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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part II

  - by Tara Kizer

  I arrived in Seattle last Monday afternoon to attend PASS Summit 2011.  I had really wanted to attend Gail Shaw’s (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar “All About Execution Plans” on Monday, but that would have meant flying out on Sunday which I couldn’t do.  On Tuesday, I attended Allan Hirt’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar entitled “A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups”.  Allan is a great speaker, and his seminar was packed with demos and information about AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012.  Unfortunately, I have lost my notes from this seminar and the presentation materials are only available on the pre-con DVD.  Hmpf! On Wednesday, I attended Gail Shaw’s “Bad Plan! Sit!”, Andrew Kelly’s (blog|twitter) “SQL 2008 Query Statistics”, Dan Jones’ (blog|twitter) “Improving your PowerShell Productivity”, and Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) “BLITZ! The SQL – More One Hour SQL Server Takeovers”.  In Gail’s session, she went over how to fix bad plans and bad query patterns.  Update your stale statistics! How to fix bad plans Use local variables – optimizer can’t sniff it, so it’ll optimize for “average” value Use RECOMPILE (at the query or stored procedure level) – CPU hit OPTIMIZE FOR hint – most common value you’ll pass How to fix bad query patterns Don’t use them – ha! Catch-all queries Use dynamic SQL OPTION (RECOMPILE) Multiple execution paths Split into multiple stored procedures OPTION (RECOMPILE) Modifying parameter values Use local variables Split into outer and inner procedure OPTION (RECOMPILE) She also went into “last resort” and “very last resort” options, but those are risky unless you know what you are doing.  For the average Joe, she wouldn’t recommend these.  Examples are query hints and plan guides. While I enjoyed Andrew’s session, I didn’t take any notes as it was familiar material.  Andrew is a great speaker though, and I’d highly recommend attending his sessions in the future. Next up was Dan’s PowerShell session.  I need to look into profiles, manifests, function modules, and function import scripts more as I just didn’t quite grasp these concepts.  I am attending a PowerShell training class at the end of November, so maybe that’ll help clear it up.  I really enjoyed the Excel integration demo.  It was very cool watching PowerShell build the spreadsheet in real-time.  I must look into this more!  On a side note, I am jealous of Dan’s hair.  Fabulous hair! Brent’s session showed us how to quickly gather information about a server that you will be taking over database administration duties for.  He wrote a script to do a fast health check and then later wrapped it into a stored procedure, sp_Blitz.  I can’t wait to use this at my work even on systems where I’ve been the primary DBA for years, maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked.  We are using EPM to help standardize our environment and uncover problems, but sp_Blitz will definitely still help us out.  He even provides a cloud-based update feature, sp_BlitzUpdate, for sp_Blitz so you don’t have to constantly update it when he makes a change.  I think I’ll utilize his update code for some other challenges that we face at my work.

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• SQL SERVER – Curious Case of Disappearing Rows – ON UPDATE CASCADE and ON DELETE CASCADE – T-SQL Example – Part 2 of 2

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I wrote a real world story of how a friend who thought they have an issue with intrusion or virus whereas the issue was really in the code. I strongly suggest you read my earlier blog post Curious Case of Disappearing Rows – ON UPDATE CASCADE and ON DELETE CASCADE – Part 1 of 2 before continuing this blog post as this is second part of the first blog post. Let me reproduce the simple scenario in T-SQL. Building Sample Data USE [TestDB] GO -- Creating Table Products CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Products]( [ProductID] [int] NOT NULL, [ProductDesc] [varchar](50) NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_Products] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [ProductID] ASC )) ON [PRIMARY] GO -- Creating Table ProductDetails CREATE TABLE [dbo].[ProductDetails]( [ProductDetailID] [int] NOT NULL, [ProductID] [int] NOT NULL, [Total] [int] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_ProductDetails] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [ProductDetailID] ASC )) ON [PRIMARY] GO ALTER TABLE [dbo].[ProductDetails] WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT [FK_ProductDetails_Products] FOREIGN KEY([ProductID]) REFERENCES [dbo].[Products] ([ProductID]) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE CASCADE GO -- Insert Data into Table USE TestDB GO INSERT INTO Products (ProductID, ProductDesc) SELECT 1, 'Bike' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'Car' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'Books' GO INSERT INTO ProductDetails ([ProductDetailID],[ProductID],[Total]) SELECT 1, 1, 200 UNION ALL SELECT 2, 1, 100 UNION ALL SELECT 3, 1, 111 UNION ALL SELECT 4, 2, 200 UNION ALL SELECT 5, 3, 100 UNION ALL SELECT 6, 3, 100 UNION ALL SELECT 7, 3, 200 GO Select Data from Tables -- Selecting Data SELECT * FROM Products SELECT * FROM ProductDetails GO Delete Data from Products Table -- Deleting Data DELETE FROM Products WHERE ProductID = 1 GO Select Data from Tables Again -- Selecting Data SELECT * FROM Products SELECT * FROM ProductDetails GO Clean up Data -- Clean up DROP TABLE ProductDetails DROP TABLE Products GO My friend was confused as there was no delete was firing over ProductsDetails Table still there was a delete happening. The reason was because there is a foreign key created between Products and ProductsDetails Table with the keywords ON DELETE CASCADE. Due to ON DELETE CASCADE whenever is specified when the data from Table A is deleted and if it is referenced in another table using foreign key it will be deleted as well. Workaround 1: Design Changes – 3 Tables Change the design to have more than two tables. Create One Product Mater Table with all the products. It should historically store all the products list in it. No products should be ever removed from it. Add another table called Current Product and it should contain only the table which should be visible in the product catalogue. Another table should be called as ProductHistory table. There should be no use of CASCADE keyword among them. Workaround 2: Design Changes - Column IsVisible You can keep the same two tables. 1) Products and 2) ProductsDetails. Add a column with BIT datatype to it and name it as a IsVisible. Now change your application code to display the catalogue based on this column. There should be no need to delete anything. Workaround 3: Bad Advices (Bad advises begins here) The reason I have said bad advices because these are going to be bad advices for sure. You should make necessary design changes and not use poor workarounds which can damage the system and database integrity further. Here are the examples 1) Do not delete the data – well, this is not a real solution but can give time to implement design changes. 2) Do not have ON CASCADE DELETE – in this case, you will have entry in productsdetails which will have no corresponding product id and later on there will be lots of confusion. 3) Duplicate Data – you can have all the data of the product table move to the product details table and repeat them at each row. Now remove CASCADE code. This will let you delete the product table rows without any issue. There are so many things wrong this suggestion, that I will not even start here. (Bad advises ends here)  Well, did I miss anything? Please help me with your suggestions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Why 32-bit color EGL configurations fail with EGL_BAD_MATCH on Moto Droid?

  - by Gilead

  I'm trying to figure out why certain EGL configurations cause eglMakeCurrent() call to return EGL_BAD_MATCH on Motorola Droid running Android 2.1u1. This is a full list of hardware-accelerated EGL configurations (those with EGL_CONFIG_CAVEAT == EGL_NONE) as there's a few others with EGL_CONFIG_CAVEAT == EGL_SLOW_CONFIG but those are backed by PixelFlinger 1.2 meaning they're using software renderer. ID: 0 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 1 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 0 Stencil: 0 // BAD MATCH ID: 2 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 3 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 4 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 0 Stencil: 0 // BAD MATCH ID: 5 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 6 RGB: 5, 6, 5 Alpha: 0 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 ID: 7 RGB: 5, 6, 5 Alpha: 0 Depth: 0 Stencil: 0 ID: 8 RGB: 5, 6, 5 Alpha: 0 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 Clearly, all configurations with 32-bit color depth fail and all 16-bit ones are OK but: 1. Why? 2. WHY?! :) 3. How do I tell which ones would fail before actually trying to use them? The code below is as simple as it can get. I put if (v[0] == 6) there to check different configs, normally they're chosen by half-clever config matcher :) private void createSurface(SurfaceHolder holder) { egl = (EGL10)EGLContext.getEGL(); eglDisplay = egl.eglGetDisplay(EGL10.EGL_DEFAULT_DISPLAY); egl.eglInitialize(eglDisplay, null); int[] numConfigs = new int[1]; egl.eglChooseConfig(eglDisplay, new int[] { EGL10.EGL_NONE }, null, 0, numConfigs); EGLConfig[] configs = new EGLConfig[numConfigs[0]]; egl.eglChooseConfig(eglDisplay, new int[] { EGL10.EGL_NONE }, configs, numConfigs[0], numConfigs); int[] v = new int[1]; for (EGLConfig c : configs) { egl.eglGetConfigAttrib(eglDisplay, c, EGL10.EGL_CONFIG_ID, v); if (v[0] == 6) { eglConfig = c; } } eglContext = egl.eglCreateContext(eglDisplay, eglConfig, EGL10.EGL_NO_CONTEXT, null); if (eglContext == null || eglContext == EGL10.EGL_NO_CONTEXT) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to create EGL context"); } eglSurface = egl.eglCreateWindowSurface(eglDisplay, eglConfig, holder, null); if (eglSurface == null || eglSurface == EGL10.EGL_NO_SURFACE) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to create EGL surface"); } if (!egl.eglMakeCurrent(eglDisplay, eglSurface, eglSurface, eglContext)) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to make EGL current"); } gl = (GL10)eglContext.getGL(); }

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• How to Global onRouteRequest directly to onBadRequest?

  - by virtualeyes

  EDIT Came up with this to sanitize URI date params prior to passing off to Play router val ymdMatcher = "\\d{8}".r // matcher for yyyyMMdd URI param val ymdFormat = org.joda.time.format.DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyyMMdd") def ymd2Date(ymd: String) = ymdFormat.parseDateTime(ymd) override def onRouteRequest(r: RequestHeader): Option[Handler] = { import play.api.i18n.Messages ymdMatcher.findFirstIn(r.uri) map{ ymd=> try { ymd2Date( ymd); super.onRouteRequest(r) } catch { case e:Exception => // kick to "bad" action handler on invalid date Some(controllers.Application.bad(Messages("bad.date.format"))) } } getOrElse(super.onRouteRequest(r)) } ORIGINAL Let's say I want to return a BadRequest result type for all /foo URIs: override def onBadRequest(r: RequestHeader, error: String) = { BadRequest("Bad Request: " + error) } override def onRouteRequest(r: RequestHeader): Option[Handler] = { if(r.uri.startsWith("/foo") onBadRequest("go away") else super.onRouteRequest(r) } Of course does not work, since the expected return type is Option[play.api.mvc.Handler] What's the idiomatic way to deal with this, create a default Application controller method to handle filtered bad requests? Ideally, since I know in onRouteRequest that /foo is in fact a BadRequest, I'd like to call onBadRequest directly. Should note that this is a contrived example, am actually verifying a URI yyyyMMdd date param, and BadRequest-ing if it does not parse to a JodaTime instance -- basically a catch-all filter to sanitize a given date param rather than handling on every single controller method call, not to mention, avoiding cluttering up application log with useless stack traces re: invalid date parse conversions (have several MBs of these junk trace entries accruing daily due to users pointlessly manipulating the uri date in attempts to get at paid subscriber content)

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• F#: Advantages of converting top-level functions to member methods?

  - by J Cooper

  Earlier I requested some feedback on my first F# project. Before closing the question because the scope was too large, someone was kind enough to look it over and leave some feedback. One of the things they mentioned was pointing out that I had a number of regular functions that could be converted to be methods on my datatypes. Dutifully I went through changing things like let getDecisions hand = let (/=/) card1 card2 = matchValue card1 = matchValue card2 let canSplit() = let isPair() = match hand.Cards with | card1 :: card2 :: [] when card1 /=/ card2 -> true | _ -> false not (hasState Splitting hand) && isPair() let decisions = [Hit; Stand] let split = if canSplit() then [Split] else [] let doubleDown = if hasState Initial hand then [DoubleDown] else [] decisions @ split @ doubleDown to this: type Hand // ...stuff... member hand.GetDecisions = let (/=/) (c1 : Card) (c2 : Card) = c1.MatchValue = c2.MatchValue let canSplit() = let isPair() = match hand.Cards with | card1 :: card2 :: [] when card1 /=/ card2 -> true | _ -> false not (hand.HasState Splitting) && isPair() let decisions = [Hit; Stand] let split = if canSplit() then [Split] else [] let doubleDown = if hand.HasState Initial then [DoubleDown] else [] decisions @ split @ doubleDown Now, I don't doubt I'm an idiot, but other than (I'm guessing) making C# interop easier, what did that gain me? Specifically, I found a couple *dis*advantages, not counting the extra work of conversion (which I won't count, since I could have done it this way in the first place, I suppose, although that would have made using F# Interactive more of a pain). For one thing, I'm now no longer able to work with function "pipelining" easily. I had to go and change some |> chained |> calls to (some |> chained).Calls etc. Also, it seemed to make my type system dumber--whereas with my original version, my program needed no type annotations, after converting largely to member methods, I got a bunch of errors about lookups being indeterminate at that point, and I had to go and add type annotations (an example of this is in the (/=/) above). I hope I haven't come off too dubious, as I appreciate the advice I received, and writing idiomatic code is important to me. I'm just curious why the idiom is the way it is :) Thanks!

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• Microsoft T-SQL Counting Consecutive Records

  - by JeffW

  Problem: From the most current day per person, count the number of consecutive days that each person has received 0 points for being good. Sample data to work from : Date Name Points 2010-05-07 Jane 0 2010-05-06 Jane 1 2010-05-07 John 0 2010-05-06 John 0 2010-05-05 John 0 2010-05-04 John 0 2010-05-03 John 1 2010-05-02 John 1 2010-05-01 John 0 Expected answer: Jane was bad on 5/7 but good the day before that. So Jane was only bad 1 day in a row most recently. John was bad on 5/7, again on 5/6, 5/5 and 5/4. He was good on 5/3. So John was bad the last 4 days in a row. Code to create sample data: IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#z') IS NOT NULL BEGIN DROP TABLE #z END select getdate() as Date,'John' as Name,0 as Points into #z insert into #z values(getdate()-1,'John',0) insert into #z values(getdate()-2,'John',0) insert into #z values(getdate()-3,'John',0) insert into #z values(getdate()-4,'John',1) insert into #z values(getdate(),'Jane',0) insert into #z values(getdate()-1,'Jane',1) select * from #z order by name,date desc

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• perl Getopt::Long madness

  - by ennuikiller

  The following code works in one script yet in another only works if a specify the "--" end of options flag before specifying an option: my $opt; GetOptions( 'help|h' => sub { usage("you want help?? hahaha, hopefully your not serious!!"); }, 'file|f=s' => \$opt->{FILE}, 'report|r' => \$opt->{REPORT}, ) or usage("Bad Options"); In other words, the same code words in good.pl and bad.pl like so: good.pl -f bad.pl -- -f If I try bad.pl -f I get "unknown option:f" Anyone have any clue as to what can cause this behavior? Thanks in advnace!

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• iphone localization

  - by hardik

  hello all when i run the command to generate Localizable.string file from my terminal it says me bad entry in to the classes file the file gets generated but it has no entry in it infact it should have entry in it. Here is what i am running in my terminal but somehow it is not happening please guide me need to solve this Last login: Mon Jun 7 18:02:09 on ttys000 comp10:~ admin$ cd .. comp10:Users admin$ cd .. comp10:/ admin$ cd /Users/admin/Desktop/localisationwithcode comp10:localisationwithcode admin$ sudo usage: sudo -K | -L | -V | -h | -k | -l | -v usage: sudo [-HPSb] [-p prompt] [-u username|#uid] { -e file [...] | -i | -s | <command> } comp10:localisationwithcode admin$ genstrings Classes/*.m Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 35): Argument is not a literal string. Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 36): Argument is not a literal string. Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 37): Argument is not a literal string. Bad entry in file Classes/localisationwithcodeViewController.m (line = 38): Argument is not a literal string. 2010-06-07 18:04:45.047 genstrings[3851:10b] _CFGetHostUUIDString: unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35 comp10:localisationwithcode admin$

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• Why does the same Getopt::Long code work differently in different programs?

  - by ennuikiller

  The following code works in one script yet in another only works if a specify the -- end of options flag before specifying an option: my $opt; GetOptions( 'help|h' => sub { usage("you want help?? hahaha, hopefully you're not serious!!"); }, 'file|f=s' => \$opt->{FILE}, 'report|r' => \$opt->{REPORT}, ) or usage("Bad Options"); In other words, the same code words in good.pl and bad.pl like so: good.pl -f bad.pl -- -f If I try bad.pl -f I get unknown option:f. Anyone have any clue as to what can cause this behavior? Thanks in advance! I've solved this..... and btw it's a VERY clear question (so why the downvotes)? I'll state it again: What would cause the identical GetOptions block to work in these 2 ways: "good.pl -f" "bad.pl -- -f" see how clear? Maybe you guys should think about it as if it were a TEST!

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• Excel VBA Application.OnTime. I think its a bad idea to use this... thoughts either way?

  - by FinancialRadDeveloper

  I have a number of users I support that are asking for things to happen automatically ( well more automagically but that's another point!). One want events to happen every 120 secs ( see my other question ) and also another wants 1 thing to happen say at 5pm each business day. This has to be on the Excel sheet so therefore VBA as addins etc will be a no no, as it needs to be self contained. I have a big dislike of using Application.OnTime I think its dangerous and unreliable, what does everyone else think?

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• Is this a good or bad way to use constructor chaining? (... to allow for testing).

  - by panamack

  My motivation for chaining my class constructors here is so that I have a default constructor for mainstream use by my application and a second that allows me to inject a mock and a stub. It just seems a bit ugly 'new'-ing things in the ":this(...)" call and counter-intuitive calling a parametrized constructor from a default constructor , I wondered what other people would do here? (FYI - SystemWrapper) using SystemWrapper; public class MyDirectoryWorker{ // SystemWrapper interface allows for stub of sealed .Net class. private IDirectoryInfoWrap dirInf; private FileSystemWatcher watcher; public MyDirectoryWorker() : this( new DirectoryInfoWrap(new DirectoryInfo(MyDirPath)), new FileSystemWatcher()) { } public MyDirectoryWorker(IDirectoryInfoWrap dirInf, FileSystemWatcher watcher) { this.dirInf = dirInf; if(!dirInf.Exists){ dirInf.Create(); } this.watcher = watcher; watcher.Path = dirInf.FullName; watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.FileName; watcher.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(watcher_Created); watcher.Deleted += new FileSystemEventHandler(watcher_Deleted); watcher.Renamed += new RenamedEventHandler(watcher_Renamed); watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true; } public static string MyDirPath{get{return Settings.Default.MyDefaultDirPath;}} // etc... }

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• Counting viable sublist lengths from an array.

  - by Ben B.

  This is for a genetic algorithm fitness function, so it is important I can do this as efficiently as possible, as it will be repeated over and over. Lets say there is a function foo(int[] array) that returns true if the array is a "good" array and false if the array is a "bad" array. What makes it good or bad does not matter here. Given the full array [1,6,8,9,5,11,45,16,9], lets say that subarray [1,6,8] is a "good" array and [9,5,11,45] is a "good" array. Furthermore [5,11,45,16,9] is a "good" array, and also the longest "good" subarray. Notice that while [9,5,11,45] is a "good" array, and [5,11,45,16,9] is a "good" array, [9,5,11,45,16,9] is a "bad" array. We wants the length counts of all "good" arrays, but not subarrays of "good" arrays. Furthermore, as described above, a "good" array might begin in the middle of another "good" array, but the combination of the two might be a "bad" array.

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• Ticket Bayesian(or something else) Categorization

  - by vinnitu

  Hi. I search solution for ticket managment system. Do you know any commercial offers? For now I have only own dev prjects with using dspam library. Maybe I am wrong use it but it show bad results. My idea was divide all prerated ticket in 2 group: spam (it is my category) and rest to (ham - all not the same with this category). After that i trained my dspam. After I redivide all tickets in new groups (for next category) and teach dspam again (with new user - by category name)... And it works bad... My thoughs about is - bad data base tickes (i mean not correct tagging before) - bad my algorythm (it is more posible) Please give me a direction to go forward. Thanks. I am integesting any idea and suggestion. Thanks again.

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• Bad performance function in PHP. With large files memory blows up! How can I refactor?

  - by André

  Hi I have a function that strips out lines from files. I'm handling with large files(more than 100Mb). I have the PHP Memory with 256MB but the function that handles with the strip out of lines blows up with a 100MB CSV File. What the function must do is this: Originally I have the CSV like: Copyright (c) 2007 MaxMind LLC. All Rights Reserved. locId,country,region,city,postalCode,latitude,longitude,metroCode,areaCode 1,"O1","","","",0.0000,0.0000,, 2,"AP","","","",35.0000,105.0000,, 3,"EU","","","",47.0000,8.0000,, 4,"AD","","","",42.5000,1.5000,, 5,"AE","","","",24.0000,54.0000,, 6,"AF","","","",33.0000,65.0000,, 7,"AG","","","",17.0500,-61.8000,, 8,"AI","","","",18.2500,-63.1667,, 9,"AL","","","",41.0000,20.0000,, When I pass the CSV file to this function I got: locId,country,region,city,postalCode,latitude,longitude,metroCode,areaCode 1,"O1","","","",0.0000,0.0000,, 2,"AP","","","",35.0000,105.0000,, 3,"EU","","","",47.0000,8.0000,, 4,"AD","","","",42.5000,1.5000,, 5,"AE","","","",24.0000,54.0000,, 6,"AF","","","",33.0000,65.0000,, 7,"AG","","","",17.0500,-61.8000,, 8,"AI","","","",18.2500,-63.1667,, 9,"AL","","","",41.0000,20.0000,, It only strips out the first line, nothing more. The problem is the performance of this function with large files, it blows up the memory. The function is: public function deleteLine($line_no, $csvFileName) { // this function strips a specific line from a file // if a line is stripped, functions returns True else false // // e.g. // deleteLine(-1, xyz.csv); // strip last line // deleteLine(1, xyz.csv); // strip first line // Assigna o nome do ficheiro $filename = $csvFileName; $strip_return=FALSE; $data=file($filename); $pipe=fopen($filename,'w'); $size=count($data); if($line_no==-1) $skip=$size-1; else $skip=$line_no-1; for($line=0;$line<$size;$line++) if($line!=$skip) fputs($pipe,$data[$line]); else $strip_return=TRUE; return $strip_return; } It is possible to refactor this function to not blow up with the 256MB PHP Memory? Give me some clues. Best Regards,

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• How to get change history for a specific file in git repository

  - by macek

  I would like to do something like: git history my_file possible output 2010-05-16 + add this line + more code here 2010-05-15 + delete code below - bad code - more bad codd 2010-05-12 + changes made here

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• Finding out the windows group by virtue of which a user is able to access a database in sql server?

  - by Raghu Dodda

  There is a SQL Server 2005 database with mixed-mode authentication. Among others, we have the following logins on the server: our-domain\developers-group-1, and our-domain\developers-group-2 which are AD groups. The our-domain\developer-group-2 is added to the sysadmin role on the server, by virture of which all domain users of that group can access any database as SQL Server implictly maps the sysadmin role to the dbo user in each database. There are two users our-domain\good-user and our-domain\bad-user The issue is the following: Both the good-user and the bad-user have the exact same AD group memberships. They are both members of our-domain\developers-group-1 and our-domain\developers-group-2. The good-user is able to access all the databases, and the bad-user is not. The bad-user is able to login, but he is unable access any databases. By the way, I am the good-user. How do I go about finding out why? Here's what I tried so far: When I do print current_user, I get dbo When I do print system_user, I get my-domain\good-user When I do select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I see permissions. But if do execute as user='my-domain\good-user'; select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I dont see any permisisons. And When I do, execute as user='my-domain\bad-user'; select * from fn_my_permissions(NULL, 'SERVER'), I dont see any permisisons. Also, I was wondering if there is a sql command that will tell me, "hey! the current database user is able to access this database because he is a member such-and-such ad-group, which is a login that is mapped to such-and-such user in this database".

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• Why is IIS Anonymous authentication being used with administrative UNC drive access?

  - by Mark Lindell

  My account is local administrator on my machine. If I try to browse to a non-existent drive letter on my own box using a UNC path name: \mymachine\x$ my account would get locked out. I would also get the following warning (Event ID 100, Type “Warning”) 5 times under the “System” group in Event Viewer on my box: The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'ourdomain\myaccount' due to the following error: Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. I would also get the following warning 3 times: The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'ourdomain\myaccount' due to the following error: The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to. On the domain controller, Event ID 680 of type “Failure Audit” would appear 4 times under the “Security” group in Event Viewer: Logon attempt by: MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0 Logon account: myaccount Followed by Event ID 644: User Account Locked Out: Target Account Name: myaccount Target Account ID: OURDOMAIN\myaccount Caller Machine Name: MYMACHINE Caller User Name: STAN$ Caller Domain: OURDOMAIN Caller Logon ID: (0x0,0x3E7) Followed by another 4 errors having Event ID 680. Strangely, every time I tried to browse to the UNC path I would be prompted for a user name and password, the above errors would be written to the log, and my account would be locked out. When I hit “Cancel” in response to the user name/password prompt, the following message box would display: Windows cannot find \mymachine\x$. Check the spelling and try again, or try searching for the item by clicking the Start button and then clicking Search. I checked with others in the group using XP and they only got the above message box when browsing to a “bad” drive letter on their box. No one else was prompted for a user name/password and then locked out. So, every time I tried to browse to the “bad” drive letter, behind the scenes XP was trying to login 8 times using bad credentials (or, at least a bad password as the login was correct), causing my account to get locked out on the 4th try. Interestingly, If I tried browsing to a “good” drive such as “c$” it would work fine. As a test, I tried logging on to my box as a different login and browsing the “bad” UNC path. Strangely, my “ourdomain\myaccount” account was getting locked out – not the one I was logged in as! I was totally confused as to why the credentials for the other login were being passed. After much Googling, I found a link referring to some IIS settings I was vaguely familiar with from the past but could not see how they would affect this issue. It was related to the IIS directory security setting “Anonymous access and authentication control” located under: Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Services and Applications/Internet Information Services/Web Sites/Default Web Site/Properties/Directory Security/Anonymous access and authentication control/Edit/Password I found no indication while scouring the Internet that this property was related to my UNC problem. But, I did notice that this property was set to my domain user name and password. And, my password did age recently but I had not reset the password accordingly for this property. Sure enough, keying in the new password corrected the problem. I was no longer prompted for a user name/password when browsing the UNC path and the account lock-outs ceased. Now, a couple of questions: Why would an IIS setting affect the browsing of a UNC path on a local box? Why had I not encountered this problem before? My password has aged several times and I’ve never encountered this problem. And, I can’t remember the last time I updated the “Anonymous access” IIS password it’s been so long. I’ve run the script after a password reset before and never had my account locked-out due to the UNC problem (the script accesses UNC paths as a normal part of its processing). Windows Update did install “Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP (KB972260)” on my box on 7/29/2009. I wonder if this is responsible.

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• Building KPIs to monitor your business Its not really about the Technology

  When I have discussions with people about Business Intelligence, one of the questions the inevitably come up is about building KPIs and how to accomplish that. From a technical level the concept of a KPI is very simple, almost too simple in that it is like the tip of an iceberg floating above the water. The key to that iceberg is not really the tip, but the mass of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the surface upon which the tip sits. The analogy of the iceberg is not meant to indicate that the foundation of the KPI is overly difficult or complex. The disparity in size in meant to indicate that the larger thing that needs to be defined is not the technical tip, but the underlying business definition of what the KPI means. From a technical perspective the KPI consists of primarily the following items: Actual Value This is the actual value data point that is being measured. An example would be something like the amount of sales. Target Value This is the target goal for the KPI. This is a number that can be measured against Actual Value. An example would be $10,000 in monthly sales. Target Indicator Range This is the definition of ranges that define what type of indicator the user will see comparing the Actual Value to the Target Value. Most often this is defined by stoplight, but can be any indicator that is going to show a status in a quick fashion to the user. Typically this would be something like: Red Light = Actual Value more than 5% below target; Yellow Light = Within 5% of target either direction; Green Light = More than 5% higher than Target Value Status\Trend Indicator This is an optional attribute of a KPI that is typically used to show some kind of trend. The vast majority of these indicators are used to show some type of progress against a previous period. As an example, the status indicator might be used to show how the monthly sales compare to last month. With this type of indicator there needs to be not only a definition of what the ranges are for your status indictor, but then also what value the number needs to be compared against. So now we have an idea of what data points a KPI consists of from a technical perspective lets talk a bit about tools. As you can see technically there is not a whole lot to them and the choice of technology is not as important as the definition of the KPIs, which we will get to in a minute. There are many different types of tools in the Microsoft BI stack that you can use to expose your KPI to the business. These include Performance Point, SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Reporting Services. There are pluses and minuses to each technology and the right technology is based a lot on your goals and how you want to deliver the information to the users. Additionally, there are other non-Microsoft tools that can be used to expose KPI indicators to your business users. Regardless of the technology used as your front end, the heavy lifting of KPI is in the business definition of the values and benchmarks for that KPI. The discussion about KPIs is very dependent on the history of an organization and how much they are exposed to the attributes of a KPI. Often times when discussing KPIs with a business contact who has not been exposed to KPIs the discussion tends to also be a session educating the business user about what a KPI is and what goes into the definition of a KPI. The majority of times the business user has an idea of what their actual values are and they have been tracking those numbers for some time, generally in Excel and all manually. So they will know the amount of sales last month along with sales two years ago in the same month. Where the conversation tends to get stuck is when you start discussing what the target value should be. The actual value is answering the What and How much questions. When you are talking about the Target values you are asking the question Is this number good or bad. Typically, the user will know whether or not the value is good or bad, but most of the time they are not able to quantify what is good or bad. Their response is usually something like I just know. Because they have been watching the sales quantity for years now, they can tell you that a 5% decrease in sales this month might actually be a good thing, maybe because the salespeople are all waiting until next month when the new versions come out. It can sometimes be very hard to break the business people of this habit. One of the fears generally is that the status indicator is not subjective. Thus, in the scenario above, the business user is going to be fearful that their boss, just looking at a negative red indicator, is going to haul them out to the woodshed for a bad month. But, on the flip side, if all you are displaying is the amount of sales, only a person with knowledge of last month sales and the target amount for this month would have any idea if $10,000 in sales is good or not. Here is where a key point about KPIs needs to be communicated to both the business user and any user who might be viewing the results of that KPI. The KPI is just one tool that is used to report on business performance. The KPI is meant as a quick indicator of one business statistic. It is not meant to tell the entire story. It does not answer the question Why. Its primary purpose is to objectively and quickly expose an area of the business that might warrant more review. There is always going to be the need to do further analysis on any potential negative or neutral KPI. So, hopefully, once you have convinced your business user to come up with some target numbers and ranges for status indicators, you then need to take the next step and help them answer the Why question. The main question here to ask is, Okay, you see the indicator and you need to discover why the number is what is, where do you go?. The answer is usually a combination of sources. A sales manager might have some of the following items at their disposal (Marketing report showing a decrease in the promotional discounts for the month, Pricing Report showing the reduction of prices of older models, an Inventory Report showing the discontinuation of a particular product line, or a memo showing the ending of a large affiliate partnership. The answers to the question Why are never as simple as a single indicator value. Bring able to quickly get to this information is all about designing how a user accesses the KPIs and then also how easily they can get to the additional information they need. This is where a Dashboard mentality can come in handy. For example, the business user can have a dashboard that shows their KPIs, but also has links to some of the common reports that they run regarding Sales Data. The users boss may have the same KPIs on their dashboard, but instead of links to individual reports they are going to have a link to a status report that was created by the user that pulls together all the data about the KPI in a summary format the users boss can review. So some of the key things to think about when building or evaluating KPIs for your organization: Technology should not be the driving factor KPIs are of little value without some indicator for whether a value is good, bad or neutral. KPIs only give an answer to the Is this number good\bad? question Make sure the ability to drill into the Why of a KPI is close at hand and relevant to the user who is viewing the KPI. The KPI is a key business tool when defined properly to help monitor business performance across the enterprise in an objective and consistent manner. At times it might feel like the process of defining the business aspects of a KPI can sometimes be arduous, the payoff in the end can far outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of going through this process are a better understanding of the key metrics for an organization and the measure of those metrics and a consistent snapshot of business performance that can be utilized across the organization. And I think that these are benefits to any organization regardless of the technology or the implementation.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

  - by James Michael Hare

  Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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• J2EE Applications, SPARC T4, Solaris Containers, and Resource Pools

  - by user12620111

  I've obtained a substantial performance improvement on a SPARC T4-2 Server running a J2EE Application Server Cluster by deploying the cluster members into Oracle Solaris Containers and binding those containers to cores of the SPARC T4 Processor. This is not a surprising result, in fact, it is consistent with other results that are available on the Internet. See the "references", below, for some examples. Nonetheless, here is a summary of my configuration and results. (1.0) Before deploying a J2EE Application Server Cluster into a virtualized environment, many decisions need to be made. I'm not claiming that all of the decisions that I have a made will work well for every environment. In fact, I'm not even claiming that all of the decisions are the best possible for my environment. I'm only claiming that of the small sample of configurations that I've tested, this is the one that is working best for me. Here are some of the decisions that needed to be made: (1.1) Which virtualization option? There are several virtualization options and isolation levels that are available. Options include: Hard partitions:  Dynamic Domains on Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers Hypervisor based virtualization such as Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDOMs) on SPARC T-Series Servers OS Virtualization using Oracle Solaris Containers Resource management tools in the Oracle Solaris OS to control the amount of resources an application receives, such as CPU cycles, physical memory, and network bandwidth. Oracle Solaris Containers provide the right level of isolation and flexibility for my environment. To borrow some words from my friends in marketing, "The SPARC T4 processor leverages the unique, no-cost virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris Zones"  (1.2) How to associate Oracle Solaris Containers with resources? There are several options available to associate containers with resources, including (a) resource pool association (b) dedicated-cpu resources and (c) capped-cpu resources. I chose to create resource pools and associate them with the containers because I wanted explicit control over the cores and virtual processors.  (1.3) Cluster Topology? Is it best to deploy (a) multiple application servers on one node, (b) one application server on multiple nodes, or (c) multiple application servers on multiple nodes? After a few quick tests, it appears that one application server per Oracle Solaris Container is a good solution. (1.4) Number of cluster members to deploy? I chose to deploy four big 64-bit application servers. I would like go back a test many 32-bit application servers, but that is left for another day. (2.0) Configuration tested. (2.1) I was using a SPARC T4-2 Server which has 2 CPU and 128 virtual processors. To understand the physical layout of the hardware on Solaris 10, I used the OpenSolaris psrinfo perl script available at http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Community+Group+performance/files/psrinfo.pl: test# ./psrinfo.pl -pv The physical processor has 8 cores and 64 virtual processors (0-63) The core has 8 virtual processors (0-7)   The core has 8 virtual processors (8-15)   The core has 8 virtual processors (16-23)   The core has 8 virtual processors (24-31)   The core has 8 virtual processors (32-39)   The core has 8 virtual processors (40-47)   The core has 8 virtual processors (48-55)   The core has 8 virtual processors (56-63)     SPARC-T4 (chipid 0, clock 2848 MHz) The physical processor has 8 cores and 64 virtual processors (64-127)   The core has 8 virtual processors (64-71)   The core has 8 virtual processors (72-79)   The core has 8 virtual processors (80-87)   The core has 8 virtual processors (88-95)   The core has 8 virtual processors (96-103)   The core has 8 virtual processors (104-111)   The core has 8 virtual processors (112-119)   The core has 8 virtual processors (120-127)     SPARC-T4 (chipid 1, clock 2848 MHz) (2.2) The "before" test: without processor binding. I started with a 4-member cluster deployed into 4 Oracle Solaris Containers. Each container used a unique gigabit Ethernet port for HTTP traffic. The containers shared a 10 gigabit Ethernet port for JDBC traffic. (2.3) The "after" test: with processor binding. I ran one application server in the Global Zone and another application server in each of the three non-global zones (NGZ):  (3.0) Configuration steps. The following steps need to be repeated for all three Oracle Solaris Containers. (3.1) Stop AppServers from the BUI. (3.2) Stop the NGZ. test# ssh test-z2 init 5 (3.3) Enable resource pools: test# svcadm enable pools (3.4) Create the resource pool: test# poolcfg -dc 'create pool pool-test-z2' (3.5) Create the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'create pset pset-test-z2' (3.6) Specify the maximum number of CPU's that may be addd to the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'modify pset pset-test-z2 (uint pset.max=32)' (3.7) bash syntax to add Virtual CPUs to the processor set: test# (( i = 64 )); while (( i < 96 )); do poolcfg -dc "transfer to pset pset-test-z2 (cpu $i)"; (( i = i + 1 )) ; done (3.8) Associate the resource pool with the processor set: test# poolcfg -dc 'associate pool pool-test-z2 (pset pset-test-z2)' (3.9) Tell the zone to use the resource pool that has been created: test# zonecfg -z test-z1 set pool=pool-test-z2 (3.10) Boot the Oracle Solaris Container test# zoneadm -z test-z2 boot (3.11) Save the configuration to /etc/pooladm.conf test# pooladm -s (4.0) Results. Using the resource pools improves both throughput and response time: (5.0) References: System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones Capitalizing on large numbers of processors with WebSphere Portal on Solaris WebSphere Application Server and T5440 (Dileep Kumar's Weblog)  http://www.brendangregg.com/zones.html Reuters Market Data System, RMDS 6 Multiple Instances (Consolidated), Performance Test Results in Solaris, Containers/Zones Environment on Sun Blade X6270 by Amjad Khan, 2009.

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• SQL Server MCM is too easy, is it?

  - by simonsabin

  We all know that Brent Ozar did the MCM training/certification over the past few weeks. He wrote an interesting article on Friday about the bad bits ( http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/04/sql-mcm-now-bad-stuff/ ) of the training and it lead me to thinking about the certification process again(I often think about it, and it appears often in response to something from Brent http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/archive/2010/02/12/Whats-missing-in-the-SQL-Certification-process-.aspx ) This time what...(read more)

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• Waterfall Model (SDLC) vs. Prototyping Model

  The characters in the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare can easily be used to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the Waterfall and Prototyping software development models. This children fable is about a race between a consistently slow moving but steadfast turtle and an extremely fast but unreliable rabbit. After closely comparing each character’s attributes in correlation with both software development models, a trend seems to appear in that the Waterfall closely resembles the Tortoise in that Waterfall Model is typically a slow moving process that is broken up in to multiple sequential steps that must be executed in a standard linear pattern. The Tortoise can be quoted several times in the story saying “Slow and steady wins the race.” This is the perfect mantra for the Waterfall Model in that this model is seen as a cumbersome and slow moving. Waterfall Model Phases Requirement Analysis & Definition This phase focuses on defining requirements for a project that is to be developed and determining if the project is even feasible. Requirements are collected by analyzing existing systems and functionality in correlation with the needs of the business and the desires of the end users. The desired output for this phase is a list of specific requirements from the business that are to be designed and implemented in the subsequent steps. In addition this phase is used to determine if any value will be gained by completing the project. System Design This phase focuses primarily on the actual architectural design of a system, and how it will interact within itself and with other existing applications. Projects at this level should be viewed at a high level so that actual implementation details are decided in the implementation phase. However major environmental decision like hardware and platform decision are typically decided in this phase. Furthermore the basic goal of this phase is to design an application at the system level in those classes, interfaces, and interactions are defined. Additionally decisions about scalability, distribution and reliability should also be considered for all decisions. The desired output for this phase is a functional  design document that states all of the architectural decisions that have been made in regards to the project as well as a diagrams like a sequence and class diagrams. Software Design This phase focuses primarily on the refining of the decisions found in the functional design document. Classes and interfaces are further broken down in to logical modules based on the interfaces and interactions previously indicated. The output of this phase is a formal design document. Implementation / Coding This phase focuses primarily on implementing the previously defined modules in to units of code. These units are developed independently are intergraded as the system is put together as part of a whole system. Software Integration & Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing each of the units of code developed as well as testing the system as a whole. There are basic types of testing at this phase and they include: Unit Test and Integration Test. Unit Test are built to test the functionality of a code unit to ensure that it preforms its desired task. Integration testing test the system as a whole because it focuses on results of combining specific units of code and validating it against expected results. The output of this phase is a test plan that includes test with expected results and actual results. System Verification This phase primarily focuses on testing the system as a whole in regards to the list of project requirements and desired operating environment. Operation & Maintenance his phase primarily focuses on handing off the competed project over to the customer so that they can verify that all of their requirements have been met based on their original requirements. This phase will also validate the correctness of their requirements and if any changed need to be made. In addition, any problems not resolved in the previous phase will be handled in this section. The Waterfall Model’s linear and sequential methodology does offer a project certain advantages and disadvantages. Advantages of the Waterfall Model Simplistic to implement and execute for projects and/or company wide Limited demand on resources Large emphasis on documentation Disadvantages of the Waterfall Model Completed phases cannot be revisited regardless if issues arise within a project Accurate requirement are never gather prior to the completion of the requirement phase due to the lack of clarification in regards to client’s desires. Small changes or errors that arise in applications may cause additional problems The client cannot change any requirements once the requirements phase has been completed leaving them no options for changes as they see their requirements changes as the customers desires change. Excess documentation Phases are cumbersome and slow moving Learn more about the Major Process in the Sofware Development Life Cycle and Waterfall Model. Conversely, the Hare shares similar traits with the prototyping software development model in that ideas are rapidly converted to basic working examples and subsequent changes are made to quickly align the project with customers desires as they are formulated and as software strays from the customers vision. The basic concept of prototyping is to eliminate the use of well-defined project requirements. Projects are allowed to grow as the customer needs and request grow. Projects are initially designed according to basic requirements and are refined as requirement become more refined. This process allows customer to feel their way around the application to ensure that they are developing exactly what they want in the application This model also works well for determining the feasibility of certain approaches in regards to an application. Prototypes allow for quickly developing examples of implementing specific functionality based on certain techniques. Advantages of Prototyping Active participation from users and customers Allows customers to change their mind in specifying requirements Customers get a better understanding of the system as it is developed Earlier bug/error detection Promotes communication with customers Prototype could be used as final production Reduced time needed to develop applications compared to the Waterfall method Disadvantages of Prototyping Promotes constantly redefining project requirements that cause major system rewrites Potential for increased complexity of a system as scope of the system expands Customer could believe the prototype as the working version. Implementation compromises could increase the complexity when applying updates and or application fixes When companies trying to decide between the Waterfall model and Prototype model they need to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages for both models. Typically smaller companies or projects that have major time constraints typically head for more of a Prototype model approach because it can reduce the time needed to complete the project because there is more of a focus on building a project and less on defining requirements and scope prior to the start of a project. On the other hand, Companies with well-defined requirements and time allowed to generate proper documentation should steer towards more of a waterfall model because they are in a position to obtain clarified requirements and have to design and optimal solution prior to the start of coding on a project.

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• How to mount ext4 partition?

  - by Flint

  How do I mount an ext4 partition as my user account so I wouldn't require root access to r/w on it? I used -o uid=flint,gid=flint on the mount command but I keep getting mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda7, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so Another thing, I want avoid using udisks for now as it doesn't let me mount to my specified mount point name.

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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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• The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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