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• TiVo Follow-up&hellip;Training Opportunities

  - by MightyZot

  A few posts ago I talked about my experience with TiVo Customer Service. While I didn’t receive bad service per se, I felt like the reps could have communicated better. I made the argument that it should be just as easy to leave a company as it is to engage with a company, even though my intention is to remain a TiVo fan. I worked for DataStorm Technologies in the early 90s. I pointed out to another developer that we were leaving files behind in our installations. My opinion was that, if the customer is uninstalling our application, there should be no trace of it left after uninstall except for the customer’s data. He replied with, “screw ‘em. They’re leaving us. Why do we care if we left anything behind?” Wow. Surely there is a lot of arrogance in that statement. Think about this…how often do you change your services, devices, or whatever?  Personally, I change things up about once every two or three years. If I don’t change things up, I at least think about it. So, every two or three years there is an opportunity for you (as a vendor or business) to sell me something. (That opportunity actually exists all the time, because there are many of these two or three year periods overlapping.) Likewise, you have the opportunity to win back my business every two or three years as well. Customer service on exit is just as important as customer service during engagement because, every so often, you have another chance to gain back my loyalty. If you screw that up on exit, your chances are close to zero. In addition, you need to consider all of the potential or existing customers that are part of or affected by my social organizations. “Melissa” at TiVo gave me a call last week and set up some time to talk about my experience. We talked yesterday and she gave me a few moments to pontificate about my thoughts on the importance of a complete customer experience. She had listened to my customer support calls and agreed that I had made it clear that I intended to remain a TiVo customer even though suddenLink is handling my subscription. She said that suddenLink is a very important partner for them and, of course, they want to do everything they can to support TiVo / suddenLink customers.  “Melissa” also said that they had turned this experience into a training opportunity for the reps involved. I hope that is true, because that “programmer arrogance” that I mentioned above (which was somewhat pervasive back then) may be part of the reason why that company is no longer around. Good job “Melissa”!  And, like I said, I am still a TiVo fan. In fact, we love our new TiVo and many of the great new features. In addition, if you’re one of the two people that read these posts, please remember that these are just opinions. Your experiences may be, and likely will be, completely unique to you.

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• Exception Handling Frequency/Log Detail

  - by Cyborgx37

  I am working on a fairly complex .NET application that interacts with another application. Many single-line statements are possible culprits for throwing an Exception and there is often nothing I can do to check the state before executing them to prevent these Exceptions. The question is, based on best practices and seasoned experience, how frequently should I lace my code with try/catch blocks? I've listed three examples below, but I'm open to any advice. I'm really hoping to get some pros/cons of various approaches. I can certainly come up with some of my own (greater log granularity for the O-C approach, better performance for the Monolithic approach), so I'm looking for experience over opinion. EDIT: I should add that this application is a batch program. The only "recovery" necessary in most cases is to log the error, clean up gracefully, and quit. So this could be seen to be as much a question of log granularity as exception handling. In my mind's eye I can imagine good reasons for both, so I'm looking for some general advice to help me find an appropriate balance. Monolitich Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } public static void Step2(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } public static void Step3(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } } Delegated Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Obsessive-Compulsive Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Other approaches welcomed and encouraged. Above are examples only.

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• Common business drivers that lead to creating and sustaining a project

  Common business drivers that lead to creating and sustaining a project include and are not limited to: cost reduction, increased return on investment (ROI), reduced time to market, increased speed and efficiency, increased security, and increased interoperability. These drivers primarily focus on streamlining and reducing cost to make a company more profitable with less overhead. According to Answers.com cost reduction is defined as reducing costs to improve profitability, and may be implemented when a company is having financial problems or prevent problems. ROI is defined as the amount of value received relative to the amount of money invested according to PayperclickList.com.  With the ever increasing demands on businesses to compete in today’s market, companies are constantly striving to reduce the time it takes for a concept to become a product and be sold within the global marketplace. In business, some people say time is money, so if a project can reduce the time a business process takes it in fact saves the company which is always good for the bottom line. The Social Security Administration states that data security is the protection of data from accidental or intentional but unauthorized modification, destruction. Interoperability is the capability of a system or subsystem to interact with other systems or subsystems. In my personal opinion, these drivers would not really differ for a profit-based organization, compared to a non-profit organization. Both corporate entities strive to reduce cost, and strive to keep operation budgets low. However, the reasoning behind why they want to achieve this does contrast. Typically profit based organizations strive to increase revenue and market share so that the business can grow. Alternatively, not-for-profit businesses are more interested in increasing their reach within communities whether it is to increase annual donations or invest in the lives of others. Success or failure of a project can be determined by one or more of these drivers based on the scope of a project and the company’s priorities associated with each of the drivers. In addition, if a project attempts to incorporate multiple drivers and is only partially successful, then the project might still be considered to be a success due to how close the project was to meeting each of the priorities. Continuous evaluation of the project could lead to a decision to abort a project, because it is expected to fail before completion. Evaluations should be executed after the completion of every software development process stage. Pfleeger notes that software development process stages include: Requirements Analysis and Definition System Design Program Design Program Implementation Unit Testing Integration Testing System Delivery Maintenance Each evaluation at every state should consider all the business drivers included in the scope of a project for how close they are expected to meet expectations. In addition, minimum requirements of acceptance should also be included with the scope of the project and should be reevaluated as the project progresses to ensure that the project makes good economic sense to continue. If the project falls below these benchmarks then the project should be put on hold until it does make more sense or the project should be aborted because it does not meet the business driver requirements.   References Cost Reduction Program. (n.d.). Dictionary of Accounting Terms. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/cost-reduction-program Government Information Exchange. (n.d.). Government Information Exchange Glossary. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from SSA.gov Web site: http://www.ssa.gov/gix/definitions.html PayPerClickList.com. (n.d.). Glossary Term R - Pay Per Click List. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from PayPerClickList.com Web site: http://www.payperclicklist.com/glossary/termr.html Pfleeger, S & Atlee, J.(2009). Software Engineering: Theory and Practice. Boston:Prentice Hall Veluchamy, Thiyagarajan. (n.d.). Glossary « Thiyagarajan Veluchamy’s Blog. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from Thiyagarajan.WordPress.com Web site: http://thiyagarajan.wordpress.com/glossary/

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• Some thoughts on email hosting for one’s own domain

  - by jamiet

  I have used the same email providers for my own domains for a few years now however I am considering moving over to a new provider. In this email I’ll share my current thoughts and hopefully I’ll get some feedback that might help me to decide on what to do next. What I use today I have three email addresses that I use primarily (I have changed the domains in this blog post as I don’t want to give them away to spammers): [email protected] – My personal account that I give out to family and friends and which I use to register on websites [email protected]  - An account that I use to catch email from the numerous mailing lists that I am on [email protected] – I am a self-employed consultant so this is an account that I hand out to my clients, my accountant, and other work-related organisations Those two domains (jtpersonaldomain.com & jtworkdomain.com) are both managed at http://domains.live.com which is a fantastic service provided by Microsoft that for some perplexing reason they never bother telling anyone about. It offers multiple accounts (I have seven at jtpersonaldomain.com though as already stated I only use two of them) which are accessed via Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail.com) along with usage reporting plus a few other odds and sods that I never use. Best of all though, its totally free. In addition, given that I have got both domains hosted using http://domains.live.com I can link my various accounts together and switch between them at Outlook.com without having to login and logout: N.B. You’ll notice that there are two other accounts listed there in addition to the three I already mentioned. One is my mum’s account which helps me provide IT support/spam filtering services to her and the other is the donation account for AdventureWorks on Azure. I find that linking feature to be very handy indeed. Finally, http://domains.live.com is the epitome of “it just works”. I set up jtworkdomain.com at http://domains.live.com over three years ago and I am pretty certain I haven’t been back there even once to administer it. Proposed changes OK, so if I like http://domains.live.com so much why am I considering changing? Well, I earn my corn in the Microsoft ecosystem and if I’m reading the tea-leaves correctly its looking increasingly likely that the services that I’m going to have to be familiar with in the future are all going to be running on top of and alongside Windows Azure Active Directory and Office 365 respectively. Its clear to me that Microsoft’s are pushing their customers toward cloud services and, like it or lump it, data integration developers like me may have to come along for the ride. I don’t think the day is too far off when we can log into Windows Azure SQL Database (aka SQL Azure), Team Foundation Service, Dynamics etc… using the same credentials that are currently used for Office 365 and over time I would expect those things to get integrated together a lot better – that integration will be based upon a Windows Azure Active Directory identity. This should not come as a surprise, in my opinion Microsoft’s whole enterprise play over the past 15 or 20 years can be neatly surmised as “get people onto Windows Server and Active Directory then upsell from there” – in the not-too-distant-future the only difference is that they’re trying to do it in the cloud. I want to get familiar with these services and hence I am considering moving jtworkdomain.com onto Office 365. I’ll lose the convenience of easily being able to switch to that account at Outlook.com and moreover I’ll have to start paying for it (I think it’ll be about fifty quid a year – not a massive amount but its quite a bit more than free) but increasingly this is beginning to look like a move I have to make. So that’s where my head is at right now. Anyone have any relevant thoughts or experiences to share? Please let me know in the comments below. @Jamiet

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• SQL SERVER – Why Do We Need Data Quality Services – Importance and Significance of Data Quality Services (DQS)

  - by pinaldave

  Databases are awesome.  I’m sure my readers know my opinion about this – I have made SQL Server my life’s work after all!  I love technology and all things computer-related.  Of course, even with my love for technology, I have to admit that it has its limits.  For example, it takes a human brain to notice that data has been input incorrectly.  Computer “brains” might be faster than humans, but human brains are still better at pattern recognition.  For example, a human brain will notice that “300” is a ridiculous age for a human to be, but to a computer it is just a number.  A human will also notice similarities between “P. Dave” and “Pinal Dave,” but this would stump most computers. In a database, these sorts of anomalies are incredibly important.  Databases are often used by multiple people who rely on this data to be true and accurate, so data quality is key.  That is why the improved SQL Server features Master Data Management talks about Data Quality Services.  This service has the ability to recognize and flag anomalies like out of range numbers and similarities between data.  This allows a human brain with its pattern recognition abilities to double-check and ensure that P. Dave is the same as Pinal Dave. A nice feature of Data Quality Services is that once you set the rules for the program to follow, it will not only keep your data organized in the future, but go to the past and “fix up” any data that has already been entered.  It also allows you do combine data from multiple places and it will apply these rules across the board, so that you don’t have any weird issues that crop up when trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. There are two parts of Data Quality Services that help you accomplish all these neat things.  The first part is DQL Server, which you can think of as the hardware component of the system.  It is installed on the side of (it needs to install separately after SQL Server is installed) SQL Server and runs quietly in the background, performing all its cleanup services. DQS Client is the user interface that you can interact with to set the rules and check over your data.  There are three main aspects of Client: knowledge base management, data quality projects and administration.  Knowledge base management is the part of the system that allows you to set the rules, or program the “knowledge base,” so that your database is clean and consistent. Data Quality projects are what run in the background and clean up the data that is already present.  The administration allows you to check out what DQS Client is doing, change rules, and generally oversee the entire process.  The whole process is user-friendly and a pleasure to use.  I highly recommend implementing Data Quality Services in your database. Here are few of my blog posts which are related to Data Quality Services and I encourage you to try this out. SQL SERVER – Installing Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 SQL SERVER – Step by Step Guide to Beginning Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – Introduction to DQS SQL SERVER – DQS Error – Cannot connect to server – A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate “SetDataQualitySessions” – SetDataQualitySessionPhaseTwo SQL SERVER – Configuring Interactive Cleansing Suggestion Min Score for Suggestions in Data Quality Services (DQS) – Sensitivity of Suggestion SQL SERVER – Unable to DELETE Project in Data Quality Projects (DQS) Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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• Unclaimed user group prizes, Live meeting on Monday, Next weeks UG, SQLRelay and more prizes

  - by Testas

    Hi Everyone Firstly I want to let you know that I finally found the LINQ book prize winners and the list of people at the bottom of this email are owed a LINQ book. This will be given out at next week’s UG meeting Live meeting with Carolyn Chau, Program Manager at Microsoft on Monday! It is very rare that we get the opportunity to have a Live meeting with a Program Manager in Redmond. Carolyn Chau will be presenting PowerView next Monday at 8pm. Live meeting details can be found on http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/388/Live-Meeting-on-SQL-Server-2012-PowerView-with-Carolyn-Chau-Principal-Program-Manager-in-the-Reporting-Services-in-association-with-SQLPASS-SQLServerFAQ-and-SQLBits.aspx Next week’s UG!! We welcome Mark Broadbent to Manchester next week where he will be presenting his session on SQL Server 2012 on Windows Core. We also hand out the unclaimed prizes. Register at http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/369/Thursday-night-meeting-at-BSS-with-Chris-TestaONeill-and-Mark-Broadbent.aspx Chris Webb is in Manchester!!! Chris Webb will be speaking at the Manchester SQL Server UG on 4th July. He will also be running his Real World Cube Design and Performance Tuning with Analysis Services between the 3rd – 5th July. If you want to attend then you can sign up at the link below http://www.technitrain.com/coursedetail.php?c=13&trackingcode=FAQ SQLRelay and a Special Prize and Jamie Thomson comes to Manchester!!!! SQLRelay takes place in Manchester on the 22nd. We have a special guest, after years of asking Jamie Thomson is coming to Manchester. The SSIS Junkie will be gracing us with his presence with a talk on SSIS 2012. Also we have a prize. Know a friend or colleague who would benefit from SQLRelay? Get them to register at www.sqlserverfaq.com and then register for the event http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/373/ALL-DAY-TUESDAY-EVENT-12-hours-of-SQL-Server-2012-at-the-SQLRelay-meeting-at-the-COOP-Manchester.aspx Then send an email to [email protected] with the subject of SQLFriend with the name of your friend. If you are both at the SQLRelay event on the day and your names are pulled out of the hat you will win a PASS 2011 DVD and your friend will win the “Best of PASS DVD 2011” worth  $1000 courtesy of SQLPASS. The draw will take place between 4.30pm – 5pm on the day. SQLBits feedback!!!!! Attended SQLBits? We really need to know your opinion. Please fill out the survey for the days you attended If you attended any of the days at SQLBits please can you all fill out the following survey http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsX If you attended the Thursday Training day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXThursday If you attended the Friday Deep Dives day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXFriday If you attended the Saturday Community day then please fill out the following survey: http://www.sqlbits.com/SQLBitsXSaturday Thanks   Chris and Martin   LINQ BOOK winners Andrew Birds Chris Kennedy Dave Carpenter David Forrester Ian Ringrose James Cullen James Simpson Kevan Riley Kirsty Hunter Martin Bell Martin Croft Michael Docherty Naga Anand Ram Mangipudi Neal Atkinson Nick Colebourn Pavel Nefyodov Ralph Baines Rick Hibbert saad saleh Simon Enion Stan Venn Steve Powell Stuart Quinn

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• Brainless Backups

  - by Jesse

  I’m a software developer by trade which means to my friends and family I’m just a “computer guy”. It’s assumed that I know everything about every facet of computing from removing spyware to replacing hardware. I also can do all of this blindly over the phone or after hearing a five to ten word description of the problem over dinner ;-) In my position as CIO of my friends and families I’ve been in the unfortunate position of trying to recover music, pictures, or documents off of failed hard drives on more than one occasion. It’s not a great situation for anyone, and it’s always at these times that the importance of backups becomes so clear. Several months back a friend of mine found himself in this situation. The hard drive on his 8 year old laptop failed and took a good number of his digital photos with it. I think most folks can deal with losing some of their music and even some of their documents, but it really stings to lose pictures of past events and loved ones. After ordering a new laptop, my friend went out and bought an external hard drive so that he could start keeping a backup of his data. As fate would have it, several months later the drive in his new laptop failed and he learned the hard way that simply buying the external hard drive isn’t enough… you actually have to copy your stuff over every once in awhile! The importance of backup and recovery plans is (hopefully) well known in IT organizations. Well executed backup plans are in place, and hopefully the backup and recovery process is tested regularly. When you’re talking about users at home, however, the need for these backups is often understood far too late. Most typical users can’t be expected to remember to backup their data regularly and also don’t always have the know-how to setup automated backups. For my friends and family members in this situation I recommend tools like Dropbox, Carbonite, and Mozy. Here’s why I like them: They’re affordable: Dropbox and Mozy both have free offerings, though most people with lots of music and/or photos to backup will probably exceed the storage limitations of those free plans pretty quickly. Still, all three offer pretty affordable monthly or yearly plans. In my opinion, Carbonite’s unlimited storage plan for $50-$60 per year is the best value around. They’re easy to setup: Both Dropbox and Carbonite are very easy to get setup and start using. I’ve never used Mozy, but I imagine it’s similarly painless to get up and running. Backups are automatically “off-site”: A backup that is sitting on an external hard drive right next to your computer is great, but might not protect against flood damage, a power surge, or other disasters in that single location. These services exist “in the cloud” so to speak, helping mitigate those concerns. Granted, this kind of backup scheme requires some trust in the 3rd party to protect your data from both malicious people and disastrous events. This truly is a bit of a double edged sword, but I sleep well at night knowing that my data is being backed up and secured by a company made up of engineers that focus on the business of doing backups right. Backups are “brainless”: What I like most about services like these is that they work “automagically” in the background, watching for files to be updated and automatically backing up those changes. There’s no need to remember to plug in that external drive and copy your data over. Since starting to recommend these services to my friends and family I find myself wearing my “data recovery” hat far less often. The only way backups are effective for your standard computer user is if they’re completely automatic. Backups need to be brainless, or they just won’t work.

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• Software Architecture verses Software Design

  Recently, I was asked what the differences between software architecture and software design are. At a very superficial level both architecture and design seem to mean relatively the same thing. However, if we examine both of these terms further we will find that they are in fact very different due to the level of details they encompass. Software Architecture can be defined as the essence of an application because it deals with high level concepts that do not include any details as to how they will be implemented. To me this gives stakeholders a view of a system or application as if someone was viewing the earth from outer space. At this distance only very basic elements of the earth can be detected like land, weather and water. As the viewer comes closer to earth the details in this view start to become more defined. Details about the earth’s surface will start to actually take form as well as mane made structures will be detected. The process of transitioning a view from outer space to inside our earth’s atmosphere is similar to how an architectural concept is transformed to an architectural design. From this vantage point stakeholders can start to see buildings and other structures as if they were looking out of a small plane window. This distance is still high enough to see a large area of the earth’s surface while still being able to see some details about the surface. This viewing point is very similar to the actual design process of an application in that it takes the very high level architectural concept or concepts and applies concrete design details to form a software design that encompasses the actual implementation details in the form of responsibilities and functions. Examples of these details include: interfaces, components, data, and connections. In review, software architecture deals with high level concepts without regard to any implementation details. Software design on the other hand takes high level concepts and applies concrete details so that software can be implemented. As part of the transition between software architecture to the creation of software design an evaluation on the architecture is recommended. There are several benefits to including this step as part of the transition process. It allows for projects to ensure that they are on the correct path as to meeting the stakeholder’s requirement goals, identifies possible cost savings and can be used to find missing or nonspecific requirements that cause ambiguity in a design. In the book “Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies”, they define key benefits to adding an architectural review process to ensure that an architecture is ready to move on to the design phase. Benefits to evaluating software architecture: Gathers all stakeholders to communicate about the project Goals are clearly defined in regards to the creation or validation of specific requirements Goals are prioritized so that when conflicts occur decisions will be made based on goal priority Defines a clear expectation of the architecture so that all stakeholders have a keen understanding of the project Ensures high quality documentation of the architecture Enables discoveries of architectural reuse  Increases the quality of architecture practices. I can remember a few projects that I worked on that could have really used an architectural review prior to being passed on to developers. This project was to create some new advertising space on the company’s website in order to sell space based on the location and some other criteria. I was one of the developer selected to lead this project and I was given a high level design concept and a long list of ever changing requirements due to the fact that sales department had no clear direction as to what exactly the project was going to do or how they were going to bill the clients once they actually agreed to purchase the Ad space. In my personal opinion IT should have pushed back to have the requirements further articulated instead of forcing programmers to code blindly attempting to build such an ambiguous project.  Unfortunately, we had to suffer with this project for about 4 months when it should have only taken 1.5 to complete due to the constantly changing and unclear requirements. References  Clements, P., Kazman, R., & Klein, M. (2002). Evaluating Software Architectures. Westford, Massachusetts: Courier Westford. 

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• F# and the rose-tinted reflection

  - by CliveT

  We're already seeing increasing use of many cores on client desktops. It is a change that has been long predicted. It is not just a change in architecture, but our notions of efficiency in a program. No longer can we focus on the asymptotic complexity of an algorithm by counting the steps that a single core processor would take to execute it. Instead we'll soon be more concerned about the scalability of the algorithm and how well we can increase the performance as we increase the number of cores. This may even lead us to throw away our most efficient algorithms, and switch to less efficient algorithms that scale better. We might even be willing to waste cycles in order to speculatively execute at the algorithm rather than the hardware level. State is the big headache in this parallel world. At the hardware level, main memory doesn't necessarily contain the definitive value corresponding to a particular address. An update to a location might still be held in a CPU's local cache and it might be some time before the value gets propagated. To get the latest value, and the notion of "latest" takes a lot of defining in this world of rapidly mutating state, the CPUs may well need to communicate to decide who has the definitive value of a particular address in order to avoid lost updates. At the user program level, this means programmers will need to lock objects before modifying them, or attempt to avoid the overhead of locking by understanding the memory models at a very deep level. I think it's this need to avoid statefulness that has led to the recent resurgence of interest in functional languages. In the 1980s, functional languages started getting traction when research was carried out into how programs in such languages could be auto-parallelised. Sadly, the impracticality of some of the languages, the overheads of communication during this parallel execution, and rapid improvements in compiler technology on stock hardware meant that the functional languages fell by the wayside. The one thing that these languages were good at was getting rid of implicit state, and this single idea seems like a solution to the problems we are going to face in the coming years. Whether these languages will catch on is hard to predict. The mindset for writing a program in a functional language is really very different from the way that object-oriented problem decomposition happens - one has to focus on the verbs instead of the nouns, which takes some getting used to. There are a number of hybrid functional/object languages that have been becoming more popular in recent times. These half-way houses make it easy to use functional ideas for some parts of the program while still allowing access to the underlying object-focused platform without a great deal of impedance mismatch. One example is F# running on the CLR which, in Visual Studio 2010, has because a first class member of the pack. Inside Visual Studio 2010, the tooling for F# has improved to the point where it is easy to set breakpoints and watch values change while debugging at the source level. In my opinion, it is the tooling support that will enable the widespread adoption of functional languages - without this support, people will put off any transition into the functional world for as long as they possibly can. Without tool support it will make it hard to learn these languages. One tool that doesn't currently support F# is Reflector. The idea of decompiling IL to a functional language is daunting, but F# is potentially so important I couldn't dismiss the idea. As I'm currently developing Reflector 6.5, I thought it wise to take four days just to see how far I could get in doing so, even if it achieved little more than to be clearer on how much was possible, and how long it might take. You can read what happened here, and of the insights it gave us on ways to improve the tool.

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• Ongoing confusion about ivars and properties in objective C

  - by Earl Grey

  After almost 8 months being in ios programming, I am again confused about the right approach. Maybe it is not the language but some OOP principle I am confused about. I don't know.. I was trying C# a few years back. There were fields (private variables, private data in an object), there were getters and setters (methods which exposed something to the world) ,and properties which was THE exposed thing. I liked the elegance of the solution, for example there could be a class that would have a property called DailyRevenue...a float...but there was no private variable called dailyRevenue, there was only a field - an array of single transaction revenues...and the getter for DailyRevenue property calculated the revenue transparently. If somehow the internals of daily revenue calculation would change, it would not affect somebody who consumed my DailyRevenue property in any way, since he would be shielded from getter implementation. I understood that sometimes there was , and sometimes there wasn't a 1-1 relationship between fields and properties. depending on the requirements. It seemed ok in my opinion. And that properties are THE way to acces the data in object. I know the difference betweeen private, protected, and public keyword. Now lets get to objectiveC. On what factor should I base my decision about making someting only an ivar or making it as a property? Is the mental model the same as I describe above? I know that ivars are "protected" by default, not "private" asi in c#..But thats ok I think, no big deal for my presnet level of understanding the whole ios development. The point is ivars are not accesible from outside (given i don't make them public..but i won't). The thing that clouds my clear understanding is that I can have IBOutlets from ivars. Why am I seeing internal object data in the UI? *Why is it ok?* On the other hand, if I make an IBOutlet from property, and I do not make it readonly, anybody can change it. Is this ok too? Let's say I have a ParseManager object. This object would use a built in Foundation framework class called NSXMLParser. Obviously my ParseManager will utilize this nsxmlparser's capabilities but will also do some additional work. Now my question is, who should initialize this NSXMLParser object and in which way should I make a reference to it from the ParseManager object, when there is a need to parse something. A) the ParseManager -1) in its default init method (possible here ivar - or - ivar+ppty) -2) with lazyloading in getter (required a ppty here) B) Some other object - who will pass a reference to NSXMLParser object to the ParseManager object. -1) in some custom initializer (initWithParser:(NSXMLPArser *) parser) when creating the ParseManager object.. A1 - the problem is, we create a parser and waste memory while it is not yet needed. However, we can be sure that all methods that are part ot ParserManager object, can use the ivar safely, since it exists. A2 - the problem is, the nsxmlparser is exposed to outside world, although it could be read only. Would we want a parser to be exposed in some scenario? B1 - this could maybe be useful when we would want to use more types of parsers..i dont know... I understand that architectural requirements and and language is not the same. But clearly the two are in relation. How to get out of that mess of my? Please bear with me, I wasn't able to come up with a single ultimate question. And secondly, it's better to not scare me with some superadvanced newspeak that talks about some crazy internals (what the compiler does) and edge cases.

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• Beginner Geek: Scan Files for Viruses Before Using Them

  - by Mysticgeek

  To help avoid getting your computer infected by malicious software, it’s a good idea to scan files before executing them. Today we take a look at a couple of options that will let you scan files easily from your desktop. Scan File with Your Antivirus Software Most Antivirus software will put an option in the context menu so you can scan individual files. After downloading a file or email attachment, simply right-click the file and select the option to scan with your Antivirus software. If you want to scan more than one at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while you clicking each file you want to scan. Then right-click and select to scan with your Antivirus software. Here is our favorite Antivirus app, Microsoft Security Essentials scanning a couple of files. If a virus is found, your Antivirus app will delete it or put it in Quarantine so it cannot infect your system. Using VirusTotal Uploader To be very thorough and want a second opinion (actually 41), then you might want to check out the VirusTotal Uploader. This handy app will scan your files with 41 different Antivirus apps online. After installing VirusTotal Uploader, right-click the file, go to Send To, then VirusTotal. Alternately you can launch VirusTotal Uploader and Get and upload the file. It will send the file to VirusTotal.com and scan it with 41 different Antivirus apps and show you the results.   If you don’t want to install the Uploader, you can go to the VirusTotal site and upload a file from there to scan. We’ve noticed that occasionally there will be a false positive detected on files we know are clean. Sometimes the definition database of an Anti-malware app isn’t current, or an obscure Antivirus App will find something questionable. If that is the case, use your best judgment when viewing the results. Conclusion Most Antivirus apps today have real-time scanning and should be able to detect possible infections before you’re able to execute them. However, if they don’t or when in doubt, following these tips can save you a lot of headaches in the long run. If you use a lot of different flash drives throughout the day, check out our article on how to scan a thumb drive for viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog. Download Microsoft Security Essentials Download VirusTotal Uploader VirusTotal Website Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Scan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebMake Microsoft Security Essentials Scan Faster by Excluding Certain File TypesBeginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay DialogSecure Computing: Free Anti-Virus Protection With AVG Free Edition TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox

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• Laptop screen blank after login when external monitor is not connected

  - by Ramon Suarez

  Ubuntu does not switch back automatically to only monitor present when booting after disconnecting external monitor. Here's a video showing what happens. I get to the login window and everything looks ok, then I type my password, the desktop image shows up and... everything goes blank. It does not happen when I just login as a guest. When possible I work with my laptop connected to an external screen via the VGA port. The problem comes when I boot the computer without that secondary screen connected: The login screen comes out ok. After login the screen goes black, but I can hear the login sound. If I hit ctr + alt + backwards-delete and login again sometimes it is fixed, but not all. If I log in as a different user everything is OK. Then I log in as my user and sometimes it works. To have a screen I have to plug a monitor. Although I have turned on the laptop display with that monitor on, if I reboot it goes blank again after login, even if I turn off the external monitor before turning off the computer. I've managed to get my screen back with my username after going into recovery mode, but only sometimes. Failsafe would not load after second screen asking me what I wanted to do (no mouse to click nor keyboard working). My computer is a LDLC Aurore BB1-i5 -8 -S1. Which is the configuration file that keeps the information about the monitors using Displays under lightgdm and where is it? I guess if I could edit it I may have a chance :) One of the things I tried following a solution in another post was removing my monitors.xml file, but it does not work and I don't know how to create a good one that I could use now. When doing DISPLAY=:0 xrandrI get: Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 320 x 200, maximum 8192 x 8192 LVDS1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1366x768 60.0 + 1360x768 59.8 60.0 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9 VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) This is the full dmesg after activating sudo xdiagnoseas Bryce sugested. (If you tell me the relevant parts I will paste them here) When conecting the external monitor, only the external will work, although I can see using Displays that the computer thinks that both are working. I've asked the question in Launchpad but have it keeps on expiring without any feedback. In my opinion Ubuntu should be able to detect automatically that there is no external monitor present and switch to the laptop monitor. There's a similar question here, but it does not apply to my case External monitor set as primary even when disconnected from laptop Update: For clarification, the problem happens only with my user and once I log in. I even get to see the screensaver for about a second, and then it goes blank. Tried Bryce's example (see his answer below), but it did not work. This is the info I get from tty1 with Display=:0 xrandr: – Ramon Suarez Jul 9 at 16:36 Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 320 x 200, maximum 8192 x 8192 LVDS1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1366x768 60.0 + 1360x768 59.8 60.0 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9 VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

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• Acr.ExtDirect &ndash; Part 1 &ndash; Method Resolvers

  - by Allan Ritchie

  One of the most important things of any open source libraries in my opinion is to be as open as possible while avoiding having your library become invasive to your code/business model design.  I personally could never stand marking my business and/or data access code with attributes everywhere.  XML also isn’t really a fav with too many people these days since it comes with a startup performance hit and requires runtime compiling.  I find that there is a whole ton of communication libraries out there currently requiring this (ie. WCF, RIA, etc).  Even though Acr.ExtDirect comes with its own set of attributes, you can piggy-back the [ServiceContract] & [OperationContract] attributes from WCF if you choose.  It goes beyond that though, there are 2 others “out-of-the-box” implementations – Convention based & XML Configuration.    Convention – I don’t actually recommend using this one since it opens up all of your public instance methods to remote execution calls. XML Configuration – This isn’t so bad but requires you enter all of your methods and there operation types into the Castle XML configuration & as I said earlier, XML isn’t the fav these days.   So what are your options if you don’t like attributes, convention, or XML Configuration?  Well, Acr.ExtDirect has its own extension base to give the API a list of methods and components to make available for remote execution.  1: public interface IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type); 4: string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model); 5: string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model); 6: DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method); 7: }   Now to implement our own method resolver:   1: public class TestResolver : IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: #region IDirectMethodResolver Members 4:   5: /// <summary> 6: /// Determine if you are calling a service 7: /// </summary> 8: /// <param name="model"></param> 9: /// <param name="type"></param> 10: /// <returns></returns> 11: public bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type) { 12: return (type.Namespace == "MyBLL.Data"); 13: } 14:   15: /// <summary> 16: /// Return the calling name for the client side 17: /// </summary> 18: /// <param name="model"></param> 19: /// <returns></returns> 20: public string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model) { 21: return model.Name; 22: } 23:   24: public string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model) { 25: switch (model.Name) { 26: case "Products" : 27: return new [] { 28: "GetProducts", 29: "LoadProduct", 30: "Save", 31: "Update" 32: }; 33:   34: case "Categories" : 35: return new [] { 36: "GetProducts" 37: }; 38:   39: default : 40: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid type"); 41: } 42: } 43:   44: public DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method) { 45: if (method.Name.StartsWith("Save") || method.Name.StartsWith("Update")) 46: return DirectMethodType.FormSubmit; 47: 48: else if (method.Name.StartsWith("Load")) 49: return DirectMethodType.FormLoad; 50:   51: else 52: return DirectMethodType.Direct; 53: } 54:   55: #endregion 56: }   And there you have it, your own custom method resolver.  Pretty easy and pretty open ended!

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• Multidimensional Thinking–24 Hours of Pass: Celebrating Women in Technology

  - by smisner

  It’s Day 1 of #24HOP and it’s been great to participate in this event with so many women from all over the world in one long training-fest. The SQL community has been abuzz on Twitter with running commentary which is fun to watch while listening to the current speaker. If you missed the fun today because you’re busy with all that work you’ve got to do – don’t despair. All sessions are recorded and will be available soon. Keep an eye on the 24 Hours of Pass page for details. And the fun’s not over today. Rather than run 24 hours consecutively, #24HOP is now broken down into 12-hours over two days, so check out the schedule to see if there’s a session that interests you and fits your schedule. I’m pleased to announce that my business colleague Erika Bakse ( Blog | Twitter) will be presenting on Day 2 – her debut presentation for a PASS event. (And I’m also pleased to say she’s my daughter!) Multidimensional Thinking: The Presentation My contribution to this lineup of terrific speakers was Multidimensional Thinking. Here’s the abstract: “Whether you’re developing Analysis Services cubes or creating PowerPivot workbooks, you need to get into a multidimensional frame of mind to produce a model that best enables users to answer their business questions on their own. Many database professionals struggle initially with multidimensional models because the data modeling process is much different than the one they use to produce traditional, third normal form databases. In this session, I’ll introduce you to the terminology of multidimensional modeling and step through the process of translating business requirements into a viable model.” If you watched the presentation and want a copy of the slides, you can download a copy here. And you’re welcome to download the slides even if you didn’t watch the presentation, but they’ll make more sense if you did! Kimball All the Way There’s only so much I can cover in the time allotted, but I hope that I succeeded in my attempt to build a foundation that prepares you for starting out in business intelligence. One of my favorite resources that will get into much more detail about all kinds of scenarios (well beyond the basics!) is The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) by Ralph Kimball. Anything from Kimball or the Kimball Group is worth reading. Kimball material might take reading and re-reading a few times before it makes sense. From my own experience, I found that I actually had to just build my first data warehouse using dimensional modeling on faith that I was going the right direction because it just didn’t click with me initially. I’ve had years of practice since then and I can say it does get easier with practice. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you simply must prototype a lot and solicit user feedback, because ultimately the model needs to make sense to them. They will definitely make sure you get it right! Schema Generation One question came up after the presentation about whether we use SQL Server Management Studio or Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to build the tables for the dimensional model. My answer? It really doesn’t matter how you create the tables. Use whatever method that you’re comfortable with. But just so happens that it IS possible to set up your design in BIDS as part of an Analysis Services project and to have BIDS generate the relational schema for you. I did a Webcast last year called Building a Data Mart with Integration Services that demonstrated how to do this. Yes, the subject was Integration Services, but as part of that presentation, I showed how to leverage Analysis Services to build the tables, and then I showed how to use Integration Services to load those tables. I blogged about this presentation in September 2010 and included downloads of the project that I used. In the blog post, I explained that I missed a step in the demonstration. Oops. Just as an FYI, there were two more Webcasts to finish the story begun with the data – Accelerating Answers with Analysis Services and Delivering Information with Reporting Services. If you want to just cut to the chase and learn how to use Analysis Services to build the tables, you can see the Using the Schema Generation Wizard topic in Books Online.

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• ADF Enterprise Application Development - Made Simple (Book Review)

  - by Frank Nimphius

    Sten E. Vesterli wrote the "Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development – Made Simple" book published by Packt Publishing in 2011 http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-adf-enterprise-application-development/book A common question on OTN, but also when talking to clients or customers is about where and how to start your ADF application development. Especially when the current programming background is not in Java, but 4 GL or PLSQL, developers often look for answers to the following questions: · How long does it take to learn Oracle ADF ? · How long does it take to replace a Forms application with ADF ? · How many developers do I need? · Do I need to know Java to use ADF and if yes, how good do I need to know this? · How do I structure my programming files, organizing them in JDeveloper work spaces, projects and libraries? · What is best practices for naming Java packages and how to void naming conflicts in ADF in general? · How many Application Modules do I need or should I create? · How to test applications? Sten Vesterli answers all of the above questions and more in his book http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-adf-enterprise-application-development/book , which makes it great value add to the 3 existing Oracle ADF books. In order of complexity (which also is the order in which reading the available Oracle ADF books makes sense), in my opinion, Sten's book should come second – though it also is useful to those that are already more advanced with Oracle ADF. So if you are absolutely new to Oracle ADF, then the order of books to read to get you up on an expert level should be: 1. Grant Ronald; "Quick Start Guide to Oracle Fusion Development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF" (McGraw Hill 2010) 2. Sten Vesterli; "Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development – Made Simple" (Packt Publishing 2011) 3. Duncan Mills, Peter Koletzke; " Oracle JDeveloper 11g Handbook: A Guide to Fusion Web Development" (McGraw Hill 2009) 4. Frank Nimphius, Lynn Munsinger; " Oracle Fusion Developer Guide: Building Rich Internet Applications with Oracle ADF Business Components and Oracle ADF Faces" (McGraw Hill 2010) If you are not new to Oracle ADF and Orace JDeveloper, then buy Sten Vesterli's book anyway. It is worth it and you want to have it on your book shelf. See below the table of content to get a better idea of what this book covers: · Chapter 1: The ADF Proof of Concept · Chapter 2: Estimating the Effort · Chapter 3: Getting Organized · Chapter 4: Productive Teamwork · Chapter 5: Prepare to Build · Chapter 6: Building the Enterprise Application · Chapter 7: Testing your Application · Chapter 8: Look and Feel · Chapter 9: Customizing the Functionality · Chapter 10: Securing your ADF Application · Chapter 11: Package and Deliver · Appendix: Internationalization The book is written with a lot of good humor, which makes the read very enjoyable (from a geek's perspective, of course). My favorite quote – just in case you are interested - is from page 97, when Sten talks about getting organized: " Stop sending e-mails to your team. Just stop it. E-mail is so last century.…" So true, so true! This quote's runner up is the "boss key" on page 128 where Sten talks about productivity and how Oracle Team Productivity Center (TPC) can help you with this. Quotes like these stick to your brains and make sure you never forget. Go for it!

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• F1 Pit Pragmatics

  - by mikef

  "I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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• Free tools versus paid tools.

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  We live in a strange world. Information should be free. Tools should be free. Software should be free (and I mean free as in free beer, not as in free speech). Of course, since I make my living (and pay my mortgage) by writing software I tend to disagree. Or rather: I want to get paid for the things I do in the daytime. Next to that I also spend time on projects I feel are valuable for the community, which I do for free. The reason I can do that is because I get paid enough in the daytime to afford that time. It gives me a good feeling, I help others and it’s fun to do. But the baseline is: I get paid to write software. I am sure this goes for a lot of other developers. We get paid for what we do during the daytime and spend our free time giving back. So why does everyone always make a fuzz when a company suddenly starts to charge for software? To me, this seems like a very reasonable decision. Companies need money: they have staff to pay, buildings to rent, coffee to buy, etc. All of this doesn’t come free so it makes sense that they charge their customers for the things they produce. I know there’s a very big Open Source market out there, where companies give away (parts of) their software and get revenue out of the services they provide. But this doesn’t work if your product doesn’t need services. If you build a great tool that is very easy to use, and you give it away for free you won’t get any money by selling services that no user of your tool really needs. So what do you do? You charge money for your tool. It’s either that or stop developing the tool and turn to other, more profitable projects. Like it or not, that’s simple economics at work. You have something other people want, so you charge them for it. This week it was announced that what I believe is the most used tool for .net developers (besides Visual Studio of course),namely Red Gates .net reflector, will stop being a free tool. They will charge you $35 for the next version. Suddenly twitter was on fire and everyone was mad about it. But why? The tool is downloaded by so many developers that it must be valuable to them. I know of no serious .net developer who hasn’t got it on his or her machine. So apparently the tool gives them something they need. So why do they expect it to be free? There are developers out there maintaining and extending the tool, building new and better versions of it. And the price? $35 doesn’t seem much. If I think of the time the tool saved me the 35 dollars were earned back in a day. If by spending this amount of money I can rely on great software that helps me do my job better and faster, I have no problems by spending it. I know that there is a great team behind it, (the Red Gate tools are a must have when developing SQL systems, for instance), and I do believe they are in their right to charge this. So.. there you have it. This is of course, my opinion. You may think otherwise. Please let me know in the comments what you think! Tags van Technorati: redgate,reflector,opensource

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• Site Review: Facebook.com and Blockbuster.com - Navigation Schemes

  After cycling through a list of my favorite sites I decided to select Facebook.com and Blockbuster.com for this  post because I found their navigation schemes very intuitive. Facebook in my opinion took a very simplistic and minimalistic approach when they designed their site and its navigation. For example, when you login to your account you will find on the upper left hand side a generic section of the site common areas to all users like news, messages, events, photos and friends. Below this in a separate navigation menu is a list of applications that a user has elected to access through bookmarks. Finally in the upper right hand corner of the site contains links to administer the user’s account like account settings, public profile, and a link back to the users’ home page. Blockbuster on the other had tried to make site navigation a little more slick by using a menu-submenu approach to navigation where user can click on things like Rent, Buy, On Demand, Games, Stores, and Gifts and a submenu of corresponding items appears below the original menu item. In addition they also took this approach and added categorized lists of movies that they offer on the homepage so that users can click on an item like “DVD Spotlight” and a list of movies represented as actual DVD box cases appear on the user’s screen so they can scroll through the list by using left and right arrows on either side of the images displayed. Both Facebook and Blockbuster have more than one navigation groupings because their respected sites are so large and offer an absorbent amount of features. Because of this reason they have to group the main functionality of information in to logical groups based on their actions they perform and the access to specific information. For example it would not make sense for Facebook to include a particular game you like to play within your account with a section pertaining to account administration. The game link would be completely out of place and really confuse the users experience because the groupings where not logically grouped. In addition I think that Facebook users would benefit if Facebook allowed its users to specify what they want on the general navigation from within their site or at least create a section to show frequently accessed pages or favorite sections. Finally regarding additional navigation, I think blockbuster users really benefit from the submenu system of categorizing data, and if fact Blockbuster even allows them to refine the information they are looking for through the use of secondary submenu systems allowing users to really drill down in to what they are looking for to learn more on. I do not think that having more than one navigation bar on a web page is not confusing for the user. For example if you have a navigation bar at the top of your page and at the bottom will allow users to move around the website easier because they can utilize the navigation closest to where their cursor is on the page. In regards to designers forcing all the navigation in to one navigation bar, I think it would be hard for the user to fully understand what is going on based on the size and complexity of the site they are dealing with. For example Blockbuster has a ton of content that could not easily be put in to one navigation bar. From my experience with both Facebook and Blockbuster, they both do a good job with cross browser compatibility. I have had no issues with either site in IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari over the years. In addition, I do not believe that either Facebook or Blockbuster require any additional plug-in to utilize their navigation bars.

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• Dissing Architects, or "What's wrong with the coffee?"

  - by Bob Rhubart

  In my conversations with people in architect roles, tales of animosity, disrespect, and outright hostility aren't uncommon. And it's clear that in more than a few organizations architects regularly face a tough uphill climb. For architects with the requisite combination of technical, organizational, and people skills, that rough treatment is grossly undeserved. But tales of unqualified people in positions up and down the IT food chain are also easy to come by. So what's the other side of the architect story? Are some architects tarnishing the role and making life miserable for their more qualified colleagues? The various quotes included below were culled from a variety of sources. The criticism is harsh, and the people behind these quotes clearly have issues with architects. Still, whether based on mere opinion or actual experience, the comments shed some light on behaviors that should raise red flags for anyone pursuing a career as an architect. If you're an architect, and you've ever noticed that your coffee tastes like window cleaner, or your car is repeatedly keyed, or no one ever holds the elevator for you, maybe you need to do a little soul searching... Those Who Can, Code; Those Who Can't, Architect | Joe Winchester [May 18, 2007] "At the moment there seems to be an extremely unhealthy obsession in software with the concept of architecture. A colleague of mine, a recent graduate, told me he wished to become a software architect. He was drawn to the glamour of being able to come up with grandiose ideas - sweeping generalized designs, creating presentations to audiences of acronym addicts, writing esoteric academic papers, speaking at conferences attended by headless engineers on company expense accounts hungrily seeking out this year's grail, and creating e-mails with huge cc lists from people whose signature footer is more interesting than the content. I tried to re-orient him into actually doing some coding, to join a team that has a good product and keen users both of whom are pushing requirements forward, to no avail. Somehow the lure of being an architecture astronaut was too strong and I lost him to the dark side." Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You | Joel Spolsky [April 21, 2001] "It's very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won't stop thinking about Architecture. They're astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don't know how they're breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don't contribute to the bottom line. Remember that the architecture people are solving problems that they think they can solve, not problems which are useful to solve." Non Coding Architects Suck | Richard Henderson [May 24, 2010] "If a guy with a badge saying 'system architect' looks blank on low-level issues then he is not an architect, he is a business-analyst who went on a course. He will probably wax lyrical on all things high-level and 'important.' He will produce lovely object hierarchies without a clue to implementation. He will have a moustache and play golf." Architects Play Golf | Sunir Shah [August 15, 2012] "Often arrogant architects are difficult to get a hold of during the implementation phase because they no longer feel the need to stick around. Especially around midnight when most of the poor sob [sic] developers are still banging away. After all, they've already solved the problem--the rest is just an implementation exercise." Engineer vs Architect(Part of a discussion on the IT Architect Network Group on LinkedIn) "[An] architect spends his time producing white papers full of acronyms he does not understand but that impress his boss [while the] engineer keeps his head down and does the actual job." Architects Don't Code | [Author Unknown] "Faulty belief: System Architects don't need to code anymore. They know what they are talking about by virtue of the fact that they are System Architects."

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• Who owns the IP rights of the software without written employment contract? Employer or employee? [closed]

  - by P T

  I am a software engineer who got an idea, and developed alone an integrated ERP software solution over the past 2 years. I got the idea and coded much of the software in my personal time, utilizing my own resources, but also as intern/employee at small wholesale retailer (company A). I had a verbal agreement with the company that I could keep the IP rights to the code and the company would have the "shop rights" to use "a copy" of the software without restrictions. Part of this agreement was that I was heavily underpaid to keep the rights. Recently things started to take a down turn in the company A as the company grew fairly large and new head management was formed, also new partners were brought in. The original owners distanced themselves from the business, and the new "greedy" group indicated that they want to claim the IP rights to my software, offering me a contract that would split the IP ownership into 50% co-ownership, completely disregarding the initial verbal agreements. As of now there was no single written job description and agreement/contract/policy that I signed with the company A, I signed only I-9 and W-4 forms. I now have an opportunity to leave the company A and form a new business with 2 partners (Company B), obviously using the software as the primary tool. There would be no direct conflict of interest as the company A sells wholesale goods. My core question is: "Who owns the code without contract? Me or the company A? (in FL, US)" Detailed questions: I am familiar with the "shop rights", I don't have any problem leaving a copy of the code in the company for them to use/enhance to run their wholesale business. What worries me, Can the company A make any legal claims to the software/code/IP and potential derived profits/interests after I leave and form a company B? Can applying for a copyright of the code at http://www.copyright.gov in my name prevent any legal disputes in the future? Can I use it as evidence for legal defense? Could adding a note specifying the company A as exclusive license holder clarify the arrangements? If I leave and the company A sues me, what evidence would they use against me? On what basis would the sue since their business is in completely different industry than software (wholesale goods). Every single source file was created/stored on my personal computer with proper documentation including a copyright notice with my credentials (name/email/addres/phone). It's also worth noting that I develop significant part of the software prior to my involvement with the company A as student. If I am forced to sign a contract and the company A doesn't honor the verbal agreement, making claims towards the ownership, what can I do settle the matter legally? I like to avoid legal process altogether as my budget for court battles is extremely limited at the moment. Would altering the code beyond recognition and using it for the company B prevent the company A make any copyright claims? My common sense tells me that what I developed is by default mine in terms of IP, unless there is a signed legal agreement stating otherwise. But looking online it may be completely backwards, this really worries me. I understand that this is not legal advice, and I know to get the ultimate answer I need to hire a lawyer. I am only hoping to get some valuable input/experience/advice/opinion from those who were in similar situation or are familiar with the topic. Thank you, PT

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• My search what the Cloud will mean for my Work, part 2

  - by Kay Sellenrode

  My experience with the cloud and why work will change and not disappear. Until now I have multiple experiences with the cloud, for the most good. i have worked on multiple cloud solutions in the past but let me describe them as 0.x versions. For me the 1st real serious cloud experience was a bit more than 1 year ago, when our company switched from an in house server to Microsoft BPOS as a complete replacement. Since we are a small consultancy firm and don’t have that much else to do than consulting, our IT requirements are quite simple. We need Mail and Storage space for our documents. With the in house server we had multiple outages during a year, mostly by lack of administering. Being consultants in the field and hardly having time to maintain a server, BPOS was and still is for us the right solution. Since the migration we have less outages and a much more robust solution. Have we run into issues with BPOS for our own environment? No not that I’m aware of. Based on this experience I made a stance about deploy ability of BPOS and cloud solutions, they are suitable for MKB (Dutch for Medium and Small Businesses). Most Small businesses don’t have the amount of work to hire a full time it admin. Hiring a service provider to maintain their own server might be even more costly than hiring an admin. So seeing the capabilities of BPOS and the needs of most businesses I see it as a great solution that gives the business a complete Server replacement solution for a fixed price per user. resulting in a clear budget for IT spending, something most small businesses were looking for, for a long time. So right now I’m deploying BPOS with a customer, and I run into some of the Cloud 1.0 issues. In my opinion BPOS is a good working Cloud version 1.0 solution. What do I mean with 1.0? Well 1.0 is mostly a tested solution (unlike 0.x versions) but still have quite some limitations caused by too few market experience. in my opnion this is also the reason why we don’t see that much BPOS customers yet and why I think Office 365 will make a huge difference. What I have seen of 365 shows me it is a Cloud 2.0 version, meaning it has all needed features and is much more flexible to the customer. This is also why I see changes happen in my work field, changes and not unemployment due to Cloud solutions. Cloud 1.0 solutions gave me the idea that if every customer would adopt them I would be out of work. But in reality Cloud 1.0 solutions are here just to set the market needs. The Cloud 2.0 and higher versions will give the customer much more flexibility, but also require the need for a consultant. Where the 1.0 versions are simple to setup and maintain, the 2.0 solution needs more thought upfront and afterwards. ie. BPOS in its 1.0 version brings you a very simplified Exchange 2007 solution, Suitable for some customers. Looking at Office 365 you receive almost a full blown Exchange 2010 solution. I expect this to be even more customizable in the next version. In my search for the changes to my work I try to regulary write a post with my thought around the Cloud and the impact on my work as a consultant. I'm also planning to present around this topic, so if anyone is interested to see me present around this topic, you're more than welcome to contact me.

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• 45 minutes to talk about C# [closed]

  - by Philip

  I have the opportunity to give a 45 minute talk on C# in the theory of programming languages class I'm taking. The college teaches Java almost exclusively, so that's what all the students are most familiar with. (There's a little C, assembly, Prolog and LISP as well.) I decide what to talk about. It seems to me the best approach is to focus on a few of the big, obvious differences between C# and Java. I don't intend it to be a recommendation to use C# -- there are reasons to use each, mostly because of their ecosystems. So I want to focus on C# as a language. I don't want to go too fast and end up listing a whole bunch of features without showing their usefulness. My current plan is this: Functions as first class objects. This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest differences between C# and Java. The professor briefly mentioned this notion and showed a LISP example, but many of the students have probably never used it. I can show real world examples where it's made my code more readable. Lambda expressions as concise syntax for anonymous functions. Obviously with examples to show how this is useful. The real hit-home examples will be at the end when it's combined with the rest. I don't see an advantage to first showing the old delegate syntax and then replacing it with lambdas -- most of us won't have ever seen delegates anyway so it would just be confusing. The yield keyword and how it's different from returning an array. I have the impression that a lot of C# developers aren't familiar with how to use this. It will likely be very foreign to Java developers. I have some examples from my own work where it was really useful, such as iterating over a tree traversal, or iterating over neighbors in a graph where the neighbors aren't stored in memory. In both cases, doing it in Java would likely mean returning a complete list -- with yield I can stop iterating if I find what I want early on, without using memory for superfluous lists or arrays. Extension methods as a way to write implementation on interfaces. We'll all be familiar with how interfaces don't allow method implementation, and how this leads to code duplication. I'll show a specific example of this and how the extension method can solve the problem. Demonstrate how the above can be combined by implementing some simple Linq methods and using them. Where, Select, First, maybe more depending on how much time is left. Ideas on which ones might 'hit home' the best? There are other things I could talk about such as generics, value types, properties and more. I haven't yet though of good ways to incorporate these. In the case of generics and value types, the advantages might not be obvious or as relevant. Properties are obviously useful, particularly since we're taught strict JavaBeans here, but I don't know if I could integrate it with the "path to Linq" discussion above without it feeling tacked on. So I'm looking for thoughts on how to talk about C#, and what to talk about. Even minor details. I'm sure there are more experienced C# developers than me here who have good insight about what's really important in the language, and what would miss the point.

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• How to prepare for a programming competition? Graphs, Stacks, Trees, oh my! [closed]

  - by Simucal

  Last semester I attended ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) bi-annual programming competition at a local University. My University sent 2 teams of 3 people and we competed amongst other schools in the mid-west. We got our butts kicked. You are given a packet with about 11 problems (1 problem per page) and you have 4 hours to solve as many as you can. They'll run your program you submit against a set of data and your output must match theirs exactly. In fact, the judging is automated for the most part. In any case.. I went there fairly confident in my programming skills and I left there feeling drained and weak. It was a terribly humbling experience. In 4 hours my team of 3 people completed only one of the problems. The top team completed 4 of them and took 1st place. The problems they asked were like no problems I have ever had to answer before. I later learned that in order to solve them some of them effectively you have to use graphs/graph algorithms, trees, stacks. Some of them were simply "greedy" algo's. My question is, how can I better prepare for this semesters programming competition so I don't leave there feeling like a complete moron? What tips do you have for me to be able to answer these problems that involve graphs, trees, various "well known" algorithms? How can I easily identify the algorithm we should implement for a given problem? I have yet to take Algorithm Design in school so I just feel a little out of my element. Here are some examples of the questions asked at the competitions: ACM Problem Sets Update: Just wanted to update this since the latest competition is over. My team placed 1st for our small region (about 6-7 universities with between 1-5 teams each school) and ~15th for the midwest! So, it is a marked improvement over last years performance for sure. We also had no graduate students on our team and after reviewing the rules we found out that many teams had several! So, that would be a pretty big advantage in my own opinion. Problems this semester ranged from about 1-2 "easy" problems (ie bit manipulation, string manipulation) to hard (graph problems involving fairly complex math and network flow problems). We were able to solve 4 problems in our 5 hours. Just wanted to thank everyone for the resources they provided here, we used them for our weekly team practices and it definitely helped! Some quick tips that I have that aren't suggested below: When you are seated at your computer before the competition starts, quickly type out various data structures that you might need that you won't have access to in your languages libraries. I typed out a Graph data-structure complete with floyd-warshall and dijkstra's algorithm before the competition began. We ended up using it in our 2nd problem that we solved and this is the main reason why we solved this problem before anyone else in the midwest. We had it ready to go from the beginning. Similarly, type out the code to read in a file since this will be required for every problem. Save this answer "template" someplace so you can quickly copy/paste it to your IDE at the beginning of each problem. There are no rules on programming anything before the competition starts so get any boilerplate code out the way. We found it useful to have one person who is on permanent whiteboard duty. This is usually the person who is best at math and at working out solutions to get a head start on future problems you will be doing. One person is on permanent programming duty. Your fastest/most skilled "programmer" (most familiar with the language). This will save debugging time also. The last person has several roles between assessing the packet of problems for the next "easiest" problem, helping the person on the whiteboard work out solutions and helping the person programming work out bugs/issues. This person needs to be flexible and be able to switch between roles easily.

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• Standards Corner: Preventing Pervasive Monitoring

  - by independentid

   Phil Hunt is an active member of multiple industry standards groups and committees and has spearheaded discussions, creation and ratifications of industry standards including the Kantara Identity Governance Framework, among others. Being an active voice in the industry standards development world, we have invited him to share his discussions, thoughts, news & updates, and discuss use cases, implementation success stories (and even failures) around industry standards on this monthly column. Author: Phil Hunt On Wednesday night, I watched NBC’s interview of Edward Snowden. The past year has been tumultuous one in the IT security industry. There has been some amazing revelations about the activities of governments around the world; and, we have had several instances of major security bugs in key security libraries: Apple's ‘gotofail’ bug  the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug, not to mention Java’s zero day bug, and others. Snowden’s information showed the IT industry has been underestimating the need for security, and highlighted a general trend of lax use of TLS and poorly implemented security on the Internet. This did not go unnoticed in the standards community and in particular the IETF. Last November, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) met in Vancouver Canada, where the issue of “Internet Hardening” was discussed in a plenary session. Presentations were given by Bruce Schneier, Brian Carpenter,  and Stephen Farrell describing the problem, the work done so far, and potential IETF activities to address the problem pervasive monitoring. At the end of the presentation, the IETF called for consensus on the issue. If you know engineers, you know that it takes a while for a large group to arrive at a consensus and this group numbered approximately 3000. When asked if the IETF should respond to pervasive surveillance attacks? There was an overwhelming response for ‘Yes'. When it came to 'No', the room echoed in silence. This was just the first of several consensus questions that were each overwhelmingly in favour of response. This is the equivalent of a unanimous opinion for the IETF. Since the meeting, the IETF has followed through with the recent publication of a new “best practices” document on Pervasive Monitoring (RFC 7258). This document is extremely sensitive in its approach and separates the politics of monitoring from the technical ones. Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert) surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts, including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers. Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation, timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical compromise. The IETF community's technical assessment is that PM is an attack on the privacy of Internet users and organisations. The IETF community has expressed strong agreement that PM is an attack that needs to be mitigated where possible, via the design of protocols that make PM significantly more expensive or infeasible. Pervasive monitoring was discussed at the technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting [IETF88Plenary] and then through extensive exchanges on IETF mailing lists. This document records the IETF community's consensus and establishes the technical nature of PM. The draft goes on to further qualify what it means by “attack”, clarifying that  The term is used here to refer to behavior that subverts the intent of communicating parties without the agreement of those parties. An attack may change the content of the communication, record the content or external characteristics of the communication, or through correlation with other communication events, reveal information the parties did not intend to be revealed. It may also have other effects that similarly subvert the intent of a communicator.  The past year has shown that Internet specification authors need to put more emphasis into information security and integrity. The year also showed that specifications are not good enough. The implementations of security and protocol specifications have to be of high quality and superior testing. I’m proud to say Oracle has been a strong proponent of this, having already established its own secure coding practices. 

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• How to write simple code using TDD [migrated]

  - by adeel41

  Me and my colleagues do a small TDD-Kata practice everyday for 30 minutes. For reference this is the link for the excercise http://osherove.com/tdd-kata-1/ The objective is to write better code using TDD. This is my code which I've written public class Calculator { public int Add( string numbers ) { const string commaSeparator = ","; int result = 0; if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty( numbers ) ) result = numbers.Contains( commaSeparator ) ? AddMultipleNumbers( GetNumbers( commaSeparator, numbers ) ) : ConvertToNumber( numbers ); return result; } private int AddMultipleNumbers( IEnumerable getNumbers ) { return getNumbers.Sum(); } private IEnumerable GetNumbers( string separator, string numbers ) { var allNumbers = numbers .Replace( "\n", separator ) .Split( new string[] { separator }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries ); return allNumbers.Select( ConvertToNumber ); } private int ConvertToNumber( string number ) { return Convert.ToInt32( number ); } } and the tests for this class are [TestFixture] public class CalculatorTests { private int ArrangeAct( string numbers ) { var calculator = new Calculator(); return calculator.Add( numbers ); } [Test] public void Add_WhenEmptyString_Returns0() { Assert.AreEqual( 0, ArrangeAct( String.Empty ) ); } [Test] [Sequential] public void Add_When1Number_ReturnNumber( [Values( "1", "56" )] string number, [Values( 1, 56 )] int expected ) { Assert.AreEqual( expected, ArrangeAct( number ) ); } [Test] public void Add_When2Numbers_AddThem() { Assert.AreEqual( 3, ArrangeAct( "1,2" ) ); } [Test] public void Add_WhenMoreThan2Numbers_AddThemAll() { Assert.AreEqual( 6, ArrangeAct( "1,2,3" ) ); } [Test] public void Add_SeparatorIsNewLine_AddThem() { Assert.AreEqual( 6, ArrangeAct( @"1 2,3" ) ); } } Now I'll paste code which they have written public class StringCalculator { private const char Separator = ','; public int Add( string numbers ) { const int defaultValue = 0; if ( ShouldReturnDefaultValue( numbers ) ) return defaultValue; return ConvertNumbers( numbers ); } private int ConvertNumbers( string numbers ) { var numberParts = GetNumberParts( numbers ); return numberParts.Select( ConvertSingleNumber ).Sum(); } private string[] GetNumberParts( string numbers ) { return numbers.Split( Separator ); } private int ConvertSingleNumber( string numbers ) { return Convert.ToInt32( numbers ); } private bool ShouldReturnDefaultValue( string numbers ) { return String.IsNullOrEmpty( numbers ); } } and the tests [TestFixture] public class StringCalculatorTests { [Test] public void Add_EmptyString_Returns0() { ArrangeActAndAssert( String.Empty, 0 ); } [Test] [TestCase( "1", 1 )] [TestCase( "2", 2 )] public void Add_WithOneNumber_ReturnsThatNumber( string numberText, int expected ) { ArrangeActAndAssert( numberText, expected ); } [Test] [TestCase( "1,2", 3 )] [TestCase( "3,4", 7 )] public void Add_WithTwoNumbers_ReturnsSum( string numbers, int expected ) { ArrangeActAndAssert( numbers, expected ); } [Test] public void Add_WithThreeNumbers_ReturnsSum() { ArrangeActAndAssert( "1,2,3", 6 ); } private void ArrangeActAndAssert( string numbers, int expected ) { var calculator = new StringCalculator(); var result = calculator.Add( numbers ); Assert.AreEqual( expected, result ); } } Now the question is which one is better? My point here is that we do not need so many small methods initially because StringCalculator has no sub classes and secondly the code itself is so simple that we don't need to break it up too much that it gets confusing after having so many small methods. Their point is that code should read like english and also its better if they can break it up earlier than doing refactoring later and third when they will do refactoring it would be much easier to move these methods quite easily into separate classes. My point of view against is that we never made a decision that code is difficult to understand so why we are breaking it up so early. So I need a third person's opinion to understand which option is much better.

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