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• EBS Techstack Sessions at OAUG/Collaborate 2010

  - by Steven Chan

  We have a large contingent of E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group staff rolling out to the OAUG/Collaborate 2010 conference in Las Vegas new week.  Our Applications Technology Group staff will be appearing as guest speakers or full-speakers at the following E-Business Suite technology stack related sessions:Database Special Interest GroupSunday, April 18, 11:00 AM, Breakers FSIG Leaders:  Michael Brown, Colibri; Sandra Vucinic, Vlad GroupGuest Speaker:  Steven ChanCovering database upcoming and past desupport dates, and database support policies as they apply to E-Business Suite environments, general Q&A E-Business Suite Technology Stack Special Interest GroupSunday, April 18, 3:00 PM, Breakers FSIG Leaders:  Elke Phelps, Paul Jackson, HumanaGuest Speaker:  Steven ChanCovering the latest EBS technology stack certifications, roadmap, desupport noticesupgrade options for Discoverer, OID, SSO, Portal, general Q&A E-Business Suite Applications Technology Roadmap & VisionMonday, April 19, 8:00 AM, South Seas GOracle Speaker:  Uma PrabhalaLatest developments for SOA, AOL, OAF, Web ADI, SES, AMP, ACMP, security, and other technologies Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager UpdateMonday, April 19, 2:30 PM, Mandalay Bay Ballroom DOracle Speaker:  Cliff GodwinUpdate on the entire Oracle E-Business Suite product line. The session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite applications, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle's overall applications strategy 10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation ApplicationsTuesday, April 20, 8:00 AM, South Seas FOracle Speaker:  Nadia Bendjedou"Common sense" and "practical" steps that can be taken today to increase the value of your Oracle Applications (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JDE) investments by using the latest Oracle solutions and technologiesReducing TCO using Oracle E-Business Suite Management PacksTuesday, April 20, 10:30 AM, South Seas EOracle Speaker:  Angelo RosadoLearn how you can reduce the Total Cost of Ownership by implementing Application Management Pack (AMP) and Application Change Management Pack (ACP) for E-Business Suite 11i, R12, R12.1. AMP is Oracle's next generation system manageability product offering that provides a centralized platform to manage and maintain EBS. ACP is Oracle's offering to monitor and manage E-Business Suite changes in the areas of E-Business Suite Customizations, Patches and Functional Setups. E-Business Suite Upgrade Special Interest GroupTuesday, April 20, 3:15 PM, South Seas ESIG Leaders:  John Stouffer; Sandra Vucinic, Vlad GroupGuest Speaker:  Steven ChanParticipating in general Q&A E-Business Suite Technology Essentials: Using the Latest Oracle Technologies with E-Business Suite Wednesday, April 21, 8:00 AM, South Seas HOracle Speaker:  Lisa ParekhOracle continues to build new functionality into the Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and Enterprise Manager. Come see how you can enhance the value of E-Business Suite for your users and lower your costs of ownership by utilizing the latest features of these Oracle technologies with E-Business Suite. Learn about the latest advanced E-Business Suite topologies and features, including new options for security, performance, third-party integration, SOA, virtualization, clouds, systems management, and much more How to Leverage the New E-Business Suite R12.1 Solutions Without Upgrading your 11.5.10 EnvironmentWednesday, April 21, 10:30 AMOracle Speaker:  Nadia Bendjedou, South Seas ELearn how you can use the latest E-Business Suite 12.1 standalone solutions without upgrading from your E-Business Suite 11.5.10 environment Web 2.0 User Experience and Oracle Fusion Middleware Integration with Oracle E-Business SuiteWednesday, April 21, 4:00 PM, South Seas FOracle Speaker:  Padmaprabodh AmbaleSee the next generation Oracle E-Business Suite OA framework improvements that will provide new rich interactions in components such as LOV, Tables and Attachments.  See  new components like the Rich Container that allows any Web 2.0 content like Flash or OBIEE to be embedded in OA Framework pages. Advanced Technology Deployment Architectures for E-Business Suite Wednesday, April 21, 2:15 PM, South Seas EOracle Speaker:  Steven ChanLearn how to take advantage of the latest version of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle E-Business Suite. Learn how to utilize identity management systems and LDAP directories. In addition, come to this session for answers about advanced network deployments involving reverse proxy servers, load balancers, and DMZ's, and to see how you can take benefit from virtualization and new system management capabilities. Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 - Best PracticesThursday, April 22, 11:00 AM, South Seas EOracle Speaker:  Lester Gutierrez, Udayan ParvateFundamental of upgrading to Release 12.1, which includes the technology stack components and differences, the upgrade path from various releases of Oracle E-Business Suite, upgrade steps, monitoring the upgrade, hints and tips for minimizing downtime and upgrade best practices for making the upgrade to Release 12.1 a success.  We look forward to seeing you there!

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• Independence Day for Software Components &ndash; Loosening Coupling by Reducing Connascence

  - by Brian Schroer

  Today is Independence Day in the USA, which got me thinking about loosely-coupled “independent” software components. I was reminded of a video I bookmarked quite a while ago of Jim Weirich’s “Grand Unified Theory of Software Design” talk at MountainWest RubyConf 2009. I finally watched that video this morning. I highly recommend it. In the video, Jim talks about software connascence. The dictionary definition of connascence (con-NAY-sense) is: 1. The common birth of two or more at the same time 2. That which is born or produced with another. 3. The act of growing together. The brief Wikipedia page about Connascent Software Components says that: Two software components are connascent if a change in one would require the other to be modified in order to maintain the overall correctness of the system. Connascence is a way to characterize and reason about certain types of complexity in software systems. The term was introduced to the software world in Meilir Page-Jones’ 1996 book “What Every Programmer Should Know About Object-Oriented Design”. The middle third of that book is the author’s proposed graphical notation for describing OO designs. UML became the standard about a year later, so a revised version of the book was published in 1999 as “Fundamentals of Object-Oriented Design in UML”. Weirich says that the third part of the book, in which Page-Jones introduces the concept of connascence “is worth the price of the entire book”. (The price of the entire book, by the way, is not much – I just bought a used copy on Amazon for $1.36, so that was a pretty low-risk investment. I’m looking forward to getting the book and learning about connascence from the original source.) Meanwhile, here’s my summary of Weirich’s summary of Page-Jones writings about connascence: The stronger the form of connascence, the more difficult and costly it is to change the elements in the relationship. Some of the connascence types, ordered from weak to strong are: Connascence of Name Connascence of name is when multiple components must agree on the name of an entity. If you change the name of a method or property, then you need to change all references to that method or property. Duh. Connascence of name is unavoidable, assuming your objects are actually used. My main takeaway about connascence of name is that it emphasizes the importance of giving things good names so you don’t need to go changing them later. Connascence of Type Connascence of type is when multiple components must agree on the type of an entity. I assume this is more of a problem for languages without compilers (especially when used in apps without tests). I know it’s an issue with evil JavaScript type coercion. Connascence of Meaning Connascence of meaning is when multiple components must agree on the meaning of particular values, e.g that “1” means normal customer and “2” means preferred customer. The solution to this is to use constants or enums instead of “magic” strings or numbers, which reduces the coupling by changing the connascence form from “meaning” to “name”. Connascence of Position Connascence of positions is when multiple components must agree on the order of values. This refers to methods with multiple parameters, e.g.: eMailer.Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "Your order is complete", "Order completion notification"); The more parameters there are, the stronger the connascence of position is between the component and its callers. In the example above, it’s not immediately clear when reading the code which email addresses are sender and receiver, and which of the final two strings are subject vs. body. Connascence of position could be improved to connascence of type by replacing the parameter list with a struct or class. This “introduce parameter object” refactoring might be overkill for a method with 2 parameters, but would definitely be an improvement for a method with 10 parameters. This points out two “rules” of connascence:  The Rule of Degree: The acceptability of connascence is related to the degree of its occurrence. The Rule of Locality: Stronger forms of connascence are more acceptable if the elements involved are closely related. For example, positional arguments in private methods are less problematic than in public methods. Connascence of Algorithm Connascence of algorithm is when multiple components must agree on a particular algorithm. Be DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself. If you have “cloned” code in multiple locations, refactor it into a common function.   Those are the “static” forms of connascence. There are also “dynamic” forms, including… Connascence of Execution Connascence of execution is when the order of execution of multiple components is important. Consumers of your class shouldn’t have to know that they have to call an .Initialize method before it’s safe to call a .DoSomething method. Connascence of Timing Connascence of timing is when the timing of the execution of multiple components is important. I’ll have to read up on this one when I get the book, but assume it’s largely about threading. Connascence of Identity Connascence of identity is when multiple components must reference the entity. The example Weirich gives is when you have two instances of the “Bob” Employee class and you call the .RaiseSalary method on one and then the .Pay method on the other does the payment use the updated salary?   Again, this is my summary of a summary, so please be forgiving if I misunderstood anything. Once I get/read the book, I’ll make corrections if necessary and share any other useful information I might learn.   See Also: Gregory Brown: Ruby Best Practices Issue #24: Connascence as a Software Design Metric (That link is failing at the time I write this, so I had to go to the Google cache of the page.)

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• Weird y offset when using custom frag shader (Cocos2d-x)

  - by Mister Guacamole

  I'm trying to mask a sprite so I wrote a simple fragment shader that renders only the pixels that are not hidden under another texture (the mask). The problem is that it seems my texture has its y-coordinate offset after passing through the shader. This is the init method of the sprite (GroundZone) I want to mask: bool GroundZone::initWithSize(Size size) { // [...] // Setup the mask of the sprite m_mask = RenderTexture::create(textureWidth, textureHeight); m_mask->retain(); m_mask->setKeepMatrix(true); Texture2D *maskTexture = m_mask->getSprite()->getTexture(); maskTexture->setAliasTexParameters(); // Disable linear interpolation on the mask // Load the custom frag shader with a default vert shader as the sprite’s program FileUtils *fileUtils = FileUtils::getInstance(); string vertexSource = ccPositionTextureA8Color_vert; string fragmentSource = fileUtils->getStringFromFile( fileUtils->fullPathForFilename("CustomShader_AlphaMask_frag.fsh")); GLProgram *shader = new GLProgram; shader->initWithByteArrays(vertexSource.c_str(), fragmentSource.c_str()); shader->bindAttribLocation(GLProgram::ATTRIBUTE_NAME_POSITION, GLProgram::VERTEX_ATTRIB_POSITION); shader->bindAttribLocation(GLProgram::ATTRIBUTE_NAME_TEX_COORD, GLProgram::VERTEX_ATTRIB_TEX_COORDS); shader->link(); CHECK_GL_ERROR_DEBUG(); shader->updateUniforms(); CHECK_GL_ERROR_DEBUG(); int maskTexUniformLoc = shader->getUniformLocationForName("u_alphaMaskTexture"); shader->setUniformLocationWith1i(maskTexUniformLoc, 1); this->setShaderProgram(shader); shader->release(); // [...] } These are the custom drawing methods for actually drawing the mask over the sprite: You need to know that m_mask is modified externally by another class, the onDraw() method only render it. void GroundZone::draw(Renderer *renderer, const kmMat4 &transform, bool transformUpdated) { m_renderCommand.init(_globalZOrder); m_renderCommand.func = CC_CALLBACK_0(GroundZone::onDraw, this, transform, transformUpdated); renderer->addCommand(&m_renderCommand); Sprite::draw(renderer, transform, transformUpdated); } void GroundZone::onDraw(const kmMat4 &transform, bool transformUpdated) { GLProgram *shader = this->getShaderProgram(); shader->use(); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, m_mask->getSprite()->getTexture()->getName()); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); } Below is the method (located in another class, GroundLayer) that modify the mask by drawing a line from point start to point end. Both points are in Cocos2d coordinates (Point (0,0) is down-left). void GroundLayer::drawTunnel(Point start, Point end) { // To dig a line, we need first to get the texture of the zone we will be digging into. Then we get the // relative position of the start and end point in the zone's node space. Finally we use the custom shader to // draw a mask over the existing texture. for (auto it = _children.begin(); it != _children.end(); it++) { GroundZone *zone = static_cast<GroundZone *>(*it); Point nodeStart = zone->convertToNodeSpace(start); Point nodeEnd = zone->convertToNodeSpace(end); // Now that we have our two points converted to node space, it's easy to draw a mask that contains a line // going from the start point to the end point and that is then applied over the current texture. Size groundZoneSize = zone->getContentSize(); RenderTexture *rt = zone->getMask(); rt->begin(); { // Draw a line going from start and going to end in the texture, the line will act as a mask over the // existing texture DrawNode *line = DrawNode::create(); line->retain(); line->drawSegment(nodeStart, nodeEnd, 20, Color4F::RED); line->visit(); } rt->end(); } } Finally, here's the custom shader I wrote. #ifdef GL_ES precision mediump float; #endif varying vec2 v_texCoord; uniform sampler2D u_texture; uniform sampler2D u_alphaMaskTexture; void main() { float maskAlpha = texture2D(u_alphaMaskTexture, v_texCoord).a; float texAlpha = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord).a; float blendAlpha = (1.0 - maskAlpha) * texAlpha; // Show only where mask is invisible vec3 texColor = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord).rgb; gl_FragColor = vec4(texColor, blendAlpha); return; } I got a problem with the y coordinates. Indeed, it seems that once it has passed through my custom shader, the sprite's texture is not at the right place: Without custom shader (the sprite is the brown thing): With custom shader: What's going on here? Thanks :) EDIT It looks like after passing through the shader when I set the position of the sprite I set it in points, with (0,0) being in the top-right. Indeed, when I do sprite->setPosition(320, 480), the sprite is perfectly placed at the top of the screen.

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• VB Myth - Case Insensitivity is Awesome!

  - by Damon

  I was reading Andy Brown's article 10 Reasons Why Visual Basic is Better than C# and the first claim is that VB is superior because of case insensitivity.  I think the reasons he outlines are basically as follows: Your fingers get tired finding the shift key (e.g. typing PascalCase and camelCase members) You are much more likely to make mistakes while typing names When you accidentally leave caps lock on, it really matters These three arguments culminate in the conclusion: "It doesn't matter if you disagree with everything else in this article: case-sensitivity alone is sufficient reason to ditch C#!" Righto.  I've been using Visual Basic since version 5.0, I wrote a book about ASP.NET in Visual Basic, so I want everyone to know I'm definitely not a VB.NET hater.  I had to converted to C# because it was the language of preference at the places I've worked, so I'm used to both languages.  I love me some case sensitivity.  So first, let's debunk the claims. First, your fingers do not get tired of finding the shift key unless you are writing code in notepad and compiling everything on the command line.  Visual Studio pretty much takes away the need to use the shift key at all. For the most part, any programmer worth a damn doesn't have to type more than about 3-5 characters of any variable or method name before IntelliSense kicks in to help.  VB or C#, if you are not using the tab key for autocomplete then you are typing too much anyway, regardless of whether the shift key is involved or not.  Also, you've got to be a pretty hard-core candy ass if you're complaining at the end of the day that your little fingers are hurting from hitting the shift key. Second, I cannot logically refute the fact that if there are more stringent rules about case sensitivity it will lead to more mistakes.  As such, know that you will be more prone to mistakes in C#.  However, lets talk about the magnitude of the problem.  If you are using IntelliSense then you have auto-correction built in so you probably won't have much of a problem in the first place.  If you manage to bypass IntelliSense and type something wrong you normally are immediately presented with a red-squiggly to let you know something is amiss.  Normally, a person would look at the problem, figure out what the heck went wrong, and then avoid that problem again in the future.  Granted, I have met people who seem to lack this capability, but their problem is deeper than a decision between VB.NET and C#.  So let's make sure that we're all on the same page about this problem.  If you have two teams of developers, one that uses VB.NET and one that uses C#, do not expect to see the VB.NET team drinking beer at the end of the project in festive revelry while the C# team is crying over what the hell to do because their code is riddled with case-sensitivity problems that nobody can resolve. Lastly, if you leave your caps lock key on, turn it off.  Really, what kind of ass-hat would write an entire VB.NET application ENTIRELY IN CAPS?  I happen to be a fan of case sensitivity because it encourages precision and uniformity.  The last thing I need is a code base that looks like it was ransacked by LeEt HacKors wHo Can uSe wHateVer cASe tHey wanT.  I mean really, if you saw someone write this: PuBLIc Sub MyMethod . End Sub And upon asking them why BL was upper case, they responded "Oh, I accidentally hit the shift key there.  Fortunately for me VB.NET is a case insensitive language so I saved a couple of keystrokes by leaving it in there."  Or if you saw: PUBLIC SUB ANOTHERMETHOD . END SUB And the response to why it was uppercased was "Yeah, I accidentally had caps locks on, fortunately for me VB.NET doesn't care.  Really dodged a bullet there, glad I wasn't using C#."  Would you not think that a bit ridiculous?  If you want to convince C# developers that C# sucks, go for it.  But the case insensitivity argument is crap.

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• How to Resolve Jason issue

  - by Mohammad Nezhad

  I am working in a web scheduling application which uses DayPilot component I started by reading the documentation and use the calendar control. but whenever I do some thing which (fires an event on the Daypilot control) I face with following error An exception was thrown in the server-side event handler: System.InvalidCastException: Instance Of JasonData doesn't hold a double at DayPilot.Jason.JasonData.op_Explicit(JasonData data) at DayPilot.Web.Ui.Events.EventMoveEventArgs..ctor(JasonData parameters, string[] fields, JasonData data) at DayPilot.Web.Ui.DayPilotCalendar.ExecuteEventJASON(String ea) at DayPilot.Web.Ui.DayPilotCalendar.System.Web.UI.ICallbackEventHandler.RaiseCallbackEvent(string ea) at System.Web.UI.Page.PrepareCallback(String callbackControlID) here is the completed code in the ASPX page <DayPilot:DayPilotCalendar ID="DayPilotCalendar1" runat="server" Direction="RTL" Days="7" DataStartField="eventstart" DataEndField="eventend" DataTextField="name" DataValueField="id" DataTagFields="State" EventMoveHandling="CallBack" OnEventMove="DayPilotCalendar1_EventMove" EventEditHandling="CallBack" OnEventEdit="DayPilotCalendar1_EventEdit" EventClickHandling="Edit" OnBeforeEventRender="DayPilotCalendar1_BeforeEventRender" EventResizeHandling="CallBack" OnEventResize="DayPilotCalendar1_EventResize" EventDoubleClickHandling="CallBack" OnEventDoubleClick="DayPilotCalendar1_EventDoubleClick" oncommand="DayPilotCalendar1_Command" and here is the complete codebehind protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) Initialization(); } private void dbUpdateEvent(string id, DateTime start, DateTime end) { // update for move using (SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["db"].ConnectionString)) { con.Open(); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("UPDATE [event] SET [eventstart] = @start, [eventend] = @end WHERE [id] = @id", con); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("id", id); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("start", start); cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("end", end); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); } } private DataTable dbGetEvents(DateTime start, int days) { // get Data SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter("SELECT [id], [name], [eventstart], [eventend], [state], [other] FROM [event] WHERE NOT (([eventend] <= @start) OR ([eventstart] >= @end))", ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["DayPilotTest"].ConnectionString); ; da.SelectCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("start", start); da.SelectCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("end", start.AddDays(days)); DataTable dt = new DataTable(); da.Fill(dt); return dt; } protected void DayPilotCalendar1_EventMove(object sender, DayPilot.Web.Ui.Events.EventMoveEventArgs e) { // Drag and Drop dbUpdateEvent(e.Value, e.NewStart, e.NewEnd); DayPilotCalendar1.DataSource = dbGetEvents(DayPilotCalendar1.StartDate, DayPilotCalendar1.Days); DayPilotCalendar1.DataBind(); DayPilotCalendar1.Update(); } private void Initialization() { // first bind DayPilotCalendar1.StartDate = DayPilot.Utils.Week.FirstDayOfWeek(new DateTime(2009, 1, 1)); DayPilotCalendar1.DataSource = dbGetEvents(DayPilotCalendar1.StartDate, DayPilotCalendar1.Days); DataBind(); } protected void DayPilotCalendar1_BeforeEventRender(object sender, BeforeEventRenderEventArgs e) { // change the color based on state if (e.Tag["State"] == "Fixed") { e.DurationBarColor = "Brown"; } } protected void DayPilotCalendar1_EventResize(object sender, DayPilot.Web.Ui.Events.EventResizeEventArgs e) { dbUpdateEvent(e.Value, e.NewStart, e.NewEnd); DayPilotCalendar1.DataSource = dbGetEvents(DayPilotCalendar1.StartDate, DayPilotCalendar1.Days); DayPilotCalendar1.DataBind(); DayPilotCalendar1.Update(); } protected void DayPilotCalendar1_EventDoubleClick(object sender, EventClickEventArgs e) { dbInsertEvent(e.Text , e.Start, e.End, "New", "New Meeting"); DayPilotCalendar1.DataSource = dbGetEvents(DayPilotCalendar1.StartDate, DayPilotCalendar1.Days); DayPilotCalendar1.DataBind(); DayPilotCalendar1.Update(); } note that I remove unnecessary code behinds

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• Color Theory: How to convert Munsell HVC to RGB/HSB/HSL

  - by Ian Boyd

  I'm looking at at document that describes the standard colors used in dentistry to describe the color of a tooth. They quote hue, value, chroma values, and indicate they are from the 1905 Munsell description of color: The system of colour notation developed by A. H. Munsell in 1905 identifies colour in terms of three attributes: HUE, VALUE (Brightness) and CHROMA (saturation) [15] HUE (H): Munsell defined hue as the quality by which we distinguish one colour from another. He selected five principle colours: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple; and five intermediate colours: yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple. These were placed around a colour circle at equal points and the colours in between these points are a mixture of the two, in favour of the nearer point/colour (see Fig 1.). VALUE (V): This notation indicates the lightness or darkness of a colour in relation to a neutral grey scale, which extends from absolute black (value symbol 0) to absolute white (value symbol 10). This is essentially how ‘bright’ the colour is. CHROMA (C): This indicates the degree of divergence of a given hue from a neutral grey of the same value. The scale of chroma extends from 0 for a neutral grey to 10, 12, 14 or farther, depending upon the strength (saturation) of the sample to be evaluated. There are various systems for categorising colour, the Vita system is most commonly used in Dentistry. This uses the letters A, B, C and D to notate the hue (colour) of the tooth. The chroma and value are both indicated by a value from 1 to 4. A1 being lighter than A4, but A4 being more saturated than A1. If placed in order of value, i.e. brightness, the order from brightest to darkest would be: A1, B1, B2, A2, A3, D2, C1, B3, D3, D4, A3.5, B4, C2, A4, C3, C4 The exact values of Hue, Value and Chroma for each of the shades is shown below (16) So my question is, can anyone convert Munsell HVC into RGB, HSB or HSL? Hue Value (Brightness) Chroma(Saturation) === ================== ================== 4.5 7.80 1.7 2.4 7.45 2.6 1.3 7.40 2.9 1.6 7.05 3.2 1.6 6.70 3.1 5.1 7.75 1.6 4.3 7.50 2.2 2.3 7.25 3.2 2.4 7.00 3.2 4.3 7.30 1.6 2.8 6.90 2.3 2.6 6.70 2.3 1.6 6.30 2.9 3.0 7.35 1.8 1.8 7.10 2.3 3.7 7.05 2.4 They say that Value(Brightness) varies from 0..10, which is fine. So i take 7.05 to mean 70.5%. But what is Hue measured in? i'm used to hue being measured in degrees (0..360). But the values i see would all be red - when they should be more yellow, or brown. Finally, it says that Choma/Saturation can range from 0..10 ...or even higher - which makes it sound like an arbitrary scale. So can anyone convert Munsell HVC to HSB or HSL, or better yet, RGB?

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• How would you organize a large complex web application (see basic example)?

  - by Anurag

  How do you usually organize complex web applications that are extremely rich on the client side. I have created a contrived example to indicate the kind of mess it's easy to get into if things are not managed well for big apps. Feel free to modify/extend this example as you wish - http://jsfiddle.net/NHyLC/1/ The example basically mirrors part of the comment posting on SO, and follows the following rules: Must have 15 characters minimum, after multiple spaces are trimmed out to one. If Add Comment is clicked, but the size is less than 15 after removing multiple spaces, then show a popup with the error. Indicate amount of characters remaining and summarize with color coding. Gray indicates a small comment, brown indicates a medium comment, orange a large comment, and red a comment overflow. One comment can only be submitted every 15 seconds. If comment is submitted too soon, show a popup with appropriate error message. A couple of issues I noticed with this example. This should ideally be a widget or some sort of packaged functionality. Things like a comment per 15 seconds, and minimum 15 character comment belong to some application wide policies rather than being embedded inside each widget. Too many hard-coded values. No code organization. Model, Views, Controllers are all bundled together. Not that MVC is the only approach for organizing rich client side web applications, but there is none in this example. How would you go about cleaning this up? Applying a little MVC/MVP along the way? Here's some of the relevant functions, but it will make more sense if you saw the entire code on jsfiddle: /** * Handle comment change. * Update character count. * Indicate progress */ function handleCommentUpdate(comment) { var status = $('.comment-status'); status.text(getStatusText(comment)); status.removeClass('mild spicy hot sizzling'); status.addClass(getStatusClass(comment)); } /** * Is the comment valid for submission */ function commentSubmittable(comment) { var notTooSoon = !isTooSoon(); var notEmpty = !isEmpty(comment); var hasEnoughCharacters = !isTooShort(comment); return notTooSoon && notEmpty && hasEnoughCharacters; } // submit comment $('.add-comment').click(function() { var comment = $('.comment-box').val(); // submit comment, fake ajax call if(commentSubmittable(comment)) { .. } // show a popup if comment is mostly spaces if(isTooShort(comment)) { if(comment.length < 15) { // blink status message } else { popup("Comment must be at least 15 characters in length."); } } // show a popup is comment submitted too soon else if(isTooSoon()) { popup("Only 1 comment allowed per 15 seconds."); } });

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• C++ classes & linked list: adding & counting items

  - by user342289

  I need to make a linked list with classes. Each list will store two values: a URI and IP. After doing all the adding, I need to be able count the total number of items in the linked list. I have tried the following code but it doesn't compile. Any suggestions please? #include <iostream> #include <cstdlib> #include <string> using namespace std; class ip_uri_store { protected: string ip; string uri; ip_uri_store *next; public: ip_uri_store(string huri, string hip); void additem(string auri, string aip); void deleteitem(string duri); void findbyuri(string furi); void findbyip(string fip); int totalitems(); }; ip_uri_store *head = NULL; ip_uri_store *curr = NULL; void ip_uri_store::additem(string auri, string aip) { curr = head; while (curr->next != NULL) { curr = curr->next; } curr->uri = auri; curr->next = new ip_uri_store; curr->ip = aip; curr->next = new ip_uri_store; curr = curr->next; curr = head; } int ip_uri_store::totalitems() { int i = 0; curr = head; while (curr->next != NULL) { i += 1; curr = curr->next; } return i; } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { if (argc == 1) { cout << "123456, [email protected], Gordon Brown" << endl; return (0); } head = new ip_uri_store; curr = head; int i; for (i = 1; i < argc; i++) { if (argv[i][0] == 'A') //add item { ip_uri_store.additem(argv[i + 1], argv[i + 2]); i += 2; } else if (argv[i][0] == 'N') //print total tiems { cout << ip_uri_store.totalitems() << endl; } else { cout << "command error\n"; return 0; } } return (0); }

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• How would you organize this Javascript?

  - by Anurag

  How do you usually organize complex web applications that are extremely rich on the client side. I have created a contrived example to indicate the kind of mess it's easy to get into if things are not managed well for big apps. Feel free to modify/extend this example as you wish - http://jsfiddle.net/NHyLC/1/ The example basically mirrors part of the comment posting on SO, and follows the following rules: Must have 15 characters minimum, after multiple spaces are trimmed out to one. If Add Comment is clicked, but the size is less than 15 after removing multiple spaces, then show a popup with the error. Indicate amount of characters remaining and summarize with color coding. Gray indicates a small comment, brown indicates a medium comment, orange a large comment, and red a comment overflow. One comment can only be submitted every 15 seconds. If comment is submitted too soon, show a popup with appropriate error message. A couple of issues I noticed with this example. This should ideally be a widget or some sort of packaged functionality. Things like a comment per 15 seconds, and minimum 15 character comment belong to some application wide policies rather than being embedded inside each widget. Too many hard-coded values. No code organization. Model, Views, Controllers are all bundled together. Not that MVC is the only approach for organizing rich client side web applications, but there is none in this example. How would you go about cleaning this up? Applying a little MVC/MVP along the way? Here's some of the relevant functions, but it will make more sense if you saw the entire code on jsfiddle: /** * Handle comment change. * Update character count. * Indicate progress */ function handleCommentUpdate(comment) { var status = $('.comment-status'); status.text(getStatusText(comment)); status.removeClass('mild spicy hot sizzling'); status.addClass(getStatusClass(comment)); } /** * Is the comment valid for submission */ function commentSubmittable(comment) { var notTooSoon = !isTooSoon(); var notEmpty = !isEmpty(comment); var hasEnoughCharacters = !isTooShort(comment); return notTooSoon && notEmpty && hasEnoughCharacters; } // submit comment $('.add-comment').click(function() { var comment = $('.comment-box').val(); // submit comment, fake ajax call if(commentSubmittable(comment)) { .. } // show a popup if comment is mostly spaces if(isTooShort(comment)) { if(comment.length < 15) { // blink status message } else { popup("Comment must be at least 15 characters in length."); } } // show a popup is comment submitted too soon else if(isTooSoon()) { popup("Only 1 comment allowed per 15 seconds."); } });

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• Prolog: Sentence Parser Problem

  - by Devon

  Hey guys, Been sat here for hours now just staring at this code and have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I know what's happening from tracing the code through (it is going on an eternal loop when it hits verbPhrase). Any tips are more then welcome. Thank you. % Knowledge-base det(the). det(a). adjective(quick). adjective(brown). adjective(orange). adjective(sweet). noun(cat). noun(mat). noun(fox). noun(cucumber). noun(saw). noun(mother). noun(father). noun(family). noun(depression). prep(on). prep(with). verb(sat). verb(nibbled). verb(ran). verb(looked). verb(is). verb(has). % Sentece Structures sentence(Phrase) :- append(NounPhrase, VerbPhrase, Phrase), nounPhrase(NounPhrase), verbPhrase(VerbPhrase). sentence(Phrase) :- verbPhrase(Phrase). nounPhrase([]). nounPhrase([Head | Tail]) :- det(Head), nounPhrase2(Tail). nounPhrase(Phrase) :- nounPhrase2(Phrase). nounPhrase(Phrase) :- append(NP, PP, Phrase), nounPhrase(NP), prepPhrase(PP). nounPhrase2([]). nounPhrase2(Word) :- noun(Word). nounPhrase2([Head | Tail]) :- adjective(Head), nounPhrase2(Tail). prepPhrase([]). prepPhrase([Head | Tail]) :- prep(Head), nounPhrase(Tail). verbPhrase([]). verbPhrase(Word) :- verb(Word). verbPhrase([Head | Tail]) :- verb(Head), nounPhrase(Tail). verbPhrase(Phrase) :- append(VP, PP, Phrase), verbPhrase(VP), prepPhrase(PP).

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• Getting my string value from my form into my class( not another form)

  - by jovany

  Hello all, I have a question regarding the some data which is being transfered from one form to my class. It's not going quite the way i'd like to , so I figured maybe there is someone who could help me. This is my code in my class Public Class DrawableTextBox Inherits Drawable Dim i_testString As Integer Private s_InsertLabel As String Private drawFont As Font Public Sub New(ByVal fore_color As Color, ByVal fill_color As Color, Optional ByVal line_width As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_x1 As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_y1 As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_x2 As Integer = 1, Optional ByVal new_y2 As Integer = 1) MyBase.New(fore_color, fill_color, line_width) X1 = new_x1 Y1 = new_y1 X2 = new_x2 Y2 = new_y2 Trace.WriteLine(s_InsertLabel) End Sub Friend WriteOnly Property _textBox() As String Set(ByVal Value As String) s_InsertLabel = Value Trace.WriteLine(s_InsertLabel) End Set End Property ' Draw the object on this Graphics surface. Public Overrides Sub Draw(ByVal gr As System.Drawing.Graphics) ' Make a Rectangle representing this rectangle. Dim rect As Rectangle = GetBounds() ' Fill the rectangle as usual. Dim fill_brush As New SolidBrush(FillColor) gr.FillRectangle(fill_brush, rect) fill_brush.Dispose() ' See if we're selected. If IsSelected Then ' Draw the rectangle highlighted. Dim highlight_pen As New Pen(Color.Yellow, LineWidth) gr.DrawRectangle(highlight_pen, rect) highlight_pen.Dispose() ' Draw grab handles. Trace.WriteLine("drawing the lines for my textbox") DrawGrabHandle(gr, X1, Y1) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X1, Y2) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X2, Y2) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X2, Y1) Else 'TextBox() Dim fg_pen As New Pen(Color.Red, LineWidth) 'Dim fontSize As Single = 0.1 + ((Y2 - Y1) / 2) Dim fontSize As Single = 20 Try Dim drawFont As New Font("Arial", fontSize, FontStyle.Bold) Trace.WriteLine(s_InsertLabel) gr.DrawString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, Brushes.Brown, X1, Y1) Catch ex As ArgumentException End Try gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Azure, rect) ' gr.DrawRectangle(fg_pen, rect) fg_pen.Dispose() End If End Sub Public Function GetValueString(ByVal ValueType As String) Return ValueType End Function ' Return the object's bounding rectangle. Public Overrides Function GetBounds() As System.Drawing.Rectangle Return New Rectangle( _ Min(X1, X2), _ Min(Y1, Y2), _ Abs(100), _ Abs(30)) Trace.WriteLine("don't forget to make variables in GetBounds DrawableTextbox") End Function ' Return True if this point is on the object. Public Overrides Function IsAt(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) As Boolean Return (x >= Min(X1, X2)) AndAlso _ (x <= Max(X1, X2)) AndAlso _ (y >= Min(Y1, Y2)) AndAlso _ (y <= Max(Y1, Y2)) End Function ' Move the second point. Public Overrides Sub NewPoint(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) X2 = x Y2 = y End Sub ' Return True if the object is empty (e.g. a zero-length line). Public Overrides Function IsEmpty() As Boolean Return (X1 = X2) AndAlso (Y1 = Y2) End Function End Class I've got a form with a textbox( form1) in which the text is being inserted and passed through a buttonclick (al via properties). As you can see I've placed several traces and in the property of the class my trace works fine , however if I look in my Draw function it is already gone. And I get a blank trace. Does anyone know what's happening here. thanks in advance. (forgive me I'm new )

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• XSLT: Display unique rows of filtered XML recordset

  - by Chris G.

  I've got a recordset that I'm filtering on a particular field (i.e. Manager ="Frannklin"). Now I'd like to group the results of that filtered recordset based on another field (Client). I can't seem to get Muenchian grouping to work right. Any thoughts? TIA! CG My filter looks like this: <xsl:key name="k1" match="Row" use="@Manager"/> <xsl:param name="dvt_filterval">Frannklin</xsl:param> <xsl:variable name="Rows" select="/dsQueryResponse/Rows/Row" /> <xsl:variable name="FilteredRowsAttr" select="$Rows[normalize-space(@*[name()=$FieldNameNoAtSign])=$dvt_filterval ]" /> Templates <xsl:apply-templates select="$FilteredRowsAttr[generate-id() = generate-id(key('k1',@Manager))]" mode="g1000a"> </xsl:apply-templates> <xsl:template match="Row" mode="g1000a"> Client: <xsl:value-of select="@Client"/> </xsl:template> Results I'm getting Client: Beta Client: Beta Client: Beta Client: Gamma Client: Delta Results I want Client: Beta Client: Gamma Client: Delta Sample recordset <dsQueryResponse> <Rows> <Row Manager="Smith" Client="Alpha " Project_x0020_Name="Annapolis" PM_x0023_="00123" /> <Row Manager="Ford" Client="Alpha " Project_x0020_Name="Brown" PM_x0023_="00124" /> <Row Manager="Cronkite" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Gannon" PM_x0023_="00129" /> <Row Manager="Clinton, Bill" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Harvard" PM_x0023_="00130" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Irving" PM_x0023_="00131" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Jakarta" PM_x0023_="00132" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Beta " Project_x0020_Name="Vassar" PM_x0023_="00135" /> <Row Manager="Jefferson" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="Stamford" PM_x0023_="00141" /> <Row Manager="Cronkite" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="Tufts" PM_x0023_="00142" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="UCLA" PM_x0023_="00143" /> <Row Manager="Jefferson" Client="Gamma " Project_x0020_Name="Villanova" PM_x0023_="00144" /> <Row Manager="Carter" Client="Delta " Project_x0020_Name="Drexel" PM_x0023_="00150" /> <Row Manager="Clinton" Client="Delta " Project_x0020_Name="Iona" PM_x0023_="00151" /> <Row Manager="Frannklin" Client="Delta " Project_x0020_Name="Temple" PM_x0023_="00152" /> <Row Manager="Ford" Client="Epsilon " Project_x0020_Name="UNC" PM_x0023_="00157" /> <Row Manager="Clinton" Client="Epsilon " Project_x0020_Name="Berkley" PM_x0023_="00158" /> </Rows> </dsQueryResponse>

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• Question about DBD::CSB Statement-Functions

  - by sid_com

  From the SQL::Statement::Functions documentation: Function syntax When using SQL::Statement/SQL::Parser directly to parse SQL, functions (either built-in or user-defined) may occur anywhere in a SQL statement that values, column names, table names, or predicates may occur. When using the modules through a DBD or in any other context in which the SQL is both parsed and executed, functions can occur in the same places except that they can not occur in the column selection clause of a SELECT statement that contains a FROM clause. # valid for both parsing and executing SELECT MyFunc(args); SELECT * FROM MyFunc(args); SELECT * FROM x WHERE MyFuncs(args); SELECT * FROM x WHERE y < MyFuncs(args); # valid only for parsing (won't work from a DBD) SELECT MyFunc(args) FROM x WHERE y; Reading this I would expect that the first SELECT-statement of my example shouldn't work and the second should but it is quite the contrary. #!/usr/bin/env perl use warnings; use strict; use 5.010; use DBI; open my $fh, '>', 'test.csv' or die $!; say $fh "id,name"; say $fh "1,Brown"; say $fh "2,Smith"; say $fh "7,Smith"; say $fh "8,Green"; close $fh; my $dbh = DBI->connect ( 'dbi:CSV:', undef, undef, { RaiseError => 1, f_ext => '.csv', }); my $table = 'test'; say "\nSELECT 1"; my $sth = $dbh->prepare ( "SELECT MAX( id ) FROM $table WHERE name LIKE 'Smith'" ); $sth->execute (); $sth->dump_results(); say "\nSELECT 2"; $sth = $dbh->prepare ( "SELECT * FROM $table WHERE id = MAX( id )" ); $sth->execute (); $sth->dump_results(); outputs: SELECT 1 '7' 1 rows SELECT 2 Unknown function 'MAX' at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/SQL/Parser.pm line 2893. DBD::CSV::db prepare failed: Unknown function 'MAX' at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/SQL/Parser.pm line 2894. [for Statement "SELECT * FROM test WHERE id = MAX( id )"] at ./so_3.pl line 30. DBD::CSV::db prepare failed: Unknown function 'MAX' at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/SQL/Parser.pm line 2894. [for Statement "SELECT * FROM test WHERE id = MAX( id )"] at ./so_3.pl line 30. Could someone explaine me this behavior?

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• how i can use SAX parser

  - by moustafa

  This is what the result should look like when i parse it through a SAX parser http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6950/75914446.jpg This is the XML source code from which i need to generate the display: <orders> <order> <count>37</count> <price>49.99</price> <book> <isbn>0130897930</isbn> <title>Core Web Programming Second Edition</title> <authors> <count>2</count> <author>Marty Hall</author> <author>Larry Brown</author> </authors> </book> </order> <order> <count>1</count> <price>9.95</price> <yacht> <manufacturer>Luxury Yachts, Inc.</manufacturer> <model>M-1</model> <standardFeatures oars="plastic" lifeVests="none">false</standardFeatures> </yacht> </order> <order> <count>3</count> <price>22.22</price> <book> <isbn>B000059Z4H</isbn> <title>Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix</title> <authors> <count>1</count> <author>J.K. Rowling</author> </authors> </book> </order> i really have no clue how to code the functions but i have just set up the parser $xmlParser = xml_parser_create("UTF-8"); xml_parser_set_option($xmlParser, XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING, false); xml_set_element_handler($xmlParser, 'startElement', 'endElement'); xml_set_character_data_handler($xmlParser, 'HandleCharacterData'); $fileName = 'orders.xml'; if (!($fp = fopen($fileName, 'r'))){ die('Cannot open the XML file: ' . $fileName); } while ($data = fread($fp, 4096)){ $parsedOkay = xml_parse($xmlParser, $data, feof($fp)); if (!$parsedOkay){ print ("There was an error or the parser was finished."); break; } } xml_parser_free($xmlParser); function startElement($xmlParser, $name, $attribs) { } function endElement($parser, $name) { } function HandleCharacterData($parser, $data) { }

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• File sizing issue in DOS/FAT

  - by Heather

  I've been tasked with writing a data collection program for a Unitech HT630, which runs a proprietary DOS operating system that can run executables compiled for 16-bit MS DOS with some restrictions. I'm using the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler, which is working well thus far. One of the application requirements is that the data file must be human-readable plain text, meaning the file can be imported into Excel or opened by Notepad. I'm using a variable length record format much like CSV that I've successfully implemented using the C standard library file I/O functions. When saving a record, I have to calculate whether the updated record is larger or smaller than the version of the record currently in the data file. If larger, I first shift all records immediately after the current record forward by the size difference calculated before saving the updated record. EOF is extended automatically by the OS to accommodate the extra data. If smaller, I shift all records backwards by my calculated offset. This is working well, however I have found no way to modify the EOF marker or file size to ignore the data after the end of the last record. Most of the time records will grow in size because the data collection program will be filling some of the empty fields with data when saving a record. Records will only shrink in size when a correction is made on an existing entry, or on a normal record save if the descriptive data in the record is longer than what the program reads in memory. In the situation of a shrinking record, after the last record in the file I'm left with whatever data was sitting there before the shift. I have been writing an EOF delimiter into the file after a "shrinking record save" to signal where the end of my records are and space-filling the remaining data, but then I no longer have a clean file until a "growing record save" extends the size of the file over the space-filled area. The truncate() function in unistd.h does not work (I'm now thinking this is for *nix flavors only?). One proposed solution I've seen involves creating a second file and writing all the data you wish to save into that file, and then deleting the original. Since I only have 4MB worth of disk space to use, this works if the file size is less than 2MB minus the size of my program executable and configuration files, but would fail otherwise. It is very likely that when this goes into production, users would end up with a file exceeding 2MB in size. I've looked at Ralph Brown's Interrupt List and the interrupt reference in IBM PC Assembly Language and Programming and I can't seem to find anything to update the file size or similar. Is reducing a file's size without creating a second file even possible in DOS?

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• How to check for local Wi-Fi (not just cellular connection) using iPhone SDK?

  - by Michael

  I'm currently using the following to check whether Wi-Fi is available for my application: #import <SystemConfiguration/SystemConfiguration.h> static inline BOOL addressReachable(const struct sockaddr_in *hostAddress); BOOL localWiFiAvailable() { struct sockaddr_in localWifiAddress; bzero(&localWifiAddress, sizeof(localWifiAddress)); localWifiAddress.sin_len = sizeof(localWifiAddress); localWifiAddress.sin_family = AF_INET; // IN_LINKLOCALNETNUM is defined in <netinet/in.h> as 169.254.0.0 localWifiAddress.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(IN_LINKLOCALNETNUM); return addressReachable(&localWifiAddress); } static inline BOOL addressReachable(const struct sockaddr_in *hostAddress) { const SCNetworkReachabilityRef target = SCNetworkReachabilityCreateWithAddress(kCFAllocatorDefault, (const struct sockaddr *)hostAddress); if (target != NULL) { SCNetworkReachabilityFlags flags = 0; const BOOL reachable = SCNetworkReachabilityGetFlags(target, &flags); CFRelease(target); return reachable && (flags & kSCNetworkFlagsReachable); } return NO; } This, however, does not return NO as it should when the iPhone is connected only to a cellular network but not a Wi-Fi network. Does anyone know how to fix this? Edit So this is what I ended up using: #import <arpa/inet.h> // For AF_INET, etc. #import <ifaddrs.h> // For getifaddrs() #import <net/if.h> // For IFF_LOOPBACK BOOL localWiFiAvailable() { struct ifaddrs *addresses; struct ifaddrs *cursor; BOOL wiFiAvailable = NO; if (getifaddrs(&addresses) != 0) return NO; cursor = addresses; while (cursor != NULL) { if (cursor -> ifa_addr -> sa_family == AF_INET && !(cursor -> ifa_flags & IFF_LOOPBACK)) // Ignore the loopback address { // Check for WiFi adapter if (strcmp(cursor -> ifa_name, "en0") == 0) { wiFiAvailable = YES; break; } } cursor = cursor -> ifa_next; } freeifaddrs(addresses); return wiFiAvailable; } Thanks "unforgiven" (and Matt Brown apparently).

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• problem with Using SAX parser

  - by moustafa

  Hi guys i have this small class task that im having trouble with. I need to create a PHP file using SAX to generate the display shown below from an XML file. Im not sure how to Use | to represent its level, where the root element orders is at level zero. This is what the result should look like when i parse it through a SAX parser http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6950/75914446.jpg This is the XML source code from which i need to generate the display: <orders> <order> <count>37</count> <price>49.99</price> <book> <isbn>0130897930</isbn> <title>Core Web Programming Second Edition</title> <authors> <count>2</count> <author>Marty Hall</author> <author>Larry Brown</author> </authors> </book> </order> <order> <count>1</count> <price>9.95</price> <yacht> <manufacturer>Luxury Yachts, Inc.</manufacturer> <model>M-1</model> <standardFeatures oars="plastic" lifeVests="none">false</standardFeatures> </yacht> </order> <order> <count>3</count> <price>22.22</price> <book> <isbn>B000059Z4H</isbn> <title>Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix</title> <authors> <count>1</count> <author>J.K. Rowling</author> </authors> </book> </order>

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• Multiple column subselect in mysql 5 (5.1.42)

  - by rubber boots

  This one seems to be a simple problem, but I can't make it work in a single select or nested select. Retrieve the authors and (if any) advisers of a paper (article) into one row. I order to explain the problem, here are the two data tables (pseudo) papers (id, title, c_year) persons (id, firstname, lastname) plus a link table w/one extra attribute (pseudo): paper_person_roles( paper_id person_id act_role ENUM ('AUTHOR', 'ADVISER') ) This is basically a list of written papers (table: papers) and a list of staff and/or students (table: persons) An article my have (1,N) authors. An article may have (0,N) advisers. A person can be in 'AUTHOR' or 'ADVISER' role (but not at the same time). The application eventually puts out table rows containing the following entries: TH: || Paper_ID | Author(s) | Title | Adviser(s) | TD: || 21334 |John Doe, Jeff Tucker|Why the moon looks yellow|Brown, Rayleigh| ... My first approach was like: select/extract a full list of articles into the application, eg.SELECT q.id, q.title FROM papers AS q ORDER BY q.c_year and save the results of the query into an array (in the application). After this step, loop over the array of the returned information and retrieve authors and advisers (if any), via prepared statement (? is the paper's id) from the link table like:APPLICATION_LOOP(paper_ids in array) SELECT p.lastname, p.firstname, r.act_role FROM persons AS p, paper_person_roles AS r WHERE p.id=r.person_id AND r.paper_id = ? # The application does further processing from here (pseudo): foreach record from resulting records if record.act_role eq 'AUTHOR' then join to author_column if record.act_role eq 'ADVISER' then join to avdiser_column end print id, author_column, title, adviser_column APPLICATION_LOOP This works so far and gives the desired output. Would it make sense to put the computation back into the DB? I'm not very proficient in nontrivial SQL and can't find a solution with a single (combined or nested) select call. I tried sth. like SELECT q.title (CONCAT_WS(' ', (SELECT p.firstname, p.lastname AS aunames FROM persons AS p, paper_person_roles AS r WHERE q.id=r.paper_id AND r.act_role='AUTHOR') ) ) AS aulist FROM papers AS q, persons AS p, paper_person_roles AS r in several variations, but no luck ... Maybe there is some chance? Thanks in advance r.b.

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• HTML Language question

  - by Mike

  Note my code below. I am trying to figure out why my data is not changing to Spanish. I understand it to be one line of code and that is all within the HTML attribute lang=”es”. Any help would be greatly appreciated. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xlmns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang=”es” xml:lang="en"> <head> <title>JavaJam Coffee House</title> <link href="javajam.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body bgcolor="brown"> <h1>JavaJam Coffee House</h1> <ul> <li>Specialty Coffee and Tea</li> <li>Bagels, Muffins, and Organic Snacks</li> <li>Music and Poetry Readings</li> <li>Usability Studies</li> <li>Open Mic Night</li> </ul> <br></br> <p>12312 Main Street<br> Mountain Home, CA 93923<br> 1-888-555-5555</br> </p> <p> <em> <small>Copyright &copy; 2008 JavaJam Coffee House</em></p> E-Mail <a href="mailto;[email protected]"> Michael J. Crawley</a> </body> </html>

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• How to configure emacs by using this file?

  - by Andy Leman

  From http://public.halogen-dg.com/browser/alex-emacs-settings/.emacs?rev=1346 I got: (setq load-path (cons "/home/alex/.emacs.d/" load-path)) (setq load-path (cons "/home/alex/.emacs.d/configs/" load-path)) (defconst emacs-config-dir "~/.emacs.d/configs/" "") (defun load-cfg-files (filelist) (dolist (file filelist) (load (expand-file-name (concat emacs-config-dir file))) (message "Loaded config file:%s" file) )) (load-cfg-files '("cfg_initsplit" "cfg_variables_and_faces" "cfg_keybindings" "cfg_site_gentoo" "cfg_conf-mode" "cfg_mail-mode" "cfg_region_hooks" "cfg_apache-mode" "cfg_crontab-mode" "cfg_gnuserv" "cfg_subversion" "cfg_css-mode" "cfg_php-mode" "cfg_tramp" "cfg_killbuffer" "cfg_color-theme" "cfg_uniquify" "cfg_tabbar" "cfg_python" "cfg_ack" "cfg_scpaste" "cfg_ido-mode" "cfg_javascript" "cfg_ange_ftp" "cfg_font-lock" "cfg_default_face" "cfg_ecb" "cfg_browser" "cfg_orgmode" ; "cfg_gnus" ; "cfg_cyrillic" )) ; enable disabled advanced features (put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil) (put 'scroll-left 'disabled nil) (put 'upcase-region 'disabled nil) ; narrow cursor ;(setq-default cursor-type 'hbar) (cua-mode) ; highlight current line (global-hl-line-mode 1) ; AV: non-aggressive scrolling (setq scroll-conservatively 100) (setq scroll-preserve-screen-position 't) (setq scroll-margin 0) (custom-set-variables ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom. ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful. ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right. '(ange-ftp-passive-host-alist (quote (("redbus2.chalkface.com" . "on") ("zope.halogen-dg.com" . "on") ("85.119.217.50" . "on")))) '(blink-cursor-mode nil) '(browse-url-browser-function (quote browse-url-firefox)) '(browse-url-new-window-flag t) '(buffers-menu-max-size 30) '(buffers-menu-show-directories t) '(buffers-menu-show-status nil) '(case-fold-search t) '(column-number-mode t) '(cua-enable-cua-keys nil) '(user-mail-address "[email protected]") '(cua-mode t nil (cua-base)) '(current-language-environment "UTF-8") '(file-name-shadow-mode t) '(fill-column 79) '(grep-command "grep --color=never -nHr -e * | grep -v .svn --color=never") '(grep-use-null-device nil) '(inhibit-startup-screen t) '(initial-frame-alist (quote ((width . 80) (height . 40)))) '(initsplit-customizations-alist (quote (("tabbar" "configs/cfg_tabbar.el" t) ("ecb" "configs/cfg_ecb.el" t) ("ange\\-ftp" "configs/cfg_ange_ftp.el" t) ("planner" "configs/cfg_planner.el" t) ("dired" "configs/cfg_dired.el" t) ("font\\-lock" "configs/cfg_font-lock.el" t) ("speedbar" "configs/cfg_ecb.el" t) ("muse" "configs/cfg_muse.el" t) ("tramp" "configs/cfg_tramp.el" t) ("uniquify" "configs/cfg_uniquify.el" t) ("default" "configs/cfg_font-lock.el" t) ("ido" "configs/cfg_ido-mode.el" t) ("org" "configs/cfg_orgmode.el" t) ("gnus" "configs/cfg_gnus.el" t) ("nnmail" "configs/cfg_gnus.el" t)))) '(ispell-program-name "aspell") '(jabber-account-list (quote (("[email protected]")))) '(jabber-nickname "AVK") '(jabber-password nil) '(jabber-server "halogen-dg.com") '(jabber-username "alex") '(remember-data-file "~/Plans/remember.org") '(safe-local-variable-values (quote ((dtml-top-element . "body")))) '(save-place t nil (saveplace)) '(scroll-bar-mode (quote right)) '(semantic-idle-scheduler-idle-time 432000) '(show-paren-mode t) '(svn-status-hide-unmodified t) '(tool-bar-mode nil nil (tool-bar)) '(transient-mark-mode t) '(truncate-lines f) '(woman-use-own-frame nil)) ; ?? ????? ??????? y ??? n? (fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p) (custom-set-faces ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom. ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful. ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right. '(compilation-error ((t (:foreground "tomato" :weight bold)))) '(cursor ((t (:background "red1")))) '(custom-variable-tag ((((class color) (background dark)) (:inherit variable-pitch :foreground "DarkOrange" :weight bold)))) '(hl-line ((t (:background "grey24")))) '(isearch ((t (:background "orange" :foreground "black")))) '(message-cited-text ((((class color) (background dark)) (:foreground "SandyBrown")))) '(message-header-name ((((class color) (background dark)) (:foreground "DarkGrey")))) '(message-header-other ((((class color) (background dark)) (:foreground "LightPink2")))) '(message-header-subject ((((class color) (background dark)) (:foreground "yellow2")))) '(message-separator ((((class color) (background dark)) (:foreground "thistle")))) '(region ((t (:background "brown")))) '(tooltip ((((class color)) (:inherit variable-pitch :background "IndianRed1" :foreground "black"))))) The above is a python emacs configure file. Where should I put it to use it? And, are there any other changes I need to make?

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• Weird Network Behavior of Home Router

  - by Stilgar

  First of all I would like to apologize because what you are going to read will be long and confusing but I am fighting this issue for 3 days now and am out of ideas. At home I have the following setup 50Mbps Internet connects into a home router A 2 desktop computers connect to router A via standard FTP LAN cables including one where the cable is ~20m long. a second router B connects to router A via standard FTP LAN cable X (~20m long). several devices connect to the wireless network of router B and there are a couple of desktop computers connected to it through FTP LAN cables. For some reason computers connected to router B when it is connected via cable X have very slow Internet connection. It is like 5 times slower than what is expected. This is the actual problem I am trying to solve. Interesting facts If a computer is connected to cable X directly instead of through router B the Internet speed is just fine (up to the 50Mbps I get from the ISP). Tested with two computers. I have tried replacing router B with another router C and the problem persists. If I connect router B via another cable to the same ports with the same settings everything seems to work fine and computers connected to router B have quite fast Internet I have tested mainly via Speedtest.net but I have also achieved similar speeds when downloading a file The upload speed is quite higher than the download speed in all cases. Note that my ISP usually has higher upload speed (unless it manages to hit the 50Mbps cap) It seems like the speed when connecting through router B with cable X is reduced 4-5 times no matter what the original speed is. For example via router B I get 10Mbps speed to local servers where I get 50Mbps when connected on router A. If I use a distant server where the ISP is only able to provide 25Mbps I get 4-5Mbps on router B. WiFi is slower than LAN on both routers (which is normal) but the reduced speed is reduced proportionally for WiFi. In addition the upload speed is normally higher from the ISP and it is also reduced proportionally. I have tried two different network configurations. One where I have NAT behind NAT where router B connects to router A via the WAN port and has its own DHCP. Second where router B connects to router A via standard LAN port and has DHCP disabled. In this configuration router B serves as a switch and the Network Gateway for computers connected to router B is the internal IP address of router A. Both configurations work just fine but both manifest the reduced speed issue. pings seem to work just fine As far as I can tell none of the cables is crossed The RJ45 setup for cable X orange orange-white brown brow-white blue blue-white green green-white This is a big problem for me since cable X passes through walls and floors and is very hard to replace. I also may have gotten some of the facts wrong because I am almost going crazy with this issue and testing includes going several floors up and down the staircase. One hypothesis I came up with is that the cable is defective in such a way that the voltage from the router affects its performance. When it is connected to a computer it performs just fine but the router has less power. Related hypothesis includes the cable being affected by electricity cables in the walls when the voltage is low. (I know nothing about electricity) So any ideas what to do, what to test or what the issue may be?

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• How to Organize a Programming Language Club

  - by Ben Griswold

  I previously noted that we started a language club at work.  You know, I searched around but I couldn’t find a copy of the How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook. Maybe it’s sold out?  Yes, Stack Overflow has quite a bit of information on how to learn and teach new languages and there’s also a good number of online tutorials which provide language introductions but I was interested in group learning.  After   two months of meetings, I present to you the Unofficial How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook.  1. Gauge interest. Start by surveying prospects. “Excuse me, smart-developer-whom-I-work-with-and-I-think-might-be-interested-in-learning-a-new-coding-language-with-me. Are you interested in learning a new language with me?” If you’re lucky, you work with a bunch of really smart folks who aren’t shy about teaching/learning in a group setting and you’ll have a collective interest in no time.  Simply suggesting the idea is the only effort required.  If you don’t work in this type of environment, maybe you should consider a new place of employment.  2. Make it official. Send out a “Welcome to the Club” email: There’s been talk of folks itching to learn new languages – Python, Scala, F# and Haskell to name a few.  Rather than taking on new languages alone, let’s learn in the open.  That’s right.  Let’s start a languages club.  We’ll have everything a real club needs – secret handshake, goofy motto and a high-and-mighty sense that we’re better than everybody else. T-shirts?  Hell YES!  Anyway, I’ve thrown this idea around the office and no one has laughed at me yet so please consider this your very official invitation to be in THE club. [Insert your ideas about how the club might be run, solicit feedback and suggestions, ask what other folks would like to get out the club, comment about club hazing practices and talk up the T-shirts even more. Finally, call out the languages you are interested in learning and ask the group for their list.] 3.  Send out invitations to the first meeting.  Don’t skimp!  Hallmark greeting cards for everyone.  Personalized.  Hearts over the I’s and everything.  Oh, and be sure to include the list of suggested languages with vote count.  Here the list of languages we are interested in: Python 5 Ruby 4 Objective-C 3 F# 2 Haskell 2 Scala 2 Ada 1 Boo 1 C# 1 Clojure 1 Erlang 1 Go 1 Pi 1 Prolog 1 Qt 1 4.  At the first meeting, there must be cake.  Lots of cake. And you should tackle some very important questions: Which language should we start with?  You can immediately go with the top vote getter or you could do as we did and designate each person to provide a high-level review of each of the proposed languages over the next two weeks.  After all presentations are completed, vote on the language. Our high-level review consisted of answers to a series of questions. Decide how often and where the group will meet.  We, for example, meet for a brown bag lunch every Wednesday.  Decide how you’re going to learn.  We determined that the best way to learn is to just dive in and write code.  After choosing our first language (Python), we talked about building an application, or performing coding katas, but we ultimately choose to complete a series of Project Euler problems.  We kept it simple – each member works out the same two problems each week in preparation of a code review the following Wednesday. 5.  Code, Review, Learn.  Prior to the weekly meeting, everyone uploads their solutions to our internal wiki.  Each Project Euler problem has a dedicated page.  In the meeting, we use a really fancy HD projector to show off each member’s solution.  It is very important to use an HD projector.  Again, don’t skimp!  Each code author speaks to their solution, everyone else comments, applauds, points fingers and laughs, etc.  As much as I’ve learned from solving the problems on my own, I’ve learned at least twice as much at the group code review.  6.  Rinse. Lather. Repeat.  We’ve hosted the language club for 7 weeks now.  The first meeting just set the stage.  The next two meetings provided a review of the languages followed by a first language selection.  The remaining meetings focused on Python and Project Euler problems.  Today we took a vote as to whether or not we’re ready to switch to another language and/or another problem set.  Pretty much everyone wants to stay the course for a few more weeks at least.  Until then, we’ll continue to code the next two solutions, review and learn. Again, we’ve been having a good time with the programming language club.  I’m glad it got off the ground.  What do you think?  Would you be interested in a language club?  Any suggestions on what we might do better?

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• CEN/CENELEC Lacks Perspective

  - by trond-arne.undheim

  Over the last few months, two of the European Standardization Organizations (ESOs), CEN and CENELEC have circulated an unfortunate position statement distorting the facts around fora and consortia. For the benefit of outsiders to this debate, let's just say that this debate regards whether and how the EU should recognize standards and specifications from certain fora and consortia based on a process evaluating the openness and transparency of such deliverables. The topic is complex, and somewhat confusing even to insiders, but nevertheless crucial to the European economy. As far as I can judge, their positions are not based on facts. This is unfortunate. For the benefit of clarity, here are some of the observations they make: a)"Most consortia are in essence driven by technology companies making hardware and software solutions, by definition very few of the largest ones are European-based". b) "Most consortia lack a European presence, relevant Committees, even those that are often cited as having stronger links with Europe, seem to lack an overall, inclusive set of participants". c) "Recognising specific consortia specifications will not resolve any concrete problems of interoperability for public authorities; interoperability depends on stringing together a range of specifications (from formal global bodies or consortia alike)". d) "Consortia already have the option to have their specifications adopted by the international formal standards bodies and many more exercise this than the two that seem to be campaigning for European recognition. Such specifications can then also be adopted as European standards." e) "Consortium specifications completely lack any process to take due and balanced account of requirements at national level - this is not important for technologies but can be a critical issue when discussing cross-border issues within the EU such as eGovernment, eHealth and so on". f) "The proposed recognition will not lead to standstill on national or European activities, nor to the adoption of the specifications as national standards in the CEN and CENELEC members (usually in their official national languages), nor to withdrawal of conflicting national standards. A big asset of the European standardization system is its coherence and lack of fragmentation." g) "We always miss concrete and specific examples of where consortia referencing are supposed to be helpful." First of all, note that ETSI, the third ESO, did not join the position. The reason is, of course, that ETSI beyond being an ESO, also has a global perspective and, moreover, does consider reality. Secondly, having produced arguments a) to g), CEN/CENELEC has the audacity to call a meeting on Friday 25 February entitled "ICT standardization - improving collaboration in Europe". This sounds very nice, but they have not set the stage for constructive debate. Rather, they demonstrate a striking lack of vision and lack of perspective. I will back this up by three facts, and leave it there. 1. Since the 1980s, global industry fora and consortia, such as IETF, W3C and OASIS have emerged as world-leading ICT standards development organizations with excellent procedures for openness and transparency in all phases of standards development, ex post and ex ante. - Practically no ICT system can be built without using fora and consortia standards (FCS). - Without using FCS, neither the Internet, upon which the EU economy depends, nor EU institutions would operate. - FCS are of high relevance for achieving and promoting interoperability and driving innovation. 2. FCS are complementary to the formally recognized standards organizations including the ESOs. - No work will be taken away from the ESOs should the EU recognize certain FCS. - Each FCS would be evaluated on its merit and on the openness of the process that produced it. ESOs would, with other stakeholders, have a say. - ESOs could potentially educate and assist European stakeholders to engage more actively and constructively with FCS. - ETSI, also an ESO, seems to clearly recognize these facts. 3. Europe and its Member States have a strong voice in several of the most relevant global industry fora and consortia. - W3C: W3C was founded in 1994 by an Englishman, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in collaboration with CERN, the European research lab. In April 1995, INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique) in France became the first European W3C host and in 2003, ERCIM (European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics), also based in France, took over the role of European W3C host from INRIA. Today, W3C has 326 Members, 40% of which are European. Government participation is also strong, and it could be increased - a development that is very much desired by W3C. Current members of the W3C Advisory Board includes Ora Lassila (Nokia) and Charles McCathie Nevile (Opera). Nokia is Finnish company, Opera is a Norwegian company. SAP's Claus von Riegen is an alumni of the same Advisory Board. - OASIS: its membership - 30% of which is European - represents the marketplace, reflecting a balance of providers, user companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. In particular, about 15% of OASIS members are governments or universities. Frederick Hirsch from Nokia, Claus von Riegen from SAP AG and Charles-H. Schulz from Ars Aperta are on the Board of Directors. Nokia is a Finnish company, SAP is a German company and Ars Aperta is a French company. The Chairman of the Board is Peter Brown, who is an Independent Consultant, an Austrian citizen AND an official of the European Parliament currently on long-term leave. - IETF: The oversight of its activities is by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), since 2007 chaired by Olaf Kolkman, a Dutch national who lives in Uithoorn, NL. Kolkman is director of NLnet Labs, a foundation chartered to develop open source software and open source standards for the Internet. Other IAB members include Marcelo Bagnulo whose affiliation is the University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain as well as Hannes Tschofenig from Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia is a Finnish company. Siemens is a German company. Nokia Siemens is a European joint venture. - Member States: At least 17 European Member States have developed Interoperability Frameworks that include FCS, according to the EU-funded National Interoperability Framework Observatory (see list and NIFO web site on IDABC). This also means they actively procure solutions using FCS, reference FCS in their policies and even in laws. Member State reps are free to engage in FCS, and many do. It would be nice if the EU adjusted to this reality. - A huge number of European nationals work in the global IT industry, on European soil or elsewhere, whether in EU registered companies or not. CEN/CENELEC lacks perspective and has engaged in an effort to twist facts that is quite striking from a publicly funded organization. I wish them all possible success with Friday's meeting but I fear all of the most important stakeholders will not be at the table. Not because they do not wish to collaborate, but because they just have been insulted. If they do show up, it would be a gracious move, almost beyond comprehension. While I do not expect CEN/CENELEC to line up perfectly in favor of fora and consortia, I think it would be to their benefit to stick to more palatable observations. Actually, I would suggest an apology, straightening out the facts. This works among friends and it works in an organizational context. Then, we can all move on. Standardization is important. Too important to ignore. Too important to distort. The European economy depends on it. We need CEN/CENELEC. It is an important organization. But CEN/CENELEC needs fora and consortia, too.

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• Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

  - by Wes McClure

  Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare.  Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown.  Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made.  The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application.  Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine.  Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term.  Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster.  This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable.  Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult.  This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about.  Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection.  How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us.  Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years.  This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test.  I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person!  This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation.  As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds!  In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base.  Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements.  What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code?  Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users.  If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)?  What matters, not how.  LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation.  The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence.  It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.”  Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective.  That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go.  Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it.  Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works.  However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone.  Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well.  In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it.  Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages.  We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains.  That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste.  Other times features converge and aren’t combined.  Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems.  Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most.  These tend to be the parts that are changed.  There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above).  I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up.  If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas.   Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion!  Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others.  It’s an evolution, not a revolution.  These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process.  I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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• Book Review: Brownfield Application Development in .NET

  - by DotNetBlues

  I recently finished reading the book Brownfield Application Development in .NET by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham.  The book is available from Manning.  First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of Manning as a publisher.  I've found their books to be top-quality, over all.  As a Kindle owner, I also appreciate getting an ebook copy along with the dead tree copy.  I find ebooks to be much more convenient to read, but hard-copies are easier to reference. The book covers, surprisingly enough, working with brownfield applications.  Which is well and good, if that term has meaning to you.  It didn't for me.  Without retreading a chunk of the first chapter, the authors break code bases into three broad categories: greenfield, brownfield, and legacy.  Greenfield is, essentially, new development that hasn't had time to rust and is (hopefully) being approached with some discipline.  Legacy applications are those that are more or less stable and functional, that do not expect to see a lot of work done to them, and are more likely to be replaced than reworked. Brownfield code is the gray (brown?) area between the two and the authors argue, quite effectively, that it is the most likely state for an application to be in.  Brownfield code has, in some way, been allowed to tarnish around the edges and can be difficult to work with.  Although I hadn't realized it, most of the code I've worked on has been brownfield.  Sometimes, there's talk of scrapping and starting over.  Sometimes, the team dismisses increased discipline as ivory tower nonsense.  And, sometimes, I've been the ignorant culprit vexing my future self. The book is broken into two major sections, plus an introduction chapter and an appendix.  The first section covers what the authors refer to as "The Ecosystem" which consists of version control, build and integration, testing, metrics, and defect management.  The second section is on actually writing code for brownfield applications and discusses object-oriented principles, architecture, external dependencies, and, of course, how to deal with these when coming into an existing code base. The ecosystem section is just shy of 140 pages long and brings some real meat to the matter.  The focus on "pain points" immediately sets the tone as problem-solution, rather than academic.  The authors also approach some of the topics from a different angle than some essays I've read on similar topics.  For example, the chapter on automated testing is on just that -- automated testing.  It's all well and good to criticize a project as conflating integration tests with unit tests, but it really doesn't make anyone's life better.  The discussion on testing is more focused on the "right" level of testing for existing projects.  Sometimes, an integration test is the best you can do without gutting a section of functional code.  Even if you can sell other developers and/or management on doing so, it doesn't actually provide benefit to your customers to rewrite code that works.  This isn't to say the authors encourage sloppy coding.  Far from it.  Just that they point out the wisdom of ignoring the sleeping bear until after you deal with the snarling wolf. The other sections take a similarly real-world, workable approach to the pain points they address.  As the section moves from technical solutions like version control and continuous integration (CI) to the softer, process issues of metrics and defect tracking, the authors begin to gently suggest moving toward a zero defect count.  While that really sounds like an unreasonable goal for a lot of ongoing projects, it's quite apparent that the authors have first-hand experience with taming some gruesome projects.  The suggestions are grounded and workable, and the difficulty of some situations is explicitly acknowledged. I have to admit that I started getting bored by the end of the ecosystem section.  No matter how valuable I think a good project manager or business analyst is to a successful ALM, at the end of the day, I'm a gear-head.  Also, while I agreed with a lot of the ecosystem ideas, in theory, I didn't necessarily feel that a lot of the single-developer projects that I'm often involved in really needed that level of rigor.  It's only after reading the sidebars and commentary in the coding section that I had the context for the arguments made in favor of a strong ecosystem supporting the development process.  That isn't to say that I didn't support good product management -- indeed, I've probably pushed too hard, on occasion, for a strong ALM outside of just development.  This book gave me deeper insight into why some corners shouldn't be cut and how damaging certain sins of omission can be. The code section, though, kept me engaged for its entirety.  Many technical books can be used as reference material from day one.  The authors were clear, however, that this book is not one of these.  The first chapter of the section (chapter seven, over all) addresses object oriented (OO) practices.  I've read any number of definitions, discussions, and treatises on OO.  None of the chapter was new to me, but it was a good review, and I'm of the opinion that it's good to review the foundations of what you do, from time to time, so I didn't mind. The remainder of the book is really just about how to apply OOP to existing code -- and, just because all your code exists in classes does not mean that it's object oriented.  That topic has the potential to be extremely condescending, but the authors miraculously managed to never once make me feel like a dolt or that they were wagging their finger at me for my prior sins.  Instead, they continue the "pain points" and problem-solution presentation to give concrete examples of how to apply some pretty academic-sounding ideas.  That's a point worth emphasizing, as my experience with most OO discussions is that they stay in the academic realm.  This book gives some very, very good explanations of why things like the Liskov Substitution Principle exist and why a corporate programmer should even care.  Even if you know, with absolute certainty, that you'll never have to work on an existing code-base, I would recommend this book just for the clarity it provides on OOP. This book goes beyond just theory, or even real-world application.  It presents some methods for fixing problems that any developer can, and probably will, encounter in the wild.  First, the authors address refactoring application layers and internal dependencies.  Then, they take you through those layers from the UI to the data access layer and external dependencies.  Finally, they come full circle to tie it all back to the overall process.  By the time the book is done, you're left with a lot of ideas, but also a reasonable plan to begin to improve an existing project structure. Throughout the book, it's apparent that the authors have their own preferred methodology (TDD and domain-driven design), as well as some preferred tools.  The "Our .NET Toolbox" is something of a neon sign pointing to that latter point.  They do not beat the reader over the head with anything resembling a "One True Way" mentality.  Even for the most emphatic points, the tone is quite congenial and helpful.  With some of the near-theological divides that exist within the tech community, I found this to be one of the more remarkable characteristics of the book.  Although the authors favor tools that might be considered Alt.NET, there is no reason the advice and techniques given couldn't be quite successful in a pure Microsoft shop with Team Foundation Server.  For that matter, even though the book specifically addresses .NET, it could be applied to a Java and Oracle shop, as well.

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