, but I'd rather not if at all possible. Edit2: I just stumbled across the function SetDllDirectory in the MSDN docs (on a totally unrelated search). At first glance, that looks like what I need. Is that right, or am I misjudging? (off to test it now) Edit3: I've solved this problem by doing thing a bit differently. Instead of dropping an OpenGL32.dll, I've renamed my DLL to DInput.dll. Not only does it have the advantage of having to export one function instead of well over 120 (for the program, Cg, and GLEW), I don't have to worry about functions running back in (I can link to OpenGL as usual). To get into the calls I need to intercept, I'm using Detours. All in all, it works much better. This question, though, is still an interesting problem (and hopefully will be useful for anyone else trying to do crazy things in the future). Both the answers are good, so I'm not sure yet which to pick...

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• Giving event control back to xaml/callee to access check/uncheck

  - by dovholuk

  Hi All, I've scoured the Internet but my search-foo must not work if it's out there cause I just can't find the proper search terms to get me the answer I am looking for. So I turn to the experts here as a last resort to point me in the right direction. What I'm trying to do is create a composite control of a text box and a list box but I want to allow the control consumer to decide what to do when say the checkbox is checked/unchecked and I just can't figure it out... Maybe i'm going about it all wrong. What I've done thus far is to: create a custom control that extends ListBox expose a custom DP named "Text" (for the Text box but it's not the important part) craft the generic.xaml so that the list items have a default ItemTemplate/DataTemplate inside the DataTemplate I'm trying to set the "Checked" or "Unchecked" events expose 'wrapper' events as DPs in the custom control that would get 'set' via the template when instatiated As soon as I try something like the following (inside generic.xaml): <DataTemplate> <...> <CheckBox Checked="{TemplateBinding MyCheckedDP}"/> <...> </DataTemplate> I get runtime exceptions, the designer - vs2010 - pukes out a LONG list of errors that are all very similar and nothing I do can make it work. I went so far as to try using the VisualTreeHelper but no magic combination I could find would work nor would it allow me to traverse the tree because when the OnApplyTemplate method fires the listbox items don't exist yet and aren't in the tree. So hopefully this all makes sense but if not please let me know and I'll edit the post for clarifications. Thanks to all for any pointers or thoughts... Like I said maybe I'm heading about it in the wrong way from the start... EDIT (Request for xaml) generic.xaml datatemplate: <DataTemplate > <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" > <local:FilterCheckbox x:Name="chk"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Display}" /> </local:FilterCheckbox> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> usercontrol.xaml (invocation of custom control) <local:MyControl FancyName="This is the fancy name" ItemChecked="DoThisWhenACheckboxIsChecked" <-- this is where the consumer "ties" to the checkbox events ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource someDataSource}}" />

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• Is this scenario in compliance with GPLv3?

  - by Sean Kinsey

  For arguments sake, say that we create a web application , that depends on a GPLv3 licensed component, lets say Ext JS. Based on Section 0 of the license, the common notion is that the entire web application (the client side javascript) falls under the definition of a covered work: A “covered work” means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program. and that it will therefor have to be distributed under the same license Ok, so here comes the fun part: This is a short 'program' that is based on Ext JS var myPanel = new Ext.Panel(); The question that arises is: Have I now violated the GPL by not including the source of Ext JS and its license? Ok, so lets take another example <!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>my title</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://extjs.cachefly.net/ext-3.2.1/ext-all.js"> </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://extjs.cachefly.net/ext-3.2.1/resources/css/ext-all.css" /> <script type="text/javascript"> var myPanel = new Ext.Panel(); </script> </head> <body> </body> </html> Have I now violated the terms of the GPL? The code conveyed by me to you is in a non-functional state - it will have to be combined with the actual source of Ext JS, which you(your browser) will have to retrieve, from a source made public by someone else to be usable. Now, if the answer to the above is no, how does me conveying this code in visible form differ from the 'invisible' form conveyed by my web server? As a side note, a very similar thing is done in Linux with many projects that depends on less permissive licenses - the user has to retrieve these on its own and make these available for the primary lib/executable. How is this not the same if the user is informed on beforehand that he (the browser) will have to retrieve the needed resources from a different source? Just to make it clear, I'm pro FLOSS, and I have also published a number of projects licensed under more permissive licenses. The reason I'm asking this is that I still haven't found anyone offering a definitive answer to this.

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• string categorization strategies

  - by Andrew Heath

  I'm the one-man dev team on a fledgling military history website. One aspect of the site is a catalog of ~1,200 individual battles, including the nations & formations (regiments, divisions, etc) which took part. The formation information (as well as the other battle info) was manually imported from a series of books by a 10-man volunteer team. The formations were listed in groups with varying formatting and abbreviation patterns. At the time I set up the data collection forms I couldn't think of a good way to process that data... and elected to store it all as strings in the MySQL database and sort it out later. Well, "later" - as it tends to happen - has arrived. :-) Each battle has 2+ records in the database - one for each nation that participated. Each record has a formations text string listing the formations present as the volunteer chose to add them. Some real examples: 39th Grenadier Rgmt, 26th Volksgrenadier Division 2nd Luftwaffe Field Division, 246th Infantry Division 247th Rifle Division, 255th Tank Brigade 2nd Luftwaffe Field Division, SS Cavalry Division 28th Tank Brigade, 158th Rifle Division, 135th Rifle Division, 81st Tank Brigade, 242nd Tank Brigade 78th Infantry Division 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force, Tulagi Seaplane Base personnel 1st Battalion 505th Infantry Regiment The ultimate goal is for each individual force to have an ID, so that its participation can be traced throughout the battle database. Formation hierarchy, such as the final item above 1st Battalion (of the) 505th Infantry Regiment also needs to be preserved. In that case, 1st Battalion and 505th Infantry Regiment would be split, but 1st Battalion would be flagged as belonging to the 505th. In database terms, I think I want to pull the formation field out of the current battle info table and create three new tables: FORMATION [id] [name] FORMATION_HIERARCHY [id] [parent] [child] FORMATION_BATTLE [f_id] [battle_id] It's simple to explain, but complicated to enact. What I'm looking for from the SO community is just some tips on how best to tackle this problem. Ideally there's some sort of method to solving this that I'm not aware of. However, as a last resort, I could always code a classification framework and call my volunteers back to sort through 2,500+ records...

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• Arguments for moving from LINQtoSQL to Nhibernate?

  - by sah302

  Backstory: Hi all, I just spent a lot of time reading many of the LINQ vs Nhibernate threads here and on other sites. I work in a small development team of 4 people and we don't even have really any super experienced developers. We work for a small company that has a lot of technical needs but not enough developers to implement them (and hiring more is out of the question right now). Typically our projects (which individually are fairly small) have been coded separately and weren't really layered in anyway, code wasn't re-used, no class libraries, and we just use the LINQtoSQL .dbml files for our pojects, we really don't even use objects but pass around values and stuff, the only time we use objects is when inserting to a database (heck not even querying since you don't need to assign it to a type and can just bind to gridview). Despite all this as I said our company has a lot of technical needs, no one could come to us for a year and we would have plenty of work to implement requested features. Well I have decided to change that a bit first by creating class libraries and actually adding layers to our applications. I am trying to meet these guys halfway by still using LINQtoSQL as the ORM yet and still use VB as the language. However I am finding it a b***h of a time dealing with so many thing in LINQtoSQL that I found easy in Nhibernate (automatic handling of the session, criteria creation easier than expression trees, generic an dynamic querying easier etc.) So... Question: How can I convince my lead developers and other senior programmers that switching to Nhibernate is a good thing? That being in control of our domain objects is a good thing? That being able to implement interfaces is a good? I've tried exlpaining the advantages of this before but it's not understood by them because they've never programmed in a true OO & layered way. Also one of the counter arguments to this I can see is sqlMetal generates those classes automatically and therefore it saves a lot of time. I can't really counter that other than saying spending more time on infrastructure to make it more scalable and flexible is good, but they can't see how. Again, I know the features and advantages (somewhat enough I believe) of each, but I need arguments applicable to my context, hence why I provided the context. I just am not a very good arguer I guess. (Caveat: For all the LINQtoSQL lovers, I may just not be super proficient as LINQ, but I find it very cumbersome that you are required to download some extra library for dynamic queries which don't by default support guid comparisons, and I also find the way of updating entitites to be cumbersome as well in terms of data context managing, so it could just be that I suck hehe.)

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• Is it possible to reliably auto-decode user files to Unicode? [C#]

  - by NVRAM

  I have a web application that allows users to upload their content for processing. The processing engine expects UTF8 (and I'm composing XML from multiple users' files), so I need to ensure that I can properly decode the uploaded files. Since I'd be surprised if any of my users knew their files even were encoded, I have very little hope they'd be able to correctly specify the encoding (decoder) to use. And so, my application is left with task of detecting before decoding. This seems like such a universal problem, I'm surprised not to find either a framework capability or general recipe for the solution. Can it be I'm not searching with meaningful search terms? I've implemented BOM-aware detection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark) but I'm not sure how often files will be uploaded w/o a BOM to indicate encoding, and this isn't useful for most non-UTF files. My questions boil down to: Is BOM-aware detection sufficient for the vast majority of files? In the case where BOM-detection fails, is it possible to try different decoders and determine if they are "valid"? (My attempts indicate the answer is "no.") Under what circumstances will a "valid" file fail with the C# encoder/decoder framework? Is there a repository anywhere that has a multitude of files with various encodings to use for testing? While I'm specifically asking about C#/.NET, I'd like to know the answer for Java, Python and other languages for the next time I have to do this. So far I've found: A "valid" UTF-16 file with Ctrl-S characters has caused encoding to UTF-8 to throw an exception (Illegal character?) (That was an XML encoding exception.) Decoding a valid UTF-16 file with UTF-8 succeeds but gives text with null characters. Huh? Currently, I only expect UTF-8, UTF-16 and probably ISO-8859-1 files, but I want the solution to be extensible if possible. My existing set of input files isn't nearly broad enough to uncover all the problems that will occur with live files. Although the files I'm trying to decode are "text" I think they are often created w/methods that leave garbage characters in the files. Hence "valid" files may not be "pure". Oh joy. Thanks.

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• How do I set up ServletForwardingController to intercept for jsp requests on weblogic

  - by dok

  My end goal is to be able to use the spring message tag with configured messageSource on a legacy app using a model-1 architecture. I've done this in tomcat with something like <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource"> <property name="basename" value="WEB-INF/classes/bundle"/> </bean> <bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping"> <property name="mappings"> <props> <prop key="*">myServletForwardingController</prop> </props> </property> </bean> <bean id="myServletForwardingController" name="/**/*.jsp" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ServletForwardingController"> <property name="servletName" value="jsp"/> </bean> For weblogic I have <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource"> <property name="basenames"> <list> <value>WEB-INF/i18n/bundle</value> </list> </property> </bean> <bean name="/**/*.jsp" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ServletForwardingController"> <property name="servletName" value="JspServlet"/> </bean> But, no luck. I'm getting a StackOverflowError when I attempt to access a JSP. java.lang.StackOverflowError at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:620) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.defineClass(GenericClassLoader.java:338) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.findLocalClass(GenericClassLoader.java:291) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.findClass(GenericClassLoader.java:259) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader.findClass(ChangeAwareClassLoader.java:54) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.loadClass(GenericClassLoader.java:179) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader.loadClass(ChangeAwareClassLoader.java:35) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:319) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:620) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.defineClass(GenericClassLoader.java:338) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.findLocalClass(GenericClassLoader.java:291) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.findClass(GenericClassLoader.java:259) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader.findClass(ChangeAwareClassLoader.java:54) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.GenericClassLoader.loadClass(GenericClassLoader.java:179) at weblogic.utils.classloaders.ChangeAwareClassLoader.loadClass(ChangeAwareClassLoader.java:35) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:319) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:683) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:552) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:707) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820) at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:226) at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:124) at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:283) at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.onAddToMapException(ServletStubImpl.java:394) at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:309) at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:175) at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestDispatcherImpl.invokeServlet(RequestDispatcherImpl.java:533) at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestDispatcherImpl.forward(RequestDispatcherImpl.java:266) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ServletForwardingController.handleRequestInternal(ServletForwardingController.java:129) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.AbstractController.handleRequest(AbstractController.java:153) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.SimpleControllerHandlerAdapter.handle(SimpleControllerHandlerAdapter.java:48) at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:771) at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:716) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:647) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:552) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:707) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820) ...

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• Share a "deep link" from a Windows 8/WinRT application

  - by Dave Parker

  I have searched using many different terms and phrases, and waded through many pages of results, but I have (remarkably) not seen anyone else addressing, even asking, about, this issue. So here goes... Ultimate Goal: Allow a user viewing a content-based page (may contain both text and images) within a Windows Store app to share that content with someone else. Description I am working on taking a fair amount of content and making it available for browsing/navigating as a Windows 8/WinRT/Windows Store (we need a consistent name here) application. One of the desired features is to take advantage of the Share Charm, such that someone viewing a page could share that page with someone else. The ideal behavior is for the application to implement the Share Source contract which would share an email message that contained some explanatory text, a link to get the app from the Windows Store, and a "deep link" into the shared page in the application. Solutions Considered We had originally looked at just generating a PDF representation of the page, but there are very few external libraries that would work under WinRT, and having to include externally licensed code would be problematic as well. Writing our own PDF generation code would out of scope. We have also considered generating a Word document or PowerPoint slide using OpenXML, but again, we run up against the limitaions of WinRT. In this case, it is highly unlikely the OpenXML SDK is useable in a WinRT application. Another thought was to pre-generate all of the pages as .pdf files, store them as resources, and when the Share Charm is invoked, share the .pdf file associated with the current page. The problem here is the application will have at least 150 content pages, and depending on how we break the content down, up to over 600. This would likely cause serious bloat. Where We Are At Thus we have come to sharing URIs. From what I can tell, though, the "deep linking" feature is only intended for use on Secondary Tiles tied to your application. Another avenue I considered was registering a protocol like, "my-special-app:" with the OS and having it fire up the application but that would require HKCR registry access, which is outside the WinRT sandbox. If it matters, we are leaning towards an HTML/JS application, rather than XAML/C#, because the converted content will all be in HTML and the WebView control in WinRT is fairly limited. This decision is not yet final, though. Conclusion So, is this possible, and if so, how would it be done or where can I find documentation on it? Thanks, Dave Parker

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• Advice on software / database design to avoid using cursors when updating database

  - by Remnant

  I have a database that logs when an employee has attended a course and when they are next due to attend the course (courses tend to be annual). As an example, the following employee attended course '1' on 1st Jan 2010 and, as the course is annual, is due to attend next on the 1st Jan 2011. As today is 20th May 2010 the course status reads as 'Complete' i.e. they have done the course and do not need to do it again until next year: EmployeeID CourseID AttendanceDate DueDate Status 123456 1 01/01/2010 01/01/2011 Complete In terms of the DueDate I calculate this in SQL when I update the employee's record e.g. DueDate = AttendanceDate + CourseFrequency (I pull course frequency this from a separate table). In my web based app (asp.net mvc) I pull back this data for all employees and display it in a grid like format for HR managers to review. This allows HR to work out who needs to go on courses. The issue I have is as follows. Taking the example above, suppose today is 2nd Jan 2011. In this case, employee 123456 is now overdue for the course and I would like to set the Status to Incomplete so that the HR manager can see that they need to action this i.e. get employee on the course. I could build a trigger in the database to run overnight to update the Status field for all employees based on the current date. From what I have read I would need to use cursors to loop over each row to amend the status and this is considered bad practice / inefficient or at least something to avoid if you can??? Alternatively, I could compute the Status in my C# code after I have pulled back the data from the database and before I display it on screen. The issue with this is that the Status in the database would not necessarily match what is shown on screen which just feels plain wrong to me. Does anybody have any advice on the best practice approach to such an issue? It helps, if I did use a cursor I doubt I would be looping over more than 1000 records at any given time. Maybe this is such small volume that using cursors is okay?

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• Using multiple aggregate functions in an algebraic expression in (ANSI) SQL statement

  - by morpheous

  I have the following aggregate functions (AGG FUNCs): foo(), foobar(), fredstats(), barneystats(). I want to know if I can use multiple AGG FUNCs in an algebraic expression. This may seem a strange/simplistic question for seasoned SQL developers - however, the but the reason I ask is that so far, all AGG FUNCs examples I have seen are of the simplistic variety e.g. max(salary) < 100, rather than using the AGG FUNCs in an expression which involves using multiple AGG FUNCs in an expression (like agg_func1() agg_func2()). The information below should help clarify further. Given tables with the following schemas: CREATE TABLE item (id int, length float, weight float); CREATE TABLE item_info (item_id, name varchar(32)); # Is it legal (ANSI) SQL to write queries of this format ? SELECT id, name, foo, foobar, fredstats FROM A, B (SELECT id, foo(123) as foo, foobar('red') as foobar, fredstats('weight') as fredstats FROM item GROUP BY id HAVING [ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSION] ORDER BY id AS A), item_info AS B WHERE item.id = B.id Where: ALGEBRAIC EXPRESSION is the type of expression that can be used in a WHERE clause - for example: ((foo(x) < foobar(y)) AND foobar(y) IN (1,2,3)) OR (fredstats(x) <> 0)) I am using PostgreSQL as the db, but I would prefer to use ANSI SQL wherever possible. Assuming it is legal to include AGG FUNCS in the way I have done above, I'd like to know: Is there a more efficient way to write the above query ? Is there any way I can speed up the query in terms of a judicious choice of indexes on the tables item and item_info ? Is there a performance hit of using AGG FUNCs in an algebraic expression like I am (i.e. an expression involving the output of aggregate functions rather than constants? Can the expression also include 'scaled' AGG FUNC? (for example: 2*foo(123) < -3*foobar(456) ) - will scaling (i.e. multiplying an AGG FUNC by a number have an effect on performance?) How can I write the query above using INNER JOINS instead?

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• Do Websites need Local Databases Anymore?

  - by viatropos

  If there's a better place to ask this, please let me know. Every time I build a new website/blog/shopping-cart/etc., I keep trying to do the following: Extract out common functionality into reusable code (Rubygems and jQuery plugins mostly) If possible, convert that gem into a small service so I never have to deal with a database for the objects involved (by service, I mean something lean and mean, usually built with the Sinatra Web Framework with a few core models). My assumption is, if I can remove dependencies on local databases, that will make it easier and more scalable in the long run (scalable in terms of reusability and manageability, not necessarily database/performance). I'm not sure if that's a good or bad assumption yet. What do you think? I've made this assumption because of the following reason: Most serious database/model functionality has been built on the internet somewhere. Just to name a few: Social Network API: Facebook Messaging API: Twitter Mailing API: Google Event API: Eventbrite Shopping API: Shopify Comment API: Disqus Form API: Wufoo Image API: Picasa Video API: Youtube ... Each of those things are fairly complicated to build from scratch and to make as optimized, simple, and easy to use as those companies have made them. So if I build an app that shows pictures (picasa) on an Event page (eventbrite), and you can see who joined the event (facebook events), and send them emails (google apps api), and have them fill out monthly surveys (wufoo), and watch a video when they're done (youtube), all integrated into a custom, easy to use website, and I can do that without ever creating a local database, is that a good thing? I ask because there's two things missing from the puzzle that keep forcing me to create that local database: Post API RESTful/Pretty Url API While there's plenty of Blogging systems and APIs for them, there is no one place where you can just write content and have it part of some massive thing. For every app, I have to use code for creating pretty/restful urls, and that saves posts. But it seems like that should be a service! Question is, is that what the website is? ...That place to integrate the worlds services for my specific cause... and, sigh, to store posts that only my site has access to. Will everyone always need "their own blog"? Why not just have a profile and write lots of content on an established platform like StackOverflow or Facebook? ... That way I can write apps entirely without a database and know that I'm doing it right. Note: Of course at some point you'd need a database, if you were doing something unique or new. But for the case where you're just rewiring information or creating things like videos, events, and products, is it really necessary anymore??

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• Django admin fails when using includes in urlpatterns

  - by zenWeasel

  I am trying to refactor out my application a little bit to keep it from getting too unwieldily. So I started to move some of the urlpatterns out to sub files as the documentation proposes. Besides that fact that it just doesn't seem to be working (the items are not being rerouted) but when I go to the admin, it says that 'urlpatterns has not been defined'. The urls.py I have at the root of my application is: if settings.ENABLE_SSL: urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^checkout/orderform/onepage/(\w*)/$','checkout.views.one_page_orderform',{'SSL':True},'commerce.checkout.views.single_product_orderform'), ) else: urlpatterns = patterns('', (r'^checkout/orderform/onepage/(\w*)/$','commerce.checkout.views.single_product_orderform'), ) urlpatterns+= patterns('', (r'^$', 'alchemysites.views.route_to_home'), (r'^%s/' % settings.DAJAXICE_MEDIA_PREFIX, include('dajaxice.urls')), (r'^/checkout/', include('commerce.urls')), (r'^/offers',include('commerce.urls')), (r'^/order/',include('commerce.urls')), (r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)), (r'^accounts/login/$', login), (r'^accounts/logout/$', logout), (r'^(?P<path>.*)/$','alchemysites.views.get_path'), (r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':settings.MEDIA_ROOT}), The urls I have moved out so far are the checkout/offers/order which are all subapps of 'commerce' where the urls.py for the apps are so to be clear. /urls.py in questions (included here) /commerce/urls.py where the urls.py I want to include is: order_info = { 'queryset': Order.objects.all(), } urlpatterns+= patterns('', (r'^offers/$','offers.views.start_offers'), (r'^offers/([a-zA-Z0-9-]*)/order/(\d*)/add/([a-zA-Z0-9-]*)/(\w*)/next/([a-zA-Z0-9-)/$','offers.views.show_offer'), (r'^reports/orders/$', list_detail.object_list,order_info), ) and the applications offers lies under commerce. And so the additional problem is that admin will not work at all, so I'm thinking because I killed it somewhere with my includes. Things I have checked for: Is the urlpatterns variable accidentally getting reset somewhere (i.e. urlpatterns = patterns, instead of urlpatterns+= patterns) Are the patterns in commerce.urls valid (yes, when moved back to root they work). So from there I am stumped. I can move everything back into the root, but was trying to get a little decoupled, not just for theoretical reason but for some short terms ones. Lastly if I enter www.domainname/checkout/orderform/onepage/xxxjsd I get the correct page. However, entering www.domainname/checkout/ gets handled by the alchemysites.views.get_path. If not the answer (because this is pretty darn specific), then is there a good way for troubleshoot urls.py? It seems to just be trial and error. Seems there should be some sort of parser that will tell you what your urlpatterns will do.

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• mediaelement.js control sizes are wrong when clip nested in a hidden element

  - by Martin Francis

  It's a nasty one this. In an audio control placed within a container element whose display property is initially set to none, the audio clip does NOT correctly size the progress bar when it is initialised. This is clear when the container's display property is changed from 'none' to '' (which is equivalent to 'static'). But who would ever do that? I make extensive use of 'tabbed' display arrangements on community sites like this one: http://www.churchesInBracebridge.ca Owing to the page arrangement, the audio controls which you see under 'sermons' (which at the time of writing still using Flash rather than John's excellent library here) are initially rendered in a div that is hidden. Simplified Test case Rather than have anyone have to wade through all of that, here's a much simplified test case: http://jsfiddle.net/sJL6T/36 Here's the full page source for those who'd prefer to work with it that way. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> <title>MediaElementPlayer.js</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <script src="http://mediaelementjs.com/js/mejs-2.13.1/mediaelement-and-player.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://mediaelementjs.com/js/mejs-2.13.1/mediaelementplayer.css" /> <script type="text/javascript"> function toggle(id){ document.getElementById(id).style.display= (document.getElementById(id).style.display=='none' ? '' : 'none'); } </script> </head> <body> <h1>MediaElementPlayer.js</h1> <h2 onclick="return toggle('test1')">Initially Hidden (Click to toggle)</h2> <div id='test1' style='display:none'> <audio controls="controls"> <source src="http://mediaelementjs.com/media/AirReview-Landmarks-02-ChasingCorporate.mp3" type="audio/mp3" /> </audio> </div> <h2 onclick="return toggle('test2')">Initially Shown (Click to toggle)</h2> <div id='test2' style=''> <audio controls="controls"> <source src="http://mediaelementjs.com/media/AirReview-Landmarks-02-ChasingCorporate.mp3" type="audio/mp3" /> </audio> </div> <script> $('audio').mediaelementplayer(); </script> </body> </html> Possible Workarounds Now I know that Google maps has the same quirk and there are two possible ways I've used to deal with that: Use absolute positioning in a displayed div to place the element 10,000px to the left then bring it onto the stage when we want to see it Have the map pane displayed when loading then hide it as soon as it's loaded (ugly I know, but it usually works) However either approach would be a pain to do, as I have a lot of legacy code using the simpler div hiding method. I know that JQuery can get the dimensions of an element event if it is hidden - someone thoughtfully fiddled that and it does work: http://jsfiddle.net/sJL6T/9 Perhaps it may be possible to modify the actual library to find correct dimensions, even if the container itself is hidden? That would be wonderful, if it can be done! Initial experiments on mediaelement-and-player.js code I found that when I provided a fixed value in the setControlsSize function for railWidth, I got consistent results with both controls in the test case above (and obviously I'm working with my own copy of the library to do that, not the one stored at mediaelementjs.com): // outer area rail.width(railWidth); Change to this: // outer area railWidth=216; rail.width(railWidth); Many thanks in anticipation! Martin Francis <<

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• Would a Centralized Blogging Service Work?

  - by viatropos

  If there's a better place to ask this, please let me know. Every time I build a new website/blog/shopping-cart/etc., I keep trying to do the following: Extract out common functionality into reusable code (Rubygems and jQuery plugins mostly) If possible, convert that gem into a small service so I never have to deal with a database for the objects involved (by service, I mean something lean and mean, usually built with the Sinatra Web Framework with a few core models. My assumption is, if I can remove dependencies on local databases, that will make it easier and more scalable in the long run (scalable in terms of reusability and manageability, not necessarily database/performance). I'm not sure if that's a good or bad assumption yet. What do you think? I've made this assumption because of the following reason: Most serious database/model functionality has been built on the internet somewhere. Just to name a few: Social Network API: Facebook Messaging API: Twitter Mailing API: Google Event API: Eventbrite Shopping API: Shopify Comment API: Disqus Form API: Wufoo Image API: Picasa Video API: Youtube ... Each of those things are fairly complicated to build from scratch and to make as optimized, simple, and easy to use as those companies have. So if I build an app that shows pictures (picasa) on an Event page (eventbrite), and you can see who joined the event (facebook events), and send them emails (google apps api), and have them fill out monthly surveys (wufoo), and watch a video when they're done (youtube), all integrated into a custom, easy to use website, and I can do that without ever creating a local database, is that a good thing? I ask because there's two things missing from the puzzle that keep forcing me to create that local database: Post API RESTful/Pretty Url API While there's plenty of Blogging systems and APIs for them, there is no one place where you can just write content and have it part of some massive thing. For every app, I have to use code for creating pretty/restful urls, and that saves posts. But it seems like that should be a service! Question is, is that the main point of a website? Will everyone always need "their own blog"? Why not just have a profile and write lots of content on an established platform like StackOverflow or Facebook?

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• UITableViewCell outlets not set during bundle load (possibly very elementary question)

  - by Jan Zich

  What are the most common reasons for an outlet (a class property) not being set during a bundle load? I'm sorry; most likely I'm not using the correct terms. It's my first steps with iPhone OS development and Objective-C, so please bear with me. Here is more details. Basically, I'm trying to create a table view based form with a fixed number of static rows. I followed this example: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/TableView_iPhone/TableViewCells/TableViewCells.html Scroll down to The Technique for Static Row Content please. I have one nib file with one table view, three table cells and all connections set as in the example. The problem is that the corresponding cell properties in my controller are never initialised. I get an exception in cellForRowAtIndexPath complaining that the returned cell is nil: UITableView dataSource must return a cell from tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath. Here are the relevant parts from the implementation of the controller: @synthesize cellA; @synthesize cellB; @synthesize cellC; - (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { return 1; } - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { return 3; } - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { switch (indexPath.row) { case 0: return cellA; break; case 1: return cellB; break; case 2: return cellC; break; default: return nil; } } And here is the interface part: @interface AssociatePhoneViewController : UITableViewController { UITableViewCell *cellA; UITableViewCell *cellB; UITableViewCell *cellB; } @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableViewCell *cellA; @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableViewCell *cellB; @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableViewCell *cellC; @end This must be possibly one of the the most embarrassing questions on StackOverflow. It looks like the most basic example code. Is is possible that the cells are not instantiated with the nib file? I have them on the same level before the tabula view in the nib file. I tried to move them after the table view, but it did not make any difference. Are table cells in some way special? Do I need to set some flag or some property on them in the nib file? I was under the impression that all classes (views, windows, controllers …) listed in a nib file are simply instantiated (and linked using the provided connections). Could it possibly be some memory issue? The cell properties in my controller are not defined in any special way.

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• Why is this OpenGL ES code slow on iPhone?

  - by f3r3nc

  I've slightly modified the iPhone SDK's GLSprite example while learning OpenGL ES and it turns out to be quite slow. Even in the simulator (on the hw worst) so I must be doing something wrong since it's only 400 textured triangles. const GLfloat spriteVertices[] = { 0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 100.0f, 100.0f }; const GLshort spriteTexcoords[] = { 0,0, 1,0, 0,1, 1,1 }; - (void)setupView { glViewport(0, 0, backingWidth, backingHeight); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); glOrthof(0.0f, backingWidth, backingHeight,0.0f, -10.0f, 10.0f); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glClearColor(0.3f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); glVertexPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, spriteVertices); glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_SHORT, 0, spriteTexcoords); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); // sprite data is preloaded. 512x512 rgba8888 glGenTextures(1, &spriteTexture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, spriteTexture); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, width, height, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, spriteData); free(spriteData); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glBlendFunc(GL_ONE, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); glEnable(GL_BLEND); } - (void)drawView { .. glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); glTranslatef(tx-100, ty-100,10); for (int i=0; i<200; i++) { glTranslatef(1, 1, 0); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, 0, 4); } .. } drawView is called every time the screen is touched or the finger on the screen is moved and tx,ty are set to the x,y coordinates where that touch happened. I've also tried using GLBuffer, when translation was pre-generated and there was only one DrawArray but gave the same performance (~4 FPS). ===EDIT=== Meanwhile I've modified this so that much smaller quads are used (sized: 34x20) and much less overlapping is done. There are ~400 quads-800 triangles spread on the whole screen. Texture size is 512x512 atlas and RGBA_8888 while the texture coordinates are in float. The code is very ugly in terms of API efficiency: there are two MatrixMode change along with two loads and two translation then a drawarrays for a triangle strip (quad). Now this produces ~45 FPS.

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• When is ¦ not equal to ¦?

  - by Trey Jackson

  Background. I'm working with netlists, and in general, people specify different hierarchies by using /. However, it's not illegal to actually use a / as a part of an instance name. For example, X1/X2/X3/X4 might refer to instance X4 inside another instance named X1/X2/X3. Or it might refer an instance named X3/X4 inside an instance named X2 inside an instance named X1. Got it? There's really no "regular" character that cannot be used as a part of an instance name, so you resort to a non-printable one, or ... perhaps one outside of the standard 0..127 ASCII chars. I thought I'd try (decimal) 166, because for me it shows up as the pipe: ¦. So... I've got some C++ code which constructs the path name using ¦ as the hierarchical separator, so the path above looks like X1¦X2/X3¦X4. Now the GUI is written in Tcl/Tk, and to properly translate this into human readable terms I need to do something like the following: set path [getPathFromC++] ;# returns X1¦X2/X3¦X4 set humanreadable [join [split $path ¦] /] Basically, replace the ¦ with / (I could also accomplish this with [string map]). Now, the problem is, the ¦ in the string I get from C++ doesn't match the ¦ I can create in Tcl. i.e. This fails: set path [getPathFromC++] ;# returns X1¦X2/X3¦X4 string match $path [format X1%cX2/X3%cX4 166 166] Visually, the two strings look identical, but string match fails. I even tried using scan to see if I'd mixed up the bit values. But set path [getPathFromC++] ;# returns X1¦X2/X3¦X4 set path2 [format X1%cX2/X3%cX4 166 166] for {set i 0} {$i < [string length $path]} {incr i} { set p [string range $path $i $i] set p2 [string range $path2 $i $i] scan %c $p c scan %c $p2 c2 puts [list $p $c :::: $p2 $c2 equal? [string equal $c $c2]] } Produces output which looks like everything should match, except the [string equal] fails for the ¦ characters with a print line: ¦ 166 :::: ¦ 166 equal? 0 For what it's worth, the character in C++ is defined as: const char SEPARATOR = 166; Any ideas why a character outside the regular ASCII range would fail like this? When I changed the separator to (decimal) 28 (^\), things worked fine. I just don't want to get bit by a similar problem on a different platform. (I'm currently using Redhat Linux).

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• CQRS - Should a Command try to create a "complex" master-detail entity?

  - by Simon Crabtree

  I've been reading Greg Young and Udi Dahan's thoughts on Command Query Responsibilty Separation and a lot of what I read strikes a chord with me. My domain (we track vehicles which are doing deliveries) has the concept of a Route which contains one or more Stops. I need my customers to be able to set these up in our system by calling a webservice, and then be able to retrieve information about a Route and how the vehicle is progressing. In the past I would have "cut-down" DTO classes which closely resemble my domain classes, and the customer would create a RouteDto with an array of StopDto(s), and call our CreateRoute webmethod, passing in the RouteDto. When they query our system by calling the GetRouteDetails method, I would return exactly the same objects to them. One of the appealing aspects of CQRS is that the RouteDto might have all manner of properties that the customer wants to query, but have no business setting when they create a Route. So I create a separate CreateRouteRequest class which is passed in when calling the CreateRoute "command", and a Route DTO class which gets returned as a query result. class Route{ string Reference; List<Stop> Stops; } But I need my customer to provide me with Route AND Stop details when they create a route. As I see it I could either... Give my CreateRouteRequest class a Stops(s) property which is an array of "something" representing the data they need to provide about each stop - but what do I call this class? It's not a Stop as that's what I'm calling the list of DTO inside my Route DTO, but I don't like "CreateStopRequest". I also wonder if I'm stuck in a CRUD mindset here thinking in terms of master-detail information and asking the customer to think like that too. class CreateRouteRequest{ string Reference; ... List<CreateStopRequest> Stops; } or They call CreateRoute, and then make a number of calls to an AddStopToRoute method. This feels a bit more "behavioural" but I'm going to lose the ability to treat creating a route including its stops as a single atomic command. If they create a Route and then try to add a Stop which fails due to some validation problem they're going to have a partially correct Route. The fact that I can't come up with a good name for the list of "StopCreationData" objects I'd be working with in option 1, makes me wonder if there's something I'm missing.

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• The best way to separate admin functionality from a public site?

  - by AndrewO

  I'm working on a site that's grown both in terms of user-base and functionality to the point where it's becoming evident that some of the admin tasks should be separate from the public website. I was wondering what the best way to do this would be. For example, the site has a large social component to it, and a public sales interface. But at the same time, there's back office tasks, bulk upload processing, dashboards (with long running queries), and customer relations tools in the admin section that I would like to not be effected by spikes in public traffic (or effect the public-facing response time). The site is running on a fairly standard Rails/MySQL/Linux stack, but I think this is more of an architecture problem than an implementation one: mainly, how does one keep the data and business logic in sync between these different applications? Some strategies that I'm evaluating: 1) Create a slave database of the public facing database on another machine. Extract out all of the model and library code so that it can be shared between the applications. Create new controllers and views for the admin interfaces. I have limited experience with replication and am not even sure that it's supposed to be used this way (most of the time I've seen it, it's been for scaling out the read capabilities of the same application, rather than having multiple different ones). I'm also worried about the potential for latency issues if the slave is not on the same network. 2) Create new more task/department-specific applications and use a message oriented middleware to integrate them. I read Enterprise Integration Patterns awhile back and they seemed to advocate this for distributed systems. (Alternatively, in some cases the basic Rails-style RESTful API functionality might suffice.) But, I have nightmares about data synchronization issues and the massive re-architecting that this would entail. 3) Some mixture of the two. For example, the only public information necessary for some of the back office tasks is a read-only completion time or status. Would it make sense to have that on a completely separate system and send the data to public? Meanwhile, the user/group admin functionality would be run on a separate system sharing the database? The downside is, this seems to keep many of the concerns I have with the first two, especially the re-architecting. I'm sure the answers are going to be highly dependent on a site's specific needs, but I'd love to hear success (or failure) stories.

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• Is the recent trend toward widescreen (16:9) computer monitors a plus or minus for programmers?

  - by DanM

  It's almost gotten to the point where you can't buy a conventional (4:3) monitor anymore. Pretty much everything is widescreen. This is fine for watching movies or TV, but is it good or bad for programming? My initial thoughts on the issue are that widescreens are a net negative for programmers. Here are some of the disadvantages I see: Poor space utiliziation One disadvantage of widescreens you can't argue with is that they offer poor space utilization for the amount of total pixels you get. For example, my Thinkpad, which I bought just before the widescreen craze, has a 15" monitor with a native resolution of 1600 x 1200. The newer 15.4" Thinkpads run at most 1680 x 1050. So (if you do the math) you get fewer pixels in a wider (but not shorter) package. With desktop monitors, you pay a price in terms of desk space used. Two 1680 x 1050 monitors will simply take up more of your desk than two 1600 x 1200 monitors (assuming equal dot pitch). More scrolling If you compare a 1680 x 1050 monitor to a 1600 x 1200 monitor, you get 80 extra pixels of width but 150 fewer pixels of height. The height reduction means you lose approximately 11 lines of code. That's less you can see on the screen at one time and more scrolling you have to do. This harms productivity, maybe not dramatically, but insidiously. Less room for wide panels Widescreens also mean you lose space for wide but short panels common in programming environments. If you use Visual Studio, for example, your code window will be that much shorter when viewing the Find Results, Task List, or Error List (all of which I use frequently). This isn't to say the 80 pixels of extra width you get with widescreen would never be useful, but I tend to keep my lines of code short, so seeing more lines would be more valuable to me than seeing fewer, longer lines. What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Are you now using one or more widescreen monitors for development? What resolution are you running on each? Do you ever miss the height of the traditional 4:3 monitor? Would you complain if your monitors were one inch narrower but two inches taller?

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• Source code versioning with comments (organizational practice) - leave or remove?

  - by ADTC

  Before you start admonishing me with "DON'T DO IT," "BAD PRACTICE!" and "Learn to use proper source code control", please hear me out first. I am fully aware that the practice of commenting out old code and leaving it there forever is very bad and I hate such practice myself. But here's the situation I'm in. A few months ago I joined a company as software developer. I had worked in the company for few months as an intern, about a year before joining recently. Our company uses source code version control (CVS) but not properly. Here's what happened both in my internship and my current permanent position. Each time I was assigned to work on a project (legacy, about 8-10 years old). Instead of creating a CVS account and letting me check out code and check in changes, a senior colleague exported the code from CVS, zipped it up and passed it to me. While this colleague checks in all changes in bulk every few weeks, our usual practice is to do fine-grained versioning in the actual source code itself (each file increments in versions independent from the rest). Whenever a change is made to a file, old code is commented out, new code entered below it, and this whole section is marked with a version number. Finally a note about the changes is placed at the top of the file in a section called Modification History. Finally the changed files are placed in a shared folder, ready and waiting for the bulk check-in. /* * Copyright notice blah blah * Some details about file (project name, file name etc) * Modification History: * Date Version Modified By Description * 2012-10-15 1.0 Joey Initial creation * 2012-10-22 1.1 Chandler Replaced old code with new code */ code .... //v1.1 start //old code new code //v1.1 end code .... Now the problem is this. In the project I'm working on, I needed to copy some new source code files from another project (new in the sense that they didn't exist in destination project before). These files have a lot of historical commented out code and comment-based versioning including usually long or very long Modification History section. Since the files are new to this project I decided to clean them up and remove unnecessary code including historical code, and start fresh at version 1.0. (I still have to continue the practice of comment-based versioning despite hating it. And don't ask why not start at version 0.1...) I have done similar something during my internship and no one said anything. My supervisor has seen the work a few times and didn't say I shouldn't do such clean-up (if at all it was noticed). But a same-level colleague saw this and said it's not recommended as it may cause downtime in the future and increase maintenance costs. An example is when changes are made in another project on the original files and these changes need to be propagated to this project. With code files drastically different, it could cause confusion to an employee doing the propagation. It makes sense to me, and is a valid point. I couldn't find any reason to do my clean-up other than the inconvenience of a ridiculously messy code. So, long story short: Given the practice in our company, should I not do such clean-up when copying new files from project to project? Is it better to make changes on the (copy of) original code with full history in comments? Or what justification can I give for doing the clean-up? PS to mods: Hope you allow this question some time even if for any reason you determine it to be unfit in SO. I apologize in advance if anything is inappropriate including tags.

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