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  • XCode Project Code Changes Not Updating 100% After Save-Build-Run

    - by Greg
    When I make code changes to my iPhone game project in XCode, and then do CMD-B + Enter, I expect the project to be saved, build and run on the simulator with the latest. What is happening though, sometimes, is that it doesn't pick up a small change I make unless I clean the project and then build. I'm a long time Java person and newish to C-based languages and it's compiler. Can someone explain to me what is cached after each build that does this and how to change my project settings to avoid having to clean everytime? Or tell me the bad news that this is part of C development? Not trying to bash it - I get compiled JSPs stuck in the working cache often in Java, too. :P

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  • How to Best Setup a Website Project in VS.NET

    - by Jason
    I have very little experience with setting up a website from scratch in a .NET environment. As I am doing this now, I am wondering - what's the best way to go? Is it better to create a new Website Project, and include the various backend services and database code as part of that project, or is it better to split out the various aspects of the project? If the second, how would I go about doing that? I want to ensure that this project is easy to manage in the future (in terms of source control, deployment, etc), so I want to make sure I'm starting off on the right foot. I was unable to find any tutorials online, but if you have any, I would appreciate those as well. Thanks!

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  • From Trailer to Cloud: Skire acquisition expands Oracle’s on-demand project management options.

    - by Melissa Centurio Lopes
    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;} By Alison Weiss Whether building petrochemical facilities in the Middle East or managing mining operations in Australia, project managers face significant challenges. Local regulations and currencies, contingent labor, hybrid public/private funding sources, and more threaten project budgets and schedules. According to Mike Sicilia, senior vice president and general manager for the Oracle Primavera Global Business Unit, there will be trillions of dollars invested in industrial projects around the globe between 2012 and 2016. But even with so much at stake, project leads don’t always have time to look for new and better enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) software solutions to manage large-scale capital initiatives across the enterprise. Oracle’s recent acquisition of Skire, a leading provider of capital program management and facilities management applications available both in the cloud and on premises, gives customers outstanding new EPPM options. By combining Skire’s cloud-based solutions for managing capital projects, real estate, and facilities with Oracle’s Primavera EPPM solutions, project managers can quickly get a solution running that is interoperable across an extended enterprise. Staff can access the EPPM solution within days, rather than waiting for corporate IT to put technology in place. “Staff can access the EPPM solution within days, rather than waiting for corporate IT to put technology in place,” says Sicilia. This applies to a problem that has, according to Sicilia, bedeviled project managers for decades: extending EPPM functionality into the field. Frequently, large-scale projects are remotely located, and the lack of communications and IT infrastructure threatened the accuracy of project reporting and scheduling. Read the full version of this article in the November 2012 edition of Oracle's Profit Magazine: Special Report on Project Management

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  • [ASP.NET 4.0] Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls

    - by HosamKamel
    Data Control Selection Feature In ASP.NET 2.0: ASP.NET Data Controls row selection feature was based on row index (in the current page), this of course produce an issue if you try to select an item in the first page then navigate to the second page without select any record you will find the same row (with the same index) selected in the second page! In the sample application attached: Select the second row in the books GridView. Navigate to second page without doing any selection You will find the second row in the second page selected. Persisting Row Selection: Is a new feature which replace the old selection mechanism which based on row index to be based on the row data key instead. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. Data Control Selection Feature In ASP.NET 3.5 SP1: The Persisting Row Selection was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects Data Control Selection Feature In ASP.NET 4.0: Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects. You can enable this feature by setting the EnablePersistedSelection property, as shown below: Important thing to note, once you enable this feature you have to set the DataKeyNames property too because as discussed the full approach is based on the Row Data Key Simple feature but  is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Download Demo Project

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  • Is SQL Azure a newbies springboard?

    - by jamiet
    Earlier today I was considering the various SQL Server platforms that are available today and I wondered aloud, wonder how long until the majority of #sqlserver newcomers use @sqlazure instead of installing locally Let me explain. My first experience of development was way back in the early 90s when I would crank open VBA in Access or Excel and start hammering out some code, usually by recording macros and looking at the code that they produced (sound familiar?). The reason was simple, Office was becoming ubiquitous so the barrier to entry was incredibly low and, save for a short hiatus at university, I’ve been developing on the Microsoft platform ever since. These days spend most of my time using SQL Server. I take a look at SQL Azure today I see a lot of similarities with those early experiences, the barrier to entry is low and getting lower. I don’t have to download some software or actually install anything other than a web browser in order to get myself a fully functioning SQL Server  database against which I can ostensibly start hammering out some code and I believe that to be incredibly empowering. Having said that there are still a few pretty high barriers, namely: I need to get out my credit card Its pretty useless without some development tools such as SQL Server Management Studio, which I do have to install. The second of those barriers will disappear pretty soon when Project Houston delivers a web-based admin and presentation tool for SQL Azure so that just leaves the matter of my having to use a credit card. If Microsoft have any sense at all then they will realise the huge potential of opening up a free, throttled version of SQL Azure for newbies to party on; they get to developers early (just like they did with me all those years ago) and it gives potential customers an opportunity to try-before-they-buy. Perhaps in 20 years time people will be talking about SQL Azure as being their first foray into the world of coding! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • What FOSS solutions are available to manage software requirements?

    - by boos
    In the company where I work, we are starting to plan to be compliant to the software development life cycle. We already have, wiki, vcs system, bug tracking system, and a continuous integration system. The next step we want to have is to start to manage, in a structured way, software requirements. We dont want to use a wiki or shared documentation because we have many input (developer, manager, commercial, security analyst and other) and we dont want to handle proliferation of .doc around the network share. We are trying to search and we hope we can find and use a FOSS software to manage all this things. We have about 30 people, and don't have a budget for commercial software. We need a free solution for requirements management. What we want is software that can manage: Required features: Software requirements divided in a structured configurable way Versioning of the requirements (history, diff, etc, like source code) Interdependency of requirements (child of, parent of, related to) Rule Based Access Control for data handling Multi user, multi project File upload (for graph, document related to or so on) Report and extraction features Optional Features: Web Based Test case Time based management (timeline, excepted data, result data) Person allocation and so on Business related stuff Hardware allocation handling I have already play with testlink and now i'm playing with RTH, the next one i try is redmine.

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  • Public Speaking in software development.

    - by mummey
    Greetings my fellow cubicle dwellers. I've found my role gradually change from "feature-maintainer" to "feature-developer". While much of the former would consist of fixing and/or updating an existing feature (and quietly grumbling about it's implementation with complete naiveté), in this new role I find: Have to communicate with immediate management to define the development requirements to turnaround the new feature Have to communicate with design to determine the user requirements of the new feature Have to communicate with QA to determine test sets for the new feature, as well as it's current state during development. Have to communicate with producers/project-managers to define remaining turnaround time as well as updates in development requirements. and finally, have to occasionally communicate with upper-management to defend the new feature and demonstrate it's minimized risk to the upcoming release. The last item is key here, and this took me a couple occasions to completely realize. In all, though, it becomes very apparent that communication skills ARE important, even or especially as such for developers who feel they 'own' the feature they're working on. All of this said, I recognize it's importance and would like to improve my skills in this area further. I enjoy one-on-one communication but find I tend to stutter a bit when speaking to any group larger than a few people I know well. Where can I find good resources to improve my own communication skills?

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  • Requirements/issue tracker similar to online spreadsheet

    - by Maxim Eliseev
    Is there a requirements/issue tracker software which is similar to Google spreadsheet? We have Fogbugz but I find it more heavyweight and slow than a simple spreadsheet. Is there a Fogbugz alternative which is - fast - can show issues/requirements as a spreadsheet (at) and allows in-place editing - supports tree structures (where issue can have child issues)? It is required for a small project. There will be 2 developers and 1-2 other users. I guess that only one user will be actively maintaining it. UPDATE I do not say that a spreadsheet is better than Fogbugz or similar tools. In fact I am looking for a tool which is similar to Fogbugz and could replace a spreadsheet, but faster than Fogbugz and has an additional feature (table-like mode). I'd like to find a tool which can operate in a mode which looks like a table (one row per issue) but has a rich set features (similar to Fogbugs and JIRA). I find Fogbugz (and similar tools) inconvenient because I must enter the web form in order to edit anything. In-place editing (when issues are shown as a table) would be much faster.

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  • Offshoring: does it ever work?

    - by DanSingerman
    I know there has been a fair amount of discussion on here about outsourcing/offshoring, and the general opinion seems to be that at best it is difficult, and at worst it fails. I have direct experience of offshoring myself; a previous company where I was a dev manager wanted to send some development offshore, and we ran a pilot scheme to see how well it would work. Of course it was a complete failure, although it is not completely clear to me whether this was down to the offshore devs being less talented, the process, or other factors (no doubt it was really a combination). I can see as a business how offshoring looks attractive (much lower day rate), but as far as I can see, the only way it could possibly work is if you do exceptionally detailed design up front, with incredibly detailed specifications; and by the time you have invested in producing that, you have probably spent as nearly as much as if you had written the actual code locally (which I think is an instance of No Silver Bullet) So, what I want to know is, does anyone here have any experience of offshoring actually working ever? Especially if there are any success stories of it working in a semi-agile way? I know there are developers here from all over the World; has anyone worked on an offshore project they consider successful?

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  • Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?

    - by eagerMoose
    I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would "fit" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?

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  • Getting started on Large Projects

    - by Mercfh
    So I just graduated from my College with a B.S. in Comp. Science (although it was a good school, we're the only accredited CS department in our state.....for w/e that means lol) I feel like im a decent programmer, not amazing....but not terrible. Anyways I got my first job about 2 weeks ago, it's a pretty entry level job: firmware development/tester (I know I know people look down on testers...but I gotta start somewhere). Anyways there isn't a whole lot of coding to be had right now (mostly simple stuff) but here soon I have the option of helping out with development (which is what I want to do) Thing is....I have NEVER worked on a huge project. I mean in school sure we had "group" projects but nothing really big. So I'm not super familiar with HUGE classes and such (main language was C++)....Is this something I'll just get used to with time? Some fellow students were used to that with internships and such...but I never got that chance. My job was mostly a "one man job" kinda thing. Mostly little things. Plus in class we never did huge projects anyways. So how do you guys I guess "plan" out these things? Do you use a whiteboard and plan out classes and such....or what. Also...another worry of mine is that I have to use google......ALOT for examples of code, because sometimes I just don't get how something works. Is this normal? It makes me feel sorta.....stupid I guess. I mean "technically" i've had 4-5 years coding experience......but it really only feels like I had 2 years of REAL experience. If that makes any sense? Thanks

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  • Kickstarter and 2D smartphone games

    - by mm24
    I am about to launch a Kickstarter project as, after 14 months of full time development on my first iOS game, I run out of money. I developed an iOS game that needs few more months to be ready (the game structure is there but haven't yet worked on balancing the difficulty of the various levels). I have a feeling that most of the computer games founded on Kickstarter are for console, PC or Mac and not for smartphones. The category that many people seem to like is RPG style games. I have done tons of work over a year and collaborated with musicians and illustrators to get top quality graphics and music. The game looks cool to be an iOS 2D game but, compared to what I've seen on Kickstarter, I feel so little and humbled. I have searched for smartphone game projects on Kickstarter but haven't found many. I believe that the reason is that people are not keen in backing an APP that is normally sold for 0.99$ as they perceive is not something big. Am I the only one having this feeling? Could anyone please share a list of references to some successfully backed kickstarter smartphone game projects? (In this way the question will not become a "chat" and will fulfill the requirements to be a gamedev question). Any other article or authoritative answer will be welcome.

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  • Offshoring: does it ever work?

    - by DanSingerman
    I know there has been a fair amount of discussion on here about outsourcing/offshoring, and the general opinion seems to be that at best it is difficult, and at worst it fails. I have direct experience of offshoring myself; a previous company where I was a dev manager wanted to send some development offshore, and we ran a pilot scheme to see how well it would work. Of course it was a complete failure, although it is not completely clear to me whether this was down to the offshore devs being less talented, the process, or other factors (no doubt it was really a combination). I can see as a business how offshoring looks attractive (much lower day rate), but as far as I can see, the only way it could possibly work is if you do exceptionally detailed design up front, with incredibly detailed specifications; and by the time you have invested in producing that, you have probably spent as nearly as much as if you had written the actual code locally (which I think is an instance of No Silver Bullet) So, what I want to know is, does anyone here have any experience of offshoring actually working ever? Especially if there are any success stories of it working in a semi-agile way? I know there are developers here from all over the World; has anyone worked on an offshore project they consider successful?

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  • What is the breakdown of jobs in game development?

    - by Destry Ullrich
    There's a project I'm trying to start for Indie Game Development; specifically, it's going to be a social networking website that lets developers meet through (It's a secret). One of the key components is showing what skills members have. Question: I need to know what MAJOR game development roles are not represented in the following list, keeping in mind that many specialist roles are being condensed into more broad, generalist roles: Art Animator (Characters, creatures, props, etc.) Concept Artist (2D scenes, environments, props, silhouettes, etc.) Technical Artist (UI artists, typefaces, graphic designers, etc.) 3D Artist (Modeling, rigging, texture, lighting, etc.) Audio Composer (Scores, music, etc.) Sound Engineer (SFX, mood setting, audio implementation, etc.) Voice (Dialog, acting, etc.) Design Creative Director (Initial direction, team management, communications, etc.) Gameplay Designer (Systems, mechanics, control mapping, etc.) World Designer (Level design, aesthetics, game progression, events, etc.) Writer (Story, mythos, dialog, flavor text, etc.) Programming Engine Programming (Engine creation, scripting, physics, etc.) Graphics Engineer (Sprites, lighting, GUI, etc.) Network Engineer (LAN, multiplayer, server support, etc.) Technical Director (I don't know what a technical director would even do.) Post Script: I have an art background, so i'm not familiar with what the others behind game creation actually do. What's missing from this list, and if you feel some things should be changed around how so?

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  • Who should have full visibility of all (non-data) requirements information?

    - by ebyrob
    I work at a smallish mid-size company where requirements are sometimes nothing more than an email or brief meeting with a subject matter manager requiring some new feature. Should a programmer working on a feature reasonably expect to have access to such "request emails" and other requirements information? Is it more appropriate for a "program manager" (PGM) to rewrite all requirements before sharing with programmers? The company is not technology-centric and has between 50 and 250 employees. (fewer than 10 programmers in sum) Our project management "software" consists of a "TODO.txt" checked into source control in "/doc/". Note: This is nothing to do with "sensitive data access". Unless a particular subject matter manager's style of email correspondence is top secret. Given the suggested duplicate, perhaps this could be a turf war, as the PGM would like to specify HOW. Whereas WHY is absent and WHAT is muddled by the time it gets through to the programmer(s)... Basically. Should specification be transparent to programmers? Perhaps a history of requirements might exist. Shouldn't a programmer be able to see that history of reqs if/when they can tell something is hinky in the spec? This isn't a question about organizing requirements. It is a question about WHO should have full VISIBILITY of requirements. I'd propose it should be ALL STAKEHOLDERS. Please point out where I'm wrong here.

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

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

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  • How to educate business managers on the complexity of adding new features? [duplicate]

    - by Derrick Miller
    This question already has an answer here: How to educate business managers on the complexity of adding new features? [duplicate] 3 answers We maintain a web application for a client who demands that new features be added at a breakneck pace. We've done our best to keep up with their demands, and as a result the code base has grown exponentially. There are now so many modules, subsystems, controllers, class libraries, unit tests, APIs, etc. that it's starting to take more time to work through all of the complexity each time we add a new feature. We've also had to pull additional people in on the project to take over things like QA and staging, so the lead developers can focus on developing. Unfortunately, the client is becoming angry that the cost for each new feature is going up. They seem to expect that we can add new features ad infinitum and the cost of each feature will remain linear. I have repeatedly tried to explain to them that it doesn't work that way - that the code base expands in a fractal manner as all these features are added. I've explained that the best way to keep the cost down is to be judicious about which new features are really needed. But, they either don't understand, or they think I'm bullshitting them. They just sort of roll their eyes and get angry. They're all completely non-technical, and have no idea what does into writing software. Is there a way that I can explain this using business language, that might help them understand better? Are there any visualizations out there, that illustrate the growth of a code base over time? Any other suggestions on dealing with this client?

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  • By what features and qualities are "free" and "premium" themes differentiated

    - by Sinthia V
    I have a lot of time invested in creating Wordpress templates. I want to release combinations of these templates along with different styles and Fancy Front pages as "Premium Wordpress Themes". What I need to know is what does "Premium" mean? What do people expect of a GPL theme vs. a Premium theme? Are there features that are considered required to be premium? Are there features that are in demand but considered "exceptional" i.e. not part of every premium theme? How can I tell the difference? I have heard tounge-in-cheek answers that say that any theme that makes money is premium, but I mean to ask about what gives an outstanding theme it's quality. Why is it worth more? I am technically able to do many things, but as a lone developer with a family to feed, I can't afford to spend time on features that no one cares about. I have to try to isolate the things that people want. This is serious food and rent to me. How can I get this kind of info so I can make my project successful?

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  • Programming During a Crisis

    - by Duracell
    Hello, I'm having difficulty turning this into a proper question, but here goes... Some of you may have heard about the flooding happening in Queensland, Australia. Well, I'm in the inner suburbs of Brisbane right now; the river has been slowly creeping toward my house since Tuesday. When I left for work this morning it was twenty meters down the road when it is normally kilometers away. Within hours of the distater striking, the government already had some pretty good web applications available for people to get information about what was happening and where the flood was predicted to rise. They also set up a database for people to search for the whereabouts of relatives or could register their location for others to see. Has anyone been involved in the development of these kinds of projects before? It's interesting that they could churn out this software in what appeared to be less than a day when the average development house could take weeks at best. In what ways did it differ from a 'normal' project? Any other thoughts?

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  • What makes a theme "Premium"

    - by Sinthia V
    I have a lot of time invested in creating Wordpress templates. I want to release combinations of these templates along with different styles and Fancy Front pages as "Premium Wordpress Themes". What I need to know is what does "Premium" mean? What do people expect of a GPL theme vs. a Premium theme? Are there features that are considered required to be premium? Are there features that are in demand but considered "exceptional" i.e. not part of every premium theme? How can I tell the difference? I have heard tounge-in-cheek answers that say that any theme that makes money is premium, but I mean to ask about what gives an outstanding theme it's quality. Why is it worth more? I am technically able to do many things, but as a lone developer with a family to feed, I can't afford to spend time on features that no one cares about. I have to try to isolate the things that people want. This is serious food and rent to me. How can I get this kind of info so I can make my project successful?

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  • How many tasks to plan beforehand [closed]

    - by no__seriously
    As for my daily routine. Every morning when I come to work, I look at the items of my todo-list inbox (noted from the previous day). For each task I think about on which day I should get started and then group them accordingly. Once that's finished, I get started with my actual schedule for the day. Now, this pre-planning for each task (which could be concerning user interface to compiler programming) is mostly pretty sketchy. Serious thoughts about design and implementation comes when the task is about to be tackled. This approach works for me and I can't really complain. But I'm wondering. Since I'm personally most productive during the morning, would it make sense to already go into a deeper level of planning right away for each task? Or is that unproductive and would rather confuse than clarify? I think the latter. How do you handle your task management for each task / project and how far do you go with planning before even getting started with that item?

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  • How would you manage development between many Staging branches?

    - by Trip
    We have a Staging Branch. then we came out with a Beta branch for users to move whenever they wanted to from old Production branch to the new features. Our plan seemed simple, we test on Staging, when items get QA'd, they get cherry-picked and deploy to Beta. Here's the problem! A bug will discreetly make its way on to Beta, and since Beta is a production environment, it needs fixes fast and accurate. But not all the QA's got done. Enter Git hell.. So I find a problem on Beta. No sweat, its already been fixed on Staging, but when I go to cherry-pick the item over, Beta barely has any of the other pre-requisites of code to implement this small change. Now Beta has a little here and a little there, and I can't imagine it as a code base being as stable as Staging. What's more, is I'm dealing with some insane Git conflicts, and having to monkey patch a bunch of things to make up for what Beta hasn't caught up with Staging. Can someone polite or non-polite terms, tell me what we're doing wrong here as far as assembling this project? Any awesome recommendations or workarounds or alternatives to the system we came up with?

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  • Fraud Detection with the SQL Server Suite Part 2

    - by Dejan Sarka
    This is the second part of the fraud detection whitepaper. You can find the first part in my previous blog post about this topic. My Approach to Data Mining Projects It is impossible to evaluate the time and money needed for a complete fraud detection infrastructure in advance. Personally, I do not know the customer’s data in advance. I don’t know whether there is already an existing infrastructure, like a data warehouse, in place, or whether we would need to build one from scratch. Therefore, I always suggest to start with a proof-of-concept (POC) project. A POC takes something between 5 and 10 working days, and involves personnel from the customer’s site – either employees or outsourced consultants. The team should include a subject matter expert (SME) and at least one information technology (IT) expert. The SME must be familiar with both the domain in question as well as the meaning of data at hand, while the IT expert should be familiar with the structure of data, how to access it, and have some programming (preferably Transact-SQL) knowledge. With more than one IT expert the most time consuming work, namely data preparation and overview, can be completed sooner. I assume that the relevant data is already extracted and available at the very beginning of the POC project. If a customer wants to have their people involved in the project directly and requests the transfer of knowledge, the project begins with training. I strongly advise this approach as it offers the establishment of a common background for all people involved, the understanding of how the algorithms work and the understanding of how the results should be interpreted, a way of becoming familiar with the SQL Server suite, and more. Once the data has been extracted, the customer’s SME (i.e. the analyst), and the IT expert assigned to the project will learn how to prepare the data in an efficient manner. Together with me, knowledge and expertise allow us to focus immediately on the most interesting attributes and identify any additional, calculated, ones soon after. By employing our programming knowledge, we can, for example, prepare tens of derived variables, detect outliers, identify the relationships between pairs of input variables, and more, in only two or three days, depending on the quantity and the quality of input data. I favor the customer’s decision of assigning additional personnel to the project. For example, I actually prefer to work with two teams simultaneously. I demonstrate and explain the subject matter by applying techniques directly on the data managed by each team, and then both teams continue to work on the data overview and data preparation under our supervision. I explain to the teams what kind of results we expect, the reasons why they are needed, and how to achieve them. Afterwards we review and explain the results, and continue with new instructions, until we resolve all known problems. Simultaneously with the data preparation the data overview is performed. The logic behind this task is the same – again I show to the teams involved the expected results, how to achieve them and what they mean. This is also done in multiple cycles as is the case with data preparation, because, quite frankly, both tasks are completely interleaved. A specific objective of the data overview is of principal importance – it is represented by a simple star schema and a simple OLAP cube that will first of all simplify data discovery and interpretation of the results, and will also prove useful in the following tasks. The presence of the customer’s SME is the key to resolving possible issues with the actual meaning of the data. We can always replace the IT part of the team with another database developer; however, we cannot conduct this kind of a project without the customer’s SME. After the data preparation and when the data overview is available, we begin the scientific part of the project. I assist the team in developing a variety of models, and in interpreting the results. The results are presented graphically, in an intuitive way. While it is possible to interpret the results on the fly, a much more appropriate alternative is possible if the initial training was also performed, because it allows the customer’s personnel to interpret the results by themselves, with only some guidance from me. The models are evaluated immediately by using several different techniques. One of the techniques includes evaluation over time, where we use an OLAP cube. After evaluating the models, we select the most appropriate model to be deployed for a production test; this allows the team to understand the deployment process. There are many possibilities of deploying data mining models into production; at the POC stage, we select the one that can be completed quickly. Typically, this means that we add the mining model as an additional dimension to an existing DW or OLAP cube, or to the OLAP cube developed during the data overview phase. Finally, we spend some time presenting the results of the POC project to the stakeholders and managers. Even from a POC, the customer will receive lots of benefits, all at the sole risk of spending money and time for a single 5 to 10 day project: The customer learns the basic patterns of frauds and fraud detection The customer learns how to do the entire cycle with their own people, only relying on me for the most complex problems The customer’s analysts learn how to perform much more in-depth analyses than they ever thought possible The customer’s IT experts learn how to perform data extraction and preparation much more efficiently than they did before All of the attendees of this training learn how to use their own creativity to implement further improvements of the process and procedures, even after the solution has been deployed to production The POC output for a smaller company or for a subsidiary of a larger company can actually be considered a finished, production-ready solution It is possible to utilize the results of the POC project at subsidiary level, as a finished POC project for the entire enterprise Typically, the project results in several important “side effects” Improved data quality Improved employee job satisfaction, as they are able to proactively contribute to the central knowledge about fraud patterns in the organization Because eventually more minds get to be involved in the enterprise, the company should expect more and better fraud detection patterns After the POC project is completed as described above, the actual project would not need months of engagement from my side. This is possible due to our preference to transfer the knowledge onto the customer’s employees: typically, the customer will use the results of the POC project for some time, and only engage me again to complete the project, or to ask for additional expertise if the complexity of the problem increases significantly. I usually expect to perform the following tasks: Establish the final infrastructure to measure the efficiency of the deployed models Deploy the models in additional scenarios Through reports By including Data Mining Extensions (DMX) queries in OLTP applications to support real-time early warnings Include data mining models as dimensions in OLAP cubes, if this was not done already during the POC project Create smart ETL applications that divert suspicious data for immediate or later inspection I would also offer to investigate how the outcome could be transferred automatically to the central system; for instance, if the POC project was performed in a subsidiary whereas a central system is available as well Of course, for the actual project, I would repeat the data and model preparation as needed It is virtually impossible to tell in advance how much time the deployment would take, before we decide together with customer what exactly the deployment process should cover. Without considering the deployment part, and with the POC project conducted as suggested above (including the transfer of knowledge), the actual project should still only take additional 5 to 10 days. The approximate timeline for the POC project is, as follows: 1-2 days of training 2-3 days for data preparation and data overview 2 days for creating and evaluating the models 1 day for initial preparation of the continuous learning infrastructure 1 day for presentation of the results and discussion of further actions Quite frequently I receive the following question: are we going to find the best possible model during the POC project, or during the actual project? My answer is always quite simple: I do not know. Maybe, if we would spend just one hour more for data preparation, or create just one more model, we could get better patterns and predictions. However, we simply must stop somewhere, and the best possible way to do this, according to my experience, is to restrict the time spent on the project in advance, after an agreement with the customer. You must also never forget that, because we build the complete learning infrastructure and transfer the knowledge, the customer will be capable of doing further investigations independently and improve the models and predictions over time without the need for a constant engagement with me.

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  • SQL cluster instance names for large project

    - by Sam
    We're setting up two clusters. One dev and one prod. The Production will host two SQL instances - a OLTP and a DW. The development will host 4 OLTP non-production environments and at least one DW non-production. We're working on getting more DW non-prods and possibly more OLTP systems. I'm considering a naming scheme like this, where PROJ would be 3 initials for the project name. Dev Cluster MSSQLPROJD1\D1 (DEV) MSSQLPROJD2\D2 (TEST) MSSQLPROJD3\D3 (QA) MSSQLPROJD4\D4 (STAGE) MSSQLPROJD5\D5 (DW) Prd Cluster MSSQLPROJP1\P1 (PRD) MSSQLPROJP2\P2 (DW) To the left of the slash, each name must be unique network wide. On each server, the instance name, to the right of the slash, must be unique. Any thoughts on this? I'm trying to avoid having instance names drifting from reality as the project progresses - say we change what we call a certain environment or want to repurpose one. Then we can update a listing of the purposes for the instances and be done with it. How has a scheme like this worked out for you? Maybe you do things another way in your shop - tell me about it. Thanks.

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