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• How to Build Services from Legacy Applications

  - by Chris Falter

  The SOA consultants invaded the executive suite at your company or agency, preached the true religion, and converted the unbelievers. Now by divine imperative you must convert your legacy applications into a suite of reusable services.  But as usual, you lack the time and resources that you need in order to develop the services properly.  So you googled or bing’ed, found this blog post, and began crying in gratitude.  Yes, as the title implies, I am going to reveal my easy, 3-step, works-every-time process for converting silos of legacy applications into the inventory of services your CIO has been dreaming about.  So just close your eyes and count to 3 … now open them … and here it is…. Not. While wishful thinking is too often the coin of the IT realm, even the most naive practitioner knows that converting legacy applications into reusable services requires more than a magic wand.  The reason is simple: if your starting point is your legacy applications, then you will simply be bolting a web service technology layer on top of your legacy API.  And that legacy API is built in the image of the silo applications.  Enter the wide gate of the legacy API, follow the broad path of generating service interfaces from existing code, and you will arrive at the siloed enterprise destruction that you thought you were escaping. The Straight and Narrow Path This past week I had the opportunity to learn how the FBI Criminal Justice Information Systems department has been transitioning from silo applications to a service inventory.  Lafe Hutcheson, IT Specialist in the architecture group and fellow attendee at an SOA Architect Certification Workshop, was my guide.  Lafe has survived the chaos of an SOA initiative, so it is not surprising that he was able to return from a US Army deployment to Kabul, Afghanistan with nary a scratch.  According to Lafe, building their service inventory is a three-phase process: Model a business process.  This requires intense collaboration between the IT and business wings of the organization, of course.  The FBI uses IBM Websphere tools to model the process with BPMN. Identify candidate services to facilitate the business process. Convert the BPMN to an executable BPEL orchestration, model and develop the services, and use a BPEL engine to run the process.  The FBI uses ActiveVOS for orchestration services. The 12 Step Program to End Your Legacy API Addiction Thomas Erl has documented a process for building a web service inventory that is quite similar to the FBI process. Erl’s process adds a technology architecture definition phase, which allows for the technology environment to influence the inventory blueprint.  For example, if you are using an enterprise service bus, you will probably not need to build your own utility services for logging or intermediate routing.  Erl also lists a service-oriented analysis phase that highlights the 12-step process of applying the principles of service orientation to modeling your services.  Erl depicts the modeling of a service inventory as an iterative process: model a business process, define the relevant technology architecture, define the service inventory blueprint, analyze the services, then model another business process, rinse and repeat.  (Astute readers will note that Erl’s diagram, restricted to analysis and modeling process, does not include the implementation phase that concludes the FBI service development methodology.) The service-oriented analysis phase is where you find the 12 steps that will free you from your legacy API addiction. In a nutshell, you identify the steps in the process that need services; identify the different types of services (agnostic entity services, service compositions, and utility services) that are required; apply service-orientation principles; and normalize the inventory into cohesive service models. Rather than discuss each of the 12 steps individually, I will close by simply referring my readers to Erl’s explanation.

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• problem with frustum AABB culling in DirectX

  - by Matthew Poole

  Hi, I am currently working on a project with a few friends, and I am trying to get frustum culling working. Every single tutorial or article I go to shows that my math is correct and that this should be working. I thought maybe posting here, somebody would catch something I could not. Thank you. Here are the important code snippets /create the projection matrix void CD3DCamera::SetLens(float fov, float aspect, float nearZ, float farZ) { D3DXMatrixPerspectiveFovLH(&projMat, D3DXToRadian(fov), aspect, nearZ, farZ); } //build the view matrix after changes have been made to camera void CD3DCamera::BuildView() { //keep axes orthoganal D3DXVec3Normalize(&look, &look); //up D3DXVec3Cross(&up, &look, &right); D3DXVec3Normalize(&up, &up); //right D3DXVec3Cross(&right, &up, &look); D3DXVec3Normalize(&right, &right); //fill view matrix float x = -D3DXVec3Dot(&position, &right); float y = -D3DXVec3Dot(&position, &up); float z = -D3DXVec3Dot(&position, &look); viewMat(0,0) = right.x; viewMat(1,0) = right.y; viewMat(2,0) = right.z; viewMat(3,0) = x; viewMat(0,1) = up.x; viewMat(1,1) = up.y; viewMat(2,1) = up.z; viewMat(3,1) = y; viewMat(0,2) = look.x; viewMat(1,2) = look.y; viewMat(2,2) = look.z; viewMat(3,2) = z; viewMat(0,3) = 0.0f; viewMat(1,3) = 0.0f; viewMat(2,3) = 0.0f; viewMat(3,3) = 1.0f; } void CD3DCamera::BuildFrustum() { D3DXMATRIX VP; D3DXMatrixMultiply(&VP, &viewMat, &projMat); D3DXVECTOR4 col0(VP(0,0), VP(1,0), VP(2,0), VP(3,0)); D3DXVECTOR4 col1(VP(0,1), VP(1,1), VP(2,1), VP(3,1)); D3DXVECTOR4 col2(VP(0,2), VP(1,2), VP(2,2), VP(3,2)); D3DXVECTOR4 col3(VP(0,3), VP(1,3), VP(2,3), VP(3,3)); // Planes face inward frustum[0] = (D3DXPLANE)(col2); // near frustum[1] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 - col2); // far frustum[2] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 + col0); // left frustum[3] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 - col0); // right frustum[4] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 - col1); // top frustum[5] = (D3DXPLANE)(col3 + col1); // bottom // Normalize the frustum for( int i = 0; i < 6; ++i ) D3DXPlaneNormalize( &frustum[i], &frustum[i] ); } bool FrustumCheck(D3DXVECTOR3 max, D3DXVECTOR3 min, const D3DXPLANE* frustum) { // Test assumes frustum planes face inward. D3DXVECTOR3 P; D3DXVECTOR3 Q; bool ret = false; for(int i = 0; i < 6; ++i) { // For each coordinate axis x, y, z... for(int j = 0; j < 3; ++j) { // Make PQ point in the same direction as the plane normal on this axis. if( frustum[i][j] > 0.0f ) { P[j] = min[j]; Q[j] = max[j]; } else { P[j] = max[j]; Q[j] = min[j]; } } if(D3DXPlaneDotCoord(&frustum[i], &Q) < 0.0f ) ret = false; } return true; }

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database – Day 14 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (Yesterday’s post) Document Databases (Yesterday’s post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Today’s post) Spatial Databases (Today’s post) Columnar Databases  Relational Database is a row store database or a row oriented database. Columnar databases are column oriented or column store databases. As we discussed earlier in Big Data we have different kinds of data and we need to store different kinds of data in the database. When we have columnar database it is very easy to do so as we can just add a new column to the columnar database. HBase is one of the most popular columnar databases. It uses Hadoop file system and MapReduce for its core data storage. However, remember this is not a good solution for every application. This is particularly good for the database where there is high volume incremental data is gathered and processed. Graph Databases For a highly interconnected data it is suitable to use Graph Database. This database has node relationship structure. Nodes and relationships contain a Key Value Pair where data is stored. The major advantage of this database is that it supports faster navigation among various relationships. For example, Facebook uses a graph database to list and demonstrate various relationships between users. Neo4J is one of the most popular open source graph database. One of the major dis-advantage of the Graph Database is that it is not possible to self-reference (self joins in the RDBMS terms) and there might be real world scenarios where this might be required and graph database does not support it. Spatial Databases  We all use Foursquare, Google+ as well Facebook Check-ins for location aware check-ins. All the location aware applications figure out the position of the phone with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS). Think about it, so many different users at different location in the world and checking-in all together. Additionally, the applications now feature reach and users are demanding more and more information from them, for example like movies, coffee shop or places see. They are all running with the help of Spatial Databases. Spatial data are standardize by the Open Geospatial Consortium known as OGC. Spatial data helps answering many interesting questions like “Distance between two locations, area of interesting places etc.” When we think of it, it is very clear that handing spatial data and returning meaningful result is one big task when there are millions of users moving dynamically from one place to another place & requesting various spatial information. PostGIS/OpenGIS suite is very popular spatial database. It runs as a layer implementation on the RDBMS PostgreSQL. This makes it totally unique as it offers best from both the worlds. Courtesy: mushroom network Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Hive. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Why do my pyramids fade black and then back to colour again

  - by geminiCoder

  I have the following vertecies and norms GLfloat verts[36] = { -0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 1, 0, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, 0, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 1, 0 }; GLfloat norms[36] = { 0, -1, 0, 0, -1, 0, 0, -1, 0, -1, 0.25, 0.5, -1, 0.25, 0.5, -1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 0.25, -0.5, 1, 0.25, -0.5, 1, 0.25, -0.5, 0, -0.5, -1, 0, -0.5, -1, 0, -0.5, -1 }; I am writing my fists Open GL game, But I need to know for sure if my Normals are correct as the colours aren't rendering correctly. my Pyramids are coloured then fade to black every half rotation then back again. My app so far is based on the boiler plate code provided by apple. heres my modified setUp Method [EAGLContext setCurrentContext:self.context]; [self loadShaders]; self.effect = [[GLKBaseEffect alloc] init]; self.effect.light0.enabled = GL_TRUE; self.effect.light0.diffuseColor = GLKVector4Make(1.0f, 0.4f, 0.4f, 1.0f); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glGenVertexArraysOES(1, &_vertexArray); //create vertex array glBindVertexArrayOES(_vertexArray); glGenBuffers(1, &_vertexBuffer); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, _vertexBuffer); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(verts) + sizeof(norms), NULL, GL_STATIC_DRAW); //create vertex buffer big enough for both verts and norms and pass NULL as data.. uint8_t *ptr = (uint8_t *)glMapBufferOES(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, GL_WRITE_ONLY_OES); //map buffer to pass data to it memcpy(ptr, verts, sizeof(verts)); //copy verts memcpy(ptr+sizeof(verts), norms, sizeof(norms)); //copy norms to position after verts glUnmapBufferOES(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER); glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribPosition); glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribPosition, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, BUFFER_OFFSET(0)); //tell GL where verts are in buffer glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribNormal); glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribNormal, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, BUFFER_OFFSET(sizeof(verts))); //tell GL where norms are in buffer glBindVertexArrayOES(0); And the update method. - (void)update { float aspect = fabsf(self.view.bounds.size.width / self.view.bounds.size.height); GLKMatrix4 projectionMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakePerspective(GLKMathDegreesToRadians(65.0f), aspect, 0.1f, 100.0f); self.effect.transform.projectionMatrix = projectionMatrix; GLKMatrix4 baseModelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakeTranslation(0.0f, 0.0f, -4.0f); baseModelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Rotate(baseModelViewMatrix, _rotation, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); // Compute the model view matrix for the object rendered with GLKit GLKMatrix4 modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakeTranslation(0.0f, 0.0f, -1.5f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Rotate(modelViewMatrix, _rotation, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Multiply(baseModelViewMatrix, modelViewMatrix); self.effect.transform.modelviewMatrix = modelViewMatrix; // Compute the model view matrix for the object rendered with ES2 modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakeTranslation(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.5f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Rotate(modelViewMatrix, _rotation, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Multiply(baseModelViewMatrix, modelViewMatrix); _normalMatrix = GLKMatrix3InvertAndTranspose(GLKMatrix4GetMatrix3(modelViewMatrix), NULL); _modelViewProjectionMatrix = GLKMatrix4Multiply(projectionMatrix, modelViewMatrix); _rotation += self.timeSinceLastUpdate * 0.5f; } But providing I understand this correct one pyramid is using the GLKit base effect shaders and the other the shaders which are included in the project. So for both of them to have the same error, I thought it would be the Norms?

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• Conversion constructor vs. conversion operator: precedence

  - by GRB

  Reading some questions here on SO about conversion operators and constructors got me thinking about the interaction between them, namely when there is an 'ambiguous' call. Consider the following code: class A; class B { public: B(){} B(const A&) //conversion constructor { cout << "called B's conversion constructor" << endl; } }; class A { public: operator B() //conversion operator { cout << "called A's conversion operator" << endl; return B(); } }; int main() { B b = A(); //what should be called here? apparently, A::operator B() return 0; } The above code displays "called A's conversion operator", meaning that the conversion operator is called as opposed to the constructor. If you remove/comment out the operator B() code from A, the compiler will happily switch over to using the constructor instead (with no other changes to the code). My questions are: Since the compiler doesn't consider B b = A(); to be an ambiguous call, there must be some type of precedence at work here. Where exactly is this precedence established? (a reference/quote from the C++ standard would be appreciated) From an object-oriented philosophical standpoint, is this the way the code should behave? Who knows more about how an A object should become a B object, A or B? According to C++, the answer is A -- is there anything in object-oriented practice that suggests this should be the case? To me personally, it would make sense either way, so I'm interested to know how the choice was made. Thanks in advance

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• Disadvantage of OOP?

  - by Bragaadeesh

  Typically i dont want to know the specifics of the cons of OOPs, but it felt kind of weird when I had an argument at an interview I attended recently. The question that was posted to me was to tell me one disadvantage of OOP (Object Oriented Programming). At that time, I felt OOP to be the most matured level of programming after the procedural/functional models. So I replied to him that I dont see any negatives at all. But the interviewer said there are few and I asked him to list one if he does not mind. He gave an example that I cant digest well, he said that OOP pattern does not strictly implement inheritance rules and cited the satellite/rocket example where the body parts will disintegrate periodically to remove weight during rocket launch and said that inheritance does not support this. His example kind of felt very weird to me the reason being the application of inheritance to this example. Then I left the example aside and I had this doubt - Can we unplug class hierarchies in such a manner (I am kind of confident in Java its not possible) in an ideal Object Oriented Design?

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• Non-Relational Database Design

  - by Ian Varley

  I'm interested in hearing about design strategies you have used with non-relational "nosql" databases - that is, the (mostly new) class of data stores that don't use traditional relational design or SQL (such as Hypertable, CouchDB, SimpleDB, Google App Engine datastore, Voldemort, Cassandra, SQL Data Services, etc.). They're also often referred to as "key/value stores", and at base they act like giant distributed persistent hash tables. Specifically, I want to learn about the differences in conceptual data design with these new databases. What's easier, what's harder, what can't be done at all? Have you come up with alternate designs that work much better in the non-relational world? Have you hit your head against anything that seems impossible? Have you bridged the gap with any design patterns, e.g. to translate from one to the other? Do you even do explicit data models at all now (e.g. in UML) or have you chucked them entirely in favor of semi-structured / document-oriented data blobs? Do you miss any of the major extra services that RDBMSes provide, like relational integrity, arbitrarily complex transaction support, triggers, etc? I come from a SQL relational DB background, so normalization is in my blood. That said, I get the advantages of non-relational databases for simplicity and scaling, and my gut tells me that there has to be a richer overlap of design capabilities. What have you done? FYI, there have been StackOverflow discussions on similar topics here: the next generation of databases changing schemas to work with Google App Engine choosing a document-oriented database

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• What is Adobe Flex? Is it just Flash II?

  - by Adam Davis

  Question Alright, I'm confused by all the buzzwords and press release bingo going on. What is the relationship between flash and flex: Replace flash (not really compatible) Enhance flash The next version of flash but still basically compatible Separate technology altogether ??? If I'm starting out in Flash now, should I just skip to Flex? Follow up Ok, so what I'm hearing is that there's three different parts to the puzzle: Flash The graphical editor used to make "Flash Movies", ie it's an IDE that focuses on the visual aspect of "Flash" (Officially Flash CS3?) The official name for the display plugins (ie, "Download Flash Now!") A general reference to the entire technology stack In terms of the editor, it's a linear timeline based editor, best used for animations with complex interactivity. Actionscript The "Flash" programming language Flex An Adobe Flash IDE that focuses on the coding/programming aspect of "Flash" (Flex Builder?) A Flash library that enhances Flash and makes it easier to program for (Flex SDK?) Is not bound to a timeline (as the Flash IDE is) and so "standard" applications are more easily accomplished. Is this correct?

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• I cannot grok MVC, what it is, and what it is not?

  - by Hao

  I cannot grok what MVC is, what mindset or programming model should I acquire so MVC stuff can instantly "lightbulb" on my head? If not instantly, what simple programs/projects should I try to do first so I can apply the neat things MVC brings to programming. OOP is intuitive and easier, object is all around us, and the benefits of code reuse using OOP-paradigm instantly click to anyone. You can probably talk to anybody about OOP in a few minutes and lecture some examples and they would get it. While OOP somehow raise the intuitiveness aspect of programming, MVC seems to do the opposite. I'm getting negative thoughts that some future employers(or even clients) would look down upon me for not using MVC technology. Though I probably get the skinnable aspect of MVC, but when I try to apply it to my own project, I don't know where to start. And also some programmers even have diverging views on how to accomplish MVC properly. Take this for instance from Jeff's post about MVC: The view is simply how you lay the data out, how it is displayed. If you want a subset of some data, for example, my opinion is that is a responsibility of the model. So maybe some programmers use MVC, but they somehow inadvertently use the View or the Controller to extract a subset of data. Why we can't have a definitive definition of what and how to accomplish MVC properly? And also, when I search for MVC .NET programs, most of it applies to web programs, not desktop apps, this intrigue me further. My guess is, this is most advantageous to web apps, there's not much problem about intermixed view(html) and controller(program code) in desktop apps.

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• NHibernate: Mapping multiple classes from a single table row

  - by Michael Kurtz

  I couldn't find an answer to this specific question. I am trying to keep my domain model object-oriented and re-use objects where possible. I am having an issue determining how to provide a mapping to multiple classes from a single row. Let me explain with an example: I have a single table, call it Customer. A customer has several attributes; but, for brevity, assume it has Id, Name, Address, City, State, ZipCode. I would like to create a Customer and Address class that look like this: public class Customer { public virtual long Id {get;set;} public virtual string Name {get;set;} public virtual Address Address {get;set;} } public class Address { public virtual string Address {get;set;} public virtual string City {get;set;} public virtual string State {get;set;} public virtual string ZipCode {get;set;} } What I am having trouble with is determining what the mapping would be for the Address class within the Customer class. There is no Address table and there isn't a "set" of addresses associated with a Customer. I just want a more object-oriented view of the Customer table in code. There are several other tables that have address information in them and it would be nice to have a reusable Address class to deal with them. Addresses are not shared so breaking all addresses into a separate table with foreign keys seems to be overkill and, actually, more painful since I would need foreign keys to multiple tables. Can someone enlighten me on this type of mapping? Please provide an example if you can. Thanks for any insights! -Mike

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• Apache CXF REST Services w/ Spring AOP

  - by jconlin

  I'm trying to get Apache CXF JAX-RS services working with Spring AOP. I've created a simple logging class: public class AOPLogger{ public void logBefore(){ System.out.println("Logging Before!"); } } My Spring configuration (beans.xml): <aop:config> <aop:aspect id="aopLogger" ref="test.aop.AOPLogger"> <aop:before method="logBefore" pointcut="execution(* test.rest.RestService(..))"/> </aop:aspect> </aop:config> <bean id="aopLogger" class="test.aop.AOPLogger"/> I always get an NPE in RestService when a call is made to a Method getServletRequest(), which has: return messageContext.getHttpServletRequest(); If I remove the aop configuration or comment it out from my beans.xml, everything works fine. All of my actual Rest services extend test.rest.RestService (which is a class) and call getServletRequest(). I'm just trying to just get AOP up and running based off of the example in the CXF JAX-RS documentation. Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks!

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• Looking for a good dev environment for OSGi bundles

  - by Riduidel

  Hi, I'm currently investigating in the field of dev environment for OSGi bundles. My goal is to find a way to develop, test and debug with ease the bundles I'll be coding. Besides, I have some "cultural" requirements. I want to be able to use java continuous integration servers (typically, Hudson) As a consequence of that first requirement, I want to have a repeatable, one-click build process. My typical tool for that is maven. And finally, being long-term Eclipse user, and having the m2eclipse at hand to merge my eclipse env with my maven one, I obviously want to be able to test and debug with that IDE. So far, here are the infos I know I can use (and have already tested) maven-bundle-plugin, maven-ipojo-plugin which both offer clean packaging facilities I have tested maven pax (and eclipse pax) and am not really satisfied with both : maven pax generates a very heavy project, where adding dependencies is very error-prone (the maven pax:import-bundle command line, with all its arguments, is a hell per se) I have taken a look at Karaf, which seems to have some nice direct maven provisionning, but I don't know how to integrate it with my Eclipse, besides using the traditionnal JPDA bridge. However, it seems to be more production-oriented than dev-oriented, and as such may require heavy configuration to fit my need (although the reading of its user manual doesn't revedal that). Have you got any ideas ? Some maven/eclipse plugins ?

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• How to debug PHP?

  - by NutMotion

  Anyone's been trying himself at object oriented programming ? Most probably every developer I guess:D I for one have never studied OO design patterns thoroughly, and trying to put it all together now does prove at times thrilling, and many times frustrating also. Even more so when trying to do it in : PHP! All-in-all, my boss asked me to add some Database persistence functions to her server, but most of all, she asked me to translate her already working procedural code into a working Object Oriented code. Here I am, still standing on my PHP OO project. I'm (already) fed up with this "file logging only" PHP capability. I believe there must be some (free or not too much expansive) PHP debugging utility ? I've heard about Zend Studio and PHPEd so far, which didn't quite do the trick for whatever reasons. WIRCW("Which I don't Remember Correctly Why" lol) What say yé? on debugging PHP ? Is there a tool that provides a good debug mode? what's more, don't forget I'm not speaking about the classical web Request/response model. Talking about a debugging facility which can enable you to trigger a web service (aka client request) and go into debug mode on the SOAP web service side. Thks for any input.

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• UIImageView is resizing

  - by dawatson833

  I have an issue with uiimageviews resizing at run time. On one view I have more than a dozen uiimageviews contained within a uiscrollview. The images are assigned at design time. The uiimageview's are all the same size. The mode is set to Aspect Fill for all uiimageviews. At run time the images appear correctly in the view. On a second view I have only 9 uiimageviews. These uiimageviews will display up to nine of the images selected from the first view. There are three images across and three images down. The uiimageview at design time is the same size as on the first view. The uiimageview image is assigned an image that is loaded into an array. All the uiimageviews are sized the same and they also have the mode set to Aspect Fill. The images are assigned at run time using image1.image = xxx. Where xxx is an image stored in an array. However, on this second view, the images are not all the same size. The height of the image changes dynamically. The same image displayed in a different uiimageview on the view will be different sizes. It is the height of the uiimageview that changes. In some cases the image will fill the uiimageview differently. It is like the mode changes dynamically. I've tried using different modes and nothing changes. Any ideas on what is happening?

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• Spring aop multiple pointcuts & advice but only the last one is working

  - by Jarle Hansen

  I have created two Spring AOP pointcuts that are completely separate and will be woven in for different parts of the system. The pointcuts are used in two different around advices, these around-advices will point to the same Java method. How the xml-file looks: <aop:config> <aop:pointcut expression="execution(......)" id="pointcutOne" /> <aop:pointcut expression="execution(.....)" id="pointcurTwo" /> <aop:aspect id="..." ref="springBean"> <aop:around pointcut-ref="pointcutOne" method="commonMethod" /> <aop:aroung pointcut-ref="pointcutTwo" method="commonMethod" /> </aop:aspect> </aop:config> The problem is that only the last pointcut works (if I change the order "pointcutOne" works because it is last). I have gotten it to work by creating one big pointcut, but I would like to have them separate. Any suggestions to why only one of the pointcuts works at a time?

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• Apply Quaternion to Camera in libGDX

  - by Alex_Hyzer_Kenoyer

  I am trying to rotate my camera using a Quaternion in libGDX. I have a Quaternion created and being manipulated but I have no idea how to apply it to the camera, everything I've tried hasn't moved the camera at all. Here is how I set up the rotation Quaternion: public void rotateX(float amount) { tempQuat.set(tempVector.set(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f), amount * MathHelper.PIOVER180); rotation = rotation.mul(tempQuat); } public void rotateY(float amount) { tempQuat.set(tempVector.set(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f), amount * MathHelper.PIOVER180); rotation = tempQuat.mul(rotation); } Here is how I am trying to update the camera (Same update method as the original libGDX version but I added the part about the rotation matrix to the top): public void update(boolean updateFrustum) { float[] matrix = new float[16]; rotation.toMatrix(matrix); Matrix4 m = new Matrix4(); m.set(matrix); camera.view.mul(m); //camera.direction.mul(m).nor(); //camera.up.mul(m).nor(); float aspect = camera.viewportWidth / camera.viewportHeight; camera.projection.setToProjection(Math.abs(camera.near), Math.abs(camera.far), camera.fieldOfView, aspect); camera.view.setToLookAt(camera.position, tempVector.set(camera.position).add(camera.direction), camera.up); camera.combined.set(camera.projection); Matrix4.mul(camera.combined.val, camera.view.val); if (updateFrustum) { camera.invProjectionView.set(camera.combined); Matrix4.inv(camera.invProjectionView.val); camera.frustum.update(camera.invProjectionView); } }

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• Opengl: fit a quad to screen, given the value of Z.

  - by hytparadisee

  Short Version of the question: I will put a quad. I know the width and height of the screen in window coordinates, i know the Z-coordinates of the quad in 3D. I know the FOVY, I know the aspect. The quad will be put along Z-axis, My camera doesn't move (placed at 0, 0, 0). I want to find out the width and height of the quad IN 3D COORDINATES that will fit exactly onto my screen. Long Version of the question: I would like to put a quad along the Z-axis at the specified offset Z, I would like to find out the width and height of the quad that will exactly fill the entire screen. I used to have a post on gamedev.net that uses a formula similar to the following: *dist = Z * tan ( FOV / 2 )* Now I can never find the post! Though it's similar, it is still different, because I remembered in that working formula, they do make use of screenWidth and screenHeight, which are the width and height of the screen in window coordinates. I am not really familiar with concepts like frustum, fov and aspect so that's why I can't work out the formula on my own. Besides, I am sure I don't need gluUnproject (I tried it, but the results are way off). It's not some gl calls, it's just a math formula that can find out the width and height in 3D space that can fill the entire screen, IF Z offset, width in window coordinates, and height in window coordinates, are known. Thanks all in advance.

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• How to pass common arguments to Perl modules

  - by Leonard

  I'm not thrilled with the argument-passing architecture I'm evolving for the (many) Perl scripts that have been developed for some scripts that call various Hadoop MapReduce jobs. There are currently 8 scripts (of the form run_something.pl) that are run from cron. (And more on the way ... we expect anywhere from 1 to 3 more for every function we add to hadoop.) Each of these have about 6 identical command-line parameters, and a couple command line parameters that are similar, all specified with Euclid. The implementations are in a dozen .pm modules. Some of which are common, and others of which are unique.... Currently I'm passing the args globally to each module ... Inside run_something.pl I have: set_common_args (%ARGV); set_something_args (%ARGV); And inside Something.pm I have sub set_something_args { (%MYARGS) =@_; } So then I can do if ( $MYARGS{'--needs_more_beer'} ) { $beer++; } I'm seeing that I'm probably going to have additional "common" files that I'll want to pass args to, so I'll have three or four set_xxx_args calls at the top of each run_something.pl, and it just doesn't seem too elegant. On the other hand, it beats passing the whole stupid argument array down the call chain, and choosing and passing individual elements down the call chain is (a) too much work (b) error-prone (c) doesn't buy much. In lots of ways what I'm doing is just object-oriented design without the object-oriented language trappings, and it looks uglier without said trappings, but nonetheless ... Anyone have thoughts or ideas?

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• implement AOP for Controllers in Spring 3

  - by tommy

  How do I implement AOP with an annotated Controller? I've search and found two previous posts regarding the problem, but can't seem to get the solutions to work. posted solution 1 posted solution 2 Here's what I have: Dispatch Servlet: <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop" xsi:schemaLocation=" http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd"> <context:annotation-config/> <context:component-scan base-package="com.foo.controller"/> <bean id="fooAspect" class="com.foo.aop.FooAspect" /> <aop:aspectj-autoproxy> <aop:include name="fooAspect" /> </aop:aspectj-autoproxy> </beans> Controller: @Controller public class FooController { @RequestMapping(value="/index.htm", method=RequestMethod.GET) public String showIndex(Model model){ return "index"; } } Aspect: @Aspect public class FooAspect { @Pointcut("@target(org.springframework.stereotype.Controller)") public void controllerPointcutter() {} @Pointcut("execution(* *(..))") public void methodPointcutter() {} @Before("controllerPointcutter()") public void beforeMethodInController(JoinPoint jp){ System.out.println("### before controller call..."); } @AfterReturning("controllerPointcutter() && methodPointcutter() ") public void afterMethodInController(JoinPoin jp) { System.out.println("### after returning..."); } @Before("methodPointcutter()") public void beforeAnyMethod(JoinPoint jp){ System.out.println("### before any call..."); } } The beforeAnyMethod() works for methods NOT in a controller; I cannot get anything to execute on calls to controllers. Am I missing something?

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• What is the best approach to embed mp4 for the iPhone without using JavaScript?

  - by usingtechnology

  I am trying to troubleshoot this code and am running into a dead-end, so I thought I would ask my first question here. I have three questions: 1) What is the best approach to embed an mp4 for an iPhone specific view, preferably without using Javascript? 2) Are there any preferred practices to debug code on an iPhone? 3) Can anyone tell me what is wrong with my specific code below? I should mention upfront that the variable $fileName does indeed contain the correct info, I've just omitted that portion of the code. Also, the poster image does flicker for a brief moment before I receive the greyed out, broken QuickTime image so that is an indication that this is partially working. Code: <object width="448" height="335" classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"> <param name="src" value="/libraries/images/$fileName.jpg" /> <param name="href" value="/libraries/media/$fileName.mp4" /> <param name="target" value="myself" /> <param name="controller" value="true" /> <param name="autoplay" value="false" /> <param name="scale" value="aspect" /> <embed src="/libraries/images/$fileName.jpg" href="/libraries/media/$fileName.mp4" type="video/mp4" target="myself" width="448" height="335" scale="aspect" controller="false" autoplay="false"> </embed> </object>

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• Exemplars of large document-centric applications with COM/XPCOM/.NET interfaces.

  - by Warren P

  I am looking for exemplars (design examples) showing the use of interfaces (aka 'protocols' for you smalltalkers) to design a document management architecture in a large Word Processor, Spreadsheet, vector graphic or publishing package, or office-productivity (non-database) application with support for as many of the following as possible: any open source project, will be ideal, and language of implementation is unimportant since I am looking for design examples, however an object oriented language with support for "interfaces" is a must. I know at least a dozen languages, and I'm willing to study any application's source. use of "interface" could loosely be applied to either XPCOM or COM interfaces, or .NET interfaces, or even the use of pure-virtual (virtual+abstract) base-classes for OOP languages that lack the ability to declare an interface distinct from a class. I am mostly looking for a robust, thorough and flexible implementation for a document, IDocument, various document views (IDocumentView), and whatever operations make sense in that case. I am particular interested in cases where the product in question is a real-world product. For example, if anybody familiar with OpenOffice can tell me if the code contains a good sample design. I am looking for design documentation that outlines the design of the interfaces for such an application. So for example, if the openoffice spreadsheet has such an interface design, then that might be the best case, because it is a widely used real-world design, with millions of users, rather than a textbook example, which is minimal, and contrived. I know that the Mozilla platform uses XPCOM, and its design is heavily "interface" oriented, but I am looking more for a "word processor" or "spreadsheet" type of document design, rather than a web-browser. I am particularly interested in the interfaces used to access to data and meta-data such as markup (attributes like bold, and italics, and font size), and the ability to search and look up named entities within a document.

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• How to ask questions to an obstructionist?

  - by Rob Wells

  This is not related to my other recently posted question about "working with a star developer". In a similar vein, how do you work with someone who will only answer the specific question that you ask. I worked with someone who, when you asked a question on a specific aspect of the system, would give you the answer just related to the specific bit you'd asked about. For example, when processing radar messages I'd ask about an aspect of message number RJ546 and he would answer just about that specific part of RJ546. He wouldn't mention anything about the other freaky parts of the message, or mention any related aspects of the other messages. Then you'd go off and work on the processing and all of a sudden all this other freakiness would pop up. What's a good technique when working with this type of person? BTW I later found out that the person who I'd come in to replace had quit because he got sick and tired of having these surprises pop up due to the lack of information provided by this person. Edit: I forgot to add that the person was deliberately obstructionist and believed that job security came from hoarded knowledge not being disseminated.

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• Inheritance Mapping Strategies with Entity Framework Code First CTP5 Part 1: Table per Hierarchy (TPH)

  - by mortezam

  A simple strategy for mapping classes to database tables might be “one table for every entity persistent class.” This approach sounds simple enough and, indeed, works well until we encounter inheritance. Inheritance is such a visible structural mismatch between the object-oriented and relational worlds because object-oriented systems model both “is a” and “has a” relationships. SQL-based models provide only "has a" relationships between entities; SQL database management systems don’t support type inheritance—and even when it’s available, it’s usually proprietary or incomplete. There are three different approaches to representing an inheritance hierarchy: Table per Hierarchy (TPH): Enable polymorphism by denormalizing the SQL schema, and utilize a type discriminator column that holds type information. Table per Type (TPT): Represent "is a" (inheritance) relationships as "has a" (foreign key) relationships. Table per Concrete class (TPC): Discard polymorphism and inheritance relationships completely from the SQL schema.I will explain each of these strategies in a series of posts and this one is dedicated to TPH. In this series we'll deeply dig into each of these strategies and will learn about "why" to choose them as well as "how" to implement them. Hopefully it will give you a better idea about which strategy to choose in a particular scenario. Inheritance Mapping with Entity Framework Code FirstAll of the inheritance mapping strategies that we discuss in this series will be implemented by EF Code First CTP5. The CTP5 build of the new EF Code First library has been released by ADO.NET team earlier this month. EF Code-First enables a pretty powerful code-centric development workflow for working with data. I’m a big fan of the EF Code First approach, and I’m pretty excited about a lot of productivity and power that it brings. When it comes to inheritance mapping, not only Code First fully supports all the strategies but also gives you ultimate flexibility to work with domain models that involves inheritance. The fluent API for inheritance mapping in CTP5 has been improved a lot and now it's more intuitive and concise in compare to CTP4. A Note For Those Who Follow Other Entity Framework ApproachesIf you are following EF's "Database First" or "Model First" approaches, I still recommend to read this series since although the implementation is Code First specific but the explanations around each of the strategies is perfectly applied to all approaches be it Code First or others. A Note For Those Who are New to Entity Framework and Code-FirstIf you choose to learn EF you've chosen well. If you choose to learn EF with Code First you've done even better. To get started, you can find a great walkthrough by Scott Guthrie here and another one by ADO.NET team here. In this post, I assume you already setup your machine to do Code First development and also that you are familiar with Code First fundamentals and basic concepts. You might also want to check out my other posts on EF Code First like Complex Types and Shared Primary Key Associations. A Top Down Development ScenarioThese posts take a top-down approach; it assumes that you’re starting with a domain model and trying to derive a new SQL schema. Therefore, we start with an existing domain model, implement it in C# and then let Code First create the database schema for us. However, the mapping strategies described are just as relevant if you’re working bottom up, starting with existing database tables. I’ll show some tricks along the way that help you dealing with nonperfect table layouts. Let’s start with the mapping of entity inheritance. -- The Domain ModelIn our domain model, we have a BillingDetail base class which is abstract (note the italic font on the UML class diagram below). We do allow various billing types and represent them as subclasses of BillingDetail class. As for now, we support CreditCard and BankAccount: Implement the Object Model with Code First As always, we start with the POCO classes. Note that in our DbContext, I only define one DbSet for the base class which is BillingDetail. Code First will find the other classes in the hierarchy based on Reachability Convention. public abstract class BillingDetail  {     public int BillingDetailId { get; set; }     public string Owner { get; set; }             public string Number { get; set; } } public class BankAccount : BillingDetail {     public string BankName { get; set; }     public string Swift { get; set; } } public class CreditCard : BillingDetail {     public int CardType { get; set; }                     public string ExpiryMonth { get; set; }     public string ExpiryYear { get; set; } } public class InheritanceMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<BillingDetail> BillingDetails { get; set; } } This object model is all that is needed to enable inheritance with Code First. If you put this in your application you would be able to immediately start working with the database and do CRUD operations. Before going into details about how EF Code First maps this object model to the database, we need to learn about one of the core concepts of inheritance mapping: polymorphic and non-polymorphic queries. Polymorphic Queries LINQ to Entities and EntitySQL, as object-oriented query languages, both support polymorphic queries—that is, queries for instances of a class and all instances of its subclasses, respectively. For example, consider the following query: IQueryable<BillingDetail> linqQuery = from b in context.BillingDetails select b; List<BillingDetail> billingDetails = linqQuery.ToList(); Or the same query in EntitySQL: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE b FROM BillingDetails AS b"; ObjectQuery<BillingDetail> objectQuery = ((IObjectContextAdapter)context).ObjectContext                                                                          .CreateQuery<BillingDetail>(eSqlQuery); List<BillingDetail> billingDetails = objectQuery.ToList(); linqQuery and eSqlQuery are both polymorphic and return a list of objects of the type BillingDetail, which is an abstract class but the actual concrete objects in the list are of the subtypes of BillingDetail: CreditCard and BankAccount. Non-polymorphic QueriesAll LINQ to Entities and EntitySQL queries are polymorphic which return not only instances of the specific entity class to which it refers, but all subclasses of that class as well. On the other hand, Non-polymorphic queries are queries whose polymorphism is restricted and only returns instances of a particular subclass. In LINQ to Entities, this can be specified by using OfType<T>() Method. For example, the following query returns only instances of BankAccount: IQueryable<BankAccount> query = from b in context.BillingDetails.OfType<BankAccount>() select b; EntitySQL has OFTYPE operator that does the same thing: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE b FROM OFTYPE(BillingDetails, Model.BankAccount) AS b"; In fact, the above query with OFTYPE operator is a short form of the following query expression that uses TREAT and IS OF operators: string eSqlQuery = @"SELECT VAlUE TREAT(b as Model.BankAccount)                       FROM BillingDetails AS b                       WHERE b IS OF(Model.BankAccount)"; (Note that in the above query, Model.BankAccount is the fully qualified name for BankAccount class. You need to change "Model" with your own namespace name.) Table per Class Hierarchy (TPH)An entire class hierarchy can be mapped to a single table. This table includes columns for all properties of all classes in the hierarchy. The concrete subclass represented by a particular row is identified by the value of a type discriminator column. You don’t have to do anything special in Code First to enable TPH. It's the default inheritance mapping strategy: This mapping strategy is a winner in terms of both performance and simplicity. It’s the best-performing way to represent polymorphism—both polymorphic and nonpolymorphic queries perform well—and it’s even easy to implement by hand. Ad-hoc reporting is possible without complex joins or unions. Schema evolution is straightforward. Discriminator Column As you can see in the DB schema above, Code First has to add a special column to distinguish between persistent classes: the discriminator. This isn’t a property of the persistent class in our object model; it’s used internally by EF Code First. By default, the column name is "Discriminator", and its type is string. The values defaults to the persistent class names —in this case, “BankAccount” or “CreditCard”. EF Code First automatically sets and retrieves the discriminator values. TPH Requires Properties in SubClasses to be Nullable in the Database TPH has one major problem: Columns for properties declared by subclasses will be nullable in the database. For example, Code First created an (INT, NULL) column to map CardType property in CreditCard class. However, in a typical mapping scenario, Code First always creates an (INT, NOT NULL) column in the database for an int property in persistent class. But in this case, since BankAccount instance won’t have a CardType property, the CardType field must be NULL for that row so Code First creates an (INT, NULL) instead. If your subclasses each define several non-nullable properties, the loss of NOT NULL constraints may be a serious problem from the point of view of data integrity. TPH Violates the Third Normal FormAnother important issue is normalization. We’ve created functional dependencies between nonkey columns, violating the third normal form. Basically, the value of Discriminator column determines the corresponding values of the columns that belong to the subclasses (e.g. BankName) but Discriminator is not part of the primary key for the table. As always, denormalization for performance can be misleading, because it sacrifices long-term stability, maintainability, and the integrity of data for immediate gains that may be also achieved by proper optimization of the SQL execution plans (in other words, ask your DBA). Generated SQL QueryLet's take a look at the SQL statements that EF Code First sends to the database when we write queries in LINQ to Entities or EntitySQL. For example, the polymorphic query for BillingDetails that you saw, generates the following SQL statement: SELECT  [Extent1].[Discriminator] AS [Discriminator],  [Extent1].[BillingDetailId] AS [BillingDetailId],  [Extent1].[Owner] AS [Owner],  [Extent1].[Number] AS [Number],  [Extent1].[BankName] AS [BankName],  [Extent1].[Swift] AS [Swift],  [Extent1].[CardType] AS [CardType],  [Extent1].[ExpiryMonth] AS [ExpiryMonth],  [Extent1].[ExpiryYear] AS [ExpiryYear] FROM [dbo].[BillingDetails] AS [Extent1] WHERE [Extent1].[Discriminator] IN ('BankAccount','CreditCard') Or the non-polymorphic query for the BankAccount subclass generates this SQL statement: SELECT  [Extent1].[BillingDetailId] AS [BillingDetailId],  [Extent1].[Owner] AS [Owner],  [Extent1].[Number] AS [Number],  [Extent1].[BankName] AS [BankName],  [Extent1].[Swift] AS [Swift] FROM [dbo].[BillingDetails] AS [Extent1] WHERE [Extent1].[Discriminator] = 'BankAccount' Note how Code First adds a restriction on the discriminator column and also how it only selects those columns that belong to BankAccount entity. Change Discriminator Column Data Type and Values With Fluent API Sometimes, especially in legacy schemas, you need to override the conventions for the discriminator column so that Code First can work with the schema. The following fluent API code will change the discriminator column name to "BillingDetailType" and the values to "BA" and "CC" for BankAccount and CreditCard respectively: protected override void OnModelCreating(System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration.ModelBuilder modelBuilder) {     modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()                 .Map<BankAccount>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue("BA"))                 .Map<CreditCard>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue("CC")); } Also, changing the data type of discriminator column is interesting. In the above code, we passed strings to HasValue method but this method has been defined to accepts a type of object: public void HasValue(object value); Therefore, if for example we pass a value of type int to it then Code First not only use our desired values (i.e. 1 & 2) in the discriminator column but also changes the column type to be (INT, NOT NULL): modelBuilder.Entity<BillingDetail>()             .Map<BankAccount>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue(1))             .Map<CreditCard>(m => m.Requires("BillingDetailType").HasValue(2)); SummaryIn this post we learned about Table per Hierarchy as the default mapping strategy in Code First. The disadvantages of the TPH strategy may be too serious for your design—after all, denormalized schemas can become a major burden in the long run. Your DBA may not like it at all. In the next post, we will learn about Table per Type (TPT) strategy that doesn’t expose you to this problem. References ADO.NET team blog Java Persistence with Hibernate book a { text-decoration: none; } a:visited { color: Blue; } .title { padding-bottom: 5px; font-family: Segoe UI; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 15px; } .code, .typeName { font-family: consolas; } .typeName { color: #2b91af; } .padTop5 { padding-top: 5px; } .padTop10 { padding-top: 10px; } p.MsoNormal { margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: "Calibri" , "sans-serif"; }

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• Microsoft Declares the Future of ASP.NET is Web API

  - by sbwalker

  Sitting on a plane on my way home from Tech Ed 2012 in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to jot down some key takeaways from this year’s conference. Some of these items I have known since the Microsoft MVP Summit which occurred in Redmond in late February ( but due to NDA restrictions I could not share them with the developer community at large ) and some of them are a result of insightful conversations with a wide variety of industry insiders and Microsoft employees at the conference. First, let’s travel back in time 4 years to the Microsoft MVP Summit in 2008. Microsoft was facing some heat from market newcomer Ruby on Rails and responded with a new web development framework of its own, ASP.NET MVC. At the Summit they estimated that MVC would only be applicable for ~10% of all new web development projects. Based on that prediction I questioned why they were investing such considerable resources for such a relative edge case, but my guess is that they felt it was an important edge case at the time as some of the more vocal .NET evangelists as well as some very high profile start-ups ( ie. Twitter ) had publicly announced their intent to use Rails. Microsoft made a lot of noise about MVC. In fact, they focused so much of their messaging and marketing hype around MVC that it appeared that WebForms was essentially dead. Yes, it may have been true that Microsoft continued to invest in WebForms, but from an outside perspective it really appeared that MVC was the only framework getting any real attention. As a result, MVC started to gain market share. An inside source at Microsoft told me that MVC usage has grown at a rate of about 5% per year and now sits at ~30%. Essentially by focusing so much marketing effort on MVC, Microsoft actually created a larger market demand for it.  This is because in the Microsoft ecosystem there is somewhat of a bandwagon mentality amongst developers. If Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about a specific technology, developers get the perception that it must be really important. So rather than choosing the right tool for the job, they often choose the tool with the most marketing hype and then try to sell it to the customer. In 2010, I blogged about the fact that MVC did not make any business sense for the DotNetNuke platform. This was because our ecosystem relied on third party extensions which were dependent on the WebForms model. If we migrated the core to MVC it would mean that all of the third party extensions would no longer be compatible, which would be an irresponsible business decision for us to make at the expense of our users and customers. However, this did not stop the debate from continuing to occur in our ecosystem. Clearly some developers had drunk Microsoft’s Kool-Aid about MVC and were of the mindset, to paraphrase an old Scottish saying, “If its not MVC, it’s crap”. Now, this is a rather ignorant position to take as most of the benefits of MVC can be achieved in WebForms with solid architecture and responsible coding practices. Clean separation of concerns, unit testing, and direct control over page output are all possible in the WebForms model – it just requires diligence and discipline. So over the past few years some horror stories have begun to bubble to the surface of software development projects focused on ground-up rewrites of web applications for the sole purpose of migrating from WebForms to MVC. These large scale rewrites were typically initiated by engineering teams with only a single argument driving the business decision, that Microsoft was promoting MVC as “the future”. These ill-fated rewrites offered no benefit to end users or customers and in fact resulted in a less stable, less scalable and more complicated systems – basically taking one step forward and two full steps back. A case in point is the announcement earlier this week that a popular open source .NET CMS provider has decided to pull the plug on their new MVC product which has been under active development for more than 18 months and revert back to WebForms. The availability of multiple server-side development models has deeply fragmented the Microsoft developer community. Some folks like to compare it to the age-old VB vs. C# language debate. However, the VB vs. C# language debate was ultimately more of a religious war because at least the two dominant programming languages were compatible with one another and could be used interchangeably. The issue with WebForms vs. MVC is much more challenging. This is because the messaging from Microsoft has positioned the two solutions as being incompatible with one another and as a result web developers feel like they are forced to choose one path or another. Yes, it is true that it has always been technically possible to use WebForms and MVC in the same project, but the tooling support has always made this feel “dirty”. The fragmentation has also made it difficult to attract newcomers as the perceived barrier to entry for learning ASP.NET has become higher. As a result many new software developers entering the market are gravitating to environments where the development model seems more simple and intuitive ( ie. PHP or Ruby ). At the same time that the Web Platform team was busy promoting ASP.NET MVC, the Microsoft Office team has been promoting Sharepoint as a platform for building internal enterprise web applications. Sharepoint has great penetration in the enterprise and over time has been enhanced with improved extensibility capabilities for software developers. But, like many other mature enterprise ASP.NET web applications, it is built on the WebForms development model. Similar to DotNetNuke, Sharepoint leverages a rich third party ecosystem for both generic web controls and more specialized WebParts – both of which rely on WebForms. So basically this resulted in a situation where the Web Platform group had headed off in one direction and the Office team had gone in another direction, and the end customer was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do with their existing investments in Microsoft technology. It really emphasized the perception that the left hand was not speaking to the right hand, as strategically speaking there did not seem to be any high level plan from Microsoft to ensure consistency and continuity across the different product lines. With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, it also made some of the third party control vendors scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking. The original value proposition of ASP.NET over Classic ASP was the ability for web developers to emulate the highly productive desktop development model by using abstract components for creating rich, interactive web interfaces. Web control vendors like Telerik, Infragistics, DevExpress, and ComponentArt had all built sizable businesses offering powerful user interface components to WebForms developers. And even after MVC was introduced these vendors continued to improve their products, offering greater productivity and a superior user experience via AJAX to what was possible in MVC. And since many developers were comfortable and satisfied with these third party solutions, the demand remained strong and the third party web control market continued to prosper despite the availability of MVC. While all of this was going on in the Microsoft ecosystem, there has also been a fundamental shift in the general software development industry. Driven by the explosion of Internet-enabled devices, the focus has now centered on service-oriented architecture (SOA). Service-oriented architecture is all about defining a public API for your product that any client can consume; whether it’s a native application running on a smart phone or tablet, a web browser taking advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, or a rich desktop application running on a PC. REST-based services which utilize the less verbose characteristics of JSON as a transport mechanism, have become the preferred approach over older, more bloated SOAP-based techniques. SOA also has the benefit of producing a cross-platform API, as every major technology stack is able to interact with standard REST-based web services. And for web applications, more and more developers are turning to robust Javascript libraries like JQuery and Knockout for browser-based client-side development techniques for calling web services and rendering content to end users. In fact, traditional server-side page rendering has largely fallen out of favor, resulting in decreased demand for server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, WebForms, and (gasp) MVC. In response to these new industry trends, Microsoft did what it always does – it immediately poured some resources into developing a solution which will ensure they remain relevant and competitive in the web space. This work culminated in a new framework which was branded as Web API. It is convention-based and designed to embrace native HTTP standards without copious layers of abstraction. This framework is designed to be the ultimate replacement for both the REST aspects of WCF and ASP.NET MVC Web Services. And since it was developed out of band with a dependency only on ASP.NET 4.0, it means that it can be used immediately in a variety of production scenarios. So at Tech Ed 2012 it was made abundantly clear in numerous sessions that Microsoft views Web API as the “Future of ASP.NET”. In fact, one Microsoft PM even went as far as to say that if we look 3-4 years into the future, that all ASP.NET web applications will be developed using the Web API approach. This is a fairly bold prediction and clearly telegraphs where Microsoft plans to allocate its resources going forward. Currently Web API is being delivered as part of the MVC4 package, but this is only temporary for the sake of convenience. It also sounds like there are still internal discussions going on in terms of how to brand the various aspects of ASP.NET going forward – perhaps the moniker of “ASP.NET Web Stack” coined a couple years ago by Scott Hanselman and utilized as part of the open source release of ASP.NET bits on Codeplex a few months back will eventually stick. Web API is being positioned as the unification of ASP.NET – the glue that is able to pull this fragmented mess back together again. The  “One ASP.NET” strategy will promote the use of all frameworks - WebForms, MVC, and Web API, even within the same web project. Basically the message is utilize the appropriate aspects of each framework to solve your business problems. Instead of navigating developers to a fork in the road, the plan is to educate them that “hybrid” applications are a great strategy for delivering solutions to customers. In addition, the service-oriented approach coupled with client-side development promoted by Web API can effectively be used in both WebForms and MVC applications. So this means it is also relevant to application platforms like DotNetNuke and Sharepoint, which means that it starts to create a unified development strategy across all ASP.NET product lines once again. And so what about MVC? There have actually been rumors floated that MVC has reached a stage of maturity where, similar to WebForms, it will be treated more as a maintenance product line going forward ( MVC4 may in fact be the last significant iteration of this framework ). This may sound alarming to some folks who have recently adopted MVC but it really shouldn’t, as both WebForms and MVC will continue to play a vital role in delivering solutions to customers. They will just not be the primary area where Microsoft is spending the majority of its R&D resources. That distinction will obviously go to Web API. And when the question comes up of why not enhance MVC to make it work with Web API, you must take a step back and look at this from the higher level to see that it really makes no sense. MVC is a server-side page compositing framework; whereas, Web API promotes client-side page compositing with a heavy focus on web services. In order to make MVC work well with Web API, would require a complete rewrite of MVC and at the end of the day, there would be no upgrade path for existing MVC applications. So it really does not make much business sense. So what does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Well, around 8-12 months ago we recognized the software industry trends towards web services and client-side development. We decided to utilize a “hybrid” model which would provide compatibility for existing modules while at the same time provide a bridge for developers who wanted to utilize more modern web techniques. Customers who like the productivity and familiarity of WebForms can continue to build custom modules using the traditional approach. However, in DotNetNuke 6.2 we also introduced a new Service Framework which is actually built on top of MVC2 ( we chose to leverage MVC because it had the most intuitive, light-weight REST implementation in the .NET stack ). The Services Framework allowed us to build some rich interactive features in DotNetNuke 6.2, including the Messaging and Notification Center and Activity Feed. But based on where we know Microsoft is heading, it makes sense for the next major version of DotNetNuke ( which is expected to be released in Q4 2012 ) to migrate from MVC2 to Web API. This will likely result in some breaking changes in the Services Framework but we feel it is the best approach for ensuring the platform remains highly modern and relevant. The fact that our development strategy is perfectly aligned with the “One ASP.NET” strategy from Microsoft means that our customers and developer community can be confident in their current and future investments in the DotNetNuke platform.

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• Abstracting functionality

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/22/abstracting-functionality.aspxWhat is more important than data? Functionality. Yes, I strongly believe we should switch to a functionality over data mindset in programming. Or actually switch back to it. Focus on functionality Functionality once was at the core of software development. Back when algorithms were the first thing you heard about in CS classes. Sure, data structures, too, were important - but always from the point of view of algorithms. (Niklaus Wirth gave one of his books the title “Algorithms + Data Structures” instead of “Data Structures + Algorithms” for a reason.) The reason for the focus on functionality? Firstly, because software was and is about doing stuff. Secondly because sufficient performance was hard to achieve, and only thirdly memory efficiency. But then hardware became more powerful. That gave rise to a new mindset: object orientation. And with it functionality was devalued. Data took over its place as the most important aspect. Now discussions revolved around structures motivated by data relationships. (John Beidler gave his book the title “Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object Oriented Approach” instead of the other way around for a reason.) Sure, this data could be embellished with functionality. But nevertheless functionality was second. When you look at (domain) object models what you mostly find is (domain) data object models. The common object oriented approach is: data aka structure over functionality. This is true even for the most modern modeling approaches like Domain Driven Design. Look at the literature and what you find is recommendations on how to get data structures right: aggregates, entities, value objects. I´m not saying this is what object orientation was invented for. But I´m saying that´s what I happen to see across many teams now some 25 years after object orientation became mainstream through C++, Delphi, and Java. But why should we switch back? Because software development cannot become truly agile with a data focus. The reason for that lies in what customers need first: functionality, behavior, operations. To be clear, that´s not why software is built. The purpose of software is to be more efficient than the alternative. Money mainly is spent to get a certain level of quality (e.g. performance, scalability, security etc.). But without functionality being present, there is nothing to work on the quality of. What customers want is functionality of a certain quality. ASAP. And tomorrow new functionality needs to be added, existing functionality needs to be changed, and quality needs to be increased. No customer ever wanted data or structures. Of course data should be processed. Data is there, data gets generated, transformed, stored. But how the data is structured for this to happen efficiently is of no concern to the customer. Ask a customer (or user) whether she likes the data structured this way or that way. She´ll say, “I don´t care.” But ask a customer (or user) whether he likes the functionality and its quality this way or that way. He´ll say, “I like it” (or “I don´t like it”). Build software incrementally From this very natural focus of customers and users on functionality and its quality follows we should develop software incrementally. That´s what Agility is about. Deliver small increments quickly and often to get frequent feedback. That way less waste is produced, and learning can take place much easier (on the side of the customer as well as on the side of developers). An increment is some added functionality or quality of functionality.[1] So as it turns out, Agility is about functionality over whatever. But software developers’ thinking is still stuck in the object oriented mindset of whatever over functionality. Bummer. I guess that (at least partly) explains why Agility always hits a glass ceiling in projects. It´s a clash of mindsets, of cultures. Driving software development by demanding small increases in functionality runs against thinking about software as growing (data) structures sprinkled with functionality. (Excuse me, if this sounds a bit broad-brush. But you get my point.) The need for abstraction In the end there need to be data structures. Of course. Small and large ones. The phrase functionality over data does not deny that. It´s not functionality instead of data or something. It´s just over, i.e. functionality should be thought of first. It´s a tad more important. It´s what the customer wants. That´s why we need a way to design functionality. Small and large. We need to be able to think about functionality before implementing it. We need to be able to reason about it among team members. We need to be able to communicate our mental models of functionality not just by speaking about them, but also on paper. Otherwise reasoning about it does not scale. We learned thinking about functionality in the small using flow charts, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, pseudo code, or UML sequence diagrams. That´s nice and well. But it does not scale. You can use these tools to describe manageable algorithms. But it does not work for the functionality triggered by pressing the “1-Click Order” on an amazon product page for example. There are several reasons for that, I´d say. Firstly, the level of abstraction over code is negligible. It´s essentially non-existent. Drawing a flow chart or writing pseudo code or writing actual code is very, very much alike. All these tools are about control flow like code is.[2] In addition all tools are computationally complete. They are about logic which is expressions and especially control statements. Whatever you code in Java you can fully (!) describe using a flow chart. And then there is no data. They are about control flow and leave out the data altogether. Thus data mostly is assumed to be global. That´s shooting yourself in the foot, as I hope you agree. Even if it´s functionality over data that does not mean “don´t think about data”. Right to the contrary! Functionality only makes sense with regard to data. So data needs to be in the picture right from the start - but it must not dominate the thinking. The above tools fail on this. Bottom line: So far we´re unable to reason in a scalable and abstract manner about functionality. That´s why programmers are so driven to start coding once they are presented with a problem. Programming languages are the only tool they´ve learned to use to reason about functional solutions. Or, well, there might be exceptions. Mathematical notation and SQL may have come to your mind already. Indeed they are tools on a higher level of abstraction than flow charts etc. That´s because they are declarative and not computationally complete. They leave out details - in order to deliver higher efficiency in devising overall solutions. We can easily reason about functionality using mathematics and SQL. That´s great. Except for that they are domain specific languages. They are not general purpose. (And they don´t scale either, I´d say.) Bummer. So to be more precise we need a scalable general purpose tool on a higher than code level of abstraction not neglecting data. Enter: Flow Design. Abstracting functionality using data flows I believe the solution to the problem of abstracting functionality lies in switching from control flow to data flow. Data flow very naturally is not about logic details anymore. There are no expressions and no control statements anymore. There are not even statements anymore. Data flow is declarative by nature. With data flow we get rid of all the limiting traits of former approaches to modeling functionality. In addition, nomen est omen, data flows include data in the functionality picture. With data flows, data is visibly flowing from processing step to processing step. Control is not flowing. Control is wherever it´s needed to process data coming in. That´s a crucial difference and needs some rewiring in your head to be fully appreciated.[2] Since data flows are declarative they are not the right tool to describe algorithms, though, I´d say. With them you don´t design functionality on a low level. During design data flow processing steps are black boxes. They get fleshed out during coding. Data flow design thus is more coarse grained than flow chart design. It starts on a higher level of abstraction - but then is not limited. By nesting data flows indefinitely you can design functionality of any size, without losing sight of your data. Data flows scale very well during design. They can be used on any level of granularity. And they can easily be depicted. Communicating designs using data flows is easy and scales well, too. The result of functional design using data flows is not algorithms (too low level), but processes. Think of data flows as descriptions of industrial production lines. Data as material runs through a number of processing steps to be analyzed, enhances, transformed. On the top level of a data flow design might be just one processing step, e.g. “execute 1-click order”. But below that are arbitrary levels of flows with smaller and smaller steps. That´s not layering as in “layered architecture”, though. Rather it´s a stratified design à la Abelson/Sussman. Refining data flows is not your grandpa´s functional decomposition. That was rooted in control flows. Refining data flows does not suffer from the limits of functional decomposition against which object orientation was supposed to be an antidote. Summary I´ve been working exclusively with data flows for functional design for the past 4 years. It has changed my life as a programmer. What once was difficult is now easy. And, no, I´m not using Clojure or F#. And I´m not a async/parallel execution buff. Designing the functionality of increments using data flows works great with teams. It produces design documentation which can easily be translated into code - in which then the smallest data flow processing steps have to be fleshed out - which is comparatively easy. Using a systematic translation approach code can mirror the data flow design. That way later on the design can easily be reproduced from the code if need be. And finally, data flow designs play well with object orientation. They are a great starting point for class design. But that´s a story for another day. To me data flow design simply is one of the missing links of systematic lightweight software design. There are also other artifacts software development can produce to get feedback, e.g. process descriptions, test cases. But customers can be delighted more easily with code based increments in functionality. ? No, I´m not talking about the endless possibilities this opens for parallel processing. Data flows are useful independently of multi-core processors and Actor-based designs. That´s my whole point here. Data flows are good for reasoning and evolvability. So forget about any special frameworks you might need to reap benefits from data flows. None are necessary. Translating data flow designs even into plain of Java is possible. ?

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