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  • The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #2 - Balancing the forces

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/02/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---2---balancing-the-forces.aspxCategorizing requirements is the prerequisite for ecconomic architectural decisions. Not all requirements are created equal. However, to truely understand and describe the requirement forces pulling on software development, I think further examination of the requirements aspects is varranted. Aspects of Functionality There are two sides to Functionality requirements. It´s about what a software should do. I call that the Operations it implements. Operations are defined by expressions and control structures or calls to frameworks of some sort, i.e. (business) logic statements. Operations calculate, transform, aggregate, validate, send, receive, load, store etc. Operations are about behavior; they take input and produce output by considering state. I´m not using the term “function” here, because functions - or methods or sub-programs - are not necessary to implement Operations. Functions belong to a different sub-aspect of requirements (see below). Operations alone are not enough, though, to make a customer happy with regard to his/her Functionality requirements. Only correctly implemented Operations provide full value. This should make clear, why testing is so important. And not just manual tests during development of some operational feature, but automated tests. Because only automated tests scale when over time the number of operations increases. Without automated tests there is no guarantee formerly correct operations are still correct after more got added. To retest all previous operations manually is infeasible. So whoever relies just on manual tests is not really balancing the two forces Operations and Correctness. With manual tests more weight is put on the side of the scale of Operations. That might be ok for a short period of time - but in the long run it will bite you. You need to plan for Correctness in the long run from the first day of your project on. Aspects of Quality As important as Functionality is, it´s not the driver for software development. No software has ever been written to just implement some operation in code. We don´t need computers just to do something. All computers can do with software we can do without them. Well, at least given enough time and resources. We could calculate the most complex formulas without computers. We could do auctions with millions of people without computers. The only reason we want computers to help us with this and a million other Operations is… We don´t want to wait for the results very long. Or we want less errors. Or we want easier accessability to complicated solutions. So the main reason for customers to buy/order software is some Quality. They want some Functionality with a higher Quality (e.g. performance, scalability, usability, security…) than without the software. But Qualities come in at least two flavors: Most important are Primary Qualities. That´s the Qualities software truely is written for. Take an online auction website for example. Its Primary Qualities are performance, scalability, and usability, I´d say. Auctions should come within reach of millions of people; setting up an auction should be very easy; finding a suitable auction and bidding on it should be as fast as possible. Only if those Qualities have been implemented does security become relevant. A secure auction website is important - but not as important as a fast auction website. Nobody would want to use the most secure auction website if it was unbearably slow. But there would be people willing to use the fastest auction website even it was lacking security. That´s why security - with regard to online auction software - is not a Primary Quality, but just a Secondary Quality. It´s a supporting quality, so to speak. It does not deliver value by itself. With a password manager software this might be different. There security might be a Primary Quality. Please get me right: I don´t want to denigrate any Quality. There´s a long list of non-functional requirements at Wikipedia. They are all created equal - but that does not mean they are equally important for all software projects. When confronted with Quality requirements check with the customer which are primary and which are secondary. That will help to make good economical decisions when in a crunch. Resources are always limited - but requirements are a bottomless ocean. Aspects of Security of Investment Functionality and Quality are traditionally the requirement aspects cared for most - by customers and developers alike. Even today, when pressure rises in a project, tunnel vision will focus on them. Any measures to create and hold up Security of Investment (SoI) will be out of the window pretty quickly. Resistance to customers and/or management is futile. As long as SoI is not placed on equal footing with Functionality and Quality it´s bound to suffer under pressure. To look closer at what SoI means will help to become more conscious about it and make customers and management aware of the risks of neglecting it. SoI to me has two facets: Production Efficiency (PE) is about speed of delivering value. Customers like short response times. Short response times mean less money spent. So whatever makes software development faster supports this requirement. This must not lead to duct tape programming and banging out features by the dozen, though. Because customers don´t just want Operations and Quality, but also Correctness. So if Correctness gets compromised by focussing too much on Production Efficiency it will fire back. Customers want PE not just today, but over the whole course of a software´s lifecycle. That means, it´s not just about coding speed, but equally about code quality. If code quality leads to rework the PE is on an unsatisfactory level. Also if code production leads to waste it´s unsatisfactory. Because the effort which went into waste could have been used to produce value. Rework and waste cost money. Rework and waste abound, however, as long as PE is not addressed explicitly with management and customers. Thanks to the Agile and Lean movements that´s increasingly the case. Nevertheless more could and should be done in many teams. Each and every developer should keep in mind that Production Efficiency is as important to the customer as Functionality and Quality - whether he/she states it or not. Making software development more efficient is important - but still sooner or later even agile projects are going to hit a glas ceiling. At least as long as they neglect the second SoI facet: Evolvability. Delivering correct high quality functionality in short cycles today is good. But not just any software structure will allow this to happen for an indefinite amount of time.[1] The less explicitly software was designed the sooner it´s going to get stuck. Big ball of mud, monolith, brownfield, legacy code, technical debt… there are many names for software structures that have lost the ability to evolve, to be easily changed to accomodate new requirements. An evolvable code base is the opposite of a brownfield. It´s code which can be easily understood (by developers with sufficient domain expertise) and then easily changed to accomodate new requirements. Ideally the costs of adding feature X to an evolvable code base is independent of when it is requested - or at least the costs should only increase linearly, not exponentially.[2] Clean Code, Agile Architecture, and even traditional Software Engineering are concerned with Evolvability. However, it seems no systematic way of achieving it has been layed out yet. TDD + SOLID help - but still… When I look at the design ability reality in teams I see much room for improvement. As stated previously, SoI - or to be more precise: Evolvability - can hardly be measured. Plus the customer rarely states an explicit expectation with regard to it. That´s why I think, special care must be taken to not neglect it. Postponing it to some large refactorings should not be an option. Rather Evolvability needs to be a core concern for every single developer day. This should not mean Evolvability is more important than any of the other requirement aspects. But neither is it less important. That´s why more effort needs to be invested into it, to bring it on par with the other aspects, which usually are much more in focus. In closing As you see, requirements are of quite different kinds. To not take that into account will make it harder to understand the customer, and to make economic decisions. Those sub-aspects of requirements are forces pulling in different directions. To improve performance might have an impact on Evolvability. To increase Production Efficiency might have an impact on security etc. No requirement aspect should go unchecked when deciding how to allocate resources. Balancing should be explicit. And it should be possible to trace back each decision to a requirement. Why is there a null-check on parameters at the start of the method? Why are there 5000 LOC in this method? Why are there interfaces on those classes? Why is this functionality running on the threadpool? Why is this function defined on that class? Why is this class depending on three other classes? These and a thousand more questions are not to mean anything should be different in a code base. But it´s important to know the reason behind all of these decisions. Because not knowing the reason possibly means waste and having decided suboptimally. And how do we ensure to balance all requirement aspects? That needs practices and transparency. Practices means doing things a certain way and not another, even though that might be possible. We´re dealing with dangerous tools here. Like a knife is a dangerous tool. Harm can be done if we use our tools in just any way at the whim of the moment. Over the centuries rules and practices have been established how to use knifes. You don´t put them in peoples´ legs just because you´re feeling like it. You hand over a knife with the handle towards the receiver. You might not even be allowed to cut round food like potatos or eggs with it. The same should be the case for dangerous tools like object-orientation, remote communication, threads etc. We need practices to use them in a way so requirements are balanced almost automatically. In addition, to be able to work on software as a team we need transparency. We need means to share our thoughts, to work jointly on mental models. So far our tools are focused on working with code. Testing frameworks, build servers, DI containers, intellisense, refactoring support… That´s all nice and well. I don´t want to miss any of that. But I think it´s not enough. We´re missing mental tools, tools for making thinking and talking about software (independently of code) easier. You might think, enough of such tools already exist like all those UML diagram types or Flow Charts. But then, isn´t it strange, hardly any team is using them to design software? Or is that just due to a lack of education? I don´t think so. It´s a matter value/weight ratio: the current mental tools are too heavy weight compared to the value they deliver. So my conclusion is, we need lightweight tools to really be able to balance requirements. Software development is complex. We need guidance not to forget important aspects. That´s like with flying an airplane. Pilots don´t just jump in and take off for their destination. Yes, there are times when they are “flying by the seats of their pants”, when they are just experts doing thing intuitively. But most of the time they are going through honed practices called checklist. See “The Checklist Manifesto” for very enlightening details on this. Maybe then I should say it like this: We need more checklists for the complex businss of software development.[3] But that´s what software development mostly is about: changing software over an unknown period of time. It needs to be corrected in order to finally provide promised operations. It needs to be enhanced to provide ever more operations and qualities. All this without knowing when it´s going to stop. Probably never - until “maintainability” hits a wall when the technical debt is too large, the brownfield too deep. Software development is not a sprint, is not a marathon, not even an ultra marathon. Because to all this there is a foreseeable end. Software development is like continuously and foreever running… ? And sometimes I dare to think that costs could even decrease over time. Think of it: With each feature a software becomes richer in functionality. So with each additional feature the chance of there being already functionality helping its implementation increases. That should lead to less costs of feature X if it´s requested later than sooner. X requested later could stand on the shoulders of previous features. Alas, reality seems to be far from this despite 20+ years of admonishing developers to think in terms of reusability.[1] ? Please don´t get me wrong: I don´t want to bog down the “art” of software development with heavyweight practices and heaps of rules to follow. The framework we need should be lightweight. It should not stand in the way of delivering value to the customer. It´s purpose is even to make that easier by helping us to focus and decreasing waste and rework. ?

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  • Convert from Procedural to Object Oriented Code

    - by Anthony
    I have been reading Working Effectively with Legacy Code and Clean Code with the goal of learning strategies on how to begin cleaning up the existing code-base of a large ASP.NET webforms application. This system has been around since 2005 and since then has undergone a number of enhancements. Originally the code was structured as follows (and is still largely structured this way): ASP.NET (aspx/ascx) Code-behind (c#) Business Logic Layer (c#) Data Access Layer (c#) Database (Oracle) The main issue is that the code is procedural masquerading as object-oriented. It virtually violates all of the guidelines described in both books. This is an example of a typical class in the Business Logic Layer: public class AddressBO { public TransferObject GetAddress(string addressID) { if (StringUtils.IsNull(addressID)) { throw new ValidationException("Address ID must be entered"); } AddressDAO addressDAO = new AddressDAO(); return addressDAO.GetAddress(addressID); } public TransferObject Insert(TransferObject addressDetails) { if (StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString("EVENT_ID")) || StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString("LOCALITY")) || StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString("ADDRESS_TARGET")) || StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString("ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE")) || StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString("CREATED_BY"))) { throw new ValidationException( "You must enter an Event ID, Locality, Address Target, Address Type Code and Created By."); } string addressID = Sequence.GetNextValue("ADDRESS_ID_SEQ"); addressDetails.SetValue("ADDRESS_ID", addressID); string syncID = Sequence.GetNextValue("SYNC_ID_SEQ"); addressDetails.SetValue("SYNC_ADDRESS_ID", syncID); TransferObject syncDetails = new TransferObject(); Transaction transaction = new Transaction(); try { AddressDAO addressDAO = new AddressDAO(); addressDAO.Insert(addressDetails, transaction); // insert the record for the target TransferObject addressTargetDetails = new TransferObject(); switch (addressDetails.GetString("ADDRESS_TARGET")) { case "PARTY_ADDRESSES": { addressTargetDetails.SetValue("ADDRESS_ID", addressID); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE", addressDetails.GetString("ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("PARTY_ID", addressDetails.GetString("PARTY_ID")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("EVENT_ID", addressDetails.GetString("EVENT_ID")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("CREATED_BY", addressDetails.GetString("CREATED_BY")); addressDAO.InsertPartyAddress(addressTargetDetails, transaction); break; } case "PARTY_CONTACT_ADDRESSES": { addressTargetDetails.SetValue("ADDRESS_ID", addressID); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE", addressDetails.GetString("ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("PUBLIC_RELEASE_FLAG", addressDetails.GetString("PUBLIC_RELEASE_FLAG")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("CONTACT_ID", addressDetails.GetString("CONTACT_ID")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("EVENT_ID", addressDetails.GetString("EVENT_ID")); addressTargetDetails.SetValue("CREATED_BY", addressDetails.GetString("CREATED_BY")); addressDAO.InsertContactAddress(addressTargetDetails, transaction); break; } << many more cases here >> default: { break; } } // synchronise SynchronisationBO synchronisationBO = new SynchronisationBO(); syncDetails = synchronisationBO.Synchronise("I", transaction, "ADDRESSES", addressDetails.GetString("ADDRESS_TARGET"), addressDetails, addressTargetDetails); // commit transaction.Commit(); } catch (Exception) { transaction.Rollback(); throw; } return new TransferObject("ADDRESS_ID", addressID, "SYNC_DETAILS", syncDetails); } << many more methods are here >> } It has a lot of duplication, the class has a number of responsibilities, etc, etc - it is just generally 'un-clean' code. All of the code throughout the system is dependent on concrete implementations. This is an example of a typical class in the Data Access Layer: public class AddressDAO : GenericDAO { public static readonly string BASE_SQL_ADDRESSES = "SELECT " + " a.address_id, " + " a.event_id, " + " a.flat_unit_type_code, " + " fut.description as flat_unit_description, " + " a.flat_unit_num, " + " a.floor_level_code, " + " fl.description as floor_level_description, " + " a.floor_level_num, " + " a.building_name, " + " a.lot_number, " + " a.street_number, " + " a.street_name, " + " a.street_type_code, " + " st.description as street_type_description, " + " a.street_suffix_code, " + " ss.description as street_suffix_description, " + " a.postal_delivery_type_code, " + " pdt.description as postal_delivery_description, " + " a.postal_delivery_num, " + " a.locality, " + " a.state_code, " + " s.description as state_description, " + " a.postcode, " + " a.country, " + " a.lock_num, " + " a.created_by, " + " TO_CHAR(a.created_datetime, '" + SQL_DATETIME_FORMAT + "') as created_datetime, " + " a.last_updated_by, " + " TO_CHAR(a.last_updated_datetime, '" + SQL_DATETIME_FORMAT + "') as last_updated_datetime, " + " a.sync_address_id, " + " a.lat," + " a.lon, " + " a.validation_confidence, " + " a.validation_quality, " + " a.validation_status " + "FROM ADDRESSES a, FLAT_UNIT_TYPES fut, FLOOR_LEVELS fl, STREET_TYPES st, " + " STREET_SUFFIXES ss, POSTAL_DELIVERY_TYPES pdt, STATES s " + "WHERE a.flat_unit_type_code = fut.flat_unit_type_code(+) " + "AND a.floor_level_code = fl.floor_level_code(+) " + "AND a.street_type_code = st.street_type_code(+) " + "AND a.street_suffix_code = ss.street_suffix_code(+) " + "AND a.postal_delivery_type_code = pdt.postal_delivery_type_code(+) " + "AND a.state_code = s.state_code(+) "; public TransferObject GetAddress(string addressID) { //Build the SELECT Statement StringBuilder selectStatement = new StringBuilder(BASE_SQL_ADDRESSES); //Add WHERE condition selectStatement.Append(" AND a.address_id = :addressID"); ArrayList parameters = new ArrayList{DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("addressID", OracleDbType.Decimal, addressID)}; // Execute the SELECT statement Query query = new Query(); DataSet results = query.Execute(selectStatement.ToString(), parameters); // Check if 0 or more than one rows returned if (results.Tables[0].Rows.Count == 0) { throw new NoDataFoundException(); } if (results.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 1) { throw new TooManyRowsException(); } // Return a TransferObject containing the values return new TransferObject(results); } public void Insert(TransferObject insertValues, Transaction transaction) { // Store Values string addressID = insertValues.GetString("ADDRESS_ID"); string syncAddressID = insertValues.GetString("SYNC_ADDRESS_ID"); string eventID = insertValues.GetString("EVENT_ID"); string createdBy = insertValues.GetString("CREATED_BY"); // postal delivery string postalDeliveryTypeCode = insertValues.GetString("POSTAL_DELIVERY_TYPE_CODE"); string postalDeliveryNum = insertValues.GetString("POSTAL_DELIVERY_NUM"); // unit/building string flatUnitTypeCode = insertValues.GetString("FLAT_UNIT_TYPE_CODE"); string flatUnitNum = insertValues.GetString("FLAT_UNIT_NUM"); string floorLevelCode = insertValues.GetString("FLOOR_LEVEL_CODE"); string floorLevelNum = insertValues.GetString("FLOOR_LEVEL_NUM"); string buildingName = insertValues.GetString("BUILDING_NAME"); // street string lotNumber = insertValues.GetString("LOT_NUMBER"); string streetNumber = insertValues.GetString("STREET_NUMBER"); string streetName = insertValues.GetString("STREET_NAME"); string streetTypeCode = insertValues.GetString("STREET_TYPE_CODE"); string streetSuffixCode = insertValues.GetString("STREET_SUFFIX_CODE"); // locality/state/postcode/country string locality = insertValues.GetString("LOCALITY"); string stateCode = insertValues.GetString("STATE_CODE"); string postcode = insertValues.GetString("POSTCODE"); string country = insertValues.GetString("COUNTRY"); // esms address string esmsAddress = insertValues.GetString("ESMS_ADDRESS"); //address/GPS string lat = insertValues.GetString("LAT"); string lon = insertValues.GetString("LON"); string zoom = insertValues.GetString("ZOOM"); //string validateDate = insertValues.GetString("VALIDATED_DATE"); string validatedBy = insertValues.GetString("VALIDATED_BY"); string confidence = insertValues.GetString("VALIDATION_CONFIDENCE"); string status = insertValues.GetString("VALIDATION_STATUS"); string quality = insertValues.GetString("VALIDATION_QUALITY"); // the insert statement StringBuilder insertStatement = new StringBuilder("INSERT INTO ADDRESSES ("); StringBuilder valuesStatement = new StringBuilder("VALUES ("); ArrayList parameters = new ArrayList(); // build the insert statement insertStatement.Append("ADDRESS_ID, EVENT_ID, CREATED_BY, CREATED_DATETIME, LOCK_NUM "); valuesStatement.Append(":addressID, :eventID, :createdBy, SYSDATE, 1 "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("addressID", OracleDbType.Decimal, addressID)); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("eventID", OracleDbType.Decimal, eventID)); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("createdBy", OracleDbType.Varchar2, createdBy)); // build the insert statement if (!StringUtils.IsNull(syncAddressID)) { insertStatement.Append(", SYNC_ADDRESS_ID"); valuesStatement.Append(", :syncAddressID"); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("syncAddressID", OracleDbType.Decimal, syncAddressID)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(postalDeliveryTypeCode)) { insertStatement.Append(", POSTAL_DELIVERY_TYPE_CODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :postalDeliveryTypeCode "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("postalDeliveryTypeCode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, postalDeliveryTypeCode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(postalDeliveryNum)) { insertStatement.Append(", POSTAL_DELIVERY_NUM"); valuesStatement.Append(", :postalDeliveryNum "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("postalDeliveryNum", OracleDbType.Varchar2, postalDeliveryNum)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(flatUnitTypeCode)) { insertStatement.Append(", FLAT_UNIT_TYPE_CODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :flatUnitTypeCode "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("flatUnitTypeCode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, flatUnitTypeCode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(lat)) { insertStatement.Append(", LAT"); valuesStatement.Append(", :lat "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("lat", OracleDbType.Decimal, lat)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(lon)) { insertStatement.Append(", LON"); valuesStatement.Append(", :lon "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("lon", OracleDbType.Decimal, lon)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(zoom)) { insertStatement.Append(", ZOOM"); valuesStatement.Append(", :zoom "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("zoom", OracleDbType.Decimal, zoom)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(flatUnitNum)) { insertStatement.Append(", FLAT_UNIT_NUM"); valuesStatement.Append(", :flatUnitNum "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("flatUnitNum", OracleDbType.Varchar2, flatUnitNum)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(floorLevelCode)) { insertStatement.Append(", FLOOR_LEVEL_CODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :floorLevelCode "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("floorLevelCode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, floorLevelCode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(floorLevelNum)) { insertStatement.Append(", FLOOR_LEVEL_NUM"); valuesStatement.Append(", :floorLevelNum "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("floorLevelNum", OracleDbType.Varchar2, floorLevelNum)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(buildingName)) { insertStatement.Append(", BUILDING_NAME"); valuesStatement.Append(", :buildingName "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("buildingName", OracleDbType.Varchar2, buildingName)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(lotNumber)) { insertStatement.Append(", LOT_NUMBER"); valuesStatement.Append(", :lotNumber "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("lotNumber", OracleDbType.Varchar2, lotNumber)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetNumber)) { insertStatement.Append(", STREET_NUMBER"); valuesStatement.Append(", :streetNumber "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("streetNumber", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetNumber)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetName)) { insertStatement.Append(", STREET_NAME"); valuesStatement.Append(", :streetName "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("streetName", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetName)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetTypeCode)) { insertStatement.Append(", STREET_TYPE_CODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :streetTypeCode "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("streetTypeCode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetTypeCode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetSuffixCode)) { insertStatement.Append(", STREET_SUFFIX_CODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :streetSuffixCode "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("streetSuffixCode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetSuffixCode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(locality)) { insertStatement.Append(", LOCALITY"); valuesStatement.Append(", :locality"); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("locality", OracleDbType.Varchar2, locality)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(stateCode)) { insertStatement.Append(", STATE_CODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :stateCode"); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("stateCode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, stateCode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(postcode)) { insertStatement.Append(", POSTCODE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :postcode "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("postcode", OracleDbType.Varchar2, postcode)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(country)) { insertStatement.Append(", COUNTRY"); valuesStatement.Append(", :country "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("country", OracleDbType.Varchar2, country)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(esmsAddress)) { insertStatement.Append(", ESMS_ADDRESS"); valuesStatement.Append(", :esmsAddress "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("esmsAddress", OracleDbType.Varchar2, esmsAddress)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(validatedBy)) { insertStatement.Append(", VALIDATED_DATE"); valuesStatement.Append(", SYSDATE "); insertStatement.Append(", VALIDATED_BY"); valuesStatement.Append(", :validatedBy "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("validatedBy", OracleDbType.Varchar2, validatedBy)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(confidence)) { insertStatement.Append(", VALIDATION_CONFIDENCE"); valuesStatement.Append(", :confidence "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("confidence", OracleDbType.Decimal, confidence)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(status)) { insertStatement.Append(", VALIDATION_STATUS"); valuesStatement.Append(", :status "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("status", OracleDbType.Varchar2, status)); } if (!StringUtils.IsNull(quality)) { insertStatement.Append(", VALIDATION_QUALITY"); valuesStatement.Append(", :quality "); parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter("quality", OracleDbType.Decimal, quality)); } // finish off the statement insertStatement.Append(") "); valuesStatement.Append(")"); // build the insert statement string sql = insertStatement + valuesStatement.ToString(); // Execute the INSERT Statement Dml dmlDAO = new Dml(); int rowsAffected = dmlDAO.Execute(sql, transaction, parameters); if (rowsAffected == 0) { throw new NoRowsAffectedException(); } } << many more methods go here >> } This system was developed by me and a small team back in 2005 after a 1 week .NET course. Before than my experience was in client-server applications. Over the past 5 years I've come to recognise the benefits of automated unit testing, automated integration testing and automated acceptance testing (using Selenium or equivalent) but the current code-base seems impossible to introduce these concepts. We are now starting to work on a major enhancement project with tight time-frames. The team consists of 5 .NET developers - 2 developers with a few years of .NET experience and 3 others with little or no .NET experience. None of the team (including myself) has experience in using .NET unit testing or mocking frameworks. What strategy would you use to make this code cleaner, more object-oriented, testable and maintainable?

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  • Down Tools Week Cometh: Kissing Goodbye to CVs/Resumes and Cover Letters

    - by Bart Read
    I haven't blogged about what I'm doing in my (not so new) temporary role as Red Gate's technical recruiter, mostly because it's been routine, business as usual stuff, and because I've been trying to understand the role by doing it. I think now though the time has come to get a little more radical, so I'm going to tell you why I want to largely eliminate CVs/resumes and cover letters from the application process for some of our technical roles, and why I think that might be a good thing for candidates (and for us). I have a terrible confession to make, or at least it's a terrible confession for a recruiter: I don't really like CV sifting, or reading cover letters, and, unless I've misread the mood around here, neither does anybody else. It's dull, it's time-consuming, and it's somewhat soul destroying because, when all is said and done, you're being paid to be incredibly judgemental about people based on relatively little information. I feel like I've dirtied myself by saying that - I mean, after all, it's a core part of my job - but it sucks, it really does. (And, of course, the truth is I'm still a software engineer at heart, and I'm always looking for ways to do things better.) On the flip side, I've never met anyone who likes writing their CV. It takes hours and hours of faffing around and massaging it into shape, and the whole process is beset by a gnawing anxiety, frustration, and insecurity. All you really want is a chance to demonstrate your skills - not just talk about them - and how do you do that in a CV or cover letter? Often the best candidates will include samples of their work (a portfolio, screenshots, links to websites, product downloads, etc.), but sometimes this isn't possible, or may not be appropriate, or you just don't think you're allowed because of what your school/university careers service has told you (more commonly an issue with grads, obviously). And what are we actually trying to find out about people with all of this? I think the common criteria are actually pretty basic: Smart Gets things done (thanks for these two Joel) Not an a55hole* (sorry, have to get around Simple Talk's swear filter - and thanks to Professor Robert I. Sutton for this one) *Of course, everyone has off days, and I don't honestly think we're too worried about somebody being a bit grumpy every now and again. We can do a bit better than this in the context of the roles I'm talking about: we can be more specific about what "gets things done" means, at least in part. For software engineers and interns, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Excellent coder For test engineers, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Good at finding problems in software Competent coder Team player, etc., to me, are covered by "not an a55hole". I don't expect people to be the life and soul of the party, or a wild extrovert - that's not what team player means, and it's not what "not an a55hole" means. Some of our best technical staff are quiet, introverted types, but they're still pleasant to work with. My problem is that I don't think the initial sift really helps us find out whether people are smart and get things done with any great efficacy. It's better than nothing, for sure, but it's not as good as it could be. It's also contentious, and potentially unfair/inequitable - if you want to get an idea of what I mean by this, check out the background information section at the bottom. Before I go any further, let's look at the Red Gate recruitment process for technical staff* as it stands now: (LOTS of) People apply for jobs. All these applications go through a brutal process of manual sifting, which eliminates between 75 and 90% of them, depending upon the role, and the time of year**. Depending upon the role, those who pass the sift will be sent an assessment or telescreened. For the purposes of this blog post I'm only interested in those that are sent some sort of programming assessment, or bug hunt. This means software engineers, test engineers, and software interns, which are the roles for which I receive the most applications. The telescreen tends to be reserved for project or product managers. Those that pass the assessment are invited in for first interview. This interview is mostly about assessing their technical skills***, although we're obviously on the look out for cultural fit red flags as well. If the first interview goes well we'll invite candidates back for a second interview. This is where team/cultural fit is really scoped out. We also use this interview to dive more deeply into certain areas of their skillset, and explore any concerns that may have come out of the first interview (these obviously won't have been serious or obvious enough to cause a rejection at that point, but are things we do need to look into before we'd consider making an offer). We might subsequently invite them in for lunch before we make them an offer. This tends to happen when we're recruiting somebody for a specific team and we'd like them to meet all the people they'll be working with directly. It's not an interview per se, but can prove pivotal if they don't gel with the team. Anyone who's made it this far will receive an offer from us. *We have a slightly quirky definition of "technical staff" as it relates to the technical recruiter role here. It includes software engineers, test engineers, software interns, user experience specialists, technical authors, project managers, product managers, and development managers, but does not include product support or information systems roles. **For example, the quality of graduate applicants overall noticeably drops as the academic year wears on, which is not to say that by now there aren't still stars in there, just that they're fewer and further between. ***Some organisations prefer to assess for team fit first, but I think assessing technical skills is a more effective initial filter - if they're the nicest person in the world, but can't cut a line of code they're not going to work out. Now, as I suggested in the title, Red Gate's Down Tools Week is upon us once again - next week in fact - and I had proposed as a project that we refactor and automate the first stage of marking our programming assessments. Marking assessments, and in fact organising the marking of them, is a somewhat time-consuming process, and we receive many assessment solutions that just don't make the cut, for whatever reason. Whilst I don't think it's possible to fully automate marking, I do think it ought to be possible to run a suite of automated tests over each candidate's solution to see whether or not it behaves correctly and, if it does, move on to a manual stage where we examine the code for structure, decomposition, style, readability, maintainability, etc. Obviously it's possible to use tools to generate potentially helpful metrics for some of these indices as well. This would obviously reduce the marking workload, and would provide candidates with quicker feedback about whether they've been successful - though I do wonder if waiting a tactful interval before sending a (nicely written) rejection might be wise. I duly scrawled out a picture of my ideal process, which looked like this: The problem is, as soon as I'd roughed it out, I realised that fundamentally it wasn't an ideal process at all, which explained the gnawing feeling of cognitive dissonance I'd been wrestling with all week, whilst I'd been trying to find time to do this. Here's what I mean. Automated assessment marking, and the associated infrastructure around that, makes it much easier for us to deal with large numbers of assessments. This means we can be much more permissive about who we send assessments out to or, in other words, we can give more candidates the opportunity to really demonstrate their skills to us. And this leads to a question: why not give everyone the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, to show that they're smart and can get things done? (Two or three of us even discussed this in the down tools week hustings earlier this week.) And isn't this a lot simpler than the alternative we'd been considering? (FYI, this was automated CV/cover letter sifting by some form of textual analysis to ideally eliminate the worst 50% or so of applications based on an analysis of the 20,000 or so historical applications we've received since 2007 - definitely not the basic keyword analysis beloved of recruitment agencies, since this would eliminate hardly anyone who was awful, but definitely would eliminate stellar Oxbridge candidates - #fail - or some nightmarishly complex Google-like system where we profile all our currently employees, only to realise that we're never going to get representative results because we don't have a statistically significant sample size in any given role - also #fail.) No, I think the new way is better. We let people self-select. We make them the masters (or mistresses) of their own destiny. We give applicants the power - we put their fate in their hands - by giving them the chance to demonstrate their skills, which is what they really want anyway, instead of requiring that they spend hours and hours creating a CV and cover letter that I'm going to evaluate for suitability, and make a value judgement about, in approximately 1 minute (give or take). It doesn't matter what university you attended, it doesn't matter if you had a bad year when you took your A-levels - here's your chance to shine, so take it and run with it. (As a side benefit, we cut the number of applications we have to sift by something like two thirds.) WIN! OK, yeah, sounds good, but will it actually work? That's an excellent question. My gut feeling is yes, and I'll justify why below (and hopefully have gone some way towards doing that above as well), but what I'm proposing here is really that we run an experiment for a period of time - probably a couple of months or so - and measure the outcomes we see: How many people apply? (Wouldn't be surprised or alarmed to see this cut by a factor of ten.) How many of them submit a good assessment? (More/less than at present?) How much overhead is there for us in dealing with these assessments compared to now? What are the success and failure rates at each interview stage compared to now? How many people are we hiring at the end of it compared to now? I think it'll work because I hypothesize that, amongst other things: It self-selects for people who really want to work at Red Gate which, at the moment, is something I have to try and assess based on their CV and cover letter - but if you're not that bothered about working here, why would you complete the assessment? Candidates who would submit a shoddy application probably won't feel motivated to do the assessment. Candidates who would demonstrate good attention to detail in their CV/cover letter will demonstrate good attention to detail in the assessment. In general, only the better candidates will complete and submit the assessment. Marking assessments is much less work so we'll be able to deal with any increase that we see (hopefully we will see). There are obviously other questions as well: Is plagiarism going to be a problem? Is there any way we can detect/discourage potential plagiarism? How do we assess candidates' education and experience? What about their ability to communicate in writing? Do we still want them to submit a CV afterwards if they pass assessment? Do we want to offer them the opportunity to tell us a bit about why they'd like the job when they submit their assessment? How does this affect our relationship with recruitment agencies we might use to hire for these roles? So, what's the objective for next week's Down Tools Week? Pretty simple really - we want to implement this process for the Graduate Software Engineer and Software Engineer positions that you can find on our website. I will be joined by a crack team of our best developers (Kevin Boyle, and new Red-Gater, Sam Blackburn), and recruiting hostess with the mostest Laura McQuillen, and hopefully a couple of others as well - if I can successfully twist more arms before Monday.* Hopefully by next Friday our experiment will be up and running, and we may have changed the way Red Gate recruits software engineers for good! Stay tuned and we'll let you know how it goes! *I'm going to play dirty by offering them beer and chocolate during meetings. Some background information: how agonising over the initial CV/cover letter sift helped lead us to bin it off entirely The other day I was agonising about the new university/good degree grade versus poor A-level results issue, and decided to canvas for other opinions to see if there was something I could do that was fairer than my current approach, which is almost always to reject. This generated quite an involved discussion on our Yammer site: I'm sure you can glean a pretty good impression of my own educational prejudices from that discussion as well, although I'm very open to changing my opinion - hopefully you've already figured that out from reading the rest of this post. Hopefully you can also trace a logical path from agonising about sifting to, "Uh, hang on, why on earth are we doing this anyway?!?" Technorati Tags: recruitment,hr,developers,testers,red gate,cv,resume,cover letter,assessment,sea change

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