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• Which problem(s) do YOU want to see solved?

  - by buu700

  My team and I are meeting tonight to come up with a business plan and some community input would be amazing. I've been mulling over this issue for the past few months and bouncing ideas off of others, and now I'd finally like some input from the community. I have come up with a fair selection of ideas, but most of those amount to either fun projects which could potentially be profitable, or otherwise solid business models that have one or two major hurdles (usually related to resources or legality). For our team meeting tonight, my idea is to take inventory of our available skills, resources, and compelling problems which interest us. The last is where I would greatly appreciate some community input. Hell, even entire business ideas/plans would be appreciated. No matter how big or small your thoughts, any input would be appreciated. We're a team of computer scientists, so our business will be primarily based around software/technology/Web solutions. Among my relevant available resources (entire Internet aside), I have the following: A pretty reliable connection to an SEO company a large production company. A stash of fairly powerful server hardware. A fast network with static IPs. The backend for Hackswipe, which includes credit card payment processing and a Google Voice-based SMS gateway. This work in progress design for something completely unrelated but which is backed by some fairly decent infrastructure. Direct access to the experts in just about any relevant field (on-campus Carnegie Mellon professors). A sexual relationship with the baron of a small nation. For further down the line, some investor relationships. Not likely to be so relevant, but a decent social media presence (Stack Overflow reputation, modship in some major reddits, various tech forums). The source code for Eugene fucking McCabe. Pooled with the other team members, the list of projects we can build off of would be longer (including an Android app). So, what are your thoughts? Crossposted to reddit

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• Passiionate about Microsoft Technology - Help raise money for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

  - by Testas

  I need your help! Please sign up to help our team raise $10,000 for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Simply by becoming a team member (a bit like a fan) and you will be helping our team earn points and advance in the race to rasie the money for charity.   If you can tick any of the boxes below then we need your help: Already Microsoft Certified? Hold a MCP/MCSA/MCSE/MCT/TS/MCITP? Want to help sufferers from the most common genetically inherited disease? Passionate about Microsoft Technology? Like to Blog, Tweet, email, connect! Enjoy the thrill of the race! Follow the Born To Learn Blog? Join our blue team and help us become the leader of the race.so please sign in with your Live ID which is associated with your MCP account and register with us - also take a look at the blue forums - we are building up some cool info! http://bit.ly/blueteam  or  http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/prix/p/index.aspx Please blog and let people know about this! Regards Chris

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• The Middle of Every Project

  - by andrew.sparks

  I read a quote somewhere “The middle of every successful project looks like a mess.” or something to that effect. I suppose the projects where the beginning, middle and end are a mess are the ones you need to watch out for. Right now we are in ramp up of the maintenance/support teams at a big project in the Nordics. We are facing a year of mixed mode operations, where we have production operations and the phased rollout to new locations in parallel. The support team supports, and the deployment team deploys. As usual the assumption right up to about a month or so before initial go-live was that the deployment team would carry the support. Not! Consequently we had a last minute scramble over the Christmas/New Year to fire up a support/maintenance team. While it is a bit messy and not perfect – the quality of the mess (I mean scramble) is not so bad. Weekly operational review with the operational delivery managers, written issue lists and assigned actions, candid discussions getting the problems on the table and documented, issues getting solved and moved off the table. So while the middle of a project might look like a mess (even the start) it is methodical use of project management tools of checklists and scheduled communication points that are helping us navigate out of the mess and bring it all under control.

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• software architecture (OO design) refresher course

  - by PeterT

  I am lead developer and team lead in a small RAD team. Deadlines are tight and we have to release often, which we do, and this is what keep the business happy. While we (the development team) are trying to maintain the quality of the code (clean and short methods), I can't help but notice that the overall quality of the OO design&architecture is getting worse over the time - the library we are working on is gradually reducing itself to a "bag of functions". Well, we try to use the design patterns, but since we don't really have much time for a design as such we are mostly using the creational ones. I have read Code Complete / Design Patterns (GOF & enterprise) / Progmatic Programmer / and many books from Effective XXX series. Should I re-read them again as I have read them a long time ago and forgotten quite a lot, or there are other / better OO design / software architeture books been published since then which I should definitely read? Any ideas, recommendations on how can I get the situation under control and start improving the architecture. The way I see it - I will start improving the architectural / design quality of software components I am working on and then will start helping other team members once I find what is working for me.

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• Data transfer between "main" site and secured virtual subsite

  - by Emma Burrows

  I am currently working on a C# ASP.Net 3.5 website I wrote some years ago which consists of a "main" public site, and a sub-site which is our customer management application, using forms-based authentication. The sub-site is set up as a virtual folder in IIS and though it's a subfolder of "main", it functions as a separate web app which handles CRUD access to our customer database and is only accessible by our staff. The main site currently includes a form for new leads to fill in, which generates an email to our sales staff so they can contact them and convince them to become customers. If that process is successful, the staff manually enter the information from the email into the database. Not surprisingly, I now have a new requirement to feed the data from the new lead form directly into the database so staff can just check a box for instance to turn the lead into a customer. My question therefore is how to go about doing this? Possible options I've thought of: Move the new lead form into the customer database subsite (with authentication turned off). Add database handling code to the main site. (No, not seriously considering this duplication of effort! :) Design some mechanism (via REST?) so a webpage outside the customer database subsite can feed data into the customer database How to organise the code for this situation, preferably with extensibility in mind, and particularly are there any options I haven't thought of?

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• How to hire support people?

  - by Martin

  I manage a tech support team at a mid-sized software company. We are the last line of support, so issues that we can't fix need to be escalated to the development team. When I joined the company, our team wasn't capable of much beyond using a specific set of troubleshooting steps to solve known issues and escalating anything else to the developers. It's always been a goal of mine for our team to shoulder as much of the support burden as possible without ever bothering a developer. Over the past few years, I, along with several new hires I've made, have made pretty good progress in that direction. We've coded our own troubleshooting tools which now ship with several of our products. When users have never-before-seen issues, we analyze stack traces and troubleshoot down to the code level, and if we need to submit a bug, half the time we've already identified in the code where in the code the bug is and offered a patch to fix it. Here's the problem I've always had: finding support people capable of the work I've described above is really difficult. I've hired 3 people in the past 3 years, and I've probably looked at several thousand resumes and conducted several hundred phone screens to do so. I know it's pretty well accepted that hiring good people is tough in the tech industry, but it seems that support is especially difficult -- there are clearly thousands of people walking around calling themselves support analysts, but 99%+ of them seemingly aren't capable of anything beyond reading a script. I'm curious if anyone has experience recruiting the sort of folks I'm talking about, and if you have any suggestions to share. We've tried all sorts of things -- different job titles/descriptions, using headhunters, etc. And while we've managed to hire a few good folks, it's basically taken us a year to find an appropriate candidate for each opening we've had, and I can't help but wonder if there's something we could be doing differently.

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• How should I show shared resources during a Shared Resource game in the Galaxy Editor?

  - by Mag Roader

  One of my favorite ways to play the original StarCraft was in a "Team" game. In this game type, multiple players on the same "team" would share control, resources, supply, and even the same starting location. It was like playing as 1 player, only 2 humans were controlling it. It was a lot of fun. I want to do something very similar in StarCraft 2, but I need to create a custom map in the Galaxy Editor to do it. I found the editor can quite easily emulate this behavior. There is a Trigger action "Set Alliance for Player Group" to "...treat each other as Ally With Shared Vision, Control, And Spending." To use this, I create units for only 1 of the players, and then set all players to be allied with each other in this way. All the other players get no units and no resources. This makes it so 1 player is the actual owner of all the units and everyone else is tagging along with full control. This nearly works! The problem is that if I am not the actual owning player, I can't actually see how many minerals/gas/supply the team has. This makes it pretty difficult to build stuff. What would be the best way to display to the other players how many Minerals/Gas/Supply the team has?

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• Finishing an iteration early

  - by f1dave

  I'd like some input on this on those working with agile methodologies... A current project is finding that development on our planned user stories is finishing some time before the end of the iteration, and that the testing effort and business acceptance is what's actually dragging us out longer towards the end. This means that the devs in question have spare time, and they're essentially going out to the iteration+1 backlog and starting work on cards there before our current iteration cards are 'done'. As iteration manager, I want to put a stop to this - I want a more team-orientated approach where the group takes ownership of getting all the cards done, as opposed to "Well, dev's done so what do I dev next?" The problem I face is convincing the team of this. On one hand, I understand why the devs don't want to test the code they've written (there are unit tests they write of course, but the manual testing to be done could be influenced by their bias). The team sees working ahead as making our next iterations easier, because a lot of the work is done before we start. I see this as screwing with the whole system of planning/actuals - but it's difficult to convince the team as to why this matters. What advice can you guys and girls give? How do we stop devs reaching ahead? What should they be doing instead? How much of a problem is this in the scheme of things, if things are still getting done?

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• QA - Developer communication

  - by exiter2000

  I am a developer and have worked at this company 4~5 years by now. We have been practicing scrum for about 2 years. I think, I have been worked well with QAs. I believe QAs/developers/technical writers are all one team. We are also actively hiring new team members. As a legacy member of the team, I have faced to assist new member(including developers and testers) with my business knowledge. We work on 2 weeks base scrum. I usually deliver my user story completely by the first date of second week and do some qa build with partial functionality of my user story so that QA has a good idea about my implementation and flow. Recently, I have met some QAs. In first week, the QAs do not talk... In stand up meeting, they say they are developing test cases regardless I deliver the user story or not. In second week, I do not have a single defect till Thursday afternoon and suddenly I have a major defect with several minor UI defect, which I delivered one week ago. Or I have one or two minor defects on second week however major defects on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. This eventually make the story rolls over to the next sprint. Major defect takes time to fix and more importantly it would trigger the regression test for the story... Even if I worked Thursday evening and fixed it, the testing will not finish. And this happens multiple times with certain QAs. As a same team member, I talked to the QAs if they could test major defect with higher priority... Rejected... Because I do not understand QA process.. So I asked roughly how many major test cases are covered so far in the stand up meeting on 2nd week Wednesday.. The response is I should not ask this to the QA in the stand up meeting... What do I do?

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• Installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. This post seams almost redundant as I had no problems, but I think that is as valuable to other thinking of installing the Service Pack as all the problems that we sometimes get. As per Brian's post I am Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken. Figure: Hopefully this will be more uneventful It takes a little while for your system to be checked to see what components need updating. On my main computer this was pretty quick, but on the laptop it took some time. Figure: There are a lot of components to update With this update also comes an update to .NET as well as many other components. Figure: I downloaded the full 1.5GB’s, but you could do a web install It depends on how good you internet connection is to how long it would take to download, but as I am now in the US I decided not to trust the internet connection speeds. It took around 30-40 minutes to download the full thing which is a little slow. Figure: I did not need to download, but that would increase the install time So on my main computer again this was fast, but again on my netbook this took a little while. Figure: The actual install took around 30-40 minutes (2 hours on netbook) I was pretty impressed with the speed of the install, and as Team Explore is now out of the box with Visual Studio 2010 I don’t get the problem of the SP being installed before Team Explorer and having a disjointed experience Figure: As I suspected, no problems with the install Figure: Checking in Visual Studio shows that all the servicing points were successful This was an easy experience even if the SP was over 1.5GB’s to download Hopefully I will be discovering things that work better for a good while to come, as well as not seeing holes in the product that I had no encountered yet. What were your experiences of installing Visual Studio 2010 Service pack 1?

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• At what point would you drop some of your principles of software development for the sake of more money?

  - by MeshMan

  I'd like to throw this question out there to interestingly see where the medium is. I'm going to admit that in my last 12 months, I picked up TDD and a lot of the Agile values in software development. I was so overwhelmed with how much better my development of software became that I would never drop them out of principle. Until...I was offered a contracting role that doubled my take home pay for the year. The company I joined didn't follow any specific methodology, the team hadn't heard of anything like code smells, SOLID, etc., and I certainly wasn't going to get away with spending time doing TDD if the team had never even seen unit testing in practice. Am I a sell out? No, not completely... Code will always been written "cleanly" (as per Uncle Bob's teachings) and the principles of SOLID will always be applied to the code that I write as they are needed. Testing was dropped for me though, the company couldn't afford to have such a unknown handed to the team who quite frankly, even I did create test frameworks, they would never use/maintain the test framework correctly. Using that as an example, what point would you say a developer should never drop his craftsmanship principles for the sake of money/other benefits to them personally? I understand that this can be a very personal opinion on how concerned one is to their own needs, business needs, and the sake of craftsmanship etc. But one can consider that for example testing can be dropped if the company decided they would rather have a test team, than rather understand unit testing in programming, would that be something you could forgive yourself for like I did? So given that there is something you would drop, there usually should be an equal cost in the business that makes up for what you drop - hopefully, unless of course you are pretty much out for lining your own pockets and not community/social collaborating ;). Double your money, go back to RAD? Or walk on, and look for someone doing Agile, and never look back...

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• design in agile process

  - by ying

  Recently I had an interview with dev team in a company. The team uses agile + TDD. The code exercise implements a video rental store which generates statement to calc total rental fee for each type of video (new release, children, etc) for a customer. The existing code use object like: Statement to generate statement and calc fee where big switch statement sits to use enum to determine how to calc rental fee customer holds a list of rentals movie base class and derived class for each type of movie (NEW, CHILDREN, ACTION, etc) The code originally doesn't compile as the owner was assumed to be hit by a bus. So here is what I did: outlined the improvement over object model to have better responsibility for each class. use strategy pattern to replace switch statement and weave them in config But the team says it's waste of time because there is no requirement for it and UAT test suite works and is the only guideline goes into architecture decision. The underlying story is just to get pricing feature out and not saying anything about how to do it. So the discussion is focused on why should time be spent on refactor the switch statement. In my understanding, agile methodology doesn't mean zero design upfront and such code smell should be avoided at the beginning. Also any unit/UAT test suite won't detect such code smell, otherwise sonar, findbugs won't exist. Here I want to ask: is there such a thing called agile design in the agile methodology? Just like agile documentation. how to define agile design upfront? how to know enough is enough? In my understanding, ballpark architecture and data contract among components should be defined before/when starting project, not the details. Am I right? anyone can explain what the team is really looking for in this kind of setup? is it design aspect or agile aspect? how to implement minimum viable product concept in the agile process in the real world project? Is it must that you feel embarrassed to be MVP?

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• Herding Cats - That's My Job....

  - by user709270

  Written by Mike Schmitz - Sr. Director, Program Management Oracle JD Edwards  I remember seeing a super bowl commercial several years ago showing some well dressed people on the African savanna herding cats. I remember turning to the people I was watching the game with and telling them, “You just watched my job description”. Releasing software is a multi-facetted undertaking. In addition to making sure the code changes are complete, you also need to make sure the other key parts of a release are ready. For example when you have a question about the software, will the person on the other end of the phone be ready to answer your question? If you need training on that cool new piece of functionality, will there be an online training course ready for you to review? If you want to read about how the software is supposed to function, is there a user manual available? Putting all the release pieces together so they are available at the same time is what the JD Edwards Program Management team does. It is my team’s job to work with all the different functional teams so when a release is made generally available you have all the things you need to be successful. The JD Edwards Program Management team uses an internal planning tool called the Release Process Model (RPM) to ensure all deliverables are accounted for in a release. The RPM makes sure all the release deliverables are ready at the correct time and in the correct format. The RPM really helps all the functional teams in JD Edwards know what release deliverables they are accountable for and when they are to be delivered. It is my team’s job to make sure everyone understands what they need to do and when they need to deliver. We then make sure they are all on track to deliver on-time and in the right format. It is just that some days this feels like herding cats.

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• Make a turn based system like final fantasy in AS3

  - by Kaoru

  i wanted to make a turn based system like final fantasy tactics. I already created the map, which is 5x5 tiles grid and the characters which is each character places in the end of the tiles. I have 2 teams, which are named Red and Yellow. ------Red-------: First character is at 0,0. Second character is at 0,1. Third character is at0.2, fourth character is at0.3, and the last one is at0.4`. -----Yellow------: First character is at 5.0. Second character is at 5.1. Third character is at 5.2, fourth character is at 5.3, and the last one is at 5.4. I wanted Red team are moving first and make a decision (whether it is attack or wait), and after 5 characters of the Red team is already made a decision, the Yellow team is the one that make a decision (Yellow team is an AI) But, i don't know how to move my characters into the next grid (e.g: from 0,0 to 0,1) by clicking the left mouse button and also how do i display a grid (when select a move selection) that shows how many tiles that the character able to move. Anyone know about this? or how should i know more about this? is there any recommendations books or webs? And also, i don't know how to move the characters using mouse click.

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• Inactive JSRs looking for Spec Leads

  - by heathervc

  You may have noticed that some JSRs have a classification of "Inactive" on their JSR page.  The introduction of this term in 2009 was part of an effort to enable and encourage more transparency into the development of JSRs.  You can read more about Inactive JSRs here and also in the JCP FAQ.The following JSR proposals have been Inactive since at least 2009. If you are a JCP Member and are interested in taking over the Specification Lead role for one of these JSRs, please contact the PMO at [email protected] on or before 23 April 2012. With that message, please include the following: the subject line "Spec Lead for JSR ###," where '###' is the JSR number which JCP Member you represent why you wish to take over the Specification lead role Here is the current list of Inactive JSRs for which Members can request to become Specification Leads: JSR 122, JAIN JCAT JSR 161, JAIN ENUM API Specification JSR 182, JPay - Payment API for the Java Platform JSR 210, OSS Service Quality Management API JSR 241, The Groovy Programming Language JSR 251, Pricing API JSR 278, Resource Management API for Java ME JSR 304, Mobile Telephony API v2 JSR 305, Annotations for Software Defect Detection JSR 320, Services Framework

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• MySQL documentation writer for MEM and Replication wanted!

  - by stefanhinz

  As MySQL is thriving and growing, we're looking for an experienced technical writer located in the UK or Ireland to join the MySQL documentation team. For this job, we need the best and most dedicated people around. You will be part of a geographically distributed documentation team responsible for the technical documentation of all MySQL products. Team members are expected to work independently, requiring discipline and excellent time-management skills as well as the technical facilities and experience to communicate across the Internet. Candidates should be prepared to work intensively with our engineers and support personnel. The overall team is highly distributed across different geographies and time zones. Our source format is DocBook XML. We're not just writing documentation, but also handling publication. This means you should be familiar with DocBook, and willing to learn our publication infrastructure. Your areas of responsibility would initially be MySQL Enterprise Monitor, and MySQL Replication. This means you should be familiar with MySQL in general, and preferably also with the MySQL Enterprise offerings. A MySQL certification will be considered an advantage. Other qualifications you should have: Native English speaker 5 or more years previous experience in writing software documentation Familiarity with distributed working environments and versioning systems such as SVN Comfortable with working on multiple operating systems, particularly Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux Ability to administer own workstations and test environment Excellent written and oral communication skills Ability to provide (online) samples of your work, e.g. books or articles If you're interested, contact me under [email protected]. For reference, the job offer can be viewed here.

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• How to manage Agile developers working with traditional (serial) business persons?

  - by Riggy

  Good afternoon, My work environment has some problems. Our IT team is trying to be more agile, but we're not really getting buy-in from the business. They attend our daily stand-ups and sprint reviews, and they help with sprint planning, but then they turn around and do 4 months of requirements gathering for a project before moving forward with a (mostly) serial development style. The sprint goals are things like "get XX% closer to release". For the IT team, they've turned the Sprints into a sort of death march. We end a Sprint one day and start a new Sprint the very next day. There's no reflection or changes done between sprints, only during. Having never done any of the agile methodologies before, I haven't had a very pleasant introduction to them. So my questions are: 1) Should there be some time (perhaps a week or so) between sprints to do the reflection/introspection/changes/etc.? Or are back-to-back-to-back sprints the norm? 2) Is there any chance for survival for an agile team with no agile business counter-parts? If not, are there some transitional methodologies or even tips for moving the business towards an iterative if not necessarily agile mindset? 3) Should your entire team be on every sprint? We have almost 20 programmers on a single sprint but working on completely different projects (typically teams of 3-5, sometimes larger). Is it normal to have a single sprint or should we be trying to manage multiple independent sprints? Should we be trying to keep the multiple sprints in concurrent lockstep or should their timetables be allowed to overlap and be flexible? Any thoughts or advice is appreciated. This is my first time coming over from SO for a question, so please let me know if there are better ways to phrase these kinds of questions (faq was rather helpful, but still not sure I'm following it perfectly). Thanks!

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• MySQL documentation writer wanted

  - by stefanhinz

  As MySQL is thriving and growing, we're looking for an experienced technical writer located in Europe or North America to join the MySQL documentation team.For this job, we need the best and most dedicated people around. You will be part of a geographically distributed documentation team responsible for the technical documentation of all MySQL products. Team members are expected to work independently, requiring discipline and excellent time-management skills as well as the technical facilities to communicate across the Internet.Candidates should be prepared to work intensively with our engineers and support personnel. The overall team is highly distributed across different geographies and time zones. Our source format is DocBook XML. We're not just writing documentation, but also handling publication. This means you should be familiar with DocBook, and willing to learn our publication infrastructure.Candidates should therefore be interested not just in writing but also in the technical aspects of publishing documentation. Regarding your initial areas of authoring, those would be MySQL Cluster, MySQL Enterprise Monitor and Backup, and various parts of the MySQL server documentation (also known as the MySQL Reference Manual). This means you should be familiar with MySQL in general, and preferably also with MySQL Cluster and the MySQL Enterprise offerings.Other qualifications: Native English speaker 3 or more years previous experience in writing software documentation Excellent written and oral communication skills Ability to provide (online) samples of your work, e.g. books or articles Curiosity to learn new technologies Familiarity with distributed working environments and versioning systems such as SVN Comfortable with working on multiple operating systems, particularly Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux Ability to administer own workstations and test environment If you're interested, contact me under [email protected].

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• Meet the Spec Leads & Active JSRs

  - by heathervc

  For your Monday reading pleasure, the JCP has published Spec Lead Profiles of In Progress/Active JSRs--there are 35 of these Spec Leads!  Find out more about these dedicated community leaders.  In preparing these profiles, the PMO also asked Specification Leads to tell about their experiences  as Spec Leads.  There were many themes that emerged around transparency, openness, agility and participation.  This led to a related article for those interested in learning about the experience of participating in the development of a Java Specification through the JCP program, see: "Active Specification Leads Offer Best Practices and Tips for Success". In Progress/Active JSRs were also reported on in the PMO Presentation during the last JCP EC Face-to-Face meeting in September 2012.   Now is a good time to start thinking about nominations for Star Spec Leads.  Nominations for 2012 are now open.  Anyone can submit a nomination for Star Spec Lead; however, we ask that you nominate an active JSR Spec Lead, operating a JSR under JCP program version 2.8 (introduced October 2011) or above.  Nominations close 31 December 2012.

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• Secondment promotion promises

  - by user75460

  I'm a Java developer at a large FTSE 30 company. My line manager approached me and asked if I'd like to be the teams lead developer. I was keen to accept. Initially he said I'd be acting-up for 3 months, then changed his tune and said I would be doing a 6 month secondment. During this time, he has got himself promoted and I have a new line manager. I have been very successful during this secondment and reviews have been overwhelmingly positive: both from my former line manager and current line manager. However, six months on, no lead role has been created in the organization and a new director has re-organised the structure of the team: two senior roles (senior Android and senior iOS) are going to be created. I feel a bit put-out that my secondment has amounted to nothing. I could have just done nothing and then applied for the senior role 6 months later (which I feel aren't as marketable as Lead developer). During my secondment I have basically become TA, senior developer, line manager and general go-to guy for all things (across Android and iOS). What do you think I should do, and has my company abused it's position? I feel they have offered a secondment to a role that they never really planned to create. During this time I have received no financial benefit for doing a more senior role.

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• Populating data in multiple cascading dropdown boxes in Access 2007

  - by miCRoSCoPiC_eaRthLinG

  Hello all, I've been assigned the task to design a temporary customer tracking system in MS Access 2007 (sheeeesh!). The tables and relationships have all been setup successfully. But I'm running into a minor problem while trying to design the data entry form for one table... Here's a bit of explanation first. The screen contains 3 dropdown boxes (apart from other fields). 1st dropdown The first dropdown (cboMarket) represents the Market lets users select between 2 options: Domestic International Since the first dropdown contains only 2 items I didn't bother making a table for it. I added them as pre-defined list items. 2nd dropdown Once the user makes a selection in this one, the second dropdown (cboLeadCategory) loads up a list of Lead Categories, namely, Fairs & Exhibitions, Agents, Press Ads, Online Ads etc. Different sets of lead categories are utilized for the 2 markets. Hence this box is dependent on the 1st one. Structure of the bound table, named Lead_Cateogries for the 2nd combo is: ID Autonumber Lead_Type TEXT <- actually a list that takes up Domestic or International Lead_Category_Name TEXT 3rd dropdown And based on the choice of category in the 2nd one, the third one (cboLeadSource) is supposed to display a pre-defined set of lead sources belonging to the particular category. Table is named Lead_Sources and the structure is: ID Autonumber Lead_Category NUMBER <- related to ID of Lead Categories table Lead_Source TEXT When I make the selection in the 1st dropdown, the AfterUpdate event of the combo is called, which instructs the 2nd dropdown to load contents: Private Sub cboMarket_AfterUpdate() Me![cboLead_Category].Requery End Sub The Row Source of the 2nd combo contains a query: SELECT Lead_Categories.ID, Lead_Categories.Lead_Category_Name FROM Lead_Categories WHERE Lead_Categories.Lead_Type=[cboMarket] ORDER BY Lead_Categories.Lead_Category_Name; The AfterUpdate event of 2nd combo is: Private Sub cboLeadCategory_AfterUpdate() Me![cboLeadSource].Requery End Sub The Row Source of 3rd combo contains: SELECT Leads_Sources.ID, Leads_Sources.Lead_Source FROM Leads_Sources WHERE [Lead_Sources].[Lead_Category]=[Lead_Categories].[ID] ORDER BY Leads_Sources.Lead_Source; Problem When I select Market type from cboMarket, the 2nd combo cboLeadCategory loads up the appropriate Categories without a hitch. But when I select a particular Category from it, instead of the 3rd combo loading the lead source names, a modal dialog is displayed asking me to Enter a Parameter. When I enter anything into this prompt (valid or invalid data), I get yet another prompt: Why is this happening? Why isn't the 3rd box loading the source names as desired. Can any one please shed some light on where I am going wrong? Thanks, m^e

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• Ajax Control Toolkit and Superexpert

  - by Stephen Walther

  Microsoft has asked my company, Superexpert Consulting, to take ownership of the development and maintenance of the Ajax Control Toolkit moving forward. In this blog entry, I discuss our strategy for improving the Ajax Control Toolkit. Why the Ajax Control Toolkit? The Ajax Control Toolkit is one of the most popular projects on CodePlex. In fact, some have argued that it is among the most successful open-source projects of all time. It consistently receives over 3,500 downloads a day (not weekends -- workdays). A mind-boggling number of developers use the Ajax Control Toolkit in their ASP.NET Web Forms applications. Why does the Ajax Control Toolkit continue to be such a popular project? The Ajax Control Toolkit fills a strong need in the ASP.NET Web Forms world. The Toolkit enables Web Forms developers to build richly interactive JavaScript applications without writing any JavaScript. For example, by taking advantage of the Ajax Control Toolkit, a Web Forms developer can add modal dialogs, popup calendars, and client tabs to a web application simply by dragging web controls onto a page. The Ajax Control Toolkit is not for everyone. If you are comfortable writing JavaScript then I recommend that you investigate using jQuery plugins instead of the Ajax Control Toolkit. However, if you are a Web Forms developer and you don’t want to get your hands dirty writing JavaScript, then the Ajax Control Toolkit is a great solution. The Ajax Control Toolkit is Vast The Ajax Control Toolkit consists of 40 controls. That’s a lot of controls (For the sake of comparison, jQuery UI consists of only 8 controls – those slackers J). Furthermore, developers expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work on browsers both old and new. For example, people expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 9 and every version of Internet Explorer in between. People also expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work on the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. And, people expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with different operating systems. Yikes, that is a lot of combinations. The biggest challenge which my company faces in supporting the Ajax Control Toolkit is ensuring that the Ajax Control Toolkit works across all of these different browsers and operating systems. Testing, Testing, Testing Because we wanted to ensure that we could easily test the Ajax Control Toolkit with different browsers, the very first thing that we did was to set up a dedicated testing server. The dedicated server -- named Schizo -- hosts 4 virtual machines so that we can run Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 at the same time (We also use the virtual machines to host the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari). The five developers on our team (plus me) can each publish to a separate FTP website on the testing server. That way, we can quickly test how changes to the Ajax Control Toolkit affect different browsers. QUnit Tests for the Ajax Control Toolkit Introducing regressions – introducing new bugs when trying to fix existing bugs – is the concern which prevents me from sleeping well at night. There are so many people using the Ajax Control Toolkit in so many unique scenarios, that it is difficult to make improvements to the Ajax Control Toolkit without introducing regressions. In order to avoid regressions, we decided early on that it was extremely important to build good test coverage for the 40 controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit. We’ve been focusing a lot of energy on building automated JavaScript unit tests which we can use to help us discover regressions. We decided to write the unit tests with the QUnit test framework. We picked QUnit because it is quickly becoming the standard unit testing framework in the JavaScript world. For example, it is the unit testing framework used by the jQuery team, the jQuery UI team, and many jQuery UI plugin developers. We had to make several enhancements to the QUnit framework in order to test the Ajax Control Toolkit. For example, QUnit does not support tests which include postbacks. We modified the QUnit framework so that it works with IFrames so we could perform postbacks in our automated tests. At this point, we have written hundreds of QUnit tests. For example, we have written 135 QUnit tests for the Accordion control. The QUnit tests are included with the Ajax Control Toolkit source code in a project named AjaxControlToolkit.Tests. You can run all of the QUnit tests contained in the project by opening the Default.aspx page. Automating the QUnit Tests across Multiple Browsers Automated tests are useless if no one ever runs them. In order for the QUnit tests to be useful, we needed an easy way to run the tests automatically against a matrix of browsers. We wanted to run the unit tests against Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari automatically. Expecting a developer to run QUnit tests against every browser after every check-in is just too much to expect. It takes 20 seconds to run the Accordion QUnit tests. We are testing against 8 browsers. That would require the developer to open 8 browsers and wait for the results after each change in code. Too much work. Therefore, we built a JavaScript Test Server. Our JavaScript Test Server project was inspired by John Resig’s TestSwarm project. The JavaScript Test Server runs our QUnit tests in a swarm of browsers (running on different operating systems) automatically. Here’s how the JavaScript Test Server works: 1. We created an ASP.NET page named RunTest.aspx that constantly polls the JavaScript Test Server for a new set of QUnit tests to run. After the RunTest.aspx page runs the QUnit tests, the RunTest.aspx records the test results back to the JavaScript Test Server. 2. We opened the RunTest.aspx page on instances of Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, FireFox, Chrome, Opera, Google, and Safari. Now that we have the JavaScript Test Server setup, we can run all of our QUnit tests against all of the browsers which we need to support with a single click of a button. A New Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit Each Month The Ajax Control Toolkit Issue Tracker contains over one thousand five hundred open issues and feature requests. So we have plenty of work on our plates J At CodePlex, anyone can vote for an issue to be fixed. Originally, we planned to fix issues in order of their votes. However, we quickly discovered that this approach was inefficient. Constantly switching back and forth between different controls was too time-consuming. It takes time to re-familiarize yourself with a control. Instead, we decided to focus on two or three controls each month and really focus on fixing the issues with those controls. This way, we can fix sets of related issues and avoid the randomization caused by context switching. Our team works in monthly sprints. We plan to do another release of the Ajax Control Toolkit each and every month. So far, we have competed one release of the Ajax Control Toolkit which was released on April 1, 2011. We plan to release a new version in early May. Conclusion Fortunately, I work with a team of smart developers. We currently have 5 developers working on the Ajax Control Toolkit (not full-time, they are also building two very cool ASP.NET MVC applications). All the developers who work on our team are required to have strong JavaScript, jQuery, and ASP.NET MVC skills. In the interest of being as transparent as possible about our work on the Ajax Control Toolkit, I plan to blog frequently about our team’s ongoing work. In my next blog entry, I plan to write about the two Ajax Control Toolkit controls which are the focus of our work for next release.

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• Too Many Kittens To Juggle At Once

  - by Bil Simser

  Ahh, the Internet. That crazy, mixed up place where one tweet turns into a conversation between dozens of people and spawns a blogpost. This is the direct result of such an event this morning. It started innocently enough, with this: Then followed up by a blog post by Joel here. In the post, Joel introduces us to the term Business Solutions Architect with mad skillz like InfoPath, Access Services, Excel Services, building Workflows, and SSRS report creation, all while meeting the business needs of users in a SharePoint environment. I somewhat disagreed with Joel that this really wasn’t a new role (at least IMHO) and that a good Architect or BA should really be doing this job. As Joel pointed out when you’re building a SharePoint team this kind of role is often overlooked. Engineers might be able to build workflows but is the right workflow for the right problem? Michael Pisarek wrote about a SharePoint Business Architect a few months ago and it’s a pretty solid assessment. Again, I argue you really shouldn’t be looking for roles that don’t exist and I don’t suggest anyone create roles to hire people to fill them. That’s basically creating a solution looking for problems. Michael’s article does have some great points if you’re lost in the quagmire of SharePoint duties though (and I especially like John Ross’ quote “The coolest shit is worthless if it doesn’t meet business needs”). SharePoinTony summed it up nicely with “SharePoint Solutions knowledge is both lacking and underrated in most environments. Roles help”. Having someone on the team who can dance between a business user and a coder can be difficult. Remember the idea of telling something to someone and them passing it on to the next person. By the time the story comes round the circle it’s a shadow of it’s former self with little resemblance to the original tale. This is very much business requirements as they’re told by the user to a business analyst, written down on paper, read by an architect, tuned into a solution plan, and implemented by a developer. Transformations between what was said, what was heard, what was written down, and what was developed can be distant cousins. Not everyone has the skill of communication and even less have negotiation skills to suit the SharePoint platform. Negotiation is important because not everything can be (or should be) done in SharePoint. Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to build it on the SharePoint platform but someone needs to know enough about the platform and what limitations it might have, then communicate that (and/or negotiate) with a customer or user so it’s not about “You can’t have this” to “Let’s try it this way”. Visualize the possible instead of denying the impossible. So what is the right SharePoint team? My cromag brain came with a fairly simpleton answer (and I’m sure people will just say this is a cop-out). The perfect SharePoint team is just enough people to do the job that know the technology and business problem they’re solving. Bridge the gap between business need and technology platform and you have an architect. Communicate the needs of the business effectively so the entire team understands it and you have a business analyst. Can you get this with full time workers? Maybe but don’t expect miracles out of the gate. Also don’t take a consultant’s word as gospel. Some consultants just don’t have the diversity of the SharePoint platform to be worth their value so be careful. You really need someone who knows enough about SharePoint to be able to validate a consultants knowledge level. This is basically try for any consultant, not just a SharePoint one. Specialization is good and needed. A good, well-balanced SharePoint team is one of people that can solve problems with work with the technology, not against it. Having a top developer is great, but don’t rely on them to solve world hunger if they can’t communicate very well with users. An expert business analyst might be great at gathering requirements so the entire team can understand them, but if it means building 100% custom solutions because they don’t fit inside the SharePoint boundaries isn’t of much value. Just repeat. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. A few people pointed out Nick Inglis’ article Excluding The Information Professional In SharePoint. It’s a good read too and hits home that maybe some developers and IT pros need some extra help in the information space. If you’re in an organization that needs labels on people, come up with something everyone understands and go with it. If that’s Business Solutions Architect, SharePoint Advisor, or Guy Who Knows A Lot About Portals, make it work for you. We all wish that one person could master all that is SharePoint but we also know that doesn’t scale very well and you quickly get into the hit-by-a-bus syndrome (with the organization coming to a full crawl when the guy or girl goes on vacation, gets sick, or pops out a baby). There are too many gaps in SharePoint knowledge to have any one person know it all and too many kittens to juggle all at once. We like to consider ourselves experts in our field, but trying to tackle too many roles at once and we end up being mediocre jack of all trades, master of none. Don't fall into this pit. It's a deep, dark hole you don't want to try to claw your way out of. Trust me. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. In the end I don’t disagree with Joel. SharePoint is a beast and not something that should be taken on by newbies. If you just read “Teach Yourself SharePoint in 24 Hours” and want to go build your corporate intranet or the next killer business solution with all your new found knowledge plan to pony up consultant dollars a few months later when everything goes to Hell in a handbasket and falls over. I’m not saying don’t build solutions in SharePoint. I’m just saying that building effective ones takes skill like any craft and not something you can just cobble together with a little bit of cursory knowledge. Thanks to *everyone* who participated in this tweet rush. It was fun and educational.

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• TFS 2010 SDK: Smart Merge - Programmatically Create your own Merge Tool

  - by Tarun Arora

  Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS SDK,TFS API,TFS Merge Programmatically,TFS Work Items Programmatically,TFS Administration Console,ALM   The information available in the Merge window in Team Foundation Server 2010 is very important in the decision making during the merging process. However, at present the merge window shows very limited information, more that often you are interested to know the work item, files modified, code reviewer notes, policies overridden, etc associated with the change set. Our friends at Microsoft are working hard to change the game again with vNext, but because at present the merge window is a model window you have to cancel the merge process and go back one after the other to check the additional information you need. If you can relate to what i am saying, you will enjoy this blog post! I will show you how to programmatically create your own merging window using the TFS 2010 API. A few screen shots of the WPF TFS 2010 API – Custom Merging Application that we will be creating programmatically, Excited??? Let’s start coding… 1. Get All Team Project Collections for the TFS Server You can read more on connecting to TFS programmatically on my blog post => How to connect to TFS Programmatically 1: public static ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> GetAllTeamProjectCollections() 2: { 3: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 4: TfsConfigurationServerFactory. 5: GetConfigurationServer(new Uri("http://xxx:8080/tfs/")); 6: 7: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 8: return catalogNode.QueryChildren(new Guid[] 9: { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 10: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 11: } 2. Get All Team Projects for the selected Team Project Collection You can read more on connecting to TFS programmatically on my blog post => How to connect to TFS Programmatically 1: public static ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> GetTeamProjects(string instanceId) 2: { 3: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> teamProjects = null; 4: 5: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 6: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri("http://xxx:8080/tfs/")); 7: 8: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 9: var teamProjectCollections = catalogNode.QueryChildren(new Guid[] {CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 10: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 11: 12: foreach (var teamProjectCollection in teamProjectCollections) 13: { 14: if (string.Compare(teamProjectCollection.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"], instanceId, true) == 0) 15: { 16: teamProjects = teamProjectCollection.QueryChildren(new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, false, 17: CatalogQueryOptions.None); 18: } 19: } 20: 21: return teamProjects; 22: } 3. Get All Branches with in a Team Project programmatically I will be passing the name of the Team Project for which i want to retrieve all the branches. When consuming the ‘Version Control Service’ you have the method QueryRootBranchObjects, you need to pass the recursion type => none, one, full. Full implies you are interested in all branches under that root branch. 1: public static List<BranchObject> GetParentBranch(string projectName) 2: { 3: var branches = new List<BranchObject>(); 4: 5: var tfs = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://<ServerName>:8080/tfs/<teamProjectName>")); 6: var versionControl = tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); 7: 8: var allBranches = versionControl.QueryRootBranchObjects(RecursionType.Full); 9: 10: foreach (var branchObject in allBranches) 11: { 12: if (branchObject.Properties.RootItem.Item.ToUpper().Contains(projectName.ToUpper())) 13: { 14: branches.Add(branchObject); 15: } 16: } 17: 18: return branches; 19: } 4. Get All Branches associated to the Parent Branch Programmatically Now that we have the parent branch, it is important to retrieve all child branches of that parent branch. Lets see how we can achieve this using the TFS API. 1: public static List<ItemIdentifier> GetChildBranch(string parentBranch) 2: { 3: var branches = new List<ItemIdentifier>(); 4: 5: var tfs = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://<ServerName>:8080/tfs/<CollectionName>")); 6: var versionControl = tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); 7: 8: var i = new ItemIdentifier(parentBranch); 9: var allBranches = 10: versionControl.QueryBranchObjects(i, RecursionType.None); 11: 12: foreach (var branchObject in allBranches) 13: { 14: foreach (var childBranche in branchObject.ChildBranches) 15: { 16: branches.Add(childBranche); 17: } 18: } 19: 20: return branches; 21: } 5. Get Merge candidates between two branches Programmatically Now that we have the parent and the child branch that we are interested to perform a merge between we will use the method ‘GetMergeCandidates’ in the namespace ‘Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client’ => http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb138934(v=VS.100).aspx 1: public static MergeCandidate[] GetMergeCandidates(string fromBranch, string toBranch) 2: { 3: var tfs = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://<ServerName>:8080/tfs/<CollectionName>")); 4: var versionControl = tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); 5: 6: return versionControl.GetMergeCandidates(fromBranch, toBranch, RecursionType.Full); 7: } 6. Get changeset details Programatically Now that we have the changeset id that we are interested in, we can get details of the changeset. The Changeset object contains the properties => http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.teamfoundation.versioncontrol.client.changeset.aspx - Changes: Gets or sets an array of Change objects that comprise this changeset. - CheckinNote: Gets or sets the check-in note of the changeset. - Comment: Gets or sets the comment of the changeset. - PolicyOverride: Gets or sets the policy override information of this changeset. - WorkItems: Gets an array of work items that are associated with this changeset. 1: public static Changeset GetChangeSetDetails(int changeSetId) 2: { 3: var tfs = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://<ServerName>:8080/tfs/<CollectionName>")); 4: var versionControl = tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>(); 5: 6: return versionControl.GetChangeset(changeSetId); 7: } 7. Possibilities In future posts i will try and extend this idea to explore further possibilities, but few features that i am sure will further help during the merge decision making process would be, - View changed files - Compare modified file with current/previous version - Merge Preview - Last Merge date Any other features that you can think of?

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• SQL Server Split() Function

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  Title goes here   Ever wanted a dbo.Split() function, but not had the time to debug it completely?  Let me guess - you are probably working on a stored procedure with 50 or more parameters; two or three of them are parameters of differing types, while the other 47 or so all of the same type (id1, id2, id3, id4, id5...).  Worse, you've found several other similar stored procedures with the ONLY DIFFERENCE being the number of like parameters taped to the end of the parameter list. If this is the situation you find yourself in now, you may be wondering, "why am I working with three different copies of what is basically the same stored procedure, and why am I having to maintain changes in three different places?  Can't I have one stored procedure that accomplishes the job of all three? My answer to you: YES!  Here is the Split() function I've created.    /******************************************************************************                                       Split.sql   ******************************************************************************/ /******************************************************************************   Split a delimited string into sub-components and return them as a table.   Parameter 1: Input string which is to be split into parts. Parameter 2: Delimiter which determines the split points in input string. Works with space or spaces as delimiter. Split() is apostrophe-safe.   SYNTAX: SELECT * FROM Split('Dvorak,Debussy,Chopin,Holst', ',') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver|Seattle|San Diego|New York', '|') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver is the super-awesomest city of them all.', ' ')   ******************************************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE xtype = 'TF'       AND name = 'Split'       ) BEGIN       DROP FUNCTION Split END GO   CREATE FUNCTION Split (       @InputString                  VARCHAR(8000),       @Delimiter                    VARCHAR(50) )   RETURNS @Items TABLE (       Item                          VARCHAR(8000) )   AS BEGIN       IF @Delimiter = ' '       BEGIN             SET @Delimiter = ','             SET @InputString = REPLACE(@InputString, ' ', @Delimiter)       END         IF (@Delimiter IS NULL OR @Delimiter = '')             SET @Delimiter = ','   --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Delimiter) -- Diagnostic --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString) -- Diagnostic         DECLARE @Item                 VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @ItemList       VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @DelimIndex     INT         SET @ItemList = @InputString       SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       WHILE (@DelimIndex != 0)       BEGIN             SET @Item = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, 0, @DelimIndex)             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)               -- Set @ItemList = @ItemList minus one less item             SET @ItemList = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, @DelimIndex+1, LEN(@ItemList)-@DelimIndex)             SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       END -- End WHILE         IF @Item IS NOT NULL -- At least one delimiter was encountered in @InputString       BEGIN             SET @Item = @ItemList             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)       END         -- No delimiters were encountered in @InputString, so just return @InputString       ELSE INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString)         RETURN   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole2 --GO   The syntax is basically as follows: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C AND TABLE2.Id IN (SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',')) @IdList is a parameter passed into the stored procedure, and the comma (',') is the delimiter you have chosen to split the parameter list on. You can also use it like this: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C HAVING COUNT(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',') Similarly, it can be used in other aggregate functions at run-time: SELECT MIN(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ','), <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C GROUP BY <fields> Now that I've (hopefully effectively) explained the benefits to using this function and implementing it in one or more of your database objects, let me warn you of a caveat that you are likely to encounter.  You may have a team member who waits until the right moment to ask you a pointed question: "Doesn't this function just do the same thing as using the IN function?  Why didn't you just use that instead?  In other words, why bother with this function?" What's happening is, one or more team members has failed to understand the reason for implementing this kind of function in the first place.  (Note: this is THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS POST). Allow me to outline a few pros to implementing this function, so you may effectively parry this question.  Touche. 1) Code consolidation.  You don't have to maintain what is basically the same code and logic, but with varying numbers of the same parameter in several SQL objects.  I'm not going to go into the cons related to using this function, because the afore mentioned team member is probably more than adept at pointing these out.  Remember, the real positive contribution is ou are decreasing the liklihood that your team fails to update all (x) duplicate copies of what are basically the same stored procedure, and so on...  This is the classic downside to duplicate code.  It is a virus, and you should kill it. You might be better off rejecting your team member's question, and responding with your own: "Would you rather maintain the same logic in multiple different stored procedures, and hope that the team doesn't forget to always update all of them at the same time?".  In his head, he might be thinking "yes, I would like to maintain several different copies of the same stored procedure", although you probably will not get such a direct response.  2) Added flexibility - you can use the Split function elsewhere, and for splitting your data in different ways.  Plus, you can use any kind of delimiter you wish.  How can you know today the ways in which you might want to examine your data tomorrow?  Segue to my next point. 3) Because the function takes a delimiter parameter, you can split the data in any number of ways.  This greatly increases the utility of such a function and enables your team to work with the data in a variety of different ways in the future.  You can split on a single char, symbol, word, or group of words.  You can split on spaces.  (The list goes on... test it out). Finally, you can dynamically define the behavior of a stored procedure (or other SQL object) at run time, through the use of this function.  Rather than have several objects that accomplish almost the same thing, why not have only one instead?

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