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• Thoughts on schemas and schema proliferation

  - by jamiet

  In SQL Server 2005 Microsoft introduced user-schema separation and since then I have seen the use of schemas increase; whereas before I would typically see databases where all objects were in the [dbo] schema I now see databases that have multiple schemas, a database I saw recently had 31 (thirty one) of them. I can’t help but wonder whether this is a good thing or not – clearly 31 is an extreme case but I question whether multiple schemas create more problems than they solve? I have been involved in many discussions that go something like this: Developer #1> “I have a new function to add to the database and I’m not sure which schema to put it in” Developer #2> “What does it do?” Developer #1> “It provides data to a report in Reporting Services” Developer #2> “Ok, so put it in the [reports] schema” Developer #1> “Well I could, but the data will only be used by our Financial reporting folks so shouldn’t I put it in the [financial] schema?” Developer #2> “Maybe, yes” Developer #1> “Mind you, the data is supposed to be used for regulatory reporting to the FSA, should I put it in [regulatory]?” Developer #2> “Err….” You get the idea!!! The more schemas that exist in your database then the more chance that their supposed usages will overlap. I’m left wondering whether the use of schemas is actually necessary. I don’t view really see them as an aid to security because I generally believe that principles should be assigned permissions on objects as-needed on a case-by-case basis (and I have a stock SQL query that deciphers them all for me) so why bother using them at all? I can envisage a use where a database is used to house objects pertaining to many different business functions (which, in itself, is an ambiguous term) and in that circumstance perhaps a schema per business function would be appropriate; hence of late I have been loosely following this edict: If some objects in a database could be moved en masse to another database without the need to remove any foreign key constraints then those objects could legitimately exist in a dedicated schema. I am interested to know what other people’s thoughts are on this. If you would like to share then please do so in the comments. @Jamiet

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• What is the correct way to use g_signal_connect() in C++ for dynamic unity quicklists?

  - by hakermania

  I want to make my application use dynamic unity quicklists. For building my application I am using C++ and the QtCreator IDE. When a menu action is triggered I want to be able to have access to a non-static function of my MainWindow class so as to be able to update the Graphical User Interface which can be accessed from inside 'normal' MainWindow's functions. So, I am building up my quicklist like this (mainwindow.cpp): void MainWindow::enable_unity_quicklist(){ Unity_Menu = dbusmenu_menuitem_new(); dbusmenu_menuitem_property_set_bool (Unity_Menu, DBUSMENU_MENUITEM_PROP_VISIBLE, FALSE); Unity_Stop = dbusmenu_menuitem_new(); dbusmenu_menuitem_property_set(Unity_Stop, DBUSMENU_MENUITEM_PROP_LABEL, "Stop"); dbusmenu_menuitem_child_append (Unity_Menu, Unity_Stop); g_signal_connect (Unity_Stop, DBUSMENU_MENUITEM_SIGNAL_ITEM_ACTIVATED, G_CALLBACK(&fake_callback), (gpointer)this); if(!unity_entry) unity_entry = unity_launcher_entry_get_for_desktop_id("myapp.desktop"); unity_launcher_entry_set_quicklist(unity_entry, Unity_Menu); dbusmenu_menuitem_property_set_bool(Unity_Menu, DBUSMENU_MENUITEM_PROP_VISIBLE, true); dbusmenu_menuitem_property_set_bool(Unity_Stop, DBUSMENU_MENUITEM_PROP_VISIBLE, true); } void MainWindow::fake_callback(gpointer data){ MainWindow* m = (MainWindow*)data; m->on_stopButton_clicked(); } void MainWindow::on_stopButton_clicked(){ //stopping the process... } mainwindow.h: private slots: void enable_unity_quicklist(); void on_stopButton_clicked(); public slots: static void fake_callback(gpointer data); This suggestion was taken from http://old.nabble.com/Using-g_signal_connect-in-class-td18461823.html The program crashes immediately after I choose the 'Stop' action from the Unity Quicklist. Debugging the program shows that I am not able to access anything MainWindow related inside the on_stopButton_clicked() without crashing. For example, it crashes when doing this check (which is the first 2 lines of code inside this function): if (!ui->stopButton->isEnabled()) return; I have also tested lots of other things that I found at the internet, but nothing of them worked. One interesting solution would be to use gtkmm (http://developer.gnome.org/gtkmm-tutorial/stable/sec-connecting-signal-handlers.html.en) but I am not used at all working on GTK applications (I work solely in Qt) and I don't know if this even suits to my occasion. A compilable example indicating what the problem is can be found at: http://ubuntuone.com/7iKA3wnPmWVp8YNNDLlVQI (3.2Kb) If you are not familiar with the QtCreator IDE, you can compile with the following commands, as long as you have all the needed libraries: cd dynamic_unity_quicklists_test; qmake -project; qmake; make

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• PASS Summit 2013 Review

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  As a long-standing member of PASS who lives in the greater Seattle area and has attended about nine of these Summits, let me start out by saying how GREAT it was to go to Charlotte, North Carolina this year.  Many of the new folks that I met at the Summit this year, upon hearing that I was from Seattle, commented that I must have been disappointed to have to travel to the Summit this year after 5 years in a row in Seattle.  Well, nothing could be further from the truth.  I cheered loudly when I first heard that the 2013 Summit would be outside Seattle.  I have many fond memories of trips to Orlando, Florida and Grapevine, Texas for past Summits (missed out on Denver, unfortunately).  And there is a funny dynamic that takes place when the conference is local.  If you do as I have done the last several years and saved my company money by not getting a hotel, but rather just commuting from home, then both family and coworkers tend to act like you’re just on a normal schedule.  For example, I have a young family, and my wife and kids really wanted to still see me come home “after work”, but there are a whole lot of after-hours activities, social events, and great food to be enjoyed at the Summit each year.  Even more so if you really capitalize on the opportunities to meet face-to-face with people you either met at previous summits or have spoken to or heard of, from Twitter, blogs, and forums.  Then there is also the lovely commuting in Seattle traffic from neighboring cities rather than the convenience of just walking across the street from your hotel.  So I’m just saying, there are really nice aspects of having the conference 2500 miles away. Beyond that, the training was fantastic as usual.  The SQL Server community has many outstanding presenters and experts with deep knowledge of the tools who are extremely willing to share all of that with anyone who wants to listen.  The opening video with PASS President Bill Graziano in a NASCAR race turned dream sequence was very well done, and the keynotes, as usual, were great.  This year I was particularly impressed with how well attended were the Professional Development sessions.  Not too many years ago, those were very sparsely attended, but this year, the two that I attended were standing-room only, and these were not tiny rooms.  I would say this is a testament to both the maturity of the attendees realizing how important these topics are to career success, as well as to the ever-increasing skills of the presenters and the program committee for selecting speakers and topics that resonated with people.  If, as is usually the case, you were not able to get to every session that you wanted to because there were just too darn many good ones, I encourage you to get the recordings. Overall, it was a great time as these events always are.  It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, and the people of Charlotte did an awesome job hosting the event and letting their hospitality shine (extra kudos to SQLSentry for all they did with the shuttle, maps, and other event sponsorships).  We’re back in Seattle next year (it is a release year, after all) but I would say that with the success of this year’s event, I strongly encourage the Board and PASS HQ to firmly reestablish the location rotation schedule.  I’ll even go so far as to suggest standardizing on an alternating Seattle – Charlotte schedule, or something like that. If you missed the Summit this year, start saving now, and register early, so you can join us!

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Guizhou Power Grid Company

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryGuizhou Power Grid Company is responsible for power grid planning, construction, management, and power distribution in Guizhou Province, serving 39 million people. Giuzhou has 49,823 employees and an annual revenue of over $5 Billion. The business objectives were to consolidate information contained in disparate systems into a single knowledge repository and provide a safe and efficient way for staff and managers to access, query, share, manage, and store business information. Guizhou Power Grid Company saved more than US$693,000 in storage costs, reduced  average search times from 180 seconds to 5 seconds and solved 80% to 90% of technology and maintenance issues by searching the Oracle WebCenter Content management system. Company OverviewA wholly owned subsidiary of China Southern Power Grid Company Limited, Guizhou Power Grid Company is responsible for power grid planning, construction, management, and power distribution in Guizhou Province, serving 39 million people. Giuzhou has 49,823 employees and an annual revenue of over $5 Billion. Business ChallengesThe business objectives were to consolidate information contained in disparate systems, such as the customer relationship management and power grid management systems, into a single knowledge repository and provide a safe and efficient way for staff and managers to access, query, share, manage, and store business information. Solution DeployedGuizhou Power Grid Company  implemented Oracle WebCenter Content to build a content management system that enabled the secure, integrated management and storage of information, such as documents, records, images, Web content, and digital assets. The content management solution was integrated with the power grid, customer service, maintenance, and other business systems, as well as the corporate Web site. Business Results Saved more than US$693,000 in storage costs and shortened the material distribution time by integrating the knowledge management solution with the power grid, customer service, maintenance, and other business systems, as well as the corporate Web site Enabled staff to search 31,650 documents using catalogs, multidimensional attributes, and knowledge maps, reducing average search times from 180 seconds to 5 seconds and saving approximately 1,539 hours in annual search time Gained comprehensive document management, format transformation, security, and auditing capabilities Enabled users to upload new documents and supervisors to check the accuracy of these documents online, resulting in improved information quality control Solved 80% to 90% of technology and maintenance issues by searching the Oracle content management system for information, ensuring IT staff can respond quickly to users’ technical problems Improved security by using role-based access controls to restrict access to confidential documents and information Supported the efficient classification of corporate knowledge by using Oracle’s metadata functions to collect, tag, and archive documents, images, Web content, and digital assets “We chose Oracle WebCenter Content, as it is an outstanding integrated content management platform. It has allowed us to establish a system to access, query, share, manage, and store our corporate assets. This has laid a solid foundation for Guizhou Power Grid Company to improve management practices.” Luo Sixi, Senior Information Consultant, Guizhou Power Grid Company Additional Information Guizhou Power Grid Company Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content

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• Merging Social Accounts: What We Learned This Weekend

  - by Mike Stiles

  Guest Post by Erika BrookesWe learned that it’s not always as easy as you think it’s going to be. While it’s widely accepted that merging multiple owned Facebook Pages that are duplicating communities and putting out the same type of content is a best practice, actually pulling it off without rattling fans is a trickier proposition. Facebook is nice and clear about how to merge Facebook Pages. Although content is not carried over, Likes from the pages you’re merging are. So you can imagine the surprise when such fans start seeing posts in their News Feed from a page they don’t believe they ever Liked. One community member accurately likened it to having your bank come under another bank’s brand name. The Facebook Page changes to the new brand, just like your debit card, emails, signs and other communication. This weekend we did our merge. The Facebook communities of Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect were pulled into one community, Oracle Social. Could we have handled it better? Oh yeah. Our intent was to make sure, to the fullest extent possible, that the fans of the Vitrue, Involver, and Collective Intellect brand pages were well-informed about the pending page merges in ADVANCE of the merge. While many were aware that Oracle acquired the three companies, many were not. We learned from fan feedback that we should have sent notifications MUCH earlier to make the brand Page merge crystal clear and to answer any questions. That was our bad, our responsibility and we apologize for Oracle Social showing up in your News Feed if you were not aware that it was a result of your fandom of Vitrue, Involver or Collective Intellect. It was our job to make you aware well in advance. Some felt they had never Liked the fan Pages of Vitrue, Involver or Collective Intellect, so they were understandably upset (some cultures may call it “fit to be tied”) when they found themselves fans of Oracle Social. One thing to consider is that since 2009, brands and developers have used and enjoyed free Involver tab apps like Twitter, RSS and YouTube (1.2 million of which are currently active), which included an opt-in Liking the Involver Page. Often, when Liking happens in a manner outside of the traditional clicking of a Like button on a brand Page, it’s easy to forget a Page was indeed Liked. Lastly, a few felt that their Like of the Page had been “bought.” It was not. No fans or Likes were separately purchased. Yes, the companies and the social properties of Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect were acquired by Oracle. Those brands are now being coordinated into the larger Oracle brand. In social media, that means those brands are being integrated into the Oracle Social community. So what now? We apologize and apply lessons learned. We learned that you not only have to communicate thoroughly and clearly, but you have to communicate well in advance of any actionable items that will affect fans. We’re more than willing to walk straight to the woodshed when we deserve it. Going forward, the social team here is dedicated to facilitating content, discussion and sharing around social for marketers, agencies, IT stakeholders and social staffs, including community managers. We anticipate Oracle Social being the premier gathering place for true social innovators as we move into social’s exciting next phase of development. Inevitably, some will still feel they are fans of the Page in error. While we hate to see you go, you may unlike the Page if it’s not relevant or useful to you. Let’s continue to contribute, participate, foster our desire to learn, and move forward together positively and constructively - both for current fans of the community and the many fans to come.

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• Would someone please explain Octree Collisions to me?

  - by A-Type

  I've been reading everything I can find on the subject and I feel like the pieces are just about to fall into place, but I just can't quite get it. I'm making a space game, where collisions will occur between planets, ships, asteroids, and the sun. Each of these objects can be subdivided into 'chunks', which I have implemented to speed up rendering (the vertices can and will change often at runtime, so I've separated the buffers). These subdivisions also have bounding primitives to test for collision. All of these objects are made of blocks (yeah, it's that kind of game). Blocks can also be tested for rough collisions, though they do not have individual bounding primitives for memory reasons. I think the rough testing seems to be sufficient, though. So, collision needs to be fairly precise; at block resolution. Some functions rely on two blocks colliding. And, of course, attacking specific blocks is important. Now what I am struggling with is filtering my collision pairs. As I said, I've read a lot about Octrees, but I'm having trouble applying it to my situation as many tutorials are vague with very little code. My main issues are: Are Octrees recalculated each frame, or are they stored in memory and objects are shuffled into different divisions as they move? Despite all my reading I still am not clear on this... the vagueness of it all has been frustrating. How far do Octrees subdivide? Planets in my game are quite large, while asteroids are smaller. Do I subdivide to the size of the planet, or asteroid (where planet is in multiple divisions)? Or is the limit something else entirely, like number of elements in the division? Should I load objects into the octrees as 'chunks' or in the whole, then break into chunks later? This could be specific to my implementation, I suppose. I was going to ask about how big my root needed to be, but I did manage to find this question, and the second answer seems sufficient for me. I'm afraid I don't really get what he means by adding new nodes and doing subdivisions upon adding new objects, probably because I'm confused about whether the tree is maintained in memory or recalculated per-frame.

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• Apps UX Launches Blueprints for Mobile User Experiences

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceAt Oracle OpenWorld 2012 this year, the Oracle Applications User Experience (Apps UX) team announced the release of Mobile User Experience Functional Design Patterns. These patterns are designed to work directly with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware, specifically, ADF Mobile.  The Oracle Application Development Framework for mobile users enables developers to build one application that can be deployed to multiple mobile device platforms. These same mobile design patterns provide the guidance for Oracle teams to develop Fusion Mobile expenses. Application developers can use Oracle’s mobile design patterns to design iPhone, Android, or browser-based smartphone applications. We are sharing our mobile design patterns and their baked-in, scientifically proven usability to enable Oracle customers and partners to build mobile applications quickly.A different way of thinking and designing. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences for Apps UX, says mobile design has to be compelling. “It needs to be optimized for the device, and be visually rich and simple,” she said. “What is really key is that you are designing for a user’s most personal device, the device that they will have with them at all times of the day.”Katy Massucco, director of the overall design patterns site, said: “You need to start with a simplified task flow. Everything should be a natural interaction. The action should be relevant and leveraging the device. It should be seamless.”She suggests that developers identify the essential tasks that a user would want to do while mobile. “They need to understand the user and the context,” she added. ?A sample inline action design patternWhat people are sayingReactions to the release of the design patterns have been positive. Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fusion User Experience Advocate (FXA), has already demo’ed Fusion Mobile Expenses widely.  Fellow Oracle Ace Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen, called it a “cool demo by @debralilley of the new mobile expenses app.” FXA member Floyd Teter says he is already cooking up some plans for using mobile design patterns.  We hope to see those ideas at Collaborate or ODTUG in 2013. For another perspective on why user experience is such an important focus for mobile applications, check out this video by John King, Director, and Monty Latiolais, President, both from ODTUG, or the Oracle Development Tools User Group.In a separate interview by e-mail, Latiolais wrote: “I enjoy the fact we can take something that, in the past, has been largely subjective, and now apply to it a scientifically proven look and feel. Trusting Oracle’s UX Design Patterns, the presentation really can become one less thing to worry about. As someone with limited ADF experience, that is extremely beneficial.”?King, who was also interviewed by e-mail, wrote: “User Experience is about making the task at hand as easy and error-free as possible. Oracle's UX labs worked hard to make the User Experience in the new Fusion Applications as good as possible; ADF makes adding tested, consistent, user experiences a declarative exercise by leveraging that work. As we move applications onto mobile platforms, user experience is the driving factor. Customers are "spoiled" by a bevy of fantastic applications, and ours cannot disappoint them. Creating applications that enable users to quickly and effectively accomplish whatever task is at hand takes thought and practice. Developers must become ’power users’ and then create applications that they and their users will love.”

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• best way to "introduce" OOP/OOD to team of experienced C++ engineers

  - by DXM

  I am looking for an efficient way, that also doesn't come off as an insult, to introduce OOP concepts to existing team members? My teammates are not new to OO languages. We've been doing C++/C# for a long time so technology itself is familiar. However, I look around and without major infusion of effort (mostly in the form of code reviews), it seems what we are producing is C code that happens to be inside classes. There's almost no use of single responsibility principle, abstractions or attempts to minimize coupling, just to name a few. I've seen classes that don't have a constructor but get memset to 0 every time they are instantiated. But every time I bring up OOP, everyone always nods and makes it seem like they know exactly what I'm talking about. Knowing the concepts is good, but we (some more than others) seem to have very hard time applying them when it comes to delivering actual work. Code reviews have been very helpful but the problem with code reviews is that they only occur after the fact so to some it seems we end up rewriting (it's mostly refactoring, but still takes lots of time) code that was just written. Also code reviews only give feedback to an individual engineer, not the entire team. I am toying with the idea of doing a presentation (or a series) and try to bring up OOP again along with some examples of existing code that could've been written better and could be refactored. I could use some really old projects that no one owns anymore so at least that part shouldn't be a sensitive issue. However, will this work? As I said most people have done C++ for a long time so my guess is that a) they'll sit there thinking why I'm telling them stuff they already know or b) they might actually take it as an insult because I'm telling them they don't know how to do the job they've been doing for years if not decades. Is there another approach which would reach broader audience than a code review would, but at the same time wouldn't feel like a punishment lecture? I'm not a fresh kid out of college who has utopian ideals of perfectly designed code and I don't expect that from anyone. The reason I'm writing this is because I just did a review of a person who actually had decent high-level design on paper. However if you picture classes: A - B - C - D, in the code B, C and D all implement almost the same public interface and B/C have one liner functions so that top-most class A is doing absolutely all the work (down to memory management, string parsing, setup negotiations...) primarily in 4 mongo methods and, for all intents and purposes, calls almost directly into D. Update: I'm a tech lead(6 months in this role) and do have full support of the group manager. We are working on a very mature product and maintenance costs are definitely letting themselves be known.

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• How to suggest using an ORM instead of stored procedures?

  - by Wayne M

  I work at a company that only uses stored procedures for all data access, which makes it very annoying to keep our local databases in sync as every commit we have to run new procs. I have used some basic ORMs in the past and I find the experience much better and cleaner. I'd like to suggest to the development manager and rest of the team that we look into using an ORM Of some kind for future development (the rest of the team are only familiar with stored procedures and have never used anything else). The current architecture is .NET 3.5 written like .NET 1.1, with "god classes" that use a strange implementation of ActiveRecord and return untyped DataSets which are looped over in code-behind files - the classes work something like this: class Foo { public bool LoadFoo() { bool blnResult = false; if (this.FooID == 0) { throw new Exception("FooID must be set before calling this method."); } DataSet ds = // ... call to Sproc if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0) { foo.FooName = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0]["FooName"].ToString(); // other properties set blnResult = true; } return blnResult; } } // Consumer Foo foo = new Foo(); foo.FooID = 1234; foo.LoadFoo(); // do stuff with foo... There is pretty much no application of any design patterns. There are no tests whatsoever (nobody else knows how to write unit tests, and testing is done through manually loading up the website and poking around). Looking through our database we have: 199 tables, 13 views, a whopping 926 stored procedures and 93 functions. About 30 or so tables are used for batch jobs or external things, the remainder are used in our core application. Is it even worth pursuing a different approach in this scenario? I'm talking about moving forward only since we aren't allowed to refactor the existing code since "it works" so we cannot change the existing classes to use an ORM, but I don't know how often we add brand new modules instead of adding to/fixing current modules so I'm not sure if an ORM is the right approach (too much invested in stored procedures and DataSets). If it is the right choice, how should I present the case for using one? Off the top of my head the only benefits I can think of is having cleaner code (although it might not be, since the current architecture isn't built with ORMs in mind so we would basically be jury-rigging ORMs on to future modules but the old ones would still be using the DataSets) and less hassle to have to remember what procedure scripts have been run and which need to be run, etc. but that's it, and I don't know how compelling an argument that would be. Maintainability is another concern but one that nobody except me seems to be concerned about.

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• My co-worker has not been doing such a good job for the past decade. What do I do? [closed]

  - by stijn

  Possible Duplicate: How do I approach a coworker about his or her code quality? I started working with him almost a decade ago and back then I had never really programmed before, being a young hardware engineer. Right now however I have made quite some progress in all areas being part of software design and i am much, much more skilled than my co-worker who is 15 years older and has been programming more than twice as long. He is super nice and definitely smart enough, but lately his lack of skill and performance are starting to drag me down because we're more and more working on the same codebase. And soon we are going to do a quite ambitious start from scratch creating a whole new hard/software system. I feel it is time to address all issues now, but i do not know how to start. Here are some of the things that I would like to see him improve on: no consistent usage of style, spaces nor tabs (eg if(something ) a =b ) adds newlines around pieces of code to make it easier to read, then commits those with messages like 'no changes made' overall commit messages are useless and so are most of the comments, if there are any (eg 'remove solves for bug Rik' if Rik reported a bug). There is no function/class documentation. lots of spelling errors, in both English and native language, which sometimes are mixed 6/7/8 level deep deep nesting is no exception, a lot of functions start with one level already like if(ptr!=Null){ even when ptr is the result of allocation via new in the constructor numerous source files have over 10k lines of those lines, a major part is simply a result of copy-pasting functionality instead of using a function. This includes copying comments so we end up with 50 occurrences of var=NULL; //TODO TEST this!!!!!!! another part is hundreds of lines of dead code knows what versioning does, yet comments out old code and places new code underneath it when making changes coding skills are below par, especially for the type of rather high precision applications we do. Yet somehow, after a lot of trying and testing, stuff starts to work. But then breaks again some time later because every change casues a waterfall effect. violates every single item in the C++ FAQ lite, practices every bad practice I can think of still doesn't know how to properly use the debugger, but spends hours inspecting messy logfiles in notepad on a tiny laptop screen. Does not make any adjustments to the settings of the software he uses. Never uses keyboard shortcuts. does not seem to progress or learn new things at all. Work rather slow, mostly due to the lack of planning and incorrect usage of tools. How does one deal with this? For starters, how do I make him aware of all these problems? Should I tell the staff about it? And the next step, how to get him to learn new things and adopt another way of working?

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• With AMD style modules in JavaScript is there any benefit to namespaces?

  - by gman

  Coming from C++ originally and seeing lots of Java programmers doing the same we brought namespaces to JavaScript. See Google's closure library as an example where they have a main namespace, goog and under that many more namespaces like goog.async, goog.graphics But now, having learned the AMD style of requiring modules it seems like namespaces are kind of pointless in JavaScript. Not only pointless but even arguably an anti-pattern. What is AMD? It's a way of defining and including modules that removes all direct dependencies. Effectively you do this // some/module.js define([ 'name/of/needed/module', 'name/of/someother/needed/module', ], function( RefToNeededModule, RefToSomeOtherNeededModule) { ...code... return object or function }); This format lets the AMD support code know that this module needs name/of/needed/module.js and name/of/someother/needed/module.js loaded. The AMD code can load all the modules and then, assuming no circular dependencies, call the define function on each module in the correct order, record the object/function returned by the module as it calls them, and then call any other modules' define function with references to those modules. This seems to remove any need for namespaces. In your own code you can call the reference to any other module anything you want. For example if you had 2 string libraries, even if they define similar functions, as long as they follow the AMD pattern you can easily use both in the same module. No need for namespaces to solve that. It also means there's no hard coded dependencies. For example in Google's closure any module could directly reference another module with something like var value = goog.math.someMathFunc(otherValue) and if you're unlucky it will magically work where as with AMD style you'd have to explicitly include the math library otherwise the module wouldn't have a reference to it since there are no globals with AMD. On top of that dependency injection for testing becomes easy. None of the code in the AMD module references things by namespace so there is no hardcoded namespace paths, you can easily mock classes at testing time. Is there any other point to namespaces or is that something that C++ / Java programmers are bringing to JavaScript that arguably doesn't really belong?

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• Why can't a blendShader sample anything but the current coordinate of the background image?

  - by Triynko

  In Flash, you can set a DisplayObject's blendShader property to a pixel shader (flash.shaders.Shader class). The mechanism is nice, because Flash automatically provides your Shader with two input images, including the background surface and the foreground display object's bitmap. The problem is that at runtime, the shader doesn't allow you to sample the background anywhere but under the current output coordinate. If you try to sample other coordinates, it just returns the color of the current coordinate instead, ignoring the coordinates you specified. This seems to occur only at runtime, because it works properly in the Pixel Bender toolkit. This limitation makes it impossible to simulate, for example, the Aero Glass effect in Windows Vista/7, because you cannot sample the background properly for blurring. I must mention that it is possible to create the effect in Flash through manual composition techniques, but it's hard to determine when it actually needs updated, because Flash does not provide information about when a particular area of the screen or a particular display object needs re-rendered. For example, you may have a fixed glass surface with objects moving underneath it that don't dispatch events when they move. The only alternative is to re-render the glass bar every frame, which is inefficient, which is why I am trying to do it through a blendShader so Flash determines when it needs rendered automatically. Is there a technical reason for this limitation, or is it an oversight of some sort? Does anyone know of a workaround, or a way I could provide my manual composition implementation with information about when it needs re-rendered? The limitation is mentioned with no explanation in the last note in this page: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/dev/WSB19E965E-CCD2-4174-8077-8E5D0141A4A8.html It says: "Note: When a Pixel Bender shader program is run as a blend in Flash Player or AIR, the sampling and outCoord() functions behave differently than in other contexts.In a blend, a sampling function will always return the current pixel being evaluated by the shader. You cannot, for example, use add an offset to outCoord() in order to sample a neighboring pixel. Likewise, if you use the outCoord() function outside a sampling function, its coordinates always evaluate to 0. You cannot, for example, use the position of a pixel to influence how the blended images are combined."

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• Incorrect results for frustum cull

  - by DeadMG

  Previously, I had a problem with my frustum culling producing too optimistic results- that is, including many objects that were not in the view volume. Now I have refactored that code and produced a cull that should be accurate to the actual frustum, instead of an axis-aligned box approximation. The problem is that now it never returns anything to be in the view volume. As the mathematical support library I'm using does not provide plane support functions, I had to code much of this functionality myself, and I'm not really the mathematical type, so it's likely that I've made some silly error somewhere. As follows is the relevant code: class Plane { public: Plane() { r0 = Math::Vector(0,0,0); normal = Math::Vector(0,1,0); } Plane(Math::Vector p1, Math::Vector p2, Math::Vector p3) { r0 = p1; normal = Math::Cross((p2 - p1), (p3 - p1)); } Math::Vector r0; Math::Vector normal; }; This class represents one plane as a point and a normal vector. class Frustum { public: Frustum( const std::array<Math::Vector, 8>& points ) { planes[0] = Plane(points[0], points[1], points[2]); planes[1] = Plane(points[4], points[5], points[6]); planes[2] = Plane(points[0], points[1], points[4]); planes[3] = Plane(points[2], points[3], points[6]); planes[4] = Plane(points[0], points[2], points[4]); planes[5] = Plane(points[1], points[3], points[5]); } Plane planes[6]; }; The points are passed in order where (the inverse of) each bit of the index of each point indicates whether it's the left, top, and back of the frustum, respectively. As such, I just picked any three points where they all shared one bit in common to define the planes. My intersection test is as follows (based on this): bool Intersects(Math::AABB lhs, const Frustum& rhs) const { for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { Math::Vector pvertex = lhs.TopRightFurthest; Math::Vector nvertex = lhs.BottomLeftClosest; if (rhs.planes[i].normal.x <= -0.0f) { std::swap(pvertex.x, nvertex.x); } if (rhs.planes[i].normal.y <= -0.0f) { std::swap(pvertex.y, nvertex.y); } if (rhs.planes[i].normal.z <= -0.0f) { std::swap(pvertex.z, nvertex.z); } if (Math::Dot(rhs.planes[i].r0, nvertex) < 0.0f) { return false; } } return true; } Also of note is that because I'm using a left-handed co-ordinate system, I wrote my Cross function to return the negative of the formula given on Wikipedia. Any suggestions as to where I've made a mistake?

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• Inline template efficiency

  - by Darryl Gove

  I like inline templates, and use them quite extensively. Whenever I write code with them I'm always careful to check the disassembly to see that the resulting output is efficient. Here's a potential cause of inefficiency. Suppose we want to use the mis-named Leading Zero Detect (LZD) instruction on T4 (this instruction does a count of the number of leading zero bits in an integer register - so it should really be called leading zero count). So we put together an inline template called lzd.il looking like: .inline lzd lzd %o0,%o0 .end And we throw together some code that uses it: int lzd(int); int a; int c=0; int main() { for(a=0; a<1000; a++) { c=lzd(c); } return 0; } We compile the code with some amount of optimisation, and look at the resulting code: $ cc -O -xtarget=T4 -S lzd.c lzd.il $ more lzd.s .L77000018: /* 0x001c 11 */ lzd %o0,%o0 /* 0x0020 9 */ ld [%i1],%i3 /* 0x0024 11 */ st %o0,[%i2] /* 0x0028 9 */ add %i3,1,%i0 /* 0x002c */ cmp %i0,999 /* 0x0030 */ ble,pt %icc,.L77000018 /* 0x0034 */ st %i0,[%i1] What is surprising is that we're seeing a number of loads and stores in the code. Everything could be held in registers, so why is this happening? The problem is that the code is only inlined at the code generation stage - when the actual instructions are generated. Earlier compiler phases see a function call. The called functions can do all kinds of nastiness to global variables (like 'a' in this code) so we need to load them from memory after the function call, and store them to memory before the function call. Fortunately we can use a #pragma directive to tell the compiler that the routine lzd() has no side effects - meaning that it does not read or write to memory. The directive to do that is #pragma no_side_effect(<routine name), and it needs to be placed after the declaration of the function. The new code looks like: int lzd(int); #pragma no_side_effect(lzd) int a; int c=0; int main() { for(a=0; a<1000; a++) { c=lzd(c); } return 0; } Now the loop looks much neater: /* 0x0014 10 */ add %i1,1,%i1 ! 11 ! { ! 12 ! c=lzd(c); /* 0x0018 12 */ lzd %o0,%o0 /* 0x001c 10 */ cmp %i1,999 /* 0x0020 */ ble,pt %icc,.L77000018 /* 0x0024 */ nop

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• Capgemini Global Business Process Management Report

  - by JuergenKress

  Welcome to the Capgemini Global Business Process Management (BPM) Report. This report is an exploration of key trends in BPM as seen by CXOs across a broad selection of sectors and geographies. BPM is perhaps at a tipping point - it’s certainly at an exciting stage in its evolution. As both an engineer and an Operational Research practitioner in my early career, and subsequently as a consultant, I have seen BPM through its development over the last 26 years. BPM has its roots in management practices such as Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering & Model Based Development; but the advent of the new generation of sophisticated modelling and process execution technologies has greatly enhanced BPM’s power to truly transform businesses. This has created one of the most rapidly growing and attractive market sectors for both services and technology. We see BPM as a critical management discipline that when executed against clear, cross organizational business objectives, can deliver exceptional value to that organization. However, we also see that the potential for BPM is not well understood. Our decision to conduct this global survey stemmed from discussions with our clients. We sought to gain a better impression of their understanding of BPM, how they measure its value, and how far it is prioritized within their Business and Technology Transformation efforts. This research confirms our belief that BPM needs to be a jointly owned Business and IT discipline. It also demonstrates that it is starting to gain significant traction in the market and investments are starting to pay dividends to the early adopters. At Capgemini we are being asked by our clients to help them simplify and improve their business models and the technology that supports them and we are already seeing BPM become an integral and key part of this proposition. Business Process Management is becoming ever more relevant to both large and small organizations in the current economic climate. At a time when many different market sectors are facing slow revenue growth, customer churn and increased pressures on costs, BPM becomes a critical weapon in the battle for efficiency and effectiveness in processes. Furthermore, in a challenging and changing business environment that is characterized by uncertainty, it allows organizations to adapt, be more agile and fleet of foot. Capgemini is seeing strong demand for BPM services in markets such as the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and France; and there are clear signs of increased interest in other geographies such as, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Australia. In sector terms, the financial services industry has led the way in BPM adoption over the recent past, driven by increased focus on customer- centricity and regulatory compliance. Other sectors, public sector, utilities, telco, retail and manufacturing are now not only catching up, but are starting o use BPM in new ways to create new business models to serve customers and outsmart the competition. The research findings also show however that this is a complex landscape, and we are not seeing adoption of BPM in a clear and consistent way. This report also looks at some of the barriers to adoption, with organizational silos being a major obstacle. Waters are further muddied by fragmented budgets, lack of clear governance and ownership and internal politics. The objective of our investment in this research project was to shed some light on these elements with a view to assisting organizations to create strategies that avoid or at least mitigate some of these barriers to success. Management of change in such endea vours is a key part in enabling the appropriate alignment of business and technology to support their transformation efforts. I hope that you find this report of benefit in the further adoption of Business Process Management. Get the full report here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Capgemini,bpm report,bpm market,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Microsoft and Application Architectures

  Microsoft has dealt with several kinds of application architectures to include but not limited to desktop applications, web applications, operating systems, relational database systems, windows services, and web services. Because of the size and market share of Microsoft, virtually every modern language works with or around a Microsoft product. Some of the languages include: Visual Basic, VB.Net, C#, C++, C, ASP.net, ASP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java and XML. From my experience, Microsoft strives to maintain an n-tier application standard where an application is comprised of multiple layers that perform specific functions, for example: presentation layer, business layer, data access layer are three general layers that just about every formally structured application contains. The presentation layer contains anything to do with displaying information to the screen and how it appears on the screen. The business layer is the middle man between the presentation layer and data access layer and transforms data from the data access layer in to useable information to be stored later or sent to an output device through the presentation layer. The data access layer does as its name implies, it allows the business layer to access data from a data source like MS SQL Server, XML, or another data source. One of my favorite technologies that Microsoft has come out with recently is the .Net Framework. This framework allows developers to code an application in multiple languages and compiles them in to one intermediate language called the Common Language Runtime (CLR). This allows VB and C# developers to work seamlessly together as if they were working in the same project. The only real disadvantage to using the .Net Framework is that it only natively runs on Microsoft operating systems. However, Microsoft does control a majority of the operating systems currently installed on modern computers and servers, especially with personal home computers. Given that the Microsoft .Net Framework is so flexible it is an ideal for business to develop applications around it as long as they wanted to commit to using Microsoft technologies and operating systems in the future. I have been a professional developer for about 9+ years now and have seen the .net framework work flawlessly in just about every instance I have used it. In addition, I have used it to develop web applications, mobile phone applications, desktop applications, web service applications, and windows service applications to name a few.

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• Why would I learn C++11, having known C and C++?

  - by Shahbaz

  I am a programmer in C and C++, although I don't stick to either language and write a mixture of the two. Sometimes having code in classes, possibly with operator overloading, or templates and the oh so great STL is obviously a better way. Sometimes use of a simple C function pointer is much much more readable and clear. So I find beauty and practicality in both languages. I don't want to get into the discussion of "If you mix them and compile with a C++ compiler, it's not a mix anymore, it's all C++" I think we all understand what I mean by mixing them. Also, I don't want to talk about C vs C++, this question is all about C++11. C++11 introduces what I think are significant changes to how C++ works, but it has introduced many special cases that change how different features behave in different circumstances, placing restrictions on multiple inheritance, adding lambda functions, etc. I know that at some point in the future, when you say C++ everyone would assume C++11. Much like when you say C nowadays, you most probably mean C99. That makes me consider learning C++11. After all, if I want to continue writing code in C++, I may at some point need to start using those features simply because my colleagues have. Take C for example. After so many years, there are still many people learning and writing code in C. Why? Because the language is good. What good means is that, it follows many of the rules to create a good programming language. So besides being powerful (which easy or hard, almost all programming languages are), C is regular and has few exceptions, if any. C++11 however, I don't think so. I'm not sure that the changes introduced in C++11 are making the language better. So the question is: Why would I learn C++11? Update: My original question in short was: "I like C++, but the new C++11 doesn't look good because of this and this and this. However, deep down something tells me I need to learn it. So, I asked this question here so that someone would help convince me to learn it." However, the zealous people here can't tolerate pointing out a flaw in their language and were not at all constructive in this manner. After the moderator edited the question, it became more like a "So, how about this new C++11?" which was not at all my question. Therefore, in a day or too I am going to delete this question if no one comes up with an actual convincing argument. P.S. If you are interested in knowing what flaws I was talking about, you can edit my question and see the previous edits.

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• Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role'ing in the deep

  - by Chris George

  Since last time I've been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It's fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my 'page', one for the list, one for the compass. Then using the onClick event in the list, this will switch the display attribute on the divs. This seemed to work, but did lead to some dodgy transitional redrawing artefacts which I was not happy with. So after some Googling I realised I was doing it all wrong! JQuery mobile has the concept of giving an object in html a data-role. By giving a div the attribute data-role="page" it is then treated as a separate page on the mobile device. Within the code, this is referenced like a html anchor in the form #mypage. Using this system, page transitions such as fade or slide are automatically applied which adds to the whole authenticity of the app! Here is a simple example: . <a href="#'compasspage">compass</a> . <div data-role="page" id="compasspage" data-add-back-btn="true"> But I don't want just a static link, I want to dynamically create my list, and get each list elements to switch to the compass page with the right information. So here is the jquery that I used to dynamically inject new <li> rows into the <ul> block. $('ul').append($('<li/>', {    //here appendin `<li>`     'data-role': "list-divider" }).append($('<a/>', {    //here appending `<a>` into `<li>`     'href': '#compasspage',     'data-transition': 'none',     'onclick': 'selectTx(' + i + ')',     'html': buttonHtml }))); $('ul').listview('refresh'); This is called within a for loop so the first 5 appropriate transmitters are used. There are several things of interest to note here. Firstly, I could not find a more elegant way to tell the target page which transmitter I've clicked on, so I have used the onclick event as well as the href attribute. The onclick event fires 'selectTx' which simply sets a global member variable to the specific index number I've clicked on. Yes it's not nice, but it works. Secondly, the data-transition attribute is set to 'none'. I wanted the transition between the pages to be a whooshy slidey effect. However this worked going to the compass page, but returning to the list page gave some undesirable visual artefacts (flickering, redrawing etc.). So I decided to remove the transitions all together, which was a shame. Thirdly, rather than embedding loads of html into the append command, I removed this out into a variable 'buttonHtml'. Doing this really tidied up my code. Until next time!

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• Issues glVertexAttribPointer last 2 parameters?

  - by NoobScratcher

  Introduction Hello I will start out by explaining my setup, showing samples as I go along explaining the situation. I'm using these tools: OpenGL 3.3 GLSL 330 C++ Problem The problem is when I render the wavefront obj 3d model it gives a very weird visual glitch the model was supposed to be a square but instead its a triangluated mess with parts of the vertexes pointing in a stretched direction in massive amounts towards the bottom left side of the frustum.... Explanation: I'm using std::vectors to store my wavefront .obj model data using sscanf to get the floating point values into the structure members x,y,z and store them into the Points structure variable p; int index = IndexAssigner(1, 1); ifstream file (list[index].c_str() ); points.push_back(Point()); Point p; int face[4]; while (!file.eof() ) { char modelbuffer[10000]; file.getline(modelbuffer, 10000); switch(modelbuffer[0]) { case 'v' : sscanf(modelbuffer, "v %f %f %f", &p.x, &p.y, &p.z); points.push_back(p); break; case 'f': sscanf(modelbuffer, "f %d %d %d %d", face, face+1, face+2, face+3 ); faces.push_back(face[0]); faces.push_back(face[1]); faces.push_back(face[2]); faces.push_back(face[3]); } //Turn on FileReader aka "RENDER CODE" FileReader = true; } then I render the Points vector using the .data() member of std::vectors to the frustum. Other declarations: int numfloats = 4; float* point=reinterpret_cast<float*>(&points[0]); int num_bytes=numfloats*sizeof(float); Vector declarations: struct Point {float x, y , z; }; std::vector<int>faces; std::vector<Point>points; Render code: glGenBuffers(1, &vertexbuffer); glGenTextures(1, &ModelTexture); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexbuffer); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_3D, ModelTexture); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0,GL_RGBA, ModelSurface->w, ModelSurface->h, 0, GL_BGR, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, ModelSurface->pixels); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(points), points.data(), GL_STATIC_DRAW); glVertexAttribPointer(3, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE,num_bytes ,points.data()); glEnableVertexAttribArray(3); //Translation Process GLfloat TranslationMatrix[] = { 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }; //Send Translation Matrix up to the vertex shader glUniformMatrix4fv(translation, 1, TRUE, TranslationMatrix); glDrawElements( GL_QUADS, faces.size(), GL_UNSIGNED_INT, faces.data()); I tried looking at what was causing this and went through every function every parameter ,etc looked at the man pages. Then found out that it could be my glVertexAttribPointer. Here are the man pages for glVertexAttribPointer http://www.opengl.org/sdk/docs/man/xhtml/glVertexAttribPointer.xml The last 2 parameters is my problem How do I write those 2 last parameters do I try putting the data from Points into it?. glVertexAttribPointer(3, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE,num_bytes ,points.data()); How does it work with vectors? Is it fast?* if you can not be bothered too look at the man pages here is the scripts coming from the man pages directly. Stride Specifies the byte offset between consecutive generic vertex attributes. If stride is 0, the generic vertex attributes are understood to be tightly packed in the array. The initial value is 0. Pointer Specifies a pointer to the first component of the first generic vertex attribute in the array. The initial value is 0. If you want my full source - http://ideone.com/fPfkg Thanks Again if you do read this.

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• What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

  - by Iain

  In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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• How do I maintain a really poorly written code base?

  - by onlineapplab.com

  Recently I got hired to work on existing web application because of NDA I'm not at liberty to disclose any details but this application is working online in sort of a beta testing stage before official launch. We have a few hundred users right now but this number is supposed to significantly increase after official launch. The application is written in PHP (but it is irrelevant to my question) and is running on a dual xeon processor standalone server with severe performance problems. I have seen a lot of bad PHP code but this really sets new standards, especially knowing how much time and money was invested in developing it. it is as badly coded as possible there is PHP, HTML, SQL mixed together and code is repeated whenever it is necessary (especially SQL queries). there are not any functions used, not mentioning any OOP there are four versions of the app (desktop, iPhone, Android + other mobile) each version has pretty much the same functionality but was created by copying the whole code base, so now there are some differences between each version and it is really hard to maintain the database is really badly designed, which is causing severe performance problems also for fixing some errors in PHP code there is a lot of database triggers used which are updating data on SELECT and on INSERT so any testing is a nightmare Basically, any sin of a bad programming you can imagine is there for example it is not only possible to use SQL injections in literally every place but you can log into app if you use a login which doesn't exist and an empty password. The team which created this app is not working on it any more and there is an outsourced team which suggested that there are some problems but was never willing to deal with the elephant in the room partially because they've got a very comfortable contract and partially due to lack of skills (just my opinion). My job was supposed to be fixing some performance problems and extending existing functionality but first thing I was asked to do was a review of the existing code base. I've made my review and it was quite a shock for the management but my conclusions were after some time finally confirmed by other programmers. Management made it clear that it is not possible to start rewriting this app from scratch (which in my opinion should be done). We have to maintain its operable state and at the same time fix performance errors and extend the functionality. My question is, as I don't want just to patch the existing code, how to transform this into properly written app while keeping the existing code working at the same time? My plan is: Unify four existing versions into common code base (fixing only most obvious errors). Redesign db and use triggers to populate it with data (so data will be maintained in two formats at the same time) All new functionality will be written as separate project. Step by step transfer existing functionality into the new project After some time everything will be in the new project Some explanation about #2, right now it is practically impossible to make any updates in existing db any change requires reviewing whole code and making changes in many places. Is such plan feasible at all? Another solution is to walk away and leave the headache to someone else.

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• Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity?

  - by Incognito

  So I'm sitting down to a nice bowl of c# spaghetti, and need to add something or remove something... but I have challenges everywhere from functions passing arguments that doesn't make sense, someone who doesn't understand data structures abusing strings, redundant variables, some comments are red-hearings, internationalization is on a per-every-output-level, SQL doesn't use any kind of DBAL, database connections are left open everywhere... Are there any tools or techniques I can use to at least keep track of the "functional integrity" of the code (meaning my "improvements" don't break it), or a resource online with common "bad patterns" that explains a good way to transition code? I'm basically looking for a guidebook on how to spin straw into gold. Here's some samples from the same 500 line function: protected void DoSave(bool cIsPostBack) { //ALWAYS a cPostBack cIsPostBack = true; SetPostBack("1"); string inCreate ="~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"; parseValues = new string []{"","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","","",""}; if (!cIsPostBack) { //....... //.... //.... if (!cIsPostBack) { } else { } //.... //.... strHPhone = StringFormat(s1.Trim()); s1 = parseValues[18].Replace(encStr," "); strWPhone = StringFormat(s1.Trim()); s1 = parseValues[11].Replace(encStr," "); strWExt = StringFormat(s1.Trim()); s1 = parseValues[21].Replace(encStr," "); strMPhone = StringFormat(s1.Trim()); s1 = parseValues[19].Replace(encStr," "); //(hundreds of lines of this) //.... //.... SQL = "...... lots of SQL .... "; SqlCommand curCommand; curCommand = new SqlCommand(); curCommand.Connection = conn1; curCommand.CommandText = SQL; try { curCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch {} //.... } I've never had to refactor something like this before, and I want to know if there's something like a guidebook or knowledgebase on how to do this sort of thing, finding common bad patterns and offering the best solutions to repair them. I don't want to just nuke it from orbit,

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• Self-Executing Anonymous Function vs Prototype

  - by Robotsushi

  In Javascript there are a few clearly prominent techniques for create and manage classes/namespaces in javascript. I am curious what situations warrant using one technique vs. the other. I want to pick one and stick with it moving forward. I write enterprise code that is maintained and shared across multiple teams, and I want to know what is the best practice when writing maintainable javascript ? I tend to prefer Self-Executing Anonymous Functions however I am curious what the community vote is on these techniques. Prototype : function obj() { } obj.prototype.test = function() { alert('Hello?'); }; var obj2 = new obj(); obj2.test(); Self-Closing Anonymous Function : //Self-Executing Anonymous Function (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var isHot = true; //Public Property skillet.ingredient = "Bacon Strips"; //Public Method skillet.fry = function() { var oliveOil; addItem( "\t\n Butter \n\t" ); addItem( oliveOil ); console.log( "Frying " + skillet.ingredient ); }; //Private Method function addItem( item ) { if ( item !== undefined ) { console.log( "Adding " + $.trim(item) ); } } }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //Public Properties console.log( skillet.ingredient ); //Bacon Strips //Public Methods skillet.fry(); //Adding Butter & Fraying Bacon Strips //Adding a Public Property skillet.quantity = "12"; console.log( skillet.quantity ); //12 //Adding New Functionality to the Skillet (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var amountOfGrease = "1 Cup"; //Public Method skillet.toString = function() { console.log( skillet.quantity + " " + skillet.ingredient + " & " + amountOfGrease + " of Grease" ); console.log( isHot ? "Hot" : "Cold" ); }; }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //end of skillet definition try { //12 Bacon Strips & 1 Cup of Grease skillet.toString(); //Throws Exception } catch( e ) { console.log( e.message ); //isHot is not defined } I feel that I should mention that the Self-Executing Anonymous Function is the pattern used by the jQuery team. Update When I asked this question I didn't truly see the importance of what I was trying to understand. The real issue at hand is whether or not to use new to create instances of your objects or to use patterns which do not require constructors of the use of the new keyword. I added my own answer, because in my opinion we should make use of patterns which don't use the new keyword. For more information please see my answer.

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• Why Are We Here?

  - by Jonathan Mills

  Back in the early 2000s, Toyota had a vision of building the number one best selling minivan in North America. Their current minivan, the Sienna, was small, underpowered, and badly needed help.  Yuji Yokoya was given the job of re-engineering the Sienna. There was just one problem, Yuji, lived in Japan. He did not know the people or places that he would be engineering for. Believe it or not, Japan is nothing like North America. So, what does a chief engineer do in a situation like that? He packed up his team and flew halfway around the world. He made a commitment to drive through every state in the US, every province in Canada, and Mexico. He met the people and drove the roads that the Sienna would be driving. And guess what, what he learned on that trip revolutionized the Sienna. The innovations he made, sent the Sienna to number one. Why? Because he knew who he was building his product for. He knew, why he was there.Let me ask you this, do you know why you are building what you are building? As a member of a product team, can you tell me how your product will be used in the real world? As you are writing code, building test plans, writing stories, or any of the other project tasks, can you picture the face of a person who will be using what you are building? All to often, the answer to those questions is, no. Why is it important? Because, every day, project team members make assumptions. Over a given project, it is safe to say project team members will make thousands of assumptions about what they are doing. And all to often, those assumptions are not quite right. Its not that they are not good at their job, its just that they don’t really know why they are there.So, what to do? First and foremost, stop doing what you are doing. Yes, really. Schedule some time to go visit the people who will be using your product. Don’t invite them to you, go to them. Watch them work. Interact with them. Ask them questions. Maybe even try it out yourself. This serves two purposes. One, It shows them that you care about them. They will be far more engaged in your project if they feel like you care. And nothing says you care more that spending some time. Second, if gives you the proper frame of reference for you work. It gives you something tangible to go back to as you are building your product. As you make the thousands of assumptions that you will make over the life of your project, it gives you something to see in your mind that makes it real to you.Ultimately, setting a proper frame of reference is critical to the overall success of a project. The funny thing is, it really does not even take that long. In most cases, a 2-3 hour session will give you most of what you need to get the right insight. For the project, it will be the best 2 hours you could spend.

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