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• Visual WebGui's XAML based programming for web developers

  - by Webgui

  While ASP.NET provides an event base approach it is completely dismissed when working with AJAX and the richness of the server is lost and replaced with JavaScript programming and couple with a very high security risk. Visual WebGui reinstates the power of the server to AJAX development and provides a statefull yet scalable, server centric architecture that provides the benefits and user productivity of AJAX with the security and developer productivity we had before AJAX stormed into our lives. "When I first came up with the concept of Visual WebGui , I was frustrated by the fragile and complex nature of developing web applications. The contrast in productivity between working in a fully OOP compiled environment vs. scripting even today, with JQuery, Dojo and such, is still huge. Even today the greatest sponsor of JavaScript programming, Google, is offering a framework to avoid JavaScript using Java that compiles to JavaScript (GWT). So I decided to find a way to abstract the complexity or rather delegate the complex job to enable developers to concentrate on the “What” instead of the “How” and embraced the Form based approach," said Guy Peled the inventor of Visual WebGui. Although traditional OOP development still rules the enterprise, the differences between web sites and web applications have blurred and so did the differences between classic developers and web developers. As a result, we now see declarative languages in desktop / backend development environments (WPF / WF) and we see OOP, gaining more and more power in web development (ASP.NET MVC / ASP.NET DOM). However, what has not changed is enterprise need for security, development ROI, reach, highly responsive and interactive UIs and scalability. The advantages that declarative languages and 'on demand' compilation provide over classic development are mostly the flexibility and a more readable initialize component it offers which is what Gizmox is aspiring to do by replacing the designer initialize component with XAML code. The code in this new project template will be compiled on demand using the build provider mechanism ASP.NET has. This means that the performance hit is only on the first request and after that the performance is the same as a prebuilt solution. This will allow the flexibility of a dynamically updated sites and the power of fully blown enterprise applications over web. You can also use prebuilt features available in ASP.NET to enjoy both worlds in production. VWG XAML implementation (VWG Sites) will be the first truly compliable XAML implementation as Microsoft implemented Silverlight and WPF as a runtime markup interpretation opposed to the ASP.NET markup implementation which is compiled to CLR code once. We have chosen to implement the VWG Sites parser as a different way to create CLR code that provides greater performance over the reflection alternative. VWG Sites will also be the first server side XAML UI engine which, while giving the power of XAML, it will not require any plug-ins or installations on the client side. Short demo video of VWG Sites markup. There is also a live sample available here.

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• Business Choices and Evony

  - by Robert May

  Recently, I’ve been playing a game called Evony, and I finally decided to quit the game and thought I should warn others who might be tempted.  I also find a lot of insight with this game as an example.  A few of the companies that I’ve worked with or worked for have been like this and they are NOT good places to be. Evony is a joke designed to milk as much money out of people as possible.  As a professional software developer who mentors teams on how to build better software, here's what I see: They obviously offshore all development and have little oversight over that offshore development, and they probably have a small team at that.  Evidenced by the poor grammar throughout the game. They're seeking to maximize revenue and pushing to do as little development as possible, which would mean a small team. They're horribly understaffed in the customer support department as evidenced by never replying to this forum and never responding to bug reports or help requests (I've had one open with no response AT ALL for over a month . . .) They have way inadequate testing, no CI, and probably no automated unit tests.  You can see this by the poor grammar throughout the game and the type of bugs that show up. They aren't following a formal development process (no Agile, Waterfall, or anything else) as evidenced by their lack of predictable release cycle and lack of visibility. I'm guessing that the internal code base is terrible, otherwise, there wouldn't be an "Age II" that had nothing more than a new visual interface and a few rule tweaks.  This is also evidenced by the itty bitty scope of bug fixes and their inability to really fix bugs. Their Architect sucks.  Really, 42k user is all you can handle on a single server?  Could you REALLY not come up with a better way to scale to handle users?  They've built isolated worlds, instead of a single continuous world. Back to milking people for money--to really progress, you have to spend money. All of this adds up to knowing, deliberate actions on the part of management.  They CHOOSE to do this (like AOL choosing to send more discs instead of improve quality). So, what can we learn? This game will never really improve, since the bosses don't care, they're only in it for the money. The game will never have good support.  Again, the owners don't care. Giving them money only perpetuates this scam (and yes, I've given them money, way too much money. :() They don't care if you quit.  There's a new sucker born every day. Don't EVER go to work for them.  I've worked both with and for people like this and the culture is NEVER good. Ah well. Technorati Tags: Evony

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows: --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 --volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then --c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) --c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I'll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• Some More New ADF Features in JDeveloper 11.1.2

  - by Steven Davelaar

  The official list of new features in JDeveloper 11.1.2 is documented here. While playing with JDeveloper 11.1.2 and scanning the web user interface developer's guide for 11.1.2, I noticed some additional new features in ADF Faces, small but might come in handy:  You can use the af:formatString and af:formatNamed constructs in EL expressions to use substituation variables. For example: <af:outputText value="#{af:formatString('The current user is: {0}',someBean.currentUser)}"/> See section 3.5.2 in web user interface guide for more info. A new ADF Faces Client Behavior tag: af:checkUncommittedDataBehavior. See section 20.3 in web user interface guide for more info. For this tag to work, you also need to set the  uncommittedDataWarning  property on the af:document tag. And this property has quite some issues as you can read here. I did a quick test, the alert is shown for a button that is on the same page, however, if you have a menu in a shell page with dynamic regions, then clicking on another menu item does not raise the alert if you have pending changes in the currently displayed region. For now, the JHeadstart implementation of pending changes still seems the best choice (will blog about that soon). New properties on the af:document tag: smallIconSource creates a so-called favicon that is displayed in front of the URL in the browser address bar. The largeIconSource property specifies the icon used by a mobile device when bookmarking the page to the home page. See section 9.2.5 in web user interface guide for more info. Also notice the failedConnectionText property which I didn't know but was already available in JDeveloper 11.1.1.4. The af:showDetail tag has a new property handleDisclosure which you can set to client for faster rendering. In JDeveloper 11.1.1.x, an expression like #{bindings.JobId.inputValue} would return the internal list index number when JobId was a list binding. To get the actual JobId attribute value, you needed to use #{bindings.JobId.attributeValue}. In JDeveloper 11.1.2 this is no longer needed, the #{bindings.JobId.inputValue} expression will return the attribute value corresponding with the selected index in the choice list. Did you discover other "hidden" new features? Please add them as comment to this blog post so everybody can benefit. 

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• 50 Billion Served: Java Embedded on Devices

  - by Tori Wieldt

  It doesn't matter if it is 50 billion or 24 billion, just suffice it to stay that there will be MANY connected devices in the year 2020. With just 24 billion devices, they will outnumber humans six to one! So as a developer, you don't want to ignore this opportunity. What if you could use your Java skills and deploy an app to a fraction of these devices (don't be greedy, how about just, say, 118,000 of them)? Fareed Suliman, Java ME Product Manager had lots of good news for Java Developers in his presentation Modernizing the Explosion of Advanced Microcontrollers with Embedded Java at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara, CA last week. "A radical architecture shift is underway in this space, from proprietary to standards-based," he explained.  He pointed out several advantages to using Embedded Java for devices: Java is a proven and open standard. Java provides connectivity, encryption, location, and web services APIs. You don't have to focus on and keep reinventing the plumbing below the JVM. Abstracting the software from the hardware allows you to repeat your app across many devices. Abstracting the software from the hardware allows allows parallel development so you can get your app done more quickly. You already know Java (or you can hire lots of Java talent). Java is a full ecosystem, with Java Embedded plugins for IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans. Java ME allows for in-field software upgrades. Suliman mentioned two ways developers can start using Java Embedded today:  Java ME Embedded Suite 7.0 Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a new packaged solution from Oracle (including Java DB, GlassFish for Embedded Suite, Jersey Web Services Framework, and Oracle Java SE Embedded 7 platform), created to provide value added services for collecting, managing, and transmitting data to embedded devices such as gateways and concentrators. Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small embedded, low power devices such as micro-controllers and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. Think tiny. Really tiny. And think big.  Read more about Java Embedded at the Oracle Technology Network, and read The Java Source blog Java Embedded Releases from September.

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• Windows 8 and the future of Silverlight

  - by Laila

  After Steve Ballmer's indiscrete 'MisSpeak' about Windows 8, there has been a lot of speculation about the new operating system. We've now had a few glimpses, such as the demonstration of 'Mosh' at the D9 2011 conference, and the Youtube video, which showed a touch-centric new interface for apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript. This has caused acute anxiety to the programmers who have followed the recommended route of WPF, Silverlight and .NET, but it need not have caused quite so much panic since it was, in fact, just a thin layer to make Windows into an apparently mobile-friendly OS. More worryingly, the press-release from Microsoft was at pains to say that 'Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML', as if all thought of Silverlight, dominant in WP7, had been jettisoned. Ironically, this brave new 'happening' platform can all be done now in Windows 7 and an iPad, using Adobe Air, so it is hardly cutting-edge; in fact the tile interface had a sort of Retro-Zune Metro UI feel first seen in Media Centre, followed by Windows Phone 7, with any originality leached out of it by the corporate decision-making process. It was kinda weird seeing old Excel running alongside stodgily away amongst all the extreme paragliding videos. The ability to snap and resize concurrent apps might be a novelty on a tablet, but it is hardly so on a PC. It was at that moment that it struck me that here was a spreadsheet application that hadn't even made the leap to the .NET platform. Windows was once again trying to be all things to all men, whereas Apple had carefully separated Mac OS X development from iOS. The acrobatic feat of straddling all mobile and desktop devices with one OS is looking increasingly implausible. There is a world of difference between an operating system that facilitates business procedures and a one that drives a device for playing pop videos and your holiday photos. So where does this leave Silverlight? Pretty much where it was. Windows 8 will support it, and it will continue to be developed, but if these press-releases reflect the thinking within Microsoft, it is no longer seen as the strategic direction. However, Silverlight is still there and there will be a whole new set of developer APIs for building touch-centric apps. Jupiter, for example, is rumoured to involve an App store that provides new, Silverlight based "immersive" applications that are deployed as AppX packages. When the smoke clears, one suspects that the Javascript/HTML5 is merely an alternative development environment for Windows 8 to attract the legions of independent developers outside the .NET culture who are unlikely to ever take a shine to a more serious development environment such as WPF or Silverlight. Cheers, Laila

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• Apache doesn't load .php files

  - by Haddex

  First, sorry for my English and asking something that it's quite answered all over the web. I've read a lot of post about this problem but I still can't find the solution. I'm a web developer who recently moved to Ubuntu from Windows 7. I had a website done (it's online and working) and I set up LAMP to keep working with it. I made a test.php file with: <?php phpinfo(); ?> and put it on /var/www/html directory, it shows all the information about the php and I was really happy: "Ok, it's all done, tomorrow I will work hard" But I placed my whole web into /var/www/html , not in a folder, the index.php is in /var/www/html but guess what: doesn't load any of my .php files, the browser just keep thinking. What I did: I rebooted Apache: /etc/init.d/apache2 restart I tried again with the test.php file and it works fine I put in /var/www/html a .html file and works fine. I looked for /etc/apache2/sites-enable/000-default.conf and it says: DocumentRoot /var/www/html I looked for /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf and it says: DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php ... Edit* I think it's something related to phpmyadmin, like if I'm not able to connect with the database. But I got nothing on the screen when trying to load the page so...I'm not sure. I can access to the url localhost/phpmyadmin and I edited the connection.php file like this: <?php # FileName="Connection_php_mysql.htm" # Type="MYSQL" # HTTP="true" $hostname_rakstadconnection = "localhost"; $database_rakstadconnection = "rakstadclandb"; $username_rakstadconnection = "root"; $password_rakstadconnection = "admin"; $rakstadconnection = mysql_connect($hostname_rakstadconnection, $username_rakstadconnection, $password_rakstadconnection) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR); mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); ?> The name of the database is correct, like the user and password. http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/Haddex/Capturadepantallade2014-06-09112609_zpsc45ddb72.png http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/Haddex/Capturadepantallade2014-06-09112120_zps0b9e15f7.png *Edit2: could this be because it's a website that I brought to Linux from Windows? I used Dreamweaver. Edit3: I changed the # to /*/, nothing. The error.log file says: [Mon Jun 09 17:08:13.627881 2014] [:error] [pid 1517] [client 127.0.0.1:46663] PHP Warning: require_once(/var/www/html/Connections/rakstadconnection.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/html/index.php on line 1 [Mon Jun 09 17:08:13.627933 2014] [:error] [pid 1517] [client 127.0.0.1:46663] PHP Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required 'Connections/rakstadconnection.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /var/www/html/index.php on line 1 I'm reading error log but...should I add a linux path into a my index.php file? Don't think so. Thanks.

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• Advice for how to handle company pride

  - by user17971

  We have this "amazing" little product using the latest development methodologies, components with all the bells and whistles. I took over this product maybe 6 months ago and struggled with it from day one. Even though it is supposedly is state of the art because of all its amazing structure, using dependency injections, inversion of control from the unity framework, hibernation and is domain driven in a .net mvvm xaml application to make it streamlined and modular. I knew from the moment I saw the monolith that it was going to be an uphill struggle for me. A lot of little code-bits scattered all around in neatly organized paradigms. Debugging is difficult, tracing the code is difficult, making new code is difficult, although some modifications is surprisinly easy but it doesn't out weight the problems I have with the code by a long shot. When I took over the project I was told that the new management console was ready for delivery and all I had to do was compile it and drop it. This was the beginning of a uphill struggle, our customer didn't agree at all that this was the functionality they had asked for so I had to do modifications to the program to their specifications. Since the project pretty much has been overdue since I took over it it has always been important that we didn't add or change much to the original system. I could modify the existing bits. fast forward until today where I finally completed all their comments and issues with the program but now I think that the users has opened their eyes (even though they saw this program many times) that they will be going backwards with this new system, that it will be much worse than the tool they got today (for a long time due to the fact that I'm the only resource on the project, project manager, tester, developer, integration specialist etc) My problem is that I lost faith in this system quite early due to the nature of the program. Although I made many changes and improvements to the system I wholeheartedly sympathize with the poor users who are going to start using this system. Its not nearly doing all the things it should do. I had this conversation internally with my boss where I told him what I thought about it, that if I were the customer I wouldn't have spent money developing it. So what do I do now? The system in ready, on a staging system and nobody likes it, its too slow and boring and does maybe do 50% of what they need it to do. Despite how much energy and working around the clock I've done to this project: I won't mind scrapping the system but we've spent much money (well my salaries) developing it and my company wants us to be proud of everything we do and advocate it. How will I tackle the contractor when he asks for advice? Surely I can tell him, this is what we agreed upon based on your use case scenarios, and be done with it? How will I inform my boss about this progress? He knows what I feel about it but I always get the feeling he let my criticism pass him by as just hot air, gone tomorrow,.

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• What are the drawbacks of sending XML to browsers and let them apply XSLT?

  - by MainMa

  Context Working as a freelance developer, I often made websites completely based on XSLT. In other words, on every request, an XML file is generated, containing everything we need to know about the page content: the name of the user currently logged in, the top menu entries, if this menu is dynamic/configurable, the text to display in a specific area of the page, etc. Then XSL process (caches, etc.) it to HTML/XHTML page to send to the browser. It has a good point to make it easier to create small-scale websites, especially with PHP. It is a sort of template engine, but which I prefer to other template engines because it's much more powerful than most of template engines, and because I know it better and like it. It is also possible, when need, to give an access to raw XML data on demand for an automated access, without the need to create separate APIs. Of course, it will fail completely on any medium-scale or large-scale website, since, even with good caching techniques, XSL still degrades overall website performance and requires more CPU serverside. Question Modern browsers have the ability to take an XML file and to transform it with an associated XSL file declared in XML like <?xml-stylesheet href="demo.xslt" type="text/xsl"?>. Firefox 3 can do it. Internet Explorer 8 can do it too. It means that it is possible to migrate XSL processing from the server to the client side for 50% of users (according on browser statistics on several websites where I may want to implement this). It means that those 50% of users will receive only the XML file at each request, thus reducing their and server's bandwidth (XML file being much shorter than its processed HTML analog), and reducing server's CPU usage. What are the drawbacks of this technique? I thought about several ones, but it doesn't apply in this situation: Difficult implementation and the need to choose, based on the browser request, when to send raw XML and when to transform it to HTML instead. Obviously, the system will not be much more difficult then the actual one. The only change to make is to add XSL file link to every XML, and to add a browser check. More IO and bandwidth usage, since the XSLT file will be downloaded by the browsers, instead of being cached by the server. I don't think it will be a problem, since XSLT file will be cached by the browsers (like images, or CSS, or JavaScript files are cached actually). Possibly some problems on client side, like maybe problems when saving a page in some browsers. Difficulty to debug code: it is impossible to obtain an HTML source the browser is actually using, since the only displayed source is the downloaded XML. On the other hand, I rarely go look at HTML code on client side, and in most cases, it is unusable directly (whitespace being removed).

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• Have you used the ExecutionValue and ExecValueVariable properties?

  The ExecutionValue execution value property and it’s friend ExecValueVariable are a much undervalued feature of SSIS, and many people I talk to are not even aware of their existence, so I thought I’d try and raise their profile a bit. The ExecutionValue property is defined on the base object Task, so all tasks have it available, but it is up to the task developer to do something useful with it. The basic idea behind it is that it allows the task to return something useful and interesting about what it has performed, in addition to the standard success or failure result. The best example perhaps is the Execute SQL Task which uses the ExecutionValue property to return the number of rows affected by the SQL statement(s). This is a very useful feature, something people often want to capture into a variable, and start using the result set options to do. Unfortunately we cannot read the value of a task property at runtime from within a SSIS package, so the ExecutionValue property on its own is a bit of a let down, but enter the ExecValueVariable and we have the perfect marriage. The ExecValueVariable is another property exposed through the task (TaskHost), which lets us select a SSIS package variable. What happens now is that when the task sets the ExecutionValue, the interesting value is copied into the variable we set on the ExecValueVariable property, and a variable is something we can access and do something with. So put simply if the ExecutionValue property value is of interest, make sure you create yourself a package variable and set the name as the ExecValueVariable. Have  look at the 3 step guide below: 1 Configure your task as normal, for example the Execute SQL Task, which here calls a stored procedure to do some updates. 2 Create variable of a suitable type to match the ExecutionValue, an integer is used to match the result we want to capture, the number of rows. 3 Set the ExecValueVariable for the task, just select the variable we created in step 2. You need to do this in Properties grid for the task (Short-cut key, select the task and press F4) Now when we execute the sample task above, our variable UpdateQueueRowCount will get the number of rows we updated in our Execute SQL Task. I’ve tried to collate a list of tasks that return something useful via the ExecutionValue and ExecValueVariable mechanism, but the documentation isn’t always great. Task ExecutionValue Description Execute SQL Task Returns the number of rows affected by the SQL statement or statements. File System Task Returns the number of successful operations performed by the task. File Watcher Task Returns the full path of the file found Transfer Error Messages Task Returns the number of error messages that have been transferred Transfer Jobs Task Returns the number of jobs that are transferred Transfer Logins Task Returns the number of logins transferred Transfer Master Stored Procedures Task Returns the number of stored procedures transferred Transfer SQL Server Objects Task Returns the number of objects transferred WMI Data Reader Task Returns an object that contains the results of the task. Not exactly clear, but I assume it depends on the WMI query used.

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• The Case of the Missing Date/Time Stamp: Reporting Services 2008 R2 Snapshots

  - by smisner

  This week I stumbled upon an undocumented “feature” in SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services as I was preparing a demonstration on how to set up and use report snapshots. If you’re familiar with the main changes in this latest release of Reporting Services, you probably already know that Report Manager got a facelift this time around. Although this facelift was generally a good thing, one of the casualties – in my opinion – is the loss of the snapshot label that served two purposes… First, it flagged the report as a snapshot. Second, it let you know when that snapshot was created. As part of my standard operating procedure when demonstrating report snapshots, I point out this label, so I was rather taken aback when I didn’t see it in the demonstration I was preparing. It sort of upset my routine, and I’m rather partial to my routines. I thought perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right place and changed Report Manager from Tile View to Detail View, but no – that label was still missing. In the grand scheme of life, it’s not an earth-shattering change, but you’ll have to look at the Modified Date in Details View to know when the snapshot was run. Or hope that the report developer included a textbox to show the execution time in the report. (Hint: this is a good time to add this to your list of report development best practices, whether a report gets set up as a report snapshot or not!) A snapshot from the past In case you don’t remember how a snapshot appeared in Report Manager back in the old days (of SQL Server 2008 and earlier), here’s an image I snagged from my Reporting Services 2008 Step by Step manuscript: A snapshot in the present A report server running in SharePoint integrated mode had no such label. There you had to rely on the Report Modified date-time stamp to know the snapshot execution time. So I guess all platforms are now consistent. Here’s a screenshot of Report Manager in the 2008 R2 version. One of these is a snapshot and the rest execute on demand. Can you tell which is the snapshot? Consider descriptions as an alternative So my report snapshot demonstration has one less step, and I’ll need to edit the Denali version of the Step by Step book. Things are simpler this way, but I sure wish we had an easier way to identify the execution methods of the reports. Consider using the description field to alert users that the report is a snapshot. It might save you a few questions about why the data isn’t up-to-date if the users know that something changed in the source of the report. Notice that the full description doesn’t display in Tile View, so keep it short and sweet or instruct users to open Details View to see the entire description.

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• Should I go back to college and graduate with a poor GPA or try to jump into an entry-level development position? [closed]

  - by jshin47

  I once attended a top-10 American university but I am currently not in school for several different reasons. Chief among them is that I did very poorly two semesters and even failed one of them (got two F's) which put me in automatic suspension. My major is not CS but math. I am in a pickle at the moment. After I was suspended I got a job at a niche IT company in the area. I am employed as something of an IT generalist; my primary responsibilities are Windows systems administration/networking but I also do some Android, iOS, and .NET development. I have released a few apps to the app store under my name and my company's name, and we have done work for a few big clients. I started working at my job about 1.5 years ago and I am somewhat happily employed but I do not see it as a long-term fit because it is a small company with little opportunity to advance. I would like to move out to California and particularly to the Bay Area to get a job at a more reputable or exciting company, even at a lower rate of pay, but I am not sure if I should do that or try to go back to school. If I went back to school, it would take 1-1.5 years to graduate and some $. Best case scenario I would graduate with a 2.9 or 3.0 GPA. It is a top-10 school, but that's a crappy GPA. If I do not go back to school, I will be a field where most people have degrees, without a degree. If anything goes wrong I could be really screwed as I feel I will get no respect without a degree. On the other hand I really would like to get started in the field and get more serious about developing good development practices, learning new languages/frameworks, and working with people who know a lot more than I so I can learn and grow as a developer and eventually do my own thing. Basically, I am wondering: Should I just go back to school? How much does the bad GPA / good school reputation weigh in? What about the fact that I am a Math major and not a CS major (have never taken a CS course)? Does my skill set as something of a generalist bode well for me finding work at a start up in the Bay Area? If not (2), should I hunker down and focus on producing a really good (or a few medicore) iOS apps? Android apps? etc... How would you look at someone who did great in HS, kind of goofed off in college and eventually quit, and got into development? Thanks for any thoughts or input.

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• Manic Monday - More OpenWorld Solaris Sessions: Developers, Cloud, Customer Insights, Hardware Optimization

  - by Larry Wake

  We're overflowing with Monday sessions; literally more than one person can take in. Learn more about what's new in Oracle Solaris Studio, hear about the latest x86 and SPARC hardware optimizations, get some insights on cloud deployment strategies, and find out from your peers what they're doing with Oracle Solaris. If you're an OpenWorld attendee, go to to Schedule Builder to guarantee your space in any session or lab. See yesterday's blog post and the "Focus on Oracle Solaris" guide for even more sessions. Monday, October 1st: 10:45 AM - Maximizing Your SPARC T4 Oracle Solaris Application Performance(CON6382,  Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3) Hear how customers and commercial software partners have reached peak performance on SPARC T4 servers and engineered systems with Oracle Solaris Studio and its latest tools for analyzing, reporting, and improving runtime performance: Autoparallelizing, high-performance compilers Performance Analyzer (used to find performance hotspots) Thread Analyzer (to expose data races and deadlocks) Code Analyzer (used to discover latent memory corruption issues) 10:45 Cloud Formation: Implementing IaaS in Practice with Oracle Solaris(CON8787, Moscone South 302) Decisions, decisions--at the same time, we've got a session that covers why Oracle Solaris is the ideal OS for public or private clouds, IaaS or PaaS, with built-in features for elastic infrastructure, unrivaled security, superfast installation and deployment, nonstop availability, and crystal-clear observability. This session will include a customer study on how Oracle Solaris is used in the cloud today to implement the Oracle stack. 12:15 PM - Customer Insight: Oracle Solaris on Oracle Exadata, Oracle Exalogic, and SPARC SuperCluster(CON8760, Moscone South 270) Hear from customers what benefits they have realized from using the Oracle stack on Oracle Exadata and Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster and from using Oracle Solaris on those engineered systems, taking advantage of built-in lightweight OS virtualization (Zones), enterprise reliability and scale, and other key features. 1:45 PM - Case Study: Mobile Tornado Uses Oracle Technology for Better RAS and TCO?(CON4281, Moscone West 2005) Mobile Tornado develops and markets instant communication platforms, replacing traditional radio networks with cellular networks. Its critical concern is uptime. Find out how they've used Oracle Solaris, Netra SPARC T4, and Oracle Solaris Cluster, including Oracle Solaris ZFS and Zones, for their Oracle Database deployments to improve reliability and drive down cost. 3:15 PM - Technical Panel: Developing High Performance Applications on Oracle Solaris(CON7196, Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C2) Engineers from the Oracle Solaris, Oracle Database, and Oracle Tuxedo development teams, and Oracle ISV Engineering discuss how they develop high-performance enterprise applications that take advantage of Oracle's SPARC and x86 servers, with Oracle Solaris Studio and new Oracle Solaris 11 features. Topics will include developer tools, parallel frameworks, best practices, and methodologies, as well as insights and case studies on parallelizing and optimizing application performance on Oracle Solaris. Bring your best questions! 3:15 PM -  x86 Power Management with Oracle Solaris: Current State, Opportunities, and Future(CON6271, Moscone West 2012) Another option for this time slot: learn about how Intel Xeon and Oracle Solaris work together to reduce server power consumption. This presentation addresses some of the recent power management improvements in Oracle Solaris, opportunities to further improve energy efficiency, and some future directions for Oracle Solaris power management.

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• Headaches using distributed version control for traditional teams?

  - by J Cooper

  Though I use and like DVCS for my personal projects, and can totally see how it makes managing contributions to your project from others easier (e.g. your typical Github scenario), it seems like for a "traditional" team there could be some problems over the centralized approach employed by solutions like TFS, Perforce, etc. (By "traditional" I mean a team of developers in an office working on one project that no one person "owns", with potentially everyone touching the same code.) A couple of these problems I've foreseen on my own, but please chime in with other considerations. In a traditional system, when you try to check your change in to the server, if someone else has previously checked in a conflicting change then you are forced to merge before you can check yours in. In the DVCS model, each developer checks in their changes locally and at some point pushes to some other repo. That repo then has a branch of that file that 2 people changed. It seems that now someone must be put in charge of dealing with that situation. A designated person on the team might not have sufficient knowledge of the entire codebase to be able to handle merging all conflicts. So now an extra step has been added where someone has to approach one of those developers, tell him to pull and do the merge and then push again (or you have to build an infrastructure that automates that task). Furthermore, since DVCS tends to make working locally so convenient, it is probable that developers could accumulate a few changes in their local repos before pushing, making such conflicts more common and more complicated. Obviously if everyone on the team only works on different areas of the code, this isn't an issue. But I'm curious about the case where everyone is working on the same code. It seems like the centralized model forces conflicts to be dealt with quickly and frequently, minimizing the need to do large, painful merges or have anyone "police" the main repo. So for those of you who do use a DVCS with your team in your office, how do you handle such cases? Do you find your daily (or more likely, weekly) workflow affected negatively? Are there any other considerations I should be aware of before recommending a DVCS at my workplace?

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• But what version is the database now?

  - by BuckWoody

  When you upgrade your system to SQL Server 2008 R2, you’ll know that the instance is at that version by using the standard commands like SELECT @@VERSION or EXEC xp_msver. My system came back with this info when I typed those: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86)   Apr  2 2010 15:53:02   Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation  Developer Edition on Windows NT 6.0 <X86> (Build 6002: Service Pack 2) (Hypervisor) Index Name Internal_Value Character_Value 1 ProductName NULL Microsoft SQL Server 2 ProductVersion 655410 10.50.1600.1 3 Language 1033 English (United States) 4 Platform NULL NT INTEL X86 5 Comments NULL SQL 6 CompanyName NULL Microsoft Corporation 7 FileDescription NULL SQL Server Windows NT 8 FileVersion NULL 2009.0100.1600.01 ((KJ_RTM).100402-1540 ) 9 InternalName NULL SQLSERVR 10 LegalCopyright NULL Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. 11 LegalTrademarks NULL Microsoft SQL Server is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. 12 OriginalFilename NULL SQLSERVR.EXE 13 PrivateBuild NULL NULL 14 SpecialBuild 104857601 NULL 15 WindowsVersion 393347078 6.0 (6002) 16 ProcessorCount 1 1 17 ProcessorActiveMask 1 1 18 ProcessorType 586 PROCESSOR_INTEL_PENTIUM 19 PhysicalMemory 2047 2047 (2146934784) 20 Product ID NULL NULL   But a database properties are separate from the Instance. After an upgrade, you always want to make sure that the compatibility options (which have much to do with how NULLs and other objects are treated) is at what you expect. For the most part, as long as the application can handle it, I set my compatibility levels to the latest version. For SQL Server 2008, that was “10.0” or “10”. You can do this with the ALTER DATABASE command or you can just right-click the database and select “Properties” and then “Database Options” in SQL Server Management Studio. To check the database compatibility level, I use this query: SELECT name, cmptlevel FROM sys.sysdatabases When I did that this morning I saw that the databases (all of them) were at 10.0 – not 10.5 like the Instance. That’s expected – we didn’t revise the database format up with the Instance for this particular release. Didn’t want to catch you by surprise on that. While your databases should be at the “proper” level for your situation, you can’t rely on the compatibility level to indicate the Instance level. More info on the ALTER DATABASE command in SQL Server 2008 R2 is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb510680(SQL.105).aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• New Worklist features on 12.1.3

  - by Vijay Shanmugam

  Following new Worklist features are available on E-Business Suite 12.1.3 via Patch 13646173. Ability to view comments on top of a notification If an action is performed on a notification such as Reassign, Request for Information or Provide Information, the recipient of the notification will see who performed the last action and the associated comment on top of the notification. Reassigning a request for information notification If an approver requests more information on a notification from it's submitter, the submitter now has two options Answer Request for More Information Transfer Request for More Information If the submitter thinks the requested information can be provided by another user, he/she can transfer the request to the other user. Please note that only Transfer is supported for Request for More Information. Once transferred, the submitter cannot access the notification and provide the requested information. Use actual sent date when reassigning a notification The Sent field in notification header always showed the date on which the notification was first created. If the notification was later reassigned, the Sent date was not updated to show the last action date. This caused problems in following scenario Approval notification was sent to JACK on 01-JAN-2012 JACK waited for 10 days before reassigning to JILL on 10-JAN-2012 JILL does not see the notification as sent on 10-JAN-2012, instead sees it as sent on 01-JAN-2012 Although the notification was originally created on 01-JAN-2012, it was sent to JILL only on 10-JAN-2012 The enhancement now shows the correct sent date in Worklist and Notification Details page. Figure 1 - Depicts all the above 3 features Related Action History for response required notification So far it was possible to embed Action History of an response-required notification into another FYI notification using #RELATED_HISTORY attribute (Please refer to Workflow Developer Guide for details about this attribute). The enhancement now enables developers to embed Action History of one response-required notification into another response-required notification. To embed Action History of one response-required notification into another, create message attribute #RELATED_HISTORY. To this attribute set a value during run-time in the following format. {TITLE}[ITEM_TYPE:ITEM_KEY]PROCESS_NAME:ACTIVITY_LABEL_NAMEThe TITLE, ITEM_TYPE and ITEM_KEY are optional values. TITLE is used as Related Action History header title. If TITLE is not present, then a default title "Related Action History" is shown. If ITEM_TYPE is present and ITEM_KEY is not, For Example: {TITLE}[ITEM_TYPE]PROCESS_NAME:ACTIVITY_LABEL_NAME , the Related Action History is populated from parent item type of the current item. If both ITEM_TYPE and ITEM_KEY is present, For Example: {TITLE}[ITEM_TYPE:ITEM_KEY]PROCESS_NAME:ACTIVITY_LABEL_NAME , the Related Action History is populated from that specific instance activity. Figure 2 - Depicts Related Action History feature

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• Software Tuned to Humanity

  - by Phil Factor

  I learned a great deal from a cynical old programmer who once told me that the ideal length of time for a compiler to do its work was the same time it took to roll a cigarette. For development work, this is oh so true. After intently looking at the editing window for an hour or so, it was a relief to look up, stretch, focus the eyes on something else, and roll the possibly-metaphorical cigarette. This was software tuned to humanity. Likewise, a user’s perception of the “ideal” time that an application will take to move from frame to frame, to retrieve information, or to process their input has remained remarkably static for about thirty years, at around 200 ms. Anything else appears, and always has, to be either fast or slow. This could explain why commercial applications, unlike games, simulations and communications, aren’t noticeably faster now than they were when I started programming in the Seventies. Sure, they do a great deal more, but the SLAs that I negotiated in the 1980s for application performance are very similar to what they are nowadays. To prove to myself that this wasn’t just some rose-tinted misperception on my part, I cranked up a Z80-based Jonos CP/M machine (1985) in the roof-space. Within 20 seconds from cold, it had loaded Wordstar and I was ready to write. OK, I got it wrong: some things were faster 30 years ago. Sure, I’d now have had all sorts of animations, wizzy graphics, and other comforting features, but it seems a pity that we have used all that extra CPU and memory to increase the scope of what we develop, and the graphical prettiness, but not to speed the processes needed to complete a business procedure. Never mind the weight, the response time’s great! To achieve 200 ms response times on a Z80, or similar, performance considerations influenced everything one did as a developer. If it meant writing an entire application in assembly code, applying every smart algorithm, and shortcut imaginable to get the application to perform to spec, then so be it. As a result, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool performance freak and find it difficult to change my habits. Conversely, many developers now seem to feel quite differently. While all will acknowledge that performance is important, it’s no longer the virtue is once was, and other factors such as user-experience now take precedence. Am I wrong? If not, then perhaps we need a new school of development technique to rival Agile, dedicated once again to producing applications that smoke the rear wheels rather than pootle elegantly to the shops; that forgo skeuomorphism, cute animation, or architectural elegance in favor of the smell of hot rubber. I struggle to name an application I use that is truly notable for its blistering performance, and would dearly love one to do my everyday work – just as long as it doesn’t go faster than my brain.

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• Wireframing: A Day In the Life of UX Workshop at Oracle

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Oracle Applications User Experience team's Day in the Life (DITL) of User Experience (UX) event was run in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ for Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members. I was charged with putting together a wireframing session, together with Director of Financial Applications User Experience, Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson). Example of stunning new wireframing visuals we used on the DITL events. We put on a lively show, explaining the basics of wireframing, the concepts, what it is and isn't, considerations on wireframing tool choice, and then imparting some tips and best practices. But the real energy came when the OUAB customers and partners in the room were challenge to do some wireframing of their own. Wireframing is about bringing your business and product use cases to life in real UX visual terms, by creating a low-fidelity drawing to iterate and agree on in advance of prototyping and coding what is to be finally built and rolled out for users. All the best people wireframe. Leonardo da Vinci used "cartoons" on some great works, tracing outlines first and using red ochre or charcoal dropped through holes in the tracing parchment onto the canvas to outline the subject. (Image distributed under Wikimedia commons license) Wireframing an application's user experience design enables you to: Obtain stakeholder buy-in. Enable faster iteration of different designs. Determine the task flow navigation paths (in Oracle Fusion Applications navigation is linked with user roles). Develop a content strategy (readability, search engine optimization (SEO) of content, and so on) Lay out the pages, widgets, groups of features, and so on. Apply usability heuristics early (no replacement for usability testing, but a great way to do some heavy-lifting up front). Decide upstream which functional user experience design patterns to apply (out of the box solutions that expedite productivity). Assess which Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) or equivalent technology components can be used (again, developer productivity is enhanced downstream). We ran a lively hands-on exercise where teams wireframed a choice of application scenarios using the time-honored tools of pen and paper. Scott worked the floor like a pro, pointing out great use of features, best practices, innovations, and making sure that the whole concept of wireframing, the gestalt, transferred. "We need more buttons!" The cry of the energized. Not quite. The winning wireframe session (online shopping scenario) from the Applications UX DITL event shown. Great fun, great energy, and great teamwork were evident in the room. Naturally, there were prizes for the best wireframe. Well, actually, prizes were handed out to the other attendees too! An exciting, slightly different aspect to delivery of this session made the wireframing event one of the highlights of the day. And definitely, something we will repeat again when we get the chance. Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped organize.

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• AVIO Academy - ADF w/Oracle BPM

  - by BPMWarrior

  Oracle Platinum Partner AVIO Consulting is excited to announce the launch of the industry’s first ADF with Oracle BPM developer training program.  This training program is for any prospects or customers that could benefit from a better understanding of Oracle ADF and Oracle BPM.    Visit the AVIO Academy website for an in-depth description of the new ADF with Oracle BPM Workshop .     What it is: ·         Industry’s first ADF with Oracle BPM training program ·         3-day workshop showcasing application development using ADF with Oracle BPM Suite   Training Purpose: Teaches developers how to use Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) with the Oracle Business Process Management (BPM) Suite.  The workshop is the only one of its kind on the market today.  During the course, students gain a better understanding of Oracle ADF, and the nuances of making it work with Oracle BPM.   Course Overview This course in AVIO’s BPM series, consists of 11 hands-on lessons designed specifically for developers.   It provides a comprehensive overview of ADF and Oracle BPM concepts, and step-by-step easy to follow instructions for creating and integrating ADF user interfaces with Oracle BPM processes.  Students leave the workshop with the working versions of the projects they build for their future reference.  Rather than just frantically clicking through the lessons, concepts are thoroughly explained and demonstrated.  Students leave understanding the best practices AVIO established during years of developing ADF solutions for Oracle BPM and SOA.   AVIO Academy This new workshop is offered through AVIO Academy, the only program with curriculum specifically developed for the most recent version of the Oracle BPM Suite. The academy specializes in hands-on role based training that uses an organization’s own processes for a more practical learning experience.   Visit the AVIO Academy website for an in-depth description of the new ADF with Oracle BPM Workshop. If you have any questions please contact Brandon Dean at [email protected]

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• At $20/month Windows Azure host my website with 99.97% uptime

  - by Gopinath

  Couple of years ago a reliable and decent performing Windows hosting was not affordable to many enthusiastic developers who want to try a startup idea or build a hobby site. I tried to start an ASP.NET website few years ago to provide services like – Mobile Tracing, Vehicle Tracing. But due to high cost of Windows hosting I developed those services using PHP (not an easy task for .NET developer) and hosted on them Linux servers.  But with recent evolution of Windows Azure, hosting ASP.NET websites on highly reliable servers is affordable. Today anyone can host a high responsive and available ASP.NET website for just $20/month using Windows Azure. My website coziie.com is running on Windows Azure and serves close to quarter millions visitors a month with 99.97% of uptime and most of the page load times are less than 3 seconds. All I spend to run this website is just around $20, if you translate it to India rupees its roughly Rs.1000. The web sever of coziie.com is powered by a single Extra Small Web role instance and the backend is powered by a SQL Azure instance. Azure is quite impressive to provide 99.97% of uptime. Response times during peak are around 3 seconds and on nomarl loads it is around 1.5 seconds. Here is the report of uptime provided by Royal Pingdom over last one year For just $20/month Windows Azure takes care of the following apart from hosting Patches up Windows OS to the latest version Upgrades ASP.NET to the latest version – coziie.com is running on ASP.NET MVC 3 and soon I’ll upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 Hosts data on latest and best version Sql Server database SQL Azure maintains 3 copies of database and automatically recovers in case of server failures and disasters. I never worry about database backups/restore. Provides staging environment for deploying applications for testing purpose and move them to production – I upgrade  twice a month on average With Windows Azure I no longer focus on server maintenance or data backups. They are taken up by Microsoft team and I just focus on building my website. Wish there is a low cost Linux version of Windows Azure so that I can stop worrying about server maintenance of this blog!! If you are looking for a Windows hosting, look no further than Windows Azure. If you find $20/month is a bit expensive to start with you may explore Azure Website (sort of shared hosted environment) which is free to start with and as your traffic grows you can move to paid hosting.

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• NetBeans IDE 7.3 Knows Null

  - by Geertjan

  What's the difference between these two methods, "test1" and "test2"? public int test1(String str) {     return str.length(); } public int test2(String str) {     if (str == null) {         System.err.println("Passed null!.");         //forgotten return;     }     return str.length(); } The difference, or at least, the difference that is relevant for this blog entry, is that whoever wrote "test2" apparently thinks that the variable "str" may be null, though did not provide a null check. In NetBeans IDE 7.3, you see this hint for "test2", but no hint for "test1", since in that case we don't know anything about the developer's intention for the variable and providing a hint in that case would flood the source code with too many false positives:  Annotations are supported in understanding how a piece of code is intended to be used. If method return types use @Nullable, @NullAllowed, @CheckForNull, the value is considered to be "strongly possible to be null", as well as if the variable is tested to be null, as shown above. When using @NotNull, @NonNull, @Nonnull, the value is considered to be non-null. (The exact FQNs of the annotations are ignored, only simple names are checked.) Here are examples showing where the hints are displayed for the non-null hints (the "strongly possible to be null" hints are not shown below, though you can see one of them in the screenshot above), together with a comment showing what is shown when you hover over the hint: There isn't a "one size fits all" refactoring for these various instances relating to null checks, hence you can't do an automated refactoring across your code base via tools in NetBeans IDE, as shown yesterday for class member reordering across code bases. However, you can, instead, go to Source | Inspect and then do a scan throughout a scope (e.g., current file/package/project or combinations of these or all open projects) for class elements that the IDE identifies as potentially having a problem in this area: Thanks to Jan Lahoda, who reports that this currently also works in NetBeans IDE 7.3 dev builds for fields but that may need to be disabled since right now too many false positives are returned, for help with the info above and any misunderstandings are my own fault!

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• What are the differences between abstract classes, interfaces, and when to use them

  - by user66662

  Recently I have started to wrap my head around OOP, and I am now to the point where the more I read about the differences between Abstract classes and Interfaces the more confused I become. So far, neither can be instantiated. Interfaces are more or less structural blueprints that determine the skeleton and abstracts are different by being able to partially develop code. I would like to learn more about these through my specific situation. Here is a link to my first question if you would like a little more background information: What is a good design model for my new class? Here are two classes I created: class Ad { $title; $description $price; function get_data($website){ } function validate_price(){ } } class calendar_event { $title; $description $start_date; function get_data($website){ //guts } function validate_dates(){ //guts } } So, as you can see these classes are almost identical. Not shown here, but there are other functions, like get_zip(), save_to_database() that are common across my classes. I have also added other classes Cars and Pets which have all the common methods and of course properties specific to those objects (mileage, weight, for example). Now I have violated the DRY principle and I am managing and changing the same code across multiple files. I intend on having more classes like boats, horses, or whatever. So is this where I would use an interface or abstract class? From what I understand about abstract classes I would use a super class as a template with all of the common elements built into the abstract class, and then add only the items specifically needed in future classes. For example: abstract class content { $title; $description function get_data($website){ } function common_function2() { } function common_function3() { } } class calendar_event extends content { $start_date; function validate_dates(){ } } Or would I use an interface and, because these are so similar, create a structure that each of the subclasses are forced to use for integrity reasons, and leave it up to the end developer who fleshes out that class to be responsible for each of the details of even the common functions. my thinking there is that some 'common' functions may need to be tweaked in the future for the needs of their specific class. Despite all that above, if you believe I am misunderstanding the what and why of abstracts and interfaces altogether, by all means let a valid answer to be stop thinking in this direction and suggest the proper way to move forward! Thanks!

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• How employable am I as a programmer?

  - by dsimcha

  I'm currently a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in computational biology and am starting to think about what I want to do after graduate school. I feel like I've accumulated a lot of programming skills while in grad school, but taken a very non-traditional path to learning all this stuff. I'm wondering whether I would have an easy time getting hired as a programmer and could fall back on that if I can't find a good job directly in my field, and if so whether I would qualify for a more prestigious position than "code monkey". Things I Have Going For Me Approximately 4 years of experience programming as part of my research. I believe I have a solid enough grasp of the fundamentals that I could pick up new languages and technologies pretty fast, and could demonstrate this in an interview. Good math and statistics skills. An extensive portfolio of open source work (and the knowledge that working on these projects implies): I wrote a statistics library in D, mostly from scratch. I wrote a parallelism library (parallel map, reduce, foreach, task parallelism, pipelining, etc.) that is currently in review for adoption by the D standard library. I wrote a 2D plotting library for D against the GTK Cairo backend. I currently use it for most of the figures I make for my research. I've contributed several major performance optimizations to the D garbage collector. (Most of these were low-hanging fruit, but it still shows my knowledge of low-level issues like memory management, pointers and bit twiddling.) I've contributed lots of miscellaneous bug fixes to the D standard library and could show the change logs to prove it. (This demonstrates my ability read other people's code.) Things I Have Going Against Me Most of my programming experience is in D and Python. I have very little to virtually no experience in the more established, "enterprise-y" languages like Java, C# and C++, though I have learned a decent amount about these languages from small, one-off projects and discussions about language design in the D community. In general I have absolutely no knowledge of "enterprise-y" technlogies. I've never used a framework before, possibly because most reusable code for scientific work and for D tends to call itself a "library" instead. I have virtually no formal computer science/software engineering training. Almost all of my knowledge comes from talking to programming geek friends, reading blogs, forums, StackOverflow, etc. I have zero professional experience with the official title of "developer", "software engineer", or something similar.

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• Certification Notes: 70-583 Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Updated: 02/01/2011 It’s time for another certification, and we’ve just release the 70-583 exam on Windows Azure. I’ve blogged my “study plans” here before on other certifications, so I thought I would do the same for this one. I’ll also need to take exam 70-513 and 70-516; but I’ll post my notes on those separately. None of these are “brain dumps” or any questions from the actual tests - just the books, links and notes I have from my studies. I’ll update these references as I’m studying, so bookmark this site and watch my Twitter and Facebook posts for when I’ll update them, or just subscribe to the RSS feed. A “Green” color on the check-block means I’ve done that part so far, red means I haven’t. First, I need to refresh my memory on some basic coding, so along with the Azure-specific information I’m reading the following general programming books: Introducing Microsoft .NET (Pro-Developer): link   Head First C#, 2E: A Learner's Guide to Real-World Programming with Visual C# and .NET: link Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step: link  c The first place to start is at the official site for the certification. link c On that page you’ll find several resources, and the first you should follow is the “Save to my learning” so you have a place to track everything. Then click the “Related Learning Plans” link and follow the videos and read the documentation in each of those bullets. There are six areas on the learning plan that you should focus on - make sure you open the learning plan to drill into the specifics. c Designing Data Storage Architecture (18%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Optimizing Data Access and Messaging (17%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing the Application Architecture (19%) Books I’m Reading: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform: link Links: My Notes: c Preparing for Application and Service Deployment (15%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Investigating and Analyzing Applications (16%) Books I’m Reading: Links: My Notes: c Designing Integrated Solutions (15%) Books I’m Reading: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform (2nd mention) Links: My Notes:

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• Was I wrong about JavaScript?

  - by jboyer

  Yes, I was. Recently, I’ve taken a good hard look at JavaScript. I’ve used it before but mostly in the capacity of web design. Using JQuery to make your web page do cool stuff is different than really creating a JavaScript application using all of the language constructs. What I’m finding as I use it more is that I may have been wrong about my assumptions about it. Let me explain.   I enjoyed doing cool stuff with JQuery but the limited experience with JavaScript as a language coupled with the bad things that I heard about it led me to not have any real interest in it. However, JavaScript is ubiquitous on the web and if I want to do any web development, which I do, I need to learn it. So here I am, diving deep into the language with the help of the JavaScript Fundamentals training course at Pluralsight (great training for a low price) and the JavaScript: The Good Parts book by Douglas Crockford.   Now, there are certainly parts of JavaScript that are bad. I think these are well known by any developer that uses it. The parts that I feel are especially egregious are the following: The global object null vs. undefined truthy and falsy limited (nearly nonexistent) scoping ‘==’ and ‘===’ (I just don’t get the reason for coercion)   However, what I am finding hiding under the covers of the bad things is a good language. I am finding that I am legitimately enjoying JavaScript. This I was not expecting. I’m not going to go into a huge dissertation on what I like about it, but some things include: Object literal notation dynamic typing functional style (JavaScript: The Good Parts describes it as LISP in C clothing) JSON (better than XML) There are parts of JavaScript that seem strange to OOP developers like myself. However, just because it is different or seems strange does not mean it is bad. Some differences are quite interesting and useful.   I feel that it is important for developers to challenge their assumptions and also to be able to admit when they are wrong on a topic. Many different situations can arise that lead to this, such as choosing the wrong technology for a problem’s solution, misunderstanding the requirements, etc. I decided to challenge my assumptions about JavaScript instead of moving straight into CoffeeScript or Dart. After exploring it, I find that I am beginning to enjoy it the more I use it. As long as there are those like Crockford to help guide me in the right way to code in JavaScript, I can create elegant and efficient solutions to problems and add another ‘arrow’ to the ‘quiver’, so to speak. I do still intend to learn CoffeeScript to see what the hub-bub is about, but now I no longer have to be afraid of JavaScript as a legitimate programming language.   Has something similar ever happened to you? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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