Search Results

Search found 33194 results on 1328 pages for 'development approach'.

Page 309/1328 | < Previous Page | 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316  | Next Page >

• Game editor integration with the engine?

  - by Daniel

  What I am trying to figure out is what is the best way to integrate the editor(level, effects, model, etc...) in the most effective way? Now the first thing I thought would be to create the game engine(*) extremely modular. For example I took the example of game states. You could have multiple game states that all have their own update() and draw() methods among others. Each game state class would inherit from a base GameState class. This allows for a more modular approach and a useful one at that. Now would the most efficient approach be to implement the editor along with the modular engine, or create two different designs for both the game, and editor? I thought to take the game state example and extend it to window states, and well could be used for a lot more systems. Is there a better implementation of this design(game state) for use in other systems used in the engine? *: Now I know the term game engine is sorta irrelevant, and misused in many situations. What I am referring to as the "game engine" is the combination of the systems that the game must interact with for short. Also this is more of a theory / design question than an implementation. Even though both mix, i'd rather like to have a more general idea on how the editor is built in an efficient way and still using the same engine code as what the game uses. Thanks, Daniel P.S If you need more clarification or extra bits just leave a comment.

  Read the article

• Representing heightmaps, on disk and when drawing

  - by gardian06

  This is a conglomeration question when answering please specify which part you are addressing. I am looking at creating a maze type game that utilizes elevation. I have a few features I would like to have, but am unsure as to some of the implementation. I have done work doing fileIO maze generation (using a key to read the file, and then generate the level based on that file), but I am unsure how to think about this with elevation in the mix. I think height maps might be a good approach, but don't know how to represent them effectively. for a height map which is more beneficial XML(containing h[u,v] data and key definition), CSV (item1 is key reference, item2 is elevation), or another approach that I have not thought of yet? When it comes to placing the elevation values themselves what kind of deltah values are appropriate to have it noticeable at about a 60degree angle while not really effecting gravity driven physics (assuming some effect while moving up/down hill)? I am thinking of maybe going to procedural generation at some point, but am wondering if it is practical to have a procedurally generated grid (wall squares possibly same dimensions as the open space squares), or if designing to a thin wall open spaces is better? this decision will effect the amount of work need on the graphics end for uniform vs. irregular walls. EDIT: Game will be a elevation maze shooter. Levels/maps will be mazes with elevation the player has to negotiate. Elevations will have effects on "combat" vision, and movement.

  Read the article

• How to procedurally (create) grow an artistic (2D) tree in real-time (L-System?).

  - by lalan

  Recently I programmed an L-system module, It got me interested further. I am a Plants vs Zombies junkie as well, really liked the concept of Tree of Wisdom. Would love to create similar procedural art just for fun and learn more. Question: How should I approach the process of creating an artistic tree (2d perhaps with fixed camera/perspective) dynamically? Ideally I would like to start with a plant (only a stem with a leaf) and grow it dynamically using some influence (input/user action) over its structure. These influences may result in different type of branching, curves in branches, its spread, location of fruits, color of flowers, etc. Want it to be really full of life/spirit. :) Plants vs Zombies: Tree of wisdom It would be great to dynamically grow a similar tree, but with lot more variation and animations happening. My Background: Student / Programmer, have used few game engines (Ogre3d, cocos2d, unity). Haven't really programmed directly using openGL, trying to fix that :). I am ready to spend considerable time, Please let me know about the APIs? and how would an expert like you would take on this problem? Why 2D? I think it's easier to solve the problem only considering 2 dimensions. Artistic inspirations: Only the tree, with fruits and leaves, without the shrubs at the bottom The large tree (visible branches, green leaves, flowers, fruits, etc) on the left, behind monkey. PixelJunk's Eden (Art style inspiration). Procedurally Generated Apple Tree using Fractals Please let me know if it was easy for you to understand the question, I may elaborate further. I hope a discussion of various approach would be helpful for everyone. You guys are awesome.

  Read the article

• OpenGL sprites and point size limitation

  - by Srdan

  I'm developing a simple particle system that should be able to perform on mobile devices (iOS, Andorid). My plan was to use GL_POINT_SPRITE/GL_PROGRAM_POINT_SIZE method because of it's efficiency (GL_POINTS are enough), but after some experimenting, I found myself in a trouble. Sprite size is limited (to usually 64 pixels). I'm calculating size using this formula gl_PointSize = in_point_size * some_factor / distance_to_camera to make particle sizes proportional to distance to camera. But at some point, when camera is close enough, problem with size limitation emerges and whole system starts looking unrealistic. Is there a way to avoid this problem? If no, what's alternative? I was thinking of manually generating billboard quad for each particle. Now, I have some questions about that approach. I guess minimum geometry data would be four vertices per particle and index array to make quads from these vertices (with GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP). Additionally, for each vertex I need a color and texture coordinate. I would put all that in an interleaved vertex array. But as you can see, there is much redundancy. All vertices of same particle share same color value, and four texture coordinates are same for all particles. Because of how glDrawArrays/Elements works, I see no way to optimise this. Do you know of a better approach on how to organise per-particle data? Should I use buffers or vertex arrays, or there is no difference because each time I have to update all particles' data. About particles simulation... Where to do it? On CPU or on a vertex processors? Something tells me that mobile's CPU would do it faster than it's vertex unit (at least today in 2012 :). So, any advice on how to make a simple and efficient particle system without particle size limitation, for mobile device, would be appreciated. (animation of camera passing through particles should be realistic)

  Read the article

• Which Graphics/Geometry abstraction to choose?

  - by Robz

  I've been thinking about the design for a browser app on the HTML5 canvas that simulates a 2D robot zooming around, sensing the world around it. I decided to do this from scratch just for fun. I need shapes, like polygons, circles, and lines in order to model the robot and the world it lives in. These shapes need to be drawn with different appearance attributes, like border/fill style/width/color. I also need to have geometry functions to detect intersections and containment for the robot's sensors and so that the robot doesn't go inside stuff. One idea for functions is to have two totally separate libraries, one to implement graphics (like drawShape(context, shape)) and one for geometry operations (like shapeIntersectsShape(shape1, shape2)). Or, in a more object-oriented approach, the shape objects themselves could implement methods to do their own graphics (shape.draw(context)) and geometry operations (shape1.intersects(shape2)). Then there is the data itself: whether the data to draw a shape and the data to do geometric operations on that shape should be encapsulated within the same object, or be separate structures (where one would contain the other, or both be contained inside another structure). How do existing applications that do graphics/geometry stuff deal with this? Is there one model that is best, or is each good for certain applications? Should the fact that I'm using Javascript instead of a more classical language change how I approach the design?

  Read the article

• Bejeweled-like game, managing different gem/powerup behaviors?

  - by Wissam

  I thought I'd ask a question and look forward to some insight from this very compelling community. In a Bejeweled-like (Match 3) game, the standard behavior once a valid swap of two adjacent tiles is made is that the resulting matching tiles are destroyed, any tiles now sitting over empty spaces fall to the position above the next present-tile, and any void created above is filled with new tiles. In richer Match-3 games like Bejeweled, 4 in a row (as opposed to just 3) modifies this behavior such that the tile that was swapped is retained, turned into a "flaming" gem, it falls, and then the empty space above is filled. The next time that "flaming gem" is played it explodes and destroys the 8 perimeter tiles, triggers a different animation sequence (neighbors of those 8 tiles being destroyed look like they've been hit by a shockwave then they fall to their respective positions). Scoring is different, the triggered sounds are different, etc. There are even more elaborate behaviors for Match5, Match-cross-pattern, and many powerups that can be purchased, each which produces a more elaborate sequence of events, sounds, animations, scoring, etc... What is the best approach to developing all these different behaviors that respond to players' "move" and her current "performance" and that deviate from the standard sequence of events, scoring, animation, sounds etc, in such a way that we can always flexibly introduce a new "powerup" ? What we are doing now is hard-coding the events of each one, but the task is long and arduous and seems like the wrong approach especially since the game-designers and testers often offer (later) valuable insight on what works better in-game, which means that the code itself may have to be re-written even for minor changes in behavior (say, destroy only 7 neighboring tiles, instead of all 8 in an explosion). ANY pointers for good practices here would be highly appreciated.

  Read the article

• Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game

  - by brent777

  I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game. For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient. I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

  Read the article

• Moving 2d camera in the y direction

  - by Alex

  I'm developing a simple game for the iphone and am struggling to work out the best way for the camera to follow the main character. The following picture hightlights the three main components: There are 3 components to this: Circle - the main character Green line - terrain Black background The terrain is simply made from an array of points (approx 20 points per screen width). The terrain is moved in the x direction relative to the black background in order to keep the circle in its position shown. The distance to move the terrain is simply: movex = circle.position.x - terrain.position.x with a constant to fix the circle at some distance from the left of the screen. I am struggling to determine the best way to position the terrain in the y plane keep the focus in the character. I want to move the terrain in the y direction smoothly and not fix it to the position of the circle, so the circle can move in the y plane. If I take the same approach as the x positioning, the character is fixed at a point on the screen and the terrain moves. I could sample some terrain points either side of the character and produce an average, but in my implementation this was not smooth. I thought another approach might be to create a camera 'line' that is a smooth version of the terrain line and make the camerea follow this, but I'm not sure if this is the optimum solution. Any advice is much appreciated!

  Read the article

• Algorithm to shoot at a target in a 3d game

  - by Sebastian Bugiu

  For those of you remembering Descent Freespace it had a nice feature to help you aim at the enemy when shooting non-homing missiles or lasers: it showed a crosshair in front of the ship you chased telling you where to shoot in order to hit the moving target. I tried using the answer from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4107403/ai-algorithm-to-shoot-at-a-target-in-a-2d-game?lq=1 but it's for 2D so I tried adapting it. I first decomposed the calculation to solve the intersection point for XoZ plane and saved the x and z coordinates and then solving the intersection point for XoY plane and adding the y coordinate to a final xyz that I then transformed to clipspace and put a texture at those coordinates. But of course it doesn't work as it should or else I wouldn't have posted the question. From what I notice the after finding x in XoZ plane and the in XoY the x is not the same so something must be wrong. float a = ENG_Math.sqr(targetVelocity.x) + ENG_Math.sqr(targetVelocity.y) - ENG_Math.sqr(projectileSpeed); float b = 2.0f * (targetVelocity.x * targetPos.x + targetVelocity.y * targetPos.y); float c = ENG_Math.sqr(targetPos.x) + ENG_Math.sqr(targetPos.y); ENG_Math.solveQuadraticEquation(a, b, c, collisionTime); First time targetVelocity.y is actually targetVelocity.z (the same for targetPos) and the second time it's actually targetVelocity.y. The final position after XoZ is crossPosition.set(minTime * finalEntityVelocity.x + finalTargetPos4D.x, 0.0f, minTime * finalEntityVelocity.z + finalTargetPos4D.z); and after XoY crossPosition.y = minTime * finalEntityVelocity.y + finalTargetPos4D.y; Is my approach of separating into 2 planes and calculating any good? Or for 3D there is a whole different approach? sqr() is square not sqrt - avoiding a confusion.

  Read the article

• generating maps

  - by gardian06

  This is a conglomeration question when answering please specify which part you are addressing. I am looking at creating a maze type game that utilizes elevation. I have a few features I would like to have, but am unsure as to some of the implementation. I have done work doing fileIO maze generation (using a key to read the file, and then generate the level based on that file), but I am unsure how to think about this with elevation in the mix. I think height maps might be a good approach, but don't know how to represent them effectively. for a height map which is more beneficial XML(containing h[u,v] data and key definition), CSV (item1 is key reference, item2 is elevation), or another approach that I have not thought of yet? When it comes to placing the elevation values themselves what kind of deltah values are appropriate to have it noticeable at about a 60degree angle while not really effecting gravity driven physics (assuming some effect while moving up/down hill)? I am thinking of maybe going to procedural generation at some point, but am wondering if it is practical to have a procedurally generated grid (wall squares possibly same dimensions as the open space squares), or if designing to a thin wall open spaces is better? this decision will effect the amount of work need on the graphics end for uniform vs. irregular walls. EDIT: game will be a elevation maze shooter. levels/maps will be mazes with elevation the player has to negotiate. elevations will have effects on "combat" vision, and movement

  Read the article

• What is better for the overall performance and feel of the game: one setInterval performing all the work, or many of them doing individual tasks?

  - by Bane

  This question is, I suppose, not limited to Javascript, but it is the language I use to create my game, so I'll use it as an example. For now, I have structured my HTML5 game like this: var fps = 60; var game = new Game(); setInterval(game.update, 1000/fps); And game.update looks like this: this.update = function() { this.parseInput(); this.logic(); this.physics(); this.draw(); } This seems a bit inefficient, maybe I don't need to do all of those things at once. An obvious alternative would be to have more intervals performing individual tasks, but is it worth it? var fps = 60; var game = new Game(); setInterval(game.draw, 1000/fps); setInterval(game.physics, 1000/a); //where "a" is some constant, performing the same function as "fps" ... With which approach should I go and why? Is there a better alternative? Also, in case the second approach is the best, how frequently should I perform the tasks?

  Read the article

• Pure functional programming and game state

  - by Fu86

  Is there a common technique to handle state (in general) in a functional programming language? There are solutions in every (functional) programming language to handle global state, but I want to avoid this as far as I could. All state in a pure functional manner are function parameters. So I need to put the whole game state (a gigantic hashmap with the world, players, positions, score, assets, enemies, ...)) as a parameter to all functions which wants to manipulate the world on a given input or trigger. The function itself picks the relevant information from the gamestate blob, do something with it, manipulate the gamestate and return the gamestate. But this looks like a poor mans solution for the problem. If I put the whole gamestate into all functions, there is no benefit for me in contrast to global variables or the imperative approach. I could put just the relevant information into the functions and return the actions which will be taken for the given input. And one single function apply all the actions to the gamestate. But most functions need a lot of "relevant" information. move() need the object position, the velocity, the map for collision, position of all enemys, current health, ... So this approach does not seem to work either. So my question is how do I handle the massive amount of state in a functional programming language -- especially for game development?

  Read the article

• Unity gizmos vs. referenced game objects

  - by DuckMaestro

  I'm designing a Unity script that I intend to be highly reusable and as easy as possible to setup within the editor. To this end, a number of properties of this script really need some kind of visual representation on screen. It is an unresolved question to me whether the design of the script should require references to placeholder game objects, OR just Vector3's and float's that have associated gizmos drawn for them. Normally a gizmo would be a natural choice, except that Unity gizmos are not directly manipulable (as far as I can tell). Because of this shortcoming I'm having to consider whether depending on references to placeholder game objects is a more designer-friendly approach ultimately, in spite of the extra setup required, and that it might be counter-intuitive when the placeholder game objects disappear at run-time (which my script would do). Is there a community standard or preference here in this case? Can a Unity-experienced game programmer / designer speak to which approach they feel is more intuitive or more convenient to setup, when using a 3rd party script? Or is this just splitting hairs as long as I ship an example prefab with my script?

  Read the article

• 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.

  Read the article

• Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game (Android)

  - by brent777

  I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game. For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient. I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

  Read the article

• Approaches for a clickable map of nations (such as a Risk game) with Spritekit

  - by Vukovitch

  I would like to create a political map where each country is clickable by tapping but I'm not sure the best way to determine which nation was selected. Imagine Risk where each country can be individually clicked to bring up additional information. My current approach is to make a sprite for each nation where every image is the size of the screen The images are mostly transparent except for the country, that way when all of the images are displayed the countries are in the correct place relative to one another. To determine if a click occurs on an individual country I look to see if the tapped location is a non transparent pixel and check that the sprite's name is one of the countries. Additionally the nation needs to glow or something when tapped as an indicator, however my current solution is yet another sprite that is displayed. This seems like a terrible approach and I was wondering what other solutions might achieve the same results. I'm pretty new to SpriteKit so I'm not entirely sure. The other idea I had was creating a single texture where each country is a different shade of gray, then when I get the tap location I do a lookup on the color at that location and get the corresponding country. However, I'm not sure how to create a hilight or glowing country effect with that method.

  Read the article

• Best way to solve the game 'bricolage'

  - by maggie

  I am trying to solve the following game http://www.hacker.org/brick/ using some kind of AI. The target of this game is to finally clear the board by clicking on groups of at least 3 bricks of the same color and removing them. If a group is disappearing the remaining bricks above will fall down or be moved left if a column got no bricks left. The higher the level - more colors and larger board. I already guessed that a pure bruteforce approach wont scale nice for higher levels. So i tried to implement a monte carlo like approach which worked ok for the first levels. But i am still not confident i will make the maximum level of 1052 with this. Currently i am stuck @~ level 100 :) The finding of the solution takes too much time... Hoping that there is a better way to do this i read some stuff about neural networks but i am really at the beginning of this. Before becoming obsessed by ANNs i want to be sure it is the right way for my problem. So my question is: Does it make any sense to apply an ANN to this game? Any suggestions?

  Read the article

• Django custom managers - how do I return only objects created by the logged-in user?

  - by Tom Tom

  I want to overwrite the custom objects model manager to only return objects a specific user created. Admin users should still return all objects using the objects model manager. Now I have found an approach that could work. They propose to create your own middleware looking like this: #### myproject/middleware/threadlocals.py try: from threading import local except ImportError: # Python 2.3 compatibility from django.utils._threading_local import local _thread_locals = local() def get_current_user(): return getattr(_thread_locals, 'user', None) class ThreadLocals(object): """Middleware that gets various objects from the request object and saves them in thread local storage.""" def process_request(self, request): _thread_locals.user = getattr(request, 'user', None) #### end And in the Custom manager you could call the get_current_user() method to return only objects a specific user created. class UserContactManager(models.Manager): def get_query_set(self): return super(UserContactManager, self).get_query_set().filter(creator=get_current_user()) Is this a good approach to this use-case? Will this work? Or is this like "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut" ? ;-) Just using: Contact.objects.filter(created_by= user) in each view doesn`t look very neat to me. EDIT Do not use this middleware approach !!! use the approach stated by Jack M. below After a while of testing this approach behaved pretty strange and with this approach you mix up a global-state with a current request. Use the approach presented below. It is really easy and no need to hack around with the middleware. create a custom manager in your model with a function that expects the current user or any other user as an input. #in your models.py class HourRecordManager(models.Manager): def for_user(self, user): return self.get_query_set().filter(created_by=user) class HourRecord(models.Model): #Managers objects = HourRecordManager() #in vour view you can call the manager like this and get returned only the objects from the currently logged-in user. hr_set = HourRecord.objects.for_user(request.user)

  Read the article

• Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

  Read the article

• What are the disadvantages of domain email forwarding?

  - by naivedeveloper

  I have a domain, example.com. My domain registrar gives me two options concerning email. Set up forwarding email addresses (e.g., [email protected] forwarded to [email protected]. Set up Google Apps for email management Thus far, I have gone with option 1. I have a generic GMail email, [email protected], and I subsequently set up various email addresses on my registrar to forward to this gmail address: [email protected] -> [email protected] [email protected] -> [email protected] [email protected] -> [email protected] Through the GMail account, I have the option to alias these addresses when sending email. For example, from [email protected], I can "send email as" [email protected]. That way from the vantage point of the receiver of the email, the email came from [email protected] as opposed to [email protected]. My question is: Are there any disadvantages of this approach? Are these emails more susceptible to being picked up by spam filters vs using the Google Apps approach? Is there any hidden indication that the email is being aliased? When viewing the email headers, it shows the email was sent from [email protected] and not [email protected] or "forwarded from [email protected]" or anything like that. Am I naive in assuming that my cheap approach to email is masked by aliasing my outgoing emails? I have chosen approach number 1 simply because of the ease of setup. With that said, are there any advantages of going with approach 2 (the Google Apps approach)? Thanks for suggestions and advice.

  Read the article

• Windows Azure Use Case: Agility

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Agility in this context is defined as the ability to quickly develop and deploy an application. In theory, the speed at which your organization can develop and deploy an application on available hardware is identical to what you could deploy in a distributed environment. But in practice, this is not always the case. Having an option to use a distributed environment can be much faster for the deployment and even the development process. Implementation: When an organization designs code, they are essentially becoming a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to their own organization. To do that, the IT operations team becomes the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to the development teams. From there, the software is developed and deployed using an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. A simplified view of an ALM process is as follows: Requirements Analysis Design and Development Implementation Testing Deployment to Production Maintenance In an on-premise environment, this often equates to the following process map: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including physical plant, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to on-premise Testing servers. If no server capacity available, more resources procured through standard budgeting and ordering processes. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Server team involved to select platform and environments with available capacity. If no server capacity available, standard budgeting and procurement process followed. If no server capacity available, systems built, configured and put under standard organizational IT control. Systems configured for proper operating systems, patches, security and virus scans. System maintenance, HA/DR, backups and recovery plans configured and put into place. Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. In a distributed computing environment like Windows Azure, the process maps a bit differently: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including budget, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to Azure. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Code deployed to Azure. Point in time backup and recovery plans configured and put into place.(HA/DR and automated backups already present in Azure fabric) Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. This means that several steps can be removed or expedited. It also means that the business function requesting the application can be held directly responsible for the funding of that request, speeding the process further since the IT budgeting process may not be involved in the Azure scenario. An additional benefit is the “Azure Marketplace”, In effect this becomes an app store for Enterprises to select pre-defined code and data applications to mesh or bolt-in to their current code, possibly saving development time. Resources: Whitepaper download- What is ALM?  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743693  Whitepaper download - ALM and Business Strategy: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743690  LiveMeeting Recording on ALM and Windows Azure (registration required, but free): http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/visualstudio/contact-us.aspx?sbj=Developing with Windows Azure (ALM perspective) - 10:00-11:00 - 19th Jan 2011

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Understanding XML – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 5 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Is following XML a well formed XML Document? <?xml version=”1.0″?> <address> <firstname>Pinal</firstname> <lastname>Dave</lastname> <title>Founder</title> <company>SQLAuthority.com</company> </address> a) Yes b) No c) I do not know Query Hints: BIG HINT POST A common observation by people seeing an XML file for the first time is that it looks like just a bunch of data inside a text file. XML files are text-based documents, which makes them easy to read.  All of the data is literally spelled out in the document and relies on a just a few characters (<, >, =) to convey relationships and structure of the data.  XML files can be used by any commonly available text editor, like Notepad. Much like a book’s Table of Contents, your first glance at well-formed XML will tell you the subject matter of the data and its general structure. Hints appearing within the data help you to quickly identify the main theme (similar to book’s subject), its headers (similar to chapter titles or sections of a book), data elements (similar to a book’s characters or chief topics), and so forth. We’ll learn to recognize and use the structural “hints,” which are XML’s markup components (e.g., XML tags, root elements). The XML Raw and Auto modes are great for displaying data as all attributes or all elements – but not both at once. If you want your XML stream to have some of its data shown in attributes and some shown as elements, then you can use the XML Path mode. If you are using an XML Path stream, then by default all values will be shown as elements. However, it is possible to pick one or more elements to be shown with an attribute(s) as well. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 5. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – OpenXML Options SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Preparing XML in Memory SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Shredding XML SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Using Root With Auto XML Mode SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Using Root With Auto XML Mode SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – What is XML? SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – What is XML? – 2 Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question - Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Identity Fields – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 2 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following statement is incorrect? a) Identity value can be negative. b) Identity value can have negative interval. c) Identity value can be of datatype VARCHAR d) Identity value can have increment interval larger than 1 Query Hints: BIG HINT POST A simple way to determine if a table contains an identity field is to use the SSMS Object Explorer Design Interface. Navigate to the table, then right-click it and choose Design from the pop-up window. When your design tab opens, select the first field in the table to view its list of properties in the lower pane of the tab (In this case the field is ProductID). Look to see if the Identity Specification property in the lower pane is set to either yes or no. SQL Server will allow you to utilize IDENTITY_INSERT with just one table at a time. After you’ve completed the needed work, it’s very important to reset the IDENTITY_INSERT back to OFF. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 2. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Output Clause in Simple Examples SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – Advanced NTILE in Detail SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – RANK( ), DENSE_RANK( ), and ROW_NUMBER( ) SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Advanced Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Overriding Identity Fields – Tricks and Tips of Identity Fields SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Many to Many Relationships Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Expanding Views – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 4 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following key word will force the query to use indexes created on views? a) ENCRYPTION b) SCHEMABINDING c) NOEXPAND d) CHECK OPTION Query Hints: BIG HINT POST Usually, the assumption is that Index on the table will use Index on the table and Index on view will be used by view. However, that is the misconception. It does not happen this way. In fact, if you notice the image, you will find the both of them (table and view) use both the index created on the table. The index created on the view is not used. The reason for the same as listed in BOL. The cost of using the indexed view may exceed the cost of getting the data from the base tables, or the query is so simple that a query against the base tables is fast and easy to find. This often happens when the indexed view is defined on small tables. You can use the NOEXPAND hint if you want to force the query processor to use the indexed view. This may require you to rewrite your query if you don’t initially reference the view explicitly. You can get the actual cost of the query with NOEXPAND and compare it to the actual cost of the query plan that doesn’t reference the view. If they are close, this may give you the confidence that the decision of whether or not to use the indexed view doesn’t matter. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 4. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Structured Error Handling SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – SQL Server Error Messages SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Functions SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Table-Valued Store Procedure Parameters SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Easy Introduction to CHECK Options SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Introduction to Views SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – All about SQL Constraints Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• How to convert from amateur web app developer to professional web apper?

  - by Nilesh

  This is more of a practical question on web app development and deployment process. Here is some background information. I use PHP for server side scripting, javascript for client side. I use Netbeans and notepad++. I user Firefox and firebug for debugging and testing. The process I use is very amateurish, I code something in netbeans, something in notepad++ and since there is nothing to compile, I just refresh the firefox browser and test it. This is convenient and faster compared to the Java development enviornment where you would have to atleast compile and deploy the jar files before you could run them. I have been thinking of putting a formal process in my development and find it hard putting it together. There are so many things to do before you can deploy your final web app. I keep hearing jslint, compression, unit testing (selenium), Ant, YUI compressor etc but I am now looking for some steps that I can take to make me more organized. For e.g I use netbeans but don't use any projects within it. I directly update the files. I don't use any source control but use my Iomega backup that saves each save into a different version and at the end of the day I backup the dev directory to my Amazon s3 account. For me development environment is just a DEV directory, TEST is my intermediate stage and PROD is the final directory that gets pushed out to the server. But all these directories are in the same apache home. I have few php scripts that just copies the needed files into the production directory. Thats about it for my development approach. I know I am missing the following - Regression testing (manual or automated ??) - automated testing (selenium ??) - automated deployment (ANT ??) - source control (svn ??) - quality control (jslint ??) Can someone explain what are the missing steps and how to go about filling those steps in order to have more professional approach. I am looking for tools with example tutorials in streamlining the whole development to deployment stage. For me just getting a hang of database, server side and client side development all in synchronization was itself a huge accomplishment. And now I feel there is lot missing before you can produce quality web application. For e.g I see lot of mention about using automated testing but how to put in use with respect to javascript and php. How to use ANT for the deployment etc. Is this all too much for a single or two person development team? Is there a way to automate all the above so that I just keep coding in netbeans and then run a batch file that is configured once and run it everytime to produce the code in the production directory? Lot of these information is scattered on the web and here, if someone can guide I would be happy to consolidate here. Thank you for your patience :)

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316  | Next Page >