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  • Which of these URL scenarios is best for big link menus? [seo /user friendly urls]

    - by Sam
    Hi folks, a question about urls... me and a good friend of mine are exploring the possibilities of either of the three scenarios for a website where each webpage has a menusystem with about 130 links.: SCENARIO 1 the pages menu system has SHORT non-descriptive hyperlinks as well as a SHORT canonical: <a href:"design">dutch design</a> the pages canonical url points to e.g.: "design" OR SCENARIO 2 the pages menu system has SHORT non-descriptive hyperlinks wwith LONG canonical urls: <a href="design">dutch design</a> the pages canonical url points to: dutch-design-crazy-yes-but-always-honest OR SCENARIO 3 the pages menu system has LONG descriptive hyperlinks with LONG canonical urls: <a href="dutch-design-crazy-yes-but-always-honest">dutch design</a> the pages canonical url points to: dutch-design-crazy-yes-but-always-honest Currently we have scenario 2... should we progress to scenario 3? All three work fine and point via RewriteMod to the same page which is fetched underwater. Now, my question is which of these is better in terms of: userfriendlyness (page loading times, full url visible in url bar or not) seo friendlyness (proper indexing due to the urls containing descriptive relevant tags) other concerns we forgot like possible penalties for so many words in link hrefs?? Thanks very much for your suggestions: much appreciated!

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  • Data Modeling: Logical Modeling Exercise

    - by swisscheese
    In trying to learn the art of data storage I have been trying to take in as much solid information as possible. PerformanceDBA posted some really helpful tutorials/examples in the following posts among others: is my data normalized? and Relational table naming convention. I already asked a subset question of this model here. So to make sure I understood the concepts he presented and I have seen elsewhere I wanted to take things a step or two further and see if I am grasping the concepts. Hence the purpose of this post, which hopefully others can also learn from. Everything I present is conceptual to me and for learning rather than applying it in some production system. It would be cool to get some input from PerformanceDBA also since I used his models to get started, but I appreciate all input given from anyone. As I am new to databases and especially modeling I will be the first to admit that I may not always ask the right questions, explain my thoughts clearly, or use the right verbage due to lack of expertise on the subject. So please keep that in mind and feel free to steer me in the right direction if I head off track. If there is enough interest in this I would like to take this from the logical to physical phases to show the evolution of the process and share it here on Stack. I will keep this thread for the Logical Diagram though and start new one for the additional steps. For my understanding I will be building a MySQL DB in the end to run some tests and see if what I came up with actually works. Here is the list of things that I want to capture in this conceptual model. Edit for V1.2 The purpose of this is to list Bands, their members, and the Events that they will be appearing at, as well as offer music and other merchandise for sale Members will be able to match up with friends Members can write reviews on the Bands, their music, and their events. There can only be one review per member on a given item, although they can edit their reviews and history will be maintained. BandMembers will have the chance to write a single Comment on Reviews about the Band they are associated with. Collectively as a Band only one Comment is allowed per Review. Members can then rate all Reviews and Comments but only once per given instance Members can select their favorite Bands, music, Merchandise, and Events Bands, Songs, and Events will be categorized into the type of Genre that they are and then further subcategorized into a SubGenre if necessary. It is ok for a Band or Event to fall into more then one Genre/SubGenre combination. Event date, time, and location will be posted for a given band and members can show that they will be attending the Event. An Event can be comprised of more than one Band, and multiple Events can take place at a single location on the same day Every party will be tied to at least one address and address history shall be maintained. Each party could also be tied to more then one address at a time (i.e. billing, shipping, physical) There will be stored profiles for Bands, BandMembers, and general members. So there it is, maybe a bit involved but could be a great learning tool for many hopefully as the process evolves and input is given by the community. Any input? EDIT v1.1 In response to PerformanceDBA U.3) That means no merchandise other than Band merchandise in the database. Correct ? That was my original thought but you got me thinking. Maybe the site would want to sell its own merchandise or even other merchandise from the bands. Not sure a mod to make for that. Would it require an entire rework of the Catalog section or just the identifying relationship that exists with the Band? Attempted a mod to sell both complete albums or song. Either way they would both be in electronic format only available for download. That is why I listed an Album as being comprised of Songs rather then 2 separate entities. U.5) I understand what you bring up about the circular relation with Favorite. I would like to get to this “It is either one Entity with some form of differentiation (FavoriteType) which identifies its treatment” but how to is not clear to me. What am I missing here? u.6) “Business Rules This is probably the only area you are weak in.” Thanks for the honest response. I will readdress these but I hope to clear up some confusion in my head first with the responses I have posted back to you. Q.1) Yes I would like to have Accepted, Rejected, and Blocked. I am not sure what you are referring to as to how this would change the logical model? Q.2) A person does not have to be a User. They can exist only as a BandMember. Is that what you are asking? Minor Issue Zero, One, or More…Oops I admit I forgot to give this attention when building the model. I am submitting this version as is and will address in a future version. I need to read up more on Constraint Checking to make sure I am understanding things. M.4) Depends if you envision OrderPurchase in the future. Can you expand as to what you mean here? EDIT V1.2 In response to PerformanceDBA input... Lessons learned. I was mixing the concept of Identifying / Non-Identifying and Cardinality (i.e. Genre / SubGenre), and doing so inconsistently to make things worse. Associative Tables are not required in Logical Diagrams as their many-to-many relationships can be depicted and then expanded in the Physical Model. I was overlooking the Cardinality in a lot of the relationships The importance of reading through relationships using effective Verb Phrases to reassure I am modeling what I want to accomplish. U.2) In the concept of this model it is only required to track a Venue as a location for an Event. No further data needs to be collected. With that being said Events will take place on a given EventDate and will be hosted at a Venue. Venues will host multiple events and possibly multiple events on a given date. In my new model my thinking was that EventDate is already tied to Event . Therefore, Venue will not need a relationship with EventDate. The 5th and 6th bullets you have listed under U.2) leave me questioning my thinking though. Am I missing something here? U.3) Is it time to move the link between Item and Band up to Item and Party instead? With the current design I don't see a possibility to sell merchandise not tied to the band as you have brought up. U.5) I left as per your input rather than making it a discrete Supertype/Subtype Relationship as I don’t see a benefit of having that type of roll up. Additional Revisions AR.1) After going through the exercise for FavoriteItem, I feel that Item to Review requires a many-to-many relationship so that is indicated. Necessary? Ok here we go for v1.3 I took a few days on this version, going back and forth with my design. Once the logical process is complete, as I want to see if I am on the right track, I will go through in depth what I had learned and the troubles I faced as a beginner going through this process. The big point for this version was it took throwing in some Keys to help see what I was missing in the past. Going through the process of doing a matrix proved to be of great help also. Regardless of anything, if it wasn't for the input given by PerformanceDBA I would still be a lost soul wondering in the dark. Who knows my current design might reaffirm that I still am, but I have learned a lot so I am know I at least have a flashlight in my hand. At this point in time I admit that I am still confused about identifying and non-identifying relationships. In my model I had to use non-identifying relationships with non nulls just to join the relationships I wanted to model. In reading a lot on the subject there seems to be a lot of disagreement and indecisiveness on the subject so I did what I thought represented the right things in my model. When to force (identifying) and when to be free (non-identifying)? Anyone have inputs? EDIT V1.4 Ok took the V1.3 inputs and cleaned things up for this V1.4 Currently working on a V1.5 to include attributes.

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  • Designing interfaces: predict methods needed, discipline yourself and deal with code that comes to m

    - by fireeyedboy
    Was: Design by contract: predict methods needed, discipline yourself and deal with code that comes to mind I like the idea of designing by contract a lot (at least, as far as I understand the principal). I believe it means you define intefaces first before you start implementing actual code, right? However, from my limited experience (3 OOP years now) I usually can't resist the urge to start coding pretty early, for several reasons: because my limited experience has shown me I am unable to predict what methods I will be needing in the interface, so I might as well start coding right away. or because I am simply too impatient to write out the whole interfaces first. or when I do try it, I still wind up implementing bits of code already, because I fear I might forget this or that imporant bit of code, that springs to mind when I am designing the interfaces. As you see, especially with the last two points, this leads to a very disorderly way of doing things. Tasks get mixed up. I should draw a clear line between designing interfaces and actual coding. If you, unlike me, are a good/disciplined planner, as intended above, how do you: ...know the majority of methods you will be needing up front so well? Especially if it's components that implement stuff you are not familiar with yet. ...resist the urge to start coding right away? ...deal with code that comes to mind when you are designing the interfaces? UPDATE: Thank you for the answers so far. Valuable insights! And... I stand corrected; it seems I misinterpreted the idea of Design By Contract. For clarity, what I actually meant was: "coming up with interface methods before implementing the actual components". An additional thing that came up in my mind is related to point 1): b) How do you know the majority of components you will be needing. How do you flesh out these things before you start actually coding? For arguments sake, let's say I'm a novice with the MVC pattern, and I wanted to implement such a component/architecture. A naive approach would be to think of: a front controller some abstract action controller some abstract view ... and be done with it, so to speak. But, being more familiar with the MVC pattern, I know now that it makes sense to also have: a request object a router a dispatcher a response object view helpers etc.. etc.. If you map this idea to some completely new component you want to develop, with which you have no experience yet; how do you come up with these sort of additional components without actually coding the thing, and stuble upon the ideas that way? How would you know up front how fine grained some components should be? Is this a matter of disciplining yourself to think it out thoroughly? Or is it a matter of being good at thinking in abstractions?

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  • Error displaying a WinForm in Design mode with a custom control on it.

    - by George
    I have a UserControl that is part of a Class library. I reference this project from my solution. This adds a control from the referenced project to my toolbox. I add tghe control to a form. Everything looks good, I compile all and run. Perfect... But when I close the .frm with the control on it and re-open it, I get this error. The code continues to run. It may have something to do with namespaces. The original namespace was simply "Design" and this was ambiguous and conflicting so i decided to rename it. I think that's when my problems began. To prevent possible data loss before loading the designer, the following errors must be resolved: 2 Errors Ignore and Continue Why am I seeing this page? Could not find type 'Besi.Winforms.HtmlEditor.Editor'. Please make sure that the assembly that contains this type is referenced. If this type is a part of your development project, make sure that the project has been successfully built using settings for your current platform or Any CPU. Instances of this error (1) 1. There is no stack trace or error line information available for this error. Help with this error Could not find an associated help topic for this error. Check Windows Forms Design-Time error list Forum posts about this error Search the MSDN Forums for posts related to this error The variable 'Editor1' is either undeclared or was never assigned. Go to code Instances of this error (1) 1. BesiAdmin frmOrder.Designer.vb Line:775 Column:1 Show Call Stack at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.Error(IDesignerSerializationManager manager, String exceptionText, String helpLink) at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.DeserializeExpression(IDesignerSerializationManager manager, String name, CodeExpression expression) at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.DeserializeExpression(IDesignerSerializationManager manager, String name, CodeExpression expression) at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomSerializerBase.DeserializeStatement(IDesignerSerializationManager manager, CodeStatement statement) Help with this error MSDN Help Forum posts about this error Search the MSDN Forums for posts related to this error

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  • Database - Designing an "Events" Table

    - by Alix Axel
    After reading the tips from this great Nettuts+ article I've come up with a table schema that would separate highly volatile data from other tables subjected to heavy reads and at the same time lower the number of tables needed in the whole database schema, however I'm not sure if this is a good idea since it doesn't follow the rules of normalization and I would like to hear your advice, here is the general idea: I've four types of users modeled in a Class Table Inheritance structure, in the main "user" table I store data common to all the users (id, username, password, several flags, ...) along with some TIMESTAMP fields (date_created, date_updated, date_activated, date_lastLogin, ...). To quote the tip #16 from the Nettuts+ article mentioned above: Example 2: You have a “last_login” field in your table. It updates every time a user logs in to the website. But every update on a table causes the query cache for that table to be flushed. You can put that field into another table to keep updates to your users table to a minimum. Now it gets even trickier, I need to keep track of some user statistics like how many unique times a user profile was seen how many unique times a ad from a specific type of user was clicked how many unique times a post from a specific type of user was seen and so on... In my fully normalized database this adds up to about 8 to 10 additional tables, it's not a lot but I would like to keep things simple if I could, so I've come up with the following "events" table: |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | ID | TABLE | EVENT | DATE | IP | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 1 | user | login | 201004190030 | 127.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 1 | user | login | 201004190230 | 127.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | created | 201004190031 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | activated | 201004190234 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | approved | 201004190930 | 217.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | login | 201004191200 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | created | 201004191230 | 127.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | impressed | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | blocked | 201004200319 | 217.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | deleted | 201004200320 | 217.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| Basically the ID refers to the primary key (id) field in the TABLE table, I believe the rest should be pretty straightforward. One thing that I've come to like in this design is that I can keep track of all the user logins instead of just the last one, and thus generate some interesting metrics with that data. Due to the nature of the events table I also thought of making some optimizations, such as: #9: Since there is only a finite number of tables and a finite (and predetermined) number of events, the TABLE and EVENTS columns could be setup as ENUMs instead of VARCHARs to save some space. #14: Store IPs as UNSIGNED INT with INET_ATON() instead of VARCHARs. Store DATEs as TIMESTAMPs instead of DATETIMEs. Use the ARCHIVE (or the CSV?) engine instead of InnoDB / MyISAM. Overall, each event would only consume 14 bytes which is okay for my traffic I guess. Pros: Ability to store more detailed data (such as logins). No need to design (and code for) almost a dozen additional tables (dates and statistics). Reduces a few columns per table and keeps volatile data separated. Cons: Non-relational (still not as bad as EAV): SELECT * FROM events WHERE id = 2 AND table = 'user' ORDER BY date DESC(); 6 bytes overhead per event (ID, TABLE and EVENT). I'm more inclined to go with this approach since the pros seem to far outweigh the cons, but I'm still a little bit reluctant.. Am I missing something? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks!

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  • Replace conditional with polymorphism refactoring or similar?

    - by Anders Svensson
    Hi, I have tried to ask a variant of this question before. I got some helpful answers, but still nothing that felt quite right to me. It seems to me this shouldn't really be that hard a nut to crack, but I'm not able to find an elegant simple solution. (Here's my previous post, but please try to look at the problem stated here as procedural code first so as not to be influenced by the earlier explanation which seemed to lead to very complicated solutions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2772858/design-pattern-for-cost-calculator-app ) Basically, the problem is to create a calculator for hours needed for projects that can contain a number of services. In this case "writing" and "analysis". The hours are calculated differently for the different services: writing is calculated by multiplying a "per product" hour rate with the number of products, and the more products are included in the project, the lower the hour rate is, but the total number of hours is accumulated progressively (i.e. for a medium-sized project you take both the small range pricing and then add the medium range pricing up to the number of actual products). Whereas for analysis it's much simpler, it is just a bulk rate for each size range. How would you be able to refactor this into an elegant and preferably simple object-oriented version (please note that I would never write it like this in a purely procedural manner, this is just to show the problem in another way succinctly). I have been thinking in terms of factory, strategy and decorator patterns, but can't get any to work well. (I read Head First Design Patterns a while back, and both the decorator and factory patterns described have some similarities to this problem, but I have trouble seeing them as good solutions as stated there. The decorator example seems very complicated for just adding condiments, but maybe it could work better here, I don't know. And the factory pattern example with the pizza factory...well it just seems to create such a ridiculous explosion of classes, at least in their example. I have found good use for factory patterns before, but I can't see how I could use it here without getting a really complicated set of classes) The main goal would be to only have to change in one place (loose coupling etc) if I were to add a new parameter (say another size, like XSMALL, and/or another service, like "Administration"). Here's the procedural code example: public class Conditional { private int _numberOfManuals; private string _serviceType; private const int SMALL = 2; private const int MEDIUM = 8; public int GetHours() { if (_numberOfManuals <= SMALL) { if (_serviceType == "writing") return 30 * _numberOfManuals; if (_serviceType == "analysis") return 10; } else if (_numberOfManuals <= MEDIUM) { if (_serviceType == "writing") return (SMALL * 30) + (20 * _numberOfManuals - SMALL); if (_serviceType == "analysis") return 20; } else //i.e. LARGE { if (_serviceType == "writing") return (SMALL * 30) + (20 * (MEDIUM - SMALL)) + (10 * _numberOfManuals - MEDIUM); if (_serviceType == "analysis") return 30; } return 0; //Just a default fallback for this contrived example } } All replies are appreciated! I hope someone has a really elegant solution to this problem that I actually thought from the beginning would be really simple... Regards, Anders

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  • Building Great-Looking, Usable Apps: A two-day workshop applying Oracle’s best UX practices in ADF

    - by mvaughan
    By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceI have been with Oracle for more than 12 years. It is a company that has granted me extraordinary creative freedom to help deliver compelling experiences for customers.I am beyond proud to talk about one of the experiences we just took for a test drive. Recently, we delivered a first-of-its-kind, three-team collaboration, train-the-trainer event in Reading, U.K., on building great-looking, usable apps based on Oracle Fusion Applications -- using the ADF tool kit. A new kind of workshopKevin Li, Platform Product Director, asked the Oracle Applications User Experience VP, Jeremy Ashley, if the team had anything to help partners and customers build applications that looked like Fusion. He was receiving this request from European partners and customers.Some quick conversations ensued, and the idea for the workshop was born: We would conduct an experiment.  We would work with feedback from the key Platform Technology Solutions (PTS) trainers under Andre Pavanello, Director, Platform Technology Solutions, in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. We would partner with the ADF team lead by Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, title> and leverage the Applications UX expertise in Ashley’s team.The goal: Create a pilot workshop that in two days would explain to an ADF developer how to leverage the next-generation user experience best-practices developed for Fusion Apps. Why? Customers who need integrations with Oracle Fusion Applications, who are looking for custom applications that need to co-exist with Fusion, or who quite simply want a next-generation design for a custom app, need their solutions to reflect the next-generation research and design.Building an event for an ADF developerThe biggest hurdle was figuring out where to start.  How far into user experience country do you take an ADF developer? How far into ADF do you need to go if you are a UX professional?After some time in the UX kitchen, the workshop recipe looked like this: Mix equal parts: Fusion user experience design principles and functional design patterns The art and science behind UX How to wireframe designs that you can build in Fusion How to translate those designs into an ADF application Ultan O’Broin, Director of Global User Experience, explaining the trouble ticket wireframe design exerciseLynn Munsinger, Senior Group Product Manager, explaining the follow-on trouble ticket ADF coding exercise For spice, add:•    Debra Lilley, Fujitsu and ACE director, showcasing some of the latest ADF design work in the new face of Fusion Applications •    Partner show-and-tell of example apps they have built with FMW and ADF that are dynamic, beautiful, and interactive.Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fujitsu Fusion Champion on the new face of Fusion built with ADF and Fusion extensibility with composers as a window into “the possible”?The taste testThis first go-round of the workshop was aimed squarely at ADF developers and partners.  We were privileged to have participation and feedback from:•    Sten Vesterli, Scott/Tiger S. A., Denmark•    John Sim, Fishbowl Solutions, UK•    Josef Huber, Primus Delphi Group, Munich•    Thaddaus Weindl, Primus Delphi, Group , Munich•    Praveen Pillalamarri, EiS Technologies, Bangalore•    Balaji Kamepalli, EiS Technologies, Bangalore•    Plinio Arbizu, Services & Processes Solutions S. A., Mexico•    Yannick Ongena, infoMENTUM, UK•    Jakub Ciszek, infoMENTUM, UK•    Mauro Flores, infoMENTUM, UK•    Matteo Formica, infoMENTUM, UKRichard Bingham, Oracle, Mauro Flores and Matteo Formica, infoMENTUMWhy is this so exciting?  Oracle has invested heavily in the research and development of the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience. This investment has been and continues to be applied across the product lines. Now, we finally get to teach customers and partners how to take advantage of this investment for custom solutions.This event was a pilot to test-drive the content, as well as a train-the-trainer event that our EMEA colleagues will be using with partners who want to build with Fusion Apps design patterns.What did attendees think?"I liked most the science stuff, like eye-tracking, design patterns and best-practice (color, contrast),” Josef Huber said. “It was a very good introduction to UI design, and most developers and project managers are very bad in that.  So this course would be good for all developers and even project managers." Team Anonymous: John Sim, Fishbowl Solutions, Flavius Sana, Oracle, Josef Huber, infoMENTUM, Mireille Duroussaud, Oracle. Winners of the wireframing design exercise.  Sten Vesterli, of Scott/Tiger, said he attended to learn techniques he could use in his own projects. He wants to ensure that his applications better meet the needs of his users, and he said sessions during the workshop on user interface design and wireframing were most useful to him.  “Go to this event to learn the art and science of good user interfaces from people who really know how to do it,” he said.Sten Vesterli, Scott/Tiger, Angelo Santagata, Oracle Plinio Arbizu said the workshop fulfilled his goals, thanks to the recommendations given in how to design user interfaces to facilitate the adoption of applications among the final users. “The workshop combined these recommendations with an exercise that improved the technical comprehension, permitting the usage of JDeveloper to set forth our solutions,” he said. He added: “The first session that I really enjoyed was the five Fusion design principles. It was incredible to discover how these simple principles were included in an inherit manner in Fusion Applications, and I had been using many of them applying only ADF components.  Another topic that I enjoyed a lot was the eight recommendations about the visual design of UIs. The issues that were raised in that lesson are unknown to the developers and of great value to achieve an attractive presentation layer to the end users.  Participate in this workshop, and include these usability features in your projects and in this manner not only to facilitate and improve the user productivity, but also to distinguish you as a professional who takes advantage fully of the functionalities offered by Oracle technology. Praveen Pillalamarri came to the workshop to learn about the difficulties faced in UI and UX development, and how this can be resolved with the help of ADF.  He also appreciated the opportunity to talk with other individuals who came to the workshop. Pillalmarri said, “The way we looked at things in terms of work and projects were sharpened.  UI and UX design knowledge shared by you was quite interesting, especially the minute things which we ignored in the UI or UX design.” Plinio Arbizu, Services & Processes Solutions S. A., Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, & Praveen Pillalamarri, EiS TechnologiesReady to spread the wordIn EMEA, Oracle customers and partners have access to three world-class trainers via Platform Technology Solutions: Mireille Duroussaud, Flavius Sana, and Angelo Santagata. Contact Andre Pavanello if you like to experience this workshop firsthand, or you have customers or partners who would benefit from the training.We are looking to bring the event to the U.S. in spring 2013. If you have interest in this kind of a workshop, leave a comment below. For those who want to follow the action, join the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group run by Oracle’s Chris Muir. Ask questions and continue with the conversation in this forum, or check blogs.oracle.com/usableapps for topics emerging from the workshop.

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  • Agile Executives

    - by Robert May
    Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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  • Best free online Computer Science college courses

    - by Spiker
    I have found the MIT Open Courseware to be a great resource for free computer science college courses. Every software engineer should be required to take the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs class. Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon also provide some great online courses. Are there any more colleges that offer quality computer science courses?

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  • looking for php-based image viewer / browser

    - by stereofrog
    (don't know if this better belongs to SU/SF, feel free to move if so) Hi, I've got a directory with 1000+ subfolders full with hi-res images. I'm looking for php software that would allow me to explore it server-side: browse folders - preview images - download hi-res. NB: support for print formats (tiff, eps) is a must!

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  • Free Modem Dialer

    - by andySF
    Hello, Is there a telephone application for modems that can receive a phone number as a parameter and manage the call for themselves? I ask because in my application I must implement a click2call functionality and may be is a free software out there that I can use and I do not have to fight with TAPI. Thanks!

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  • Testing chess game

    - by mousey
    There is a software for chess game and we need to test the following method: boolean canMoveTo(int x, int y) x and y are the coordinates of the chess board and it returns true/false whether the piece can move to that position or not. We need to test this method for a pawn piece and you can set up the board any way you like prior to running a test case. Source code is not provided

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  • Cloud computing over Client-server: differences, cons and pros ?

    - by Vimvq1987
    As far as I know, Cloud computing might be a evolution in software architect, and it will replace some current architectures, such as client-server. These two architecture seem to share similarities for me (I know very little about both), but I don't know the differences between them. What are the cons and pros of cloud computing over client-server architecture? Thank you so much.

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  • Which European conference is the best equivalent of OSCON?

    - by smci
    Looking for a large European developer/software conference, open-source-friendly, programming-language-neutral, platform-neutral, vendor-neutral. Any recommendations? apparently there briefly used to be a Euro OSCON (2004-2006? what happened?) some good language/app-specific ones like EuroPython, EuroSciPy, DjangoCon European BarCamps seem kind of fragmented, esp. for an English-speaking audience anything bigger or better? If there isn't anything, I wonder if O'Reilly would resurrect Euro OSCON.

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  • Conversion between classes

    - by Nima
    Hi, Let's say we have a class called A and another one called B. and we want to have a conversion method that converts A to B. In the software architecture point of view, which one is preferred? write A.export() write B.import() write a converter class, i.e. convert(A, B) or Convert(A) or ... if the language matters, I'm using C++ Thanks,

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  • Piwik Web Analytics - Anyone with experience of it?

    - by Phil.Wheeler
    I'm considering trying to get more granular analytics for my sites than the free plan on my current provider, Clicky, provides. Piwik looks like a strong contender in the analytics space (and I'm surprised I haven't heard about it before) but I want to be sure I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater by swapping to it. Does anyone have any experience with this software and - in particular - are there any people out there who've tried customising the code or developing their own plugin?

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  • What's your release process for your commercial application?

    - by dr. evil
    If you are developing a commercial desktop application, what's your release process? Sample process: Develop it: Patch bugs, add features, etc. Feature Freeze (do not fix, add anything unless it's absolutely required) Test it If everything is OK release it, if it's not fix it, test it, release it I think the most crucial question is what's your approach to "feature freeze test release" cycle? Or do you test it more frequently that you don't need such a cycle and your software is always ready for public release?

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  • Practical ways around the GPL?

    - by Daniel
    My company makes an extremely specialized piece of software which costs a lot of money for those few who need it. On our current release we have no choice but to use a few libraries which are released only under the GPL. Releasing the code is not an option and it would take months, if not years to implement the functionality the libraries provide. What do companies do in this situation? Are there practical and legal ways around the GPL?

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  • Has anyone "learned how to program in 21 days?"

    - by Sheehan Alam
    I'm not a fan of these learn how to program in X amount of days books. Some even boast, learn how to program in 24 hours. This is a joke and an insult to me as a software engineer who went through a rigorous discipline in computer science and mathematics. So a question to the community, have you benefited from these become a programmer quick books?

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