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• Methods for getting static data from obj-c to Parse (database)

  - by Phil

  I'm starting out thinking out how best to code my latest game on iOS, and I want to use parse.com to store pretty much everything, so I can easily change things. What I'm not sure about is how to get static data into parse, or at least the best method. I've read about using NSMutableDictionary, pLists, JSON, XML files etc. Let's say for example in AS3 I could create a simple data object like so... static var playerData:Object = {position:{startX:200, startY:200}}; Stick it in a static class, and bingo I've got my static data to use how I see fit. Basically I'm looking for the best method to do the same thing in Obj-c, but the data is not to be stored directly in the iOS game, but to be sent to parse.com to be stored on their database there. The game (at least the distribution version) will only load data from the parse database, so however I'm getting the static data into parse I want to be able to remove it from being included in the eventual iOS file. So any ideas on the best methods to sort that? If I had longer on this project, it might be nice to use storyboards and create a simple game editor to send data to parse....actually maybe that's a good idea, it's just I'm new to obj-c and I'm looking for the most straightforward (see quickest) way to achieve things. Thanks for any advice.

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• What's the best way to manage reusable classes/libraries separately?

  - by Tom

  When coding, I naturally often come up with classes or a set of classes with a high reusability. I'm looking for an easy, straight-forward way to work on them separately. I'd like to be able to easily integrate them into any project; it also should be possible to switch to a different version with as few commands as possible. Am I right with the assumption that git (or another VCS) is best suited for this? I thought of setting up local repositories for each class/project/library/plugin and then just cloning/pulling them. It would be great if I could reference those projects by name, not by the full path. Like git clone someproject. edit: To clarify, I know what VCS are about and I do use them. I'm just looking for a comfortable way to store and edit some reusable pieces of code (including unit tests) separately and to be able to include them (without the unit tests) in other projects, without having to manually copy files. Apache Maven is a good example, but I'm looking for a language-independent solution, optimally command-line-based.

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• How to handle multiple pages of the same site with the same outlinks

  - by pandafromchina

  I am developing a back link tool for Chinese SEO (our web site URL is: http://link.aizhan.com just like ahrefs.com. I encountered a problem which is how to handle multiple pages of the same site with the same out links. For example: Most pages of bbs.chinaz.com have the same out links such as: bbs.chinaz.com/Tea/thread-6293993-1-1.html bbs.chinaz.com/Tea/list-1.html bbs.chinaz.com/alimama/thread-6265032-1-1.html bbs.chinaz.com/alimama/thread-6265032-2-1.html?userid=-1&extParms= bbs.chinaz.com/Shuiba/list-1.html bbs.chinaz.com/FeedBack/thread-4456753-1-1.html etc.. All of the pages have the same out links in the top of the page: www.cnzz.com(anchor text:????) www.313.com(????) www.idc123.com(????) Suppose I store these outlinks into database. The SEO will find there are six backlinks from bbs.chinaz.com of www.cnzz.com. This is obviously no sense for the SEO. Can you tell me how do you deal with this problem?

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• Is it reasonable to require passwords when users sign into my application through social media accounts?

  - by BrMcMullin

  I've built an application that requires users to authenticate with one or more social media accounts from either Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Edit Once the user has signed in, an 'identity' for them is maintained in the system, to which all content they create is associated. A user can associate one account from each of the supported providers with this identity. I'm concerned about how to protect potential users from connecting the wrong account to their identity in our application. /Edit There are two main scenarios that could happen: User has multiple accounts on one of the three providers, and is not logged into the one s/he desires. User comes to a public or shared computer, in which the previous user left themselves logged into one of the three providers. While I haven't encountered many examples of this myself, I'm considering requiring users to password authenticate with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn whenever they are signing into our application. Is that a reasonable approach, or are there reasons why many other sites and applications don't challenge users to provide a user name and password when authorizing applications to access their social media accounts? Thanks in advance! Edit A clarification, I'm not intending to store anyone's user name and password. Rather, when a user clicks the button to sign in, with Facebook as an example, I'm considering showing an "Is this you?" type window. The idea is that a user would respond to the challenge by either signing into Facebook on the account fetched from the oauth hash, or would sign into the correct account and the oauth callback would run with the new oauth hash data.

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• 'Buy the app' landing page implementations

  - by benwad

  My site (using Django) has an app that I'm trying to push - I currently have a piece of middleware that redirects the user to a page advertising the app if they're accessing the page on the iPhone, then setting a cookie so that the user isn't bugged by the message every time they visit the site. This works fine, however checking the page with the mobile Googlebot checker shows that the Googlebot gets stuck in the redirect (since it doesn't store cookies) and therefore won't index the proper content. So, I'm trying to think of an alternative implementation that won't hurt the site's Google ranking and won't have any other adverse effects. I've considered a couple of options: Redirect (the current solution), but don't redirect if the user agent matches the Googlebot's UA string. This would be ideal, however I'm not sure if Google like their bot being treated differently from other users, and I'm afraid the site's ranking may be somehow penalised if I go ahead with this. Use a Javascript popup instead of a redirect. This would make sure the Googlebot finds the content it needs, however I envision this approach causing compatibility issues with the myriad mobile devices/browsers out there, and may affect the page load time. How valid are these options? And is there a better option for implementing this feature out there? I've tried researching this topic but surprisingly can't find any reputable-looking blog posts that explore this topic. EDIT: I posted this on SF because it seemed unsuitable for SO, but if there's another site that would be better for this issue then I'd be happy to move the question elsewhere.

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• Storage of leftover values in a situation of having to round down

  - by jt0dd

  I'm writing an app (client and server side) where the number of sales required by each employee must be kept track of in round-number form. Each month, the employees are required to sell a certain number, and this app needs to keep track of how many sales must be made for each 12 hour interval during the work week. Because I have to round the values down to a whole number, I must keep track of leftovers in the rounding process and ensure that they are always carried over. My method must ensure the storage of the leftover value even when client and server side crash, restart, close, etc. Right now, I'm working on doing this by storing the leftovers in a field in the user's account row in the database each time a value is rounded, reading the stored value, removing any portion that is used (when a whole number is reached, most of the leftover is used up), and storing the new value. This practice seems weird because while the leftovers are calculated on the client side, it's the same number for each employee, and every employee using the app is storing a copy of the same leftover data. Alternatively, I could have all clients store the data at once into the same data field on a general table, but this is just as weird. Is there a better way that this can be handled or is my method correct?

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• Is there a product planning tool that has these specific features? [closed]

  - by acjohnson55

  I am working on a web startup in the early stages, and we are struggling a bit to manage the scope and scheduling of our product. We have loads of high-level features in the pipeline, but we need a good way of scheduling them for release iterations and breaking them into actual tasks that can be scheduled (that could be a separate tool, but integration would be preferred). I would say that our product can be pretty cleanly divided into "aspects", and we want to be able to separate features by the aspect to which they apply. Perhaps most importantly, it should be really simple to create and move features between target release points. We don't have physical space for a war room type setup, so whatever we settle upon should ideally have a cloud-type web interface. Right now, we're using Excel to make a grid of product aspects vs. target releases, and we store features at the intersections. But this is not providing a good way of indexing tasks to those features or being able to move them around. I would much rather have something that automates the grid overview. I'm less interested in something that helps with low-level scheduling than I am in something that is good at organizing the product plan at the long-term, high-level view. Is there a product planning tool out there that matches these specifications?

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• Is The Ease Of Windows Phone Development Ruining Its Image

  - by Tim Murphy

  I was reading an article on Mashable recently by a long time iPhone user who is living solely on a Lumia 920 at the moment and giving her assessment.  One thing that struck a nerve with me was her describing the Windows Phone ecosystem as immature.  She wasn’t saying this because of the number of apps or the big names like most people do.  She means the quality of the apps in the store. This hit a nerve with me.  I find it hard to believe that the majority of app on iOS are of any higher quality than any other platform.  I believe in any ecosystem you are going to find some high end, high quality apps, but the majority by default will be from people who are trying to solve a problem but do not have the resources to have top graphics and full blown testing.  There will also be a large number that are just there trying to trick you into giving up some cash. Does any of the mean that we shouldn’t take notice of this complaint?  Of course not!  We should always strive to publish the best quality apps possible.  Don’t do things like leaving default app icons and backgrounds.  Put a little effort into your design.  You should also spend as much time as possible ensuring against crashes and giving the user the best experience possible.  Think through your apps organization and navigation.  Go the extra step of putting it into beta and letting select people use it and give you feedback before going to full release. Remember, if we want people to appreciate the Windows Phone platform we have to make sure we give them apps that they are going to enjoy using. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,iPhone,iOS,Nokia,Lumia 920,Mashable

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• Is SEO affected negatively by having densely encoded identifiers of content in URLs?

  - by casperOne

  This isn't about where to put the id of a piece of unique content in URLs, but more about densely packing the URL (or, does it just not matter). Take for example, a hypothetical post in a blog: http://tempuri.org/123456789/seo-friendly-title The ID that uniquely identifies this is 123456789. This corresponds to a look-up and is the direct key in the underlying data store. However, I could encode that in say, hexadecimal, like so: http://tempuri.org/75bcd15/seo-friendly-title And that would be shorter. One could take it even further and have more compact encodings; since URLs are case sensitive, one could imagine an encoding that uses numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, for a base of 62 (26 upper case + 26 lower case + 10 digits): 0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz For a resulting URL of: http://tempuri.org/8M0kX/seo-friendly-title The question is, does densely packing the ID of the content (the requirement is that an ID is mandatory for look-ups) have a negative impact on SEO (and dare I ask, might it have any positive impact), or is it just not worth the time? Note that this is not for a URL shortening service, so saving space in the URL for browser limitation purposes is not an issue.

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• Take a snapshot with JavaFX!

  - by user12610255

  JavaFX 2.2 has a "snapshot" feature that enables you to take a picture of any node or scene. Take a look at the API Documentation and you will find new snapshot methods in the javafx.scene.Scene class. The most basic version has the following signature: public WritableImage snapshot(WritableImage image) The WritableImage class (also introduced in JavaFX 2.2) lives in the javafx.scene.image package, and represents a custom graphical image that is constructed from pixels supplied by the application. In fact, there are 5 new classes in javafx.scene.image: PixelFormat: Defines the layout of data for a pixel of a given format. WritablePixelFormat: Represents a pixel format that can store full colors and so can be used as a destination format to write pixel data from an arbitrary image. PixelReader: Defines methods for retrieving the pixel data from an Image or other surface containing pixels. PixelWriter: Defines methods for writing the pixel data of a WritableImage or other surface containing writable pixels. WritableImage: Represents a custom graphical image that is constructed from pixels supplied by the application, and possibly from PixelReader objects from any number of sources, including images read from a file or URL. The API documentation contains lots of information, so go investigate and have fun with these useful new classes! -- Scott Hommel

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• Do we ethically have the right to use the MAC Address for verification purposes?

  - by Matt Ridge

  I am writing a program, or starting at the very beginning of it, and I am thinking of purchase verification systems as a final step. I will be catering to Macs, PCs, and possibly Linux if all is said and done. I will also be programming this for smartphones as well using C++ and Objective-C. (I am writing a blueprint before going head first into it) That being said, I am not asking for help on doing it yet, but what I’m looking for is a realistic measurement for what could be expected as a viable and ethical option for purchase verification systems. Apple through the Apple Store, and some other stores out there have their own "You bought it" check. I am looking to use a three prong verification system. Email/password 16 to 32 character serial number using alpha/numeric and symbols with Upper and lowercase variants. MAC Address. The first two are in my mind ok, but I have to ask on an ethical standpoint, is a MAC Address to lock the software to said hardware unethical, or is it smart? I understand if an Ethernet card changes if not part of the logic board, or if the logic board changes so does the MAC address, so if that changes it will have to be re-verified, but I have to ask with how everything is today... Is it ethical to actually use the MAC address as a validation key or no? Should I be forward with this kind of verification system or should I keep it hidden as a secret? Yes I know hackers and others will find ways of knowing what I am doing, but in reality this is why I am asking. I know no verification is foolproof, but making it so that its harder to break is something I've always been interested in, and learning how to program is bringing up these questions, because I don't want to assume one thing and find out it's not really accepted in the programming world as a "you shouldn't do that" maneuver... Thanks in advance... I know this is my first programming question, but I am just learning how to program, and I am just making sure I'm not breaking some ethical programmer credo I shouldn't...

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• Where ORMs blur the lines between code and data, how do you decide what logic should be a stored procedure, and what should be coded?

  - by PhonicUK

  Take the following pseudocode: CreateInvoiceAndCalculate(ItemsAndQuantities, DispatchAddress, User); And say CreateInvoice does the following: Create a new entry in an Invoices table belonging to the specified User to be sent to the given DispatchAddress. Create a new entry in an InvoiceItems table for each of the items in ItemsAndQuantities, storing the Item, the Quantity, and the cost of the item as of now (by looking it up from an Items table) Calculate the total amount of the invoice (ex shipping and taxes) and store it in the new Invoice row. At a glace you wouldn't be able to tell if this was a method in my applications code, or a stored procedure in the database that is being exposed as a function by the ORM. And to some extent it doesn't really matter. Now technically none of this is business logic. You're not making any decisions - just performing a calculation and creating records. However some may argue that because you are performing a calculation that affects the business (the total amount to be invoiced) that this isn't something that should be done in a stored procedure and instead should be in code. So for this specific example - why would it be more appropriate to do one or the other? And where do you draw the line? Or does it even particular matter as long as it's sufficiently well documented?

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• What is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)?

  A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)  can also be called a traditional database that uses a Structured Query Language (SQL) to provide access to stored data while insuring the integrity of the data. The data is stored in a collection of tables that is defined by relationships between data items. In addition, data permitted to be joined in new relationships. Traditional databases primarily process data through transactions called transaction processing. Transaction processing is the methodology of grouping related business operations based predefined business events. An example of this can be seen when a person attempts to purchase an item from an online e-tailor. The business must execute specific operations for a related  business event. In this case, a business must store the following information: Customer Info, Order Info, Order Item Info, Customer Payment Data, Payment Results, and Current Order Status. Example: Pseudo SQL Operations needed for processing an online e-tailor sale. Insert Customer into Customers Insert New Order into Orders Insert Each New Order Item into OrderItems Insert Customer Payment Info into PaymentInfo Insert Payment Processing Result into PaymentDetails Update Customer for Current Order Status Common Relational Database Management System Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Access Oracle MySQL DB2 It is important to note that no current RDBMS has fully implemented all of the Relational Principles. Common RDBMS Traits Volatile Data Supports Transaction Processing Optimized for Updates and Simple Queries 

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• Software solution from the 2000's, should I attempt to patch or remake the whole thing?

  - by ShadowScripter

  I was sent out to discuss a system that a certain company is currently using and what should be done with it. The company manufactures various carton displays. This system was developed to keep track of clients, orders and prices. Lots have happened since the system was created and the system is now, as the manager described it, "locked up" and "problematic", which I translate as "not dynamic" and "unstable". Some info about the system It was developed around the year 2000 Fairly small system, 2-5 users, 6 forms, ~8 tables with average quantities of data Built on early Visual Basic, forms created with the drag and drop design. Interface is basically just a window with a menu and some forms Uses MSSQL database (SQL2005 server) to store data and ODBC driver to query, data was migrated from excel before this system, and before excel it was handled, calculated and written by hand and paper Users work in Microsoft XP environment (and up) Their main problem is that they can't adjust and calculate prices, can't add new carton types etc, correctly anymore because they can't (or rather, they don't know how to) touch the data on the server. I suggested 3 possible solutions Attempt to patch the current system Create a fresh new interface (preferably similar environment, VB.net or VB based) Bring it back to an Excel solution, considering it is such a small system There might be more options, but these are the ones I could think of. My questions are What should I recommend and why? What is or could be the pros and cons of these alternatives? Are there other (possibly better) alternatives?

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• XML Rules Engine and Validation Tutorial with NIEM

  - by drrwebber

  Our new XML Validation Framework tutorial video is now available. See how to easily integrate code-free adaptive XML validation services into your web services using the Java CAMV validation engine. CAMV allows you to build fault tolerant content checking with XPath that optionally use SQL data lookups. This can provide warnings as well as error conditions to tailor your validation layer to exactly meet your business application needs. Also available is developing test suites using Apache ANT scripting of validations.  This allows a community to share sets of conformance checking test and tools . On the technical XML side the video introduces XPath validation rules and illustrates and the concepts of XML content and structure validation. CAM validation templates allow contextual parameter driven dynamic validation services to be implemented compared to using a static and brittle XSD schema approach.The SQL table lookup and code list validation are discussed and examples presented.Features are highlighted along with a demonstration of the interactive generation of actual live XML data from a SQL data store and then validation processing complete with errors and warnings detection.The presentation provides a primer for developing web service XML validation and integration into a SOA approach along with examples and resources. Also alignment with the NIEM IEPD process for interoperable information exchanges is discussed along with NIEM rules services.The CAMV engine is a high performance scalable Java component for rapidly implementing code-free validation services and methods. CAMV is a next generation WYSIWYG approach that builds from older Schematron coding based interpretative runtime tools and provides a simpler declarative metaphor for rules definition. See: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCAMeditor

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• Is there a simple, flat, XML-based query-able data storage solution? [closed]

  - by alex gray

  I have been in long pursuit of an XML-based query-able data store, and despite continued searches and evaluations, I have yet to find a solution that meets the my needs, which include: Data is wholly contained within XML nodes, in flat text files. There is a "native" - or at least unobtrusive - method with which to perform Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD) operations onto the "schema". I would consider access via http, XHR, javascript, PHP, BASH, or PERL to be unobtrusive, dependent on the complexity of the set of dependencies. Server-side file-system reads and writes. A client-side interface element, accessible in any browser without a plug-in. Some extra, preferred (but optional) requirements include: Respond to simple SQL, or similarly syntax queries. Serve the data on a bare bones https server, with no "extra stuff", either via XMLHTTPRequest, HTTP proper, or JSON. A few thoughts: What I'm looking for may be possible via some Java server implementations, but for the sake of this question, please do not suggest that - unless it meets ALL the requirements. Java, especially on the client-side is not really an option, nor is it appealing from a development viewpoint.* I know walking the filesystem is a stretch, and I've heard it's possible with XPATH or XSLT, but as far as I know, that's not ready for primetime, nor even yet a recommendation. However the ability to recursively traverse the filesystem is needed for such a system to be of useful facility. At this point, I have basically implemented what I described via, of all things, CGI and Bash, but there has to be an easier way. Thoughts?

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• Should I encrypt data in database?

  - by Tio

  I have a client, for which I'm going to do an Web application about patient care, managing patients, consults, history, calendars, everything about that basically. The problem is that this is sensitive data, patient history and such. The client insists on encrypting the data at the database level, but I think this is going to deteriorate the performance of the web app. ( But maybe I shouldn't be worried about this ) I've read the laws about data protection on health issues ( Portugal ), but isn't very specific about this ( I just questioned them about this, I'm waiting for their response ). I've read the following link, but my question is different, should I encrypt the data in the database, or not. One problem that I foresee in encrypting data, is that I'm going to need a key, this could be the user password, but we all know how user passwords are ( 12345 etc etc ), and generating a key I would have to store it somewhere, this means that the programmer, dba, whatever could have access to it, any thoughts on this? Even adding an random salt to the user password isn't going to solve the problem since I can always access it, and therefore decrypt the data.

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• Are Vala and desktopcouch ready?

  - by pavolzetor

  Hi, I have started writting rss reader in Vala, but I don't know, what database system should I use, I cannot connect to couchdb and sqlite works fine, but I would like use couchdb because of ubuntu one. I have natty with latest updates public CouchDB.Session session; public CouchDB.Database db; public string feed_table = "feed"; public string item_table = "item"; public struct field { string name; string val; } // constructor public Database() { try { this.session = new CouchDB.Session(); } catch (Error e) { stderr.printf ("%s a\n", e.message); } try { this.db = new CouchDB.Database (this.session, "test"); } catch (Error e) { stderr.printf ("%s a\n", e.message); } try { this.session.get_database_info("test"); } catch (Error e) { stderr.printf ("%s aa\n", e.message); } try { var newdoc = new CouchDB.Document (); newdoc.set_boolean_field ("awesome", true); newdoc.set_string_field ("phone", "555-VALA"); newdoc.set_double_field ("pi", 3.14159); newdoc.set_int_field ("meaning_of_life", 42); this.db.put_document (newdoc); // store document } catch (Error e) { stderr.printf ("%s aaa\n", e.message); } reports $ ./xml_parser rss.xmlCannot connect to destination (127.0.0.1) aa Cannot connect to destination (127.0.0.1) aaa

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• What is the recommended MongoDB schema for this quiz-engine scenario?

  - by hughesdan

  I'm working on a quiz engine for learning a foreign language. The engine shows users four images simultaneously and then plays an audio file. The user has to match the audio to the correct image. Below is my MongoDB document structure. Each document consists of an image file reference and an array of references to audio files that match that image. To generate a quiz instance I select four documents at random, show the images and then play one audio file from the four documents at random. The next step in my application development is to decide on the best document schema for storing user guesses. There are several requirements to consider: I need to be able to report statistics at a user level. For example, total correct answers, total guesses, mean accuracy, etc) I need to be able to query images based on the user's learning progress. For example, select 4 documents where guess count is 10 and accuracy is <=0.50. The schema needs to be optimized for fast quiz generation. The schema must not cause future scaling issues vis a vis document size. Assume 1mm users who make an average of 1000 guesses. Given all of this as background information, what would be the recommended schema? For example, would you store each guess in the Image document or perhaps in a User document (not shown) or a new document collection created for logging guesses? Would you recommend logging the raw guess data or would you pre-compute statistics by incrementing counters within the relevant document? Schema for Image Collection: _id "505bcc7a45c978be24000005" date 2012-09-21 02:10:02 UTC imageFileName "BD3E134A-C7B3-4405-9004-ED573DF477FE-29879-0000395CF1091601" random 0.26997075392864645 user "2A8761E4-C13A-470E-A759-91432D61B6AF-25982-0000352D853511AF" audioFiles [ 0 { audioFileName "C3669719-9F0A-4EB5-A791-2C00486665ED-30305-000039A3FDA7DCD2" user "2A8761E4-C13A-470E-A759-91432D61B6AF-25982-0000352D853511AF" audioLanguage "English" date 2012-09-22 01:15:04 UTC } 1 { audioFileName "C3669719-9F0A-4EB5-A791-2C00486665ED-30305-000039A3FDA7DCD2" user "2A8761E4-C13A-470E-A759-91432D61B6AF-25982-0000352D853511AF" audioLanguage "Spanish" date 2012-09-22 01:17:04 UTC } ]

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• An online version of ClearTrace

  - by Bill Graziano

  When I visit clients for the first time and conduct a performance review I introduce them to ClearTrace. It’s still the best way I know to identify exactly which queries are consuming the most resources.  The downside is that it needs to be downloaded and create a database to store the results.  I finally decided it would be easier if I could just upload a trace immediately. You can find the online version of ClearTrace at TraceTune.com.  It provides a simple way to upload a trace file and see exactly which stored procedures or SQL statements consume the most CPU and disk.   This is still a work in progress as I try to determine exactly which features from ClearTrace are important.  I’ve also limited the file upload to 10MB in this beta release.  That might not sound like much but I get over 20,000 events using this stored procedure to generate the trace. If you’re looking for something to do on a Friday, I’d suggest a little performance tuning.  Generating 10MB of trace data doesn’t take long at all and in a short time you’ll see exactly which SQL statements you need to tune first.

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• Use a SQL Database for a Desktop Game

  - by sharethis

  Developing a Game Engine I am planning a computer game and its engine. There will be a 3 dimensional world with first person view and it will be single player for now. The programming language is C++ and it uses OpenGL. Data Centered Design Decision My design decision is to use a data centered architecture where there is a global event manager and a global data manager. There are many components like physics, input, sound, renderer, ai, ... Each component can trigger and listen to events. Moreover, each component can read, edit, create and remove data. The question is about the data manager. Whether to Use a Relational Database Should I use a SQL Database, e.g. SQLite or MySQL, to store the game data? This contains virtually all game content like items, characters, inventories, ... Except of meshes and textures which are even more performance related, so I will keep them in memory. Is a SQL database fast enough to use it for realtime reading and writing game informations, like the position of a moving character? I also need to care about cross-platform compatibility. Aside from keeping everything in memory, what alternatives do I have? Advantages Would Be The advantages of using a relational database like MySQL would be the data orientated structure which allows fast computation. I would not need objects for representing entities. I could easily query data of objects near the player needed for rendering. And I don't have to take care about data of objects far away. Moreover there would be no need for savegames since the hole game state is saved in the database. Last but not least, expanding the game to an online game would be relative easy because there already is a place where the hole game state is stored.

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• Game Asset Management

  - by user964123

  I am making my first small mobile game in C# XNA. Lets say I have 3 screens, the main menu, options and game screen. A single game session usually lasts for 1 min, so the user will alternate frequently between the main menu and game screen. Therefore, once I load the textures for either screen, I want to keep them in memory to avoid frequent reloading. Both screens share some assets like their background textures, but differ in others. The first solution I came up with is making 2 texture factory classes, MainScreenAssetFactory and GameScreenAssetFactory, each with their own content manager, and ill store them in a globally accessible point so that they persist after either screen is destroyed. There is also a OptionsScreenAssetFactory, but that I dont want to cache it since the options screen is rarely visited. A typical Factory would look something like this public class MainScreenAssetFactory { private readonly ContentManager contentManager; public MainScreenAssetFactory(IServiceProvider serviceProvider, string rootDirectory) { contentManager = new ContentManager(serviceProvider) { RootDirectory = rootDirectory }; } public Texture2D ListElementBackground { get { return return contentManager.Load<Texture2D>("UserTab"); } } public Texture2D ListElementBulletPoint { get { return return contentManager.Load<Texture2D>("TabIcon"); } } public Texture2D LoggedOutUser { get { return return contentManager.Load<Texture2D>("LoggedOutUser"); } } } Since both Main, Options and Game Screen share some common resources, instead of loading them more than once, I created another class CommonAssetTexFactory which holds the common stuff and stays in-memory during the app lifetime. For example, this class gets passed to the options screen when it is created. However, given my small game with its few assets, I am already finding this solution cumbersome and inflexible. Changing anything would require looking to see if its already in the common factory, and if not, modifying existing factories and so on. And this is just considering textures currently, i didnt add sound files yet. I cant imagine bigger games with thousands of resources using this approach. A better idea must exist. Would someone please enlighten me?

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• What is the standard technique for shifting the frames of a sprite according to user input?

  - by virtual__

  From my own experience, I developed two techniques for changing the sprites of a character that's reacting to user input -- this in the context of a classic 2D platformer. The first one is to store all character's pixmaps in a list, putting the index of the currently used pixmap in an ordinary variable. This way, every time the player presses a key -- say the right arrow for moving the character forward -- the graphics engine sees what's the next pixmap to draw, draws it, and increments the index counter. That's a pretty common approach I believe, the problem is that in this case the animation's quality depends not only on the number of sprites available but also on how often your engine listens to user input. The second technique is to actually play an animation every key press event. For this you can use any sort of animation framework you want. It's only necessary to set the timer, the animation steps and to call the animation's play() method on your key press event handler. The problem with that approach is that is lacks responsiveness, since the character won't react to any input while the current animation is still being played. What I want to know is whether you are using one of these techniques -- or something similar -- in your games, or whether there's a standard method for animating sprites out there that's widely known by everybody but me.

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• What kind of permission is this? (Groups+Roles)

  - by Jorge

  I'm starting to need an access control for roles in my app. I don't know much of this, but I understand how vBulletin works: I create groups, then give permissions to groups. I think that what I need is the Role Bases Access Control (RBAC) , but i'm not sure, because I need groups to give permissions instead of single users (Maybe it's not that complicated to achieve). Example of what I'm thinking: Given a post: Editor's Group has permission to view it before it's published. Editor's Group has permission to edit its content. Public Group (Default) has not permission to view it before it's published. Admin Group has permission to delete the post. So basically I wan't orientation about if RBAC is what I need. And also, how would it be good to store group membership in a user, for example, would be good to have: ID NAME PASSWORD GROUPS (1, MyName, MyPassword, 1/2/3/4/5) and explode it via PHP or one registry for every Group membership in a table named permissions, example: USERID, USERGROUP values (1, 1), (1, 2) Maybe should be the second way because of the formal norms but I didn't study yet Databases 1 at college.

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• Choosing the Database Solution for Large Data Application

  - by GµårÐïåñ

  I have been tasked to write an application that will be a combination of document and inventory management in VB.net which will be used to store document images in TIFF, PDF, XPS, TXT, DOC, PPT and so on as binary data that can be retrieved for viewing, printing, and possible OCR to be searchable as well along with meta data such as sender, recipient, type of document, date, source, etc. So the table would probably be something like: DOC_NAME, DOC_DATE, NOTES, ... DOC_BINARY (where the actual document will be put inside) What my concern is finding a database solution that will not become unstable due to size restrictions, records limitations and performance. Some of the options are MS_SQL, SQL Express, SQLite, mySQL, and Access. Now I can pretty much eliminate Access right off the bat as it is just too limiting and not scalable. I can further eliminate SQL Express because of the 2 GB limit and again scalability. So that leaves me with MS_SQL, SQLite and mySQL (although if anyone has other options they think would be good as well, please feel free to share them, by no means am I set on these only). So this brings me to what you guys think is the best option for what I have described. The goal is that the data is all in one place (a single file) that will make backup and portability easier. For small volume usage, pretty much any solution will hold for a while, but my goal is to think ahead and make sure its able to withstand heavy large volume usage as well. Another consideration is also the interoperability with .NET and stability of such code to avoid errors and memory leaks. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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