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• Jekyll - How to approach asset processing (minification, spriting...)

  - by Gromix

  I recently switched to Jekyll and I find the conversion pipeline works really well. However I'm stuck on which approach to take when the process is many inputs to one output (ex: concatenating CSS files, creating image sprites...) I know several tools that can do it, that can be called either from the command line or in Ruby code directly. For ex: Jammit css sprites Compass sprites My current solution is a few Jekyll plugins that call these tools. However, it has the following problems: 1. SASS files should be processed, then concatenated/minified SASS-CSS is a Converter, and the concatenation is a Generator run on the output. Unfortunately generators are run first, which means the concatenation is always a step behind (I have to run the build twice) 2. Jekyll does not know about the source/output relationship With converters, when I run Jekyll in server mode, if I change a SASS file it automatically runs the conversion to CSS. When dealing with concatenation/spriting, I haven't found a way to do the same. I end up having to run a "normal" Jekyll build (not server auto) to update the concatenated files and sprites. Thanks for any ideas!

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• need advice on Zend framework Application architecture, or say approach dealing with modules

  - by simple

  Let me start with the things that I did and how am I using some things to get results I have set up modular structure as: application/ /configs /layouts /models /modules /users /profile /frontend /backend /controllers /views .... I write a plugin that does addes changes with FrontController-setModuleControllerDirectoryName() FrontController-addModuleDirectory() and It is all good I have a changed all the directories according weather admin page is requested in the url or not (it is some thing like /admin/some/some) Let's say I have a single layout for anything that is related to Profile viewing , in this case the "Profile" module. The Profile layout is divided into three parts In the layout I was pulling out the Profile/PhotoController 's index action with a action() $this->action('index', 'photo', 'profile'); Then I have faced few issues 1. Can get passed Params inside the Photo Controller when calling ( profile/profile/index); 2. found out that helper Action() is evil cause it starts another dispatching loop =) --- and now I am thinking that my approach on plugging in controllers modules into layout also evil =). anyhow how Should I deal with plugging in some controllers (another module controllers) into the layout ?

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• More efficient approach to XSLT for-each

  - by Paul

  I have an XSLT which takes a . delimted string and splits it into two fields for a SQL statement: <xsl:for-each select="tokenize(Path,'\.')"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="position() = 1 and position() = last()">SITE = '<xsl:value-of select="."/>' AND PATH = ''</xsl:when> <xsl:when test="position() = 1 and position() != last()">SITE = '<xsl:value-of select="."/>' </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="position() = 2 and position() = last()">AND PATH = '<xsl:value-of select="."/>' </xsl:when> <xsl:when test="position() = 2">AND PATH = '<xsl:value-of select="."/></xsl:when> <xsl:when test="position() > 2 and position() != last()">.<xsl:value-of select="."/></xsl:when> <xsl:when test="position() > 2 and position() = last()">.<xsl:value-of select="."/>' </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise>zxyarglfaux</xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:for-each> The results are as follows: INPUT: North OUTPUT: SITE = 'North' AND PATH = '' INPUT: North.A OUTPUT: SITE = 'North' AND PATH = 'A' INPUT: North.A.B OUTPUT: SITE = 'North' AND PATH = 'A.B' INPUT: North.A.B.C OUTPUT: SITE = 'North' AND PATH = 'A.B.C' This works, but is very lengthy. Can anyone see a more efficient approach? Thanks!

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• Custom Swing component: questions on approach

  - by phatmanace

  Hi Folks, I'm trying to build a new java swing component, I realise that I might be able to find one that does what I need on the web, but this is partly an exercise for me to learn ow to do this. I want to build a swing component that represents a Gantt chart. it would be good (though not essential for people to be able to interact with it (e.g slide the the tasks around to adjust timings) it feels like the best approach for this is to subclass JComponent, and override PaintComponent() to 'draw a picture' of what the chart should look like, as opposed to doing something like trying to jam everything into a custom JTable. I've read a couple of books on the subject, and also looked at a few examples (most notably things like JXGraph) - but I'm curious about a few things When do I have to switch to using UI delegates, and when can I stick to just fiddling around in paintcomponent() to render what I want? if I want other swing components as sub-elements of my component (e.g I wanted a text box on my gantt chart) can I no longer use paintComponent()? can I arbitrarily position them within my Gantt chart, or do I have to use a normal swing layout manager many thanks in advance. -Ace

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• django simple approach to multi-field search

  - by Scott Willman

  I have a simple address book app that I want to make searchable. The model would look something like: class Address(models.Model): address1 = models.CharField("Address Line 1", max_length=128) address2 = models.CharField("Address Line 2", max_length=128) city = models.CharField("City", max_length=128) state = models.CharField("State", max_length=24) zipCode = models.CharField("Zip Code", max_length=24) def __unicode__(self): return "%s %s, %s, %s, %s" % (self.address1, self.address2, self.city, self.state, self.zipCode) class Entry(models.Model): name = models.CharField("Official School Name", max_length=128) createdBy = models.ForeignKey(User) address = models.ForeignKey(Address, unique=True) def __unicode__(self): return "%s - %s, %s" % (self.name, self.address.city, self.address.state) I want the searching to be fairly loose, like: Bank of America Los Angeles 91345. It seems like I want a field that contains all of those elements into one that I can search, but that also seems redundant. I was hoping I could add a method to the Entry model like this: def _getSearchText(self): return "%s %s %s" % (self.name, self.address, self.mascot) searchText = property(_getSearchText) ...and search that as a field, but I suppose that's wishful thinking... How should I approach this using basic Django and SqLite (this is a learning exercise). Thank you!!

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• What is your personal approach/take on commenting?

  - by Trae

  Duplicate What are your hard rules about commenting? A Developer I work with had some things to say about commenting that were interesting to me (see below). What is your personal approach/take on commenting? "I don't add comments to code unless its a simple heading or there's a platform-bug or a necessary work-around that isn't obvious. Code can change and comments may become misleading. Code should be self-documenting in its use of descriptive names and its logical organization - and its solutions should be the cleanest/simplest way to perform a given task. If a programmer can't tell what a program does by only reading the code, then he's not ready to alter it. Commenting tends to be a crutch for writing something complex or non-obvious - my goal is to always write clean and simple code." "I think there a few camps when it comes to commenting, the enterprisey-type who think they're writing an API and some grand code-library that will be used for generations to come, the craftsman-like programmer that thinks code says what it does clearer than a comment could, and novices that write verbose/unclear code so as to need to leave notes to themselves as to why they did something."

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• Best Functional Approach

  - by dbyrne

  I have some mutable scala code that I am trying to rewrite in a more functional style. It is a fairly intricate piece of code, so I am trying to refactor it in pieces. My first thought was this: def iterate(count:Int,d:MyComplexType) = { //Generate next value n //Process n causing some side effects return iterate(count - 1, n) } This didn't seem functional at all to me, since I still have side effects mixed throughout my code. My second thought was this: def generateStream(d:MyComplexType):Stream[MyComplexType] = { //Generate next value n return Stream.cons(n, generateStream(n)) } for (n <- generateStream(initialValue).take(2000000)) { //process n causing some side effects } This seemed like a better solution to me, because at least I've isolated my functional value-generation code from the mutable value-processing code. However, this is much less memory efficient because I am generating a large list that I don't really need to store. This leaves me with 3 choices: Write a tail-recursive function, bite the bullet and refactor the value-processing code Use a lazy list. This is not a memory sensitive app (although it is performance sensitive) Come up with a new approach. I guess what I really want is a lazily evaluated sequence where I can discard the values after I've processed them. Any suggestions?

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• Error handling approach on PHP

  - by Industrial

  Hi everybody, We have a web server that we're about to launch a number of applications onto. They will all share database and memcached servers, but each application has it's own mySQL database and all memcached keys per application, is prefixed. Possible scenario: If a memcached server in our cluster goes boom, we want someone (operative system admin) to be automatically contacted by email/iphone push notification or in any other appropriate way. If we we're about to install 150 identical applications for our customers on our servers, and a memcached server dies - all 150 applications will individually find this out and contact our system admin, which most certainly is going to think about getting a new job where he or she isn't about to be woken up by getting 150 messages sent 4:15 in the morning. Possible solution: One idea is to set up an external server for error handling that gets a $_POST or cURL request sent, and handles storage of the error message depending on the seriousness of the actual error message. It would of course check upon receiving the error call, that if the same memcached server have already been reported as offline, there would be no need to spam the system admin with additional reminders... The questions: What's a good approach on how to handle errors? How does the big guys in the industry handle this? Thanks!

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• Dynamic programming Approach- Knapsack Puzzle

  - by idalsin

  I'm trying to solve the Knapsack problem with the dynamical programming(DP) approach, with Python 3.x. My TA pointed us towards this code for a head start. I've tried to implement it, as below: def take_input(infile): f_open = open(infile, 'r') lines = [] for line in f_open: lines.append(line.strip()) f_open.close() return lines def create_list(jewel_lines): #turns the jewels into a list of lists jewels_list = [] for x in jewel_lines: weight = x.split()[0] value = x.split()[1] jewels_list.append((int(value), int(weight))) jewels_list = sorted(jewels_list, key = lambda x : (-x[0], x[1])) return jewels_list def dynamic_grab(items, max_weight): table = [[0 for weight in range(max_weight+1)] for j in range(len(items)+1)] for j in range(1,len(items)+1): val= items[j-1][0] wt= items[j-1][1] for weight in range(1, max_weight+1): if wt > weight: table[j][weight] = table[j-1][weight] else: table[j][weight] = max(table[j-1][weight],table[j-1][weight-wt] + val) result = [] weight = max_weight for j in range(len(items),0,-1): was_added = table[j][weight] != table[j-1][weight] if was_added: val = items[j-1][0] wt = items[j-1][1] result.append(items[j-1]) weight -= wt return result def totalvalue(comb): #total of a combo of items totwt = totval = 0 for val, wt in comb: totwt += wt totval += val return (totval, -totwt) if totwt <= max_weight else (0,0) #required setup of variables infile = "JT_test1.txt" given_input = take_input(infile) max_weight = int(given_input[0]) given_input.pop(0) jewels_list = create_list(given_input) #test lines print(jewels_list) print(greedy_grab(jewels_list, max_weight)) bagged = dynamic_grab(jewels_list, max_weight) print(totalvalue(bagged)) The sample case is below. It is in the format line[0] = bag_max, line[1:] is in form(weight, value): 575 125 3000 50 100 500 6000 25 30 I'm confused as to the logic of this code in that it returns me a tuple and I'm not sure what the output tuple represents. I've been looking at this for a while and just don't understand what the code is pointing me at. Any help would be appreciated.

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• SharpDX: best practice for multiple RenderForms?

  - by Rob Jellinghaus

  I have an XNA app, but I really need to add multiple render windows, which XNA doesn't do. I'm looking at SharpDX (both for multi-window support and for DX11 / Metro / many other reasons). I decided to hack up the SharpDX DX11 MultiCubeTexture sample to see if I could make it work. My changes are pretty trivial. The original sample had: [STAThread] private static void Main() { var form = new RenderForm("SharpDX - MiniCubeTexture Direct3D11 Sample"); ... I changed this to: struct RenderFormWithActions { internal readonly RenderForm Form; // should just be Action but it's not in System namespace?! internal readonly Action RenderAction; internal readonly Action DisposeAction; internal RenderFormWithActions(RenderForm form, Action renderAction, Action disposeAction) { Form = form; RenderAction = renderAction; DisposeAction = disposeAction; } } [STAThread] private static void Main() { // hackity hack new Thread(new ThreadStart(() = { RenderFormWithActions form1 = CreateRenderForm(); RenderLoop.Run(form1.Form, () = form1.RenderAction(0)); form1.DisposeAction(0); })).Start(); new Thread(new ThreadStart(() = { RenderFormWithActions form2 = CreateRenderForm(); RenderLoop.Run(form2.Form, () = form2.RenderAction(0)); form2.DisposeAction(0); })).Start(); } private static RenderFormWithActions CreateRenderForm() { var form = new RenderForm("SharpDX - MiniCubeTexture Direct3D11 Sample"); ... Basically, I split out all the Main() code into a separate method which creates a RenderForm and two delegates (a render delegate, and a dispose delegate), and bundles them all together into a struct. I call this method twice, each time from a separate, new thread. Then I just have one RenderLoop on each new thread. I was thinking this wouldn't work because of the [STAThread] declaration -- I thought I would need to create the RenderForm on the main (STA) thread, and run only a single RenderLoop on that thread. Fortunately, it seems I was wrong. This works quite well -- if you drag one of the forms around, it stops rendering while being dragged, but starts again when you drop it; and the other form keeps chugging away. My questions are pretty basic: Is this a reasonable approach, or is there some lurking threading issue that might make trouble? My code simply duplicates all the setup code -- it makes a duplicate SwapChain, Device, Texture2D, vertex buffer, everything. I don't have a problem with this level of duplication -- my app is not intensive enough to suffer resource issues -- but nonetheless, is there a better practice? Is there any good reference for which DirectX structures can safely be shared, and which can't? It appears that RenderLoop.Run calls the render delegate in a tight loop. Is there any standard way to limit the frame rate of RenderLoop.Run, if you don't want a 400FPS app eating 100% of your CPU? Should I just Thread.Sleep(30) in the render delegate? (I asked on the sharpdx.org forums as well, but Alexandre is on vacation for two weeks, and my sister wants me to do a performance with my app at her wedding in three and a half weeks, so I'm mighty incented here! http://robjsoftware.org for details of what I'm building....)

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• The best, in the West

  - by Fatherjack

  As many of you know, I run the SQL South West user group and we are currently in full flow preparing to stage the UK’s second SQL Saturday. The SQL Saturday spotlight is going to fall on Exeter in March 2013. We have full-day session on Friday 8th with some truly amazing speakers giving their insights and experience into some vital areas of working with SQL Server: Dave Ballantyne and Dave Morrison – TSQL and internals Christian Bolton and Gavin Payne – Mission critical data platforms on Windows Server 2012 Denny Cherry – SQL Server Security André Kamman – Powershell 3.0 for SQL Server Administrators and Developers Mladen Prajdic – From SQL Traces to Extended Events – The next big switch. A number of people have claimed that the choice is too good and they’d have trouble selecting just one session to attend. I can see how this is a problem but hope that they make their minds up quickly. The venue is a bespoke conference suite in the centre of Exeter but has limited capacity so we are working on a first-come first-served basis. All the session details and booking and travel information can be found on our user group website. The Saturday will be a day of free, 50 minute sessions on all aspects SQL Server from almost 30 different speakers. If you would like to submit a session then get a move on as submissions close on 8th January 2013 (That’s less than a month away). We are really interested in getting new speakers started so we have a lightning talk session where you can come along and give a small talk (anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes long) about anything connected with SQL Server as a way to introduce you to what it’s like to be a speaker at an event. Details on registering to attend and to submit a session (Lightning talks need to be submitted too please) can be found on our SQL Saturday pages. This is going to be the biggest and best bespoke SQL Server conference to ever take place this far South West in the UK and we aim to give everyone who comes to either day a real experience of the South West so we have a few surprises for you on the day.

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• Best of "The Moth" 2010

  - by Daniel Moth

  It is the time again (like in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) to look back at my blog for the past year and identify areas of interest that seem to be more prominent than others. After doing so, representative posts follow in my top 5 list (in random order). 1. This was the year where I had to move for the first time since 2004 my blog engine (blogger.com –> dasBlog), host provider (zen –> godaddy), web server technology and OS (apache on Linux –> IIS on Windows Server). My goal was not to break any permalinks or the look and feel of this website. A series of posts covered how I achieved that goal, culminating in a tool for others to use if they wanted to do the same: Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog. Going forward I aim to be sharing more small code utilities like that one… 2. At work I am known for being fairly responsive on email, and more importantly never dropping email balls on the floor. This is due to my email processing system, which I shared here: Processing Email in Outlook. I will be sharing more tips with regards to making the best of the Office products. 3. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the year people will remember as the one where Microsoft finally fights back in the mobile space. Even though the new platform means my Windows Mobile book sales will dwindle :-), I am ecstatic about Windows Phone 7 both as a consumer and as a developer. On the release day, to get you started I shared the top 10 Windows Phone 7 developer resources. I will be sharing my tips from my experience in writing code for and consuming this new platform… 4. For my HPC developer friends using Visual Studio, I shared Slides and code for MPI Cluster Debugger and also gave you all the links you need for getting started with Dryad and DryadLINQ from MSR. Expect more from me on cluster development in the coming year… 5. Still in the HPC space, but actually also in the game and even mainstream development, the big disruption and opportunity comes in the form of GPGPU and, on the Microsoft platform, (currently) DirectCompute. Expect more from me on gpgpu development in the coming year… Subscribe via the link on the left to stay tuned for 2011… I wish you a very Happy New Year (with whatever definition of happiness works for you)! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Best Platform/Engine for turn based Client/Server Android game

  - by Paradine

  I'm currently designing a turn based game for tablets. Initially for Android with porting to iOS later considered in design. I'm having trouble narrowing down the available technologies to even know where to spend my research time. I am hoping that if I explain what I am trying to achieve someone may be able to suggest a platform and/or engine. I've looked into some of the open source Engines ( http://www.cuteandroid.com/ten-open-source-android-2d-or-3d-game-engine-for-android-developers ) and some appear to handle much of what I might require - although with a higher focus on graphics than i need. Mages looks interesting although development appears to have ceased. If I could somehow leverage GoogleApps that would be excellent. Here is what I am trying to achieve: PvP turn based strategy game over internet - minimal animation and bandwidth required Players match up online using MetaGame system MatchID created on Resolution Server and Game starts Clients have 30 second countdown to select MoveString Clients sends small secure timestamped and MatchIDed MoveString to Resolution server Resolution server looks up Move String for each player, Resolves and Updates Players status in MatchID on Server Resolution server updates Client Views Repeat until victory conditions met - MatchID Closed, Rewards earned in MetaGame There will also need to be a full social and account system and metagame backend - but this could be running on separate system(s) Tablet in Offline mode would be catalog browsing and perhaps single player AI - bum I'm focusing on the Resolution Server at this point I'm not even certain if I would be looking at an Android App or a WebApp at this stage! I want a custom GUI so I guess an app - but maybe as I have little animation a WebApp might also work. Probably some combination of both. There will be very small overhead in data between client server - essentially a small text string every 30 seconds sent to the Resolution server which looks up the Effect and applies it to the Opponents string and determines some results to apply to the match. The client view is updated minimally with the results (only 5 in game Integers tracked) - perhaps triggering small animations/popups on the client to show the end result. e.g Explosion. If you have suggestions for a good technology or platform to best achieving the Resolution Server I'd love to hear. Also if you have experience with open source Engines - and could narrow down which (if any ) might be most suitable that would be a big help. Thanks in advance

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• Best Platform/Engine for turn based Client/Server Android game

  - by Paradine

  I'm currently designing a turn based game for tablets. Initially for Android with porting to iOS later considered in design. I'm having trouble narrowing down the available technologies to even know where to spend my research time. I am hoping that if I explain what I am trying to achieve someone may be able to suggest a platform and/or engine. I've looked into some of the open source Engines ( http://www.cuteandroid.com/ten-open-source-android-2d-or-3d-game-engine-for-android-developers ) and some appear to handle much of what I might require - although with a higher focus on graphics than i need. Mages looks interesting although development appears to have ceased. If I could somehow leverage GoogleApps that would be excellent. Here is what I am trying to achieve: PvP turn based strategy game over internet - minimal animation and bandwidth required Players match up online using MetaGame system MatchID created on Resolution Server and Game starts Clients have 30 second countdown to select MoveString Clients sends small secure timestamped and MatchIDed MoveString to Resolution server Resolution server looks up Move String for each player, Resolves and Updates Players status in MatchID on Server Resolution server updates Client Views Repeat until victory conditions met - MatchID Closed, Rewards earned in MetaGame There will also need to be a full social and account system and metagame backend - but this could be running on separate system(s) Tablet in Offline mode would be catalog browsing and perhaps single player AI - bum I'm focusing on the Resolution Server at this point I'm not even certain if I would be looking at an Android App or a WebApp at this stage! I want a custom GUI so I guess an app - but maybe as I have little animation a WebApp might also work. Probably some combination of both. There will be very small overhead in data between client server - essentially a small text string every 30 seconds sent to the Resolution server which looks up the Effect and applies it to the Opponents string and determines some results to apply to the match. The client view is updated minimally with the results (only 5 in game Integers tracked) - perhaps triggering small animations/popups on the client to show the end result. e.g Explosion. If you have suggestions for a good technology or platform to best achieving the Resolution Server I'd love to hear. Also if you have experience with open source Engines - and could narrow down which (if any ) might be most suitable that would be a big help. Thanks in advance

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• Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer

  - by TheBeefMightBeTough

  I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws.

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• Best Advice Ever: Learn By Helping Others

  - by Argenis

  I remember when back in 2001 my friend and former SQL Server MVP Carlos Eduardo Rojas was busy earning his MVP street-cred in the NNTP forums, aka Newsgroups. I always thought he was playing the Sheriff trying to put some order in a Wild Wild West town by trying to understand what these people were asking. He spent a lot of time doing this stuff – and I thought it was just plain crazy. After all, he was doing it for free. What was he gaining from all of that work? It was not until the advent of Twitter and #SQLHelp that I realized the real gain behind helping others. Forget about the glory and the laurels of others thanking you (and thinking you’re the best thing ever – ha!), or whatever award with whatever three letter acronym might be given to you. It’s about what you learn in the process of helping others. See, when you teach something, it’s usually at a fixed date and time, and on a specific topic. But helping others with their issues or general questions is something that goes on 24x7, on whatever topic under the sun. Just go look at sites like DBA.StackExchange.com, or the SQLServerCentral forums. It’s questions coming in literally non-stop from all corners or the world. And yet a lot of people are willing to help you, regardless of who you are, where you come from, or what time of day it is. And in my case, this process of helping others usually leads to me learning something new. Especially in those cases where the question isn’t really something I’m good at. The delicate part comes when you’re ready to give an answer, but you’re not sure. Often times I’ll try to validate with Internet searches and what have you. Often times I’ll throw in a question mark at the end of the answer, so as not to look authoritative, but rather suggestive. But as time passes by, you get more and more comfortable with that topic. And that’s the real gain.  I have done this for many years now on #SQLHelp, which is my preferred vehicle for providing assistance. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from it. By helping others, by watching others help. It’s all knowledge and experience you gain…and you might not be getting all that in your day job today. Such thing, my dear reader, is invaluable. It’s what will differentiate yours amongst a pack of resumes. It’s what will get you places. Take it from me - a guy who, like you, knew nothing about SQL Server.

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• Best system for creating a 2d racing track

  - by tesselode

  I am working a 2D racing game and I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to define the track. At the very least, I need to be able to create a closed circuit with any amount of turns at any angle, and I need vehicles to collide with the edges of the track. I also want the following things to be true if possible (but they are optional): The code is simple and free of funky workarounds and extras I can define all of the parts of the track (such as turns) relative to the previous parts I can predict the exact position of the road at a certain point (that way I can easily and cleanly make closed circuits) Here are my options: Use a set of points. This is my current system. I have a set of turns and width changes that the track is supposed to make over time. I have a point which I transform according to these instructions, and I place a point every 5 steps or so, depending on how precise I want the track to be. These points make up the track. The main problem with this is the discrepancy between the collisions and the way the track is drawn. I won't get into too much detail, but the picture below shows what is happening (although it is exaggerated a bit). The blue lines are what is drawn, the red lines are what the vehicle collides with. I could work around this, but I'd rather avoid funky workaround code. Beizer curves. These seem cool, but my first impression of them is that they'll be a little daunting to learn and are probably too complicated for my needs. Some other kind of curve? I have heard of some other kinds of curves; maybe those are more applicable. Use Box2D or another physics engine. Instead of defining the center of the track, I could use a physics engine to define shapes that make up the road. The downside to this, however, is that I have to put in a little more work to place the checkpoints. Something completely different. Basically, what is the simplest system for generating a race track that would allow me to create closed circuits cleanly, handle collisions, and not have a ton of weird code?

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• How best to look up objects by label?

  - by dsollen

  I am writing the server backed by a pre-written API. I'm going to get a number of strings representing ports, signals, paths, etc etc etc. I need to look up the object associated with a given label, these objects are all in memory (no sql magic to do this for me). My question is, how best do I associate a given unique label with the mutable object it represents? I have enough objects that looking through every signal or every port to find the one that matches is possible, but may be slightly too slow. To be honest the direct 'look at every object' method is probably good enough for so small a body of objects and anything else is premature optimization, but I still am curious what the proper solution would be if I thought my signals were going to grow a bit larger. As I see it there are two options available. First would be to to create a 'store' that is a simple map between object and label. I could have it so that every time I call addObject the object is automatically saved into a hashmap or the like. This works, but relies on my properly adding and deleting each object so the map doesn't grow indefinitely. The biggest issue to me is that this involves having some hidden static map in my ModelObject class that just feels...wrong somehow. The other option is to have some method that can interpret the labels. All of these labels are derived from the underlying objects. So I can look at the signal label, for instance, and say "these 20 characters are the port" to figure out what port I need. This would allow me to quickly figure out what I need. However, if the label method is changed the translateLabelToObject method needs to be updated as well or everything breaks. Which solution is cleaner, or possibly a cleaner solution than either of above? For the record I'm working with sufficient number of variables to make direct comparison a little slow, but not enough to be concerned about memory overhead, written in java. All objects that have labels I need to look up extend the same parent class.

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• Best way to process a queue in C# (PDF treatment)

  - by Bartdude

  First of all let me expose what I would like to do : I already dispose of a long-time running webapp developed in ASP.NET (C#) 2.0. In this app, users can upload standard PDF files (text+pics). The app is running in production on a Windows Server 2003 and has a dedicated database server (SQL server 2008) also running Windows Server 2003. I myself am a quite experienced web developer, but never actually programmed anything non-web (or at least nothing serious). I plan on adding a functionality to the webapp for which I would need a jpg snapshot of each page of the PDF. Creating these "thumbnails" isn't the big deal as such, I already do it inside my webapp using ghostscript. I've only done it on 1 page documents for now though, and the new functionality will need to process bigger documents. In order for this process to be transparent aswell for the admins as the final users, I would like to implement some kind of queue to delay the processing of the thumbnails. There again, no problem to create the queue, it will consist of records in a table, with enough info to find the pdf document back. Then I will need to process this queue, and that's were my interrogations start. Obviously the best solution to process it isn't an ASP script or so, so I will have to get out of my known environment. No problem, but I have no idea which direction to go. Therefore, a few questions : What should I develop ? I presumably need something that is "standby" on the server, runs when needed, then returns to idle state until further notice.Should I be looking into Windows service ? Is there another more appropriate type of project ? Depending on the first answer, what will be the approach ? Should I have somehow SQL server "tell" the program/service/... to process the queue, or should I have that program/service/... periodically check the state of the queue and treat new items. In both case, which functionality can I use ? we're not talking about hundreds of PDF a day (max 50 maybe), I can totally afford to treat the queue 1 item at a time. Can you confirm I don't have to look much further on threads and so ? (I found a lot of answers talking about threads in queue treatment, but it looks quite overkill for my needs) Maybe linked to the previous question : what about concurrent call to the program, whatever it is ? Let's suppose it is currently running, and a new record comes in the queue, what should be the behaviour ? I don't need much detailed answers and would already be happy with answers like "You can do the processing with a service, and yes it's possible to have sqlserver on machine A trigger a service start on machine B" or "You have to develop xxx and then use the scheduler to run it every xxx minutes". I don't mind reading articles and so, but I can hardly afford to spend too much time learning stuff to finally realize I went the wrong way for this project, so basically I'm trying to narrow down the scope of matters I need to investigate. Thanks for reading me, I hope I'll find some helping hands on here :-)

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• The Server Fault Wiki of recommended practices [migrated]

  - by Avery Payne

  So I've noticed that there are several recommendations on basic practices on Server Fault, but there doesn't seem to be a cohesive view as to how those recommendations would all fit together. So I thought I would lump these together as a kind of mental exercise to see what the "ServerFault Community IT Department" would look like if it were implemented. This would give a few things: it would make a reasonable wiki (in the true wiki spirit of many contributions), it would provide several links to well-vetted practices, and it would be kind of fun to see what the amalgamation would look like. And who knows, it may even point out some interesting issues between different forms of "best practices", although I would be stunned if there was a conflict hidden in there someplace... Add your favorites from Server Fault as answers, and I'll re-edit this section with the results. Here's a few catagories to collect different ideas together. Hardware Configuration(s) Server room configuration. Server room temperature Firmware Updates and Scheduling Storage Configuration(s) Selecting a NAS box Linux: Dealing with /tmp Linux: Install apps in /var or /opt? Network Configuration(s) checking DNS health and compliance Security Practice(s) Password (General) Best Practices Password sharing methods Windows Update Updating Windows Servers that are hosts for VMs Network Service(s) User Service(s) User Naming & Deletion Upgrade Process(es) Disaster Recovery Checking Backups Documenting an outage for a post-mortem review Last Edit: 2010-02-17

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• Best Method For Evaluating Existing Software or New Software

  How many of us have been faced with having to decide on an off-the-self or a custom built component, application, or solution to integrate in to an existing system or to be the core foundation of a new system? What is the best method for evaluating existing software or new software still in the design phase? One of the industry preferred methodologies to use is the Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs (ARID) evaluation process.  ARID is a hybrid mixture of the Active Design Review (ADR) methodology and the Architectural Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). So what is ARID? ARD’s main goal is to ensure quality, detailed designs in software. One way in which it does this is by empowering reviewers by assigning generic open ended survey questions. This approach attempts to remove the possibility for allowing the standard answers such as “Yes” or “No”. The ADR process ignores the “Yes”/”No” questions due to the fact that they can be leading based on how the question is asked. Additionally these questions tend to receive less thought in comparison to more open ended questions. Common Active Design Review Questions What possible exceptions can occur in this component, application, or solution? How should exceptions be handled in this component, application, or solution? Where should exceptions be handled in this component, application, or solution? How should the component, application, or solution flow based on the design? What is the maximum execution time for every component, application, or solution? What environments can this component, application, or solution? What data dependencies does this component, application, or solution have? What kind of data does this component, application, or solution require? Ok, now I know what ARID is, how can I apply? Let’s imagine that your organization is going to purchase an off-the-shelf (OTS) solution for its customer-relationship management software. What process would we use to ensure that the correct purchase is made? If we use ARID, then we will have a series of 9 steps broken up by 2 phases in order to ensure that the correct OTS solution is purchases. Phase 1 Identify the Reviewers Prepare the Design Briefing Prepare the Seed Scenarios Prepare the Materials When identifying reviewers for a design it is preferred that they be pulled from a candidate pool comprised of developers that are going to implement the design. The believe is that developers actually implementing the design will have more a vested interest in ensuring that the design is correct prior to the start of code. Design debriefing consist of a summary of the design, examples of the design solving real world examples put in to use and should be no longer than two hours typically. The primary goal of this briefing is to adequately summarize the design so that the review members could actually implement the design. In the example of purchasing an OTS product I would attempt to review my briefing prior to its distribution with the review facilitator to ensure that nothing was excluded that should have not been. This practice will also allow me to test the length of the briefing to ensure that can be delivered in an appropriate about of time. Seed Scenarios are designed to illustrate conceptualized scenarios when applied with a set of sample data. These scenarios can then be used by the reviewers in the actual evaluation of the software, All materials needed for the evaluation should be prepared ahead of time so that they can be reviewed prior to and during the meeting. Materials Included: Presentation Seed Scenarios Review Agenda Phase 2 Present ARID Present Design Brainstorm and prioritize scenarios Apply scenarios Summarize Prior to the start of any ARID review meeting the Facilitator should define the remaining steps of ARID so that all the participants know exactly what they are doing prior to the start of the review process. Once the ARID rules have been laid out, then the lead designer presents an overview of the design which typically takes about two hours. During this time no questions about the design or rational are allowed to be asked by the review panel as a standard, but they are written down for use latter in the process. After the presentation the list of compiled questions is then summarized and sent back to the lead designer as areas that need to be addressed further. In the example of purchasing an OTS product issues could arise regarding security, the implementation needed or even if this is this the correct product to solve the needed solution. After the Design presentation a brainstorming and prioritize scenarios process begins by reducing the seed scenarios down to just the highest priority scenarios.  These will then be used to test the design for suitability. Once the selected scenarios have been defined the reviewers apply the examples provided in the presentation to the scenarios. The intended output of this process is to provide code or pseudo code that makes use of the examples provided while solving the selected seed scenarios. As a standard rule, the designers of the systems are not allowed to help the review board unless they all become stuck. When this occurs it is documented and along with the reason why the designer needed to help the review panel back on track. Once all of the scenarios have been completed the review facilitator reviews with the group issues that arise during the process. Then the reviewers will be polled as to efficacy of the review experience. References: Clements, Paul., Kazman, Rick., Klien, Mark. (2002). Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies Indianapolis, IN: Addison-Wesley

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• The Best BPM Journey: More Exciting Destinations with Process Accelerators

  - by Cesare Rotundo

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle Open World (OOW) earlier this month has been a great occasion to discuss with our BPM customers. It was interesting to hear definite patterns emerging from those conversations: “BPM is a journey”, “experiences to share”, “our organization now understands what BPM is”, and my favorite (with some caveats): “BPM is like wine tasting, once you start, you want to try more”. These customers have started their journey, climbed up the learning curve, and reached a vantage point that allows them to see their next BPM destination. They see the next few processes they are going to tackle and improve with BPM. These processes/destinations target both horizontal processes where BPM replaces or coordinates manual activities, and critical industry processes that the company needs to improve to compete and deliver increasing value. Each new destination generates value, allowing the organization to reduce the cost of manual processes that were not supported by apps/custom development, and increase efficiency of end-to-end processes partially covered by apps/custom dev. The question we wanted to answer is how to help organizations experience deeper success with BPM, by increasing their awareness of the potential for reaching new targets, and equipping them with the right tools. We decided that we needed to identify destinations, and plot routes to show the fastest path to those destinations. In the end we want to enable customers to reach “Process Excellence”: continuously set new targets and consistently and efficiently reach them. The result is Oracle Process Accelerators (PA), solutions built using the rich functionality in Oracle BPM Suite. PAs offers a rapidly expanding list of exciting destinations. Our launch of the latest installment of Process Accelerators at Oracle Open World includes new Industry-focused solutions such as Public Sector Incident Reporting and Financial Services Loan Origination, and improved other horizontal PAs, including Travel Request Management, Document Routing and Approval, and Internal Service Requests. Just before OOW we had extended the Oracle deployment of Travel Request Management, riding the enthusiastic response from early adopters among travelers (employees), management and support (approvers). “Getting there first” means being among the first to extract value from the PA approach, while acquiring deeper insights into the customers’ perspective. This is especially noteworthy when it comes to PAs, a set of solutions designed to be quickly deployed and iteratively improved by customers. The OOW launch has generated immediate feedback from customers, non-customers, analysts, and partners. They all confirmed that both Business and IT at organizations benefit from PAs when it comes to exploring the potential for BPM to improve their business processes. PAs help customers visualize what can be done with BPM, and PAs are made to be extended: you can see your destination, change the path to fit your needs, and deploy. We're discovering new destinations/processes that the market wants us to support, generic enough across industries and within industries. We'll keep on building sets of requirements, deliver functional design, construct solutions using Oracle BPM, and test them not only functionally but for performance, scalability, clustering, making them robust, product-quality. Delivering BPM solutions with product-grade quality is the equivalent of following a tried-and-tested path on a map. Do you know of existing destinations in your industry? If yes, we can draw a path to innovative processes together.

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• Design approach, string table data, variables, stl memory usage

  - by howieh

  I have an old structure class like this: typedef vector<vector<string>> VARTYPE_T; which works as a single variable. This variable can hold from one value over a list to data like a table. Most values are long,double, string or double [3] for coordinates (x,y,z). I just convert them as needed. The variables are managed in a map like this : map<string,VARTYPE_T *> where the string holds the variable name. Sure, they are wrapped in classes. Also i have a tree of nodes, where each node can hold one of these variablemaps. Using VS 2008 SP1 for this, i detect a lot of memory fragmentation. Checking against the stlport, stlport seemed to be faster (20% ) and uses lesser memory (30%, for my test cases). So the question is: What is the best implementation to solve this requirement with fast an properly used memory ? Should i write an own allocator like a pool allocator. How would you do this ? Thanks in advance, Howie

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• WCF: WSDL-first approach: Problems with generating fault types

  - by Juri

  Hi, I'm currently in the process of creating a WCF webservice which should be compatible with WS-I Basic Profile 1.1. I'm using a wsdl-first approach (actually for the first time), defining first the xsd for the complex types, the WSDL and then using svcutil.exe for generating the according server as well as client-side interfaces/proxies. So far everything works fine. Then I decided to add a fault to my WSDL. Regenerating with svcutil succeeded, but then I noticed that my generated fault doesn't have the properties I defined in my xsd file (which is imported by my WSDL). Fault XSD definition <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" targetNamespace="http://product.mycompany.com/groupsfault_v1.xsd" xmlns:tns="http://product.mycompany.com/groupsfault_v1.xsd"> <complexType name="groupsFault"> <sequence> <element name="code" type="int"/> <element name="message" type="string"/> </sequence> </complexType> </schema> Generated .Net fault object [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Runtime.Serialization", "3.0.0.0")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSchemaProviderAttribute("ExportSchema")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute(IsNullable=false)] public partial class groupFault : object, System.Xml.Serialization.IXmlSerializable { private System.Xml.XmlNode[] nodesField; private static System.Xml.XmlQualifiedName typeName = new System.Xml.XmlQualifiedName("groupFault", "http://sicp.services.siag.it/groups_v1.wsdl"); public System.Xml.XmlNode[] Nodes { get { return this.nodesField; } set { this.nodesField = value; } } public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.nodesField = System.Runtime.Serialization.XmlSerializableServices.ReadNodes(reader); } public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { System.Runtime.Serialization.XmlSerializableServices.WriteNodes(writer, this.Nodes); } public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } public static System.Xml.XmlQualifiedName ExportSchema(System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaSet schemas) { System.Runtime.Serialization.XmlSerializableServices.AddDefaultSchema(schemas, typeName); return typeName; } } Is this ok?? I'd expect to have an object created that contains properties for "code" and "message" s.t. you can then throw it by using something like ... throw new FaultException<groupFault>(new groupFault { code=100, message="error" }); ... (sorry for the lower-case type definitions, but this is generated code from the WSDL) Why doesn't the svcutil.exe generate those properties?? Some sources on the web suggested to add the /useSerializerForFaults option. I tried it, it doesn't work giving me an exception that the fault type is missing on the wsdl:portType declaration. Validation with several other tools succeeded however. Any help is VERY appreciated :) thx

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• How to approach ninject container/kernel in inheritance situation

  - by Bas

  I have the following situation: class RuleEngine {} abstract class RuleImplementation {} class RootRule : RuleImplementation {} class Rule1 : RuleImplementation {} class Rule2 : RuleImplementation {} The RuleEngine is injected by Ninject and has a kernel at it's disposal, the role of the RuleEngine is to fire off the root rule, which on it's turn will load all the other rules also using Ninject, but using a different Module and creating a new Kernel. Now my question is, some of the rules require some dependencies which I want to inject using Ninject. What would be the best way to create the kernel for these rules and also still do proper unit testing with it? (the kernel shouldn't become a real pain in my tests) I've been thinking of the following possibilitys: The kernel that I use in the RuleEngine class could be tossed around to RuleImplementation and thus be available for every rule. But tossing around Kernels isn't really something I wish to do. When creating the rules, I could give the kernel (which creates the rules) as a constructor argument for each rule. I could create a method inside the RuleImplementation which creates a kernel and makes it possible for the rules to retrieve the kernel using a get() in the abstract class Whats the convention of passing around/creating kernels? Just create new kernels, or reuse them?

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