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Good C++ array class for dealing with large arrays of data in a fast and memory efficient way?

- by Shane MacLaughlin

Following on from a previous question relating to heap usage restrictions, I'm looking for a good standard C++ class for dealing with big arrays of data in a way that is both memory efficient and speed efficient. I had been allocating the array using a single malloc/HealAlloc but after multiple trys using various calls, keep falling foul of heap fragmentation. So the conclusion I've come to, other than porting to 64 bit, is to use a mechanism that allows me to have a large array spanning multiple smaller memory fragments. I don't want an alloc per element as that is very memory inefficient, so the plan is to write a class that overrides the [] operator and select an appropriate element based on the index. Is there already a decent class out there to do this, or am I better off rolling my own? From my understanding, and some googling, a 32 bit Windows process should theoretically be able address up to 2GB. Now assuming I've 2GB installed, and various other processes and services are hogging about 400MB, how much usable memory do you think my program can reasonably expect to get from the heap? I'm currently using various flavours of Visual C++.

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How to process a large post array in PHP where item names are all different and not known in advance

- by Salnajjar

I have a PHP page that queries a DB to populate a form for the user to modify the data and submit. The query returns a number of rows which contain 3 items: ImageID ImageName ImageDescription The PHP page titles each box in the form with a generic name and appends the ImageID to it. Ie: ImageID_03 ImageName_34 ImageDescription_22 As it's unknown which images are going to have been retrieved from the DB then I can't know in advance what the name of the form entries will be. The form deals with a large number of entries at the same time. My backend PHP form processor that gets the data just sees it as one big array: [imageid_2] => 2 [imagename_2] => _MG_0214 [imageid_10] => 10 [imagename_10] => _MG_0419 [imageid_39] => 39 [imagename_39] => _MG_0420 [imageid_22] => 22 [imagename_22] => Curly Fern [imagedescription_2] => Wibble [imagedescription_10] => Wobble [imagedescription_39] => Fred [imagedescription_22] => Sally I've tried to do an array walk on it to split it into 3 arrays which set places but am stuck: // define empty arrays $imageidarray = array(); $imagenamearray = array(); $imagedescriptionarray = array(); // our function to call when we walk through the posted items array function assignvars($entry, $key) { if (preg_match("/imageid/i", $key)) { array_push($imageidarray, $entry); } elseif (preg_match("/imagename/i", $key)) { // echo " ImageName: $entry"; } elseif (preg_match("/imagedescription/i", $key)) { // echo " ImageDescription: $entry"; } } array_walk($_POST, 'assignvars'); This fails with the error: array_push(): First argument should be an array in... Am I approaching this wrong?

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Mongodb performance on Windows

- by Chris

I've been researching nosql options available for .NET lately and MongoDB is emerging as a clear winner in terms of availability and support, so tonight I decided to give it a go. I downloaded version 1.2.4 (Windows x64 binary) from the mongodb site and ran it with the following options: C:\mongodb\bin>mkdir data C:\mongodb\bin>mongod -dbpath ./data --cpu --quiet I then loaded up the latest mongodb-csharp driver from http://github.com/samus/mongodb-csharp and immediately ran the benchmark program. Having heard about how "amazingly fast" MongoDB is, I was rather shocked at the poor benchmark performance. Starting Tests encode (small).........................................320000 00:00:00.0156250 encode (medium)........................................80000 00:00:00.0625000 encode (large).........................................1818 00:00:02.7500000 decode (small).........................................320000 00:00:00.0156250 decode (medium)........................................160000 00:00:00.0312500 decode (large).........................................2370 00:00:02.1093750 insert (small, no index)...............................2176 00:00:02.2968750 insert (medium, no index)..............................2269 00:00:02.2031250 insert (large, no index)...............................778 00:00:06.4218750 insert (small, indexed)................................2051 00:00:02.4375000 insert (medium, indexed)...............................2133 00:00:02.3437500 insert (large, indexed)................................835 00:00:05.9843750 batch insert (small, no index).........................53333 00:00:00.0937500 batch insert (medium, no index)........................26666 00:00:00.1875000 batch insert (large, no index).........................1114 00:00:04.4843750 find_one (small, no index).............................350 00:00:14.2812500 find_one (medium, no index)............................204 00:00:24.4687500 find_one (large, no index).............................135 00:00:37.0156250 find_one (small, indexed)..............................352 00:00:14.1718750 find_one (medium, indexed).............................184 00:00:27.0937500 find_one (large, indexed)..............................128 00:00:38.9062500 find (small, no index).................................516 00:00:09.6718750 find (medium, no index)................................316 00:00:15.7812500 find (large, no index).................................216 00:00:23.0468750 find (small, indexed)..................................532 00:00:09.3906250 find (medium, indexed).................................346 00:00:14.4375000 find (large, indexed)..................................212 00:00:23.5468750 find range (small, indexed)............................440 00:00:11.3593750 find range (medium, indexed)...........................294 00:00:16.9531250 find range (large, indexed)............................199 00:00:25.0625000 Press any key to continue... For starters, I can get better non-batch insert performance from SQL Server Express. What really struck me, however, was the slow performance of the find_nnnn queries. Why is retrieving data from MongoDB so slow? What am I missing? Edit: This was all on the local machine, no network latency or anything. MongoDB's CPU usage ran at about 75% the entire time the test was running. Edit 2: Also, I ran a trace on the benchmark program and confirmed that 50% of the CPU time spent was waiting for MongoDB to return data, so it's not a performance issue with the C# driver.

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How would you organize a large complex web application (see basic example)?

- by Anurag

How do you usually organize complex web applications that are extremely rich on the client side. I have created a contrived example to indicate the kind of mess it's easy to get into if things are not managed well for big apps. Feel free to modify/extend this example as you wish - http://jsfiddle.net/NHyLC/1/ The example basically mirrors part of the comment posting on SO, and follows the following rules: Must have 15 characters minimum, after multiple spaces are trimmed out to one. If Add Comment is clicked, but the size is less than 15 after removing multiple spaces, then show a popup with the error. Indicate amount of characters remaining and summarize with color coding. Gray indicates a small comment, brown indicates a medium comment, orange a large comment, and red a comment overflow. One comment can only be submitted every 15 seconds. If comment is submitted too soon, show a popup with appropriate error message. A couple of issues I noticed with this example. This should ideally be a widget or some sort of packaged functionality. Things like a comment per 15 seconds, and minimum 15 character comment belong to some application wide policies rather than being embedded inside each widget. Too many hard-coded values. No code organization. Model, Views, Controllers are all bundled together. Not that MVC is the only approach for organizing rich client side web applications, but there is none in this example. How would you go about cleaning this up? Applying a little MVC/MVP along the way? Here's some of the relevant functions, but it will make more sense if you saw the entire code on jsfiddle: /** * Handle comment change. * Update character count. * Indicate progress */ function handleCommentUpdate(comment) { var status = $('.comment-status'); status.text(getStatusText(comment)); status.removeClass('mild spicy hot sizzling'); status.addClass(getStatusClass(comment)); } /** * Is the comment valid for submission */ function commentSubmittable(comment) { var notTooSoon = !isTooSoon(); var notEmpty = !isEmpty(comment); var hasEnoughCharacters = !isTooShort(comment); return notTooSoon && notEmpty && hasEnoughCharacters; } // submit comment $('.add-comment').click(function() { var comment = $('.comment-box').val(); // submit comment, fake ajax call if(commentSubmittable(comment)) { .. } // show a popup if comment is mostly spaces if(isTooShort(comment)) { if(comment.length < 15) { // blink status message } else { popup("Comment must be at least 15 characters in length."); } } // show a popup is comment submitted too soon else if(isTooSoon()) { popup("Only 1 comment allowed per 15 seconds."); } });

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Agile Like Jazz

- by Jeff Certain

(I’ve been sitting on this for a week or so now, thinking that it needed to be tightened up a bit to make it less rambling. Since that’s clearly not going to happen, reader beware!) I had the privilege of spending around 90 minutes last night sitting and listening to Sonny Rollins play a concert at the Disney Center in LA. If you don’t know who Sonny Rollins is, I don’t know how to explain the experience; if you know who he is, I don’t need to. Suffice it to say that he has been recording professionally for over 50 years, and helped create an entire genre of music. A true master by any definition. One of the most intriguing aspects of a concert like this, however, is watching the master step aside and let the rest of the musicians play. Not just play their parts, but really play… letting them take over the spotlight, to strut their stuff, to soak up enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Sonny Rollins has been doing this for more than a half-century. Maybe it has something to do with a kind of patience you learn when you’re on the far side of 80 – and the man can still blow a mean sax for 90 minutes without stopping! Maybe it has to do with the fact that he was out there for the love of the music and the love of the show, not because he had anything to prove to anyone and, I like to think, not for the money. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, when you’re at that level of mastery, the other musicians are going to be good. Really good. Whatever the reasons, there was a incredible freedom on that stage – the ability to improvise, for each musician to showcase their own specialization and skills, and them come back to the common theme, back to being on the same page, as it were. All this took place in the same venue that is home to the L.A. Phil. Somehow, I can’t ever see the same kind of free-wheeling improvisation happening in that context. And, since I’m a geek, I started thinking about agility. Rollins has put together a quintet that reflects his own particular style and past. No upright bass or piano for Rollins – drums, bongos, electric guitar and bass guitar along with his sax. It’s not about the mix of instruments. Other trios, quartets, and sextets use different mixes of instruments. New Orleans jazz tends towards trombones instead of sax; some prefer cornet or trumpet. But no matter what the choice of instruments, size matters. Team sizes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We’re on a quest to rethink how our teams are organized. They just feel too big, too unwieldy. In fact, they really don’t feel like teams at all. Most of the time, they feel more like collections or people who happen to report to the same manager. I attribute this to a couple factors. One is over-specialization; we have a tendency to have people work in silos. Although the teams are product-focused, within them our developers are both generalists and specialists. On the one hand, we expect them to be able to build an entire vertical slice of the application; on the other hand, each developer tends to be responsible for the vertical slice. As a result, developers often work on their own piece of the puzzle, in isolation. This sort of feels like working on a jigsaw in a group – each person taking a set of colors and piecing them together to reveal a portion of the overall picture. But what inevitably happens when you go to meld all those pieces together? Inevitably, you have some sections that are too big to move easily. These sections end up falling apart under their own weight as you try to move them. Not only that, but there are other challenges – figuring out where that section fits, and how to tie it into the rest of the puzzle. Often, this is when you find a few pieces need to be added – these pieces are “glue,” if you will. The other issue that arises is due to the overhead of maintaining communications in a team. My mother, who worked in IT for around 30 years, once told me that 20% per team member is a good rule of thumb for maintaining communication. While this is a rule of thumb, it seems to imply that any team over about 6 people is going to become less agile simple because of the communications burden. Teams of ten or twelve seem like they fall into the philharmonic organizational model. Complicated pieces of music requiring dozens of players to all be on the same page requires a much different model than the jazz quintet. There’s much less room for improvisation, originality or freedom. (There are probably orchestral musicians who will take exception to this characterization; I’m calling it like I see it from the cheap seats.) And, there’s one guy up front who is running the show, whose job is to keep all of those dozens of players on the same page, to facilitate communications. Somehow, the orchestral model doesn’t feel much like a self-organizing team, either. The first violin may be the best violinist in the orchestra, but they don’t get to perform free-wheeling solos. I’ve never heard of an orchestra getting together for a jam session. But I have heard of teams that organize their work based on the developers available, rather than organizing the developers based on the work required. I have heard of teams where desired functionality is deferred – or worse yet, schedules are missed – because one critical person doesn’t have any bandwidth available. I’ve heard of teams where people simply don’t have the big picture, because there is too much communication overhead for everyone to be aware of everything that is happening on a project. I once heard Paul Rayner say something to the effect of “you have a process that is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you have.” Given a choice, I want a process that’s much more like jazz than orchestral music. I want a process that doesn’t burden me with lots of forms and checkboxes and stuff. Give me the simplest, most lightweight process that will work – and a smaller team of the best developers I can find. This seems like the kind of process that will get the kind of result I want to be part of.

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What would I use to remove escaped html from large sets of data.

- by Elizabeth Buckwalter

Our database is filled with articles retrieved from RSS feeds. I was unsure of what data I would be getting, and how much filtering was already setup (WP-O-Matic Wordpress plugin using the SimplePie library). This plugin does some basic encoding before insertion using Wordpress's built in post insert function which also does some filtering. I've figured out most of the filters before insertion, but now I have whacko data that I need to remove. This is an example of whacko data that I have data in one field which the content I want in the front, but this part removed which is at the end: <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoundOnTheSound?i=xFxEpT2Add0:xFbIkwGc-fk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoundOnTheSound?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoundOnTheSound?i=xFxEpT2Add0:xFbIkwGc-fk:D7DqB2pKExk" Notice how some of the images are escape and some aren't. I believe this has to do with the last part being cut off so as to be unrecognizable as an html tag, which then caused it to be html endcoded. Another field has only this which is now filtered before insertion, but I have to get rid of the others: <img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2183/2289902369_1d95bcdb85.jpg" alt="post_img" width="80" (all examples are on one line, but broken up for readability) Question: What is the best way to work with the above escaped html (or portion of an html tag)? I can do it in Perl, PHP, SQL, Ruby, and even Python. I believe Perl to be the best at text parsing, so that's why I used the Perl tag. And PHP times out on large database operations, so that's pretty much out unless I wanted to do batch processing and what not. PS One of the nice things about using Wordpress's insert post function, is that if you use php's strip_tags function to strip out all html, insert post function will insert at the paragraph points. Let me know if there's anything more that I can answer. Some article that didn't quite answer my questions. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2016751/remove-text-from-within-a-database-text-field) (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/462831/regular-expression-to-escape-html-ampersands-while-respecting-cdata)

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What regular expression(s) would I use to remove escaped html from large sets of data.

- by Elizabeth Buckwalter

Our database is filled with articles retrieved from RSS feeds. I was unsure of what data I would be getting, and how much filtering was already setup (WP-O-Matic Wordpress plugin using the SimplePie library). This plugin does some basic encoding before insertion using Wordpress's built in post insert function which also does some filtering. I've figured out most of the filters before insertion, but now I have whacko data that I need to remove. This is an example of whacko data that I have data in one field which the content I want in the front, but this part removed which is at the end: <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoundOnTheSound?i=xFxEpT2Add0:xFbIkwGc-fk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoundOnTheSound?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoundOnTheSound?i=xFxEpT2Add0:xFbIkwGc-fk:D7DqB2pKExk" Notice how some of the images are escape and some aren't. I believe this has to do with the last part being cut off so as to be unrecognizable as an html tag, which then caused it to be html endcoded. Another field has only this which is now filtered before insertion, but I have to get rid of the others: <img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2183/2289902369_1d95bcdb85.jpg" alt="post_img" width="80" (all examples are on one line, but broken up for readability) Question: What is the best way to work with the above escaped html (or portion of an html tag)? I can do it in Perl, PHP, SQL, Ruby, and even Python. I believe Perl to be the best at text parsing, so that's why I used the Perl tag. And PHP times out on large database operations, so that's pretty much out unless I wanted to do batch processing and what not. PS One of the nice things about using Wordpress's insert post function, is that if you use php's strip_tags function to strip out all html, insert post function will insert at the paragraph points. Let me know if there's anything more that I can answer. Some article that didn't quite answer my questions. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2016751/remove-text-from-within-a-database-text-field) (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/462831/regular-expression-to-escape-html-ampersands-while-respecting-cdata)

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How can I improve my select query for storing large versioned data sets?

- by Jason Francis

At work, we build large multi-page web applications, consisting mostly of radio and check boxes. The primary purpose of each application is to gather data, but as users return to a page they have previously visited, we report back to them their previous responses. Worst-case scenario, we might have up to 900 distinct variables and around 1.5 million users. For several reasons, it makes sense to use an insert-only approach to storing the data (as opposed to update-in-place) so that we can capture historical data about repeated interactions with variables. The net result is that we might have several responses per user per variable. Our table to collect the responses looks something like this: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[results]( [id] [bigint] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [userid] [int] NULL, [variable] [varchar](8) NULL, [value] [tinyint] NULL, [submitted] [smalldatetime] NULL) Where id serves as the primary key. Virtually every request results in a series of insert statements (one per variable submitted), and then we run a select to produce previous responses for the next page (something like this): SELECT t.id, t.variable, t.value FROM results t WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE t.userid = '2111846' AND (t.variable='internat' OR t.variable='veteran' OR t.variable='athlete') AND t.id IN (SELECT MAX(id) AS id FROM results WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE userid = '2111846' AND (t.variable='internat' OR t.variable='veteran' OR t.variable='athlete') GROUP BY variable) Which, in this case, would return the most recent responses for the variables "internat", "veteran", and "athlete" for user 2111846. We have followed the advice of the database tuning tools in indexing the tables, and against our data, this is the best-performing version of the select query that we have been able to come up with. Even so, there seems to be significant performance degradation as the table approaches 1 million records (and we might have about 150x that). We have a fairly-elegant solution in place for sharding the data across multiple tables which has been working quite well, but I am open for any advice about how I might construct a better version of the select query. We use this structure frequently for storing lots of independent data points, and we like the benefits it provides. So the question is, how can I improve the performance of the select query? I assume the nested select statement is a bad idea, but I have yet to find an alternative that performs as well. Thanks in advance. NB: Since we emphasize creating over reading in this case, and since we never update in place, there doesn't seem to be any penalty (and some advantage) for using the NOLOCK directive in this case.

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Large transactions causing "System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired" error?

- by Michael

My application requires a user to log in and allows them to edit a list of things. However, it seems that if the same user always logs in and out and edits the list, this user will run into a "System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired." error. I've read comments about increasing the timeout period but I've also read a comment about it possibly caused by uncommitted transactions. And I do have one going in the application. I'll provide the code I'm working with and there is an IF statement in there that I was a little iffy about but it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I'll just go over what's going on here, there is a list of objects to update or add into the database. New objects created in the application are given an ID of 0 while existing objects have their own ID's generated from the DB. If the user chooses to delete some objects, their IDs are stored in a separate list of Integers. Once the user is ready to save their changes, the two lists are passed into this method. By use of the IF statement, objects with ID of 0 are added (using the Add stored procedure) and those objects with non-zero IDs are updated (using the Update stored procedure). After all this, a FOR loop goes through all the integers in the "removal" list and uses the Delete stored procedure to remove them. A transaction is used for all this. Public Shared Sub UpdateSomethings(ByVal SomethingList As List(Of Something), ByVal RemovalList As List(Of Integer)) Using DBConnection As New SqlConnection(conn) DBConnection.Open() Dim MyTransaction As SqlTransaction MyTransaction = DBConnection.BeginTransaction() Try For Each SomethingItem As Something In SomethingList Using MyCommand As New SqlCommand() MyCommand.Connection = DBConnection If SomethingItem.ID > 0 Then MyCommand.CommandText = "UpdateSomething" Else MyCommand.CommandText = "AddSomething" End If MyCommand.Transaction = MyTransaction MyCommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure With MyCommand.Parameters If MyCommand.CommandText = "UpdateSomething" Then .Add("@id", SqlDbType.Int).Value = SomethingItem.ID End If .Add("@stuff", SqlDbType.Varchar).Value = SomethingItem.Stuff End With MyCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() End Using Next For Each ID As Integer In RemovalList Using MyCommand As New SqlCommand("DeleteSomething", DBConnection) MyCommand.Transaction = MyTransaction MyCommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure With MyCommand.Parameters .Add("@id", SqlDbType.Int).Value = ID End With MyCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() End Using Next MyTransaction.Commit() Catch ex As Exception MyTransaction.Rollback() 'Exception handling goes here End Try End Using End Sub There are three stored procedures used here as well as some looping so I can see how something can be holding everything up if the list is large enough. Other users can log in to the system at the same time just fine though. I'm using Visual Studio 2008 to debug and am using SQL Server 2000 for the DB.

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Divide a large amount of text on an arbitrary number of equal parts.

- by kalininew

I probably already fed up with their stupid questions, but I have one more question. I have a large piece of text Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur? At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio, cumque nihil impedit, quo minus id, quod maxime placeat, facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet, ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat. Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur? At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio, cumque nihil impedit, quo minus id, quod maxime placeat, facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet, ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat. Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur? At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus, qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti, quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint, obcaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa, qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, soluta nobis est eligendi optio, cumque nihil impedit, quo minus id, quod maxime placeat, facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet, ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat. Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, At the exit I need to divide the text on the "n" equal parts, so that in these parts was about the same amount of text. Then I these part are arranged in columns and the need for these columns look about the same height. Another condition: Tags you can break (I mean that if the tag "p" contains a lot of text, it can be divided into two parts, to bring in another column). I think this is a monumental task, I shall be grateful for any help.

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Scrum in 5 Minutes

- by Stephen.Walther

The goal of this blog entry is to explain the basic concepts of Scrum in less than five minutes. You learn how Scrum can help a team of developers to successfully complete a complex software project. Product Backlog and the Product Owner Imagine that you are part of a team which needs to create a new website – for example, an e-commerce website. You have an overwhelming amount of work to do. You need to build (or possibly buy) a shopping cart, install an SSL certificate, create a product catalog, create a Facebook page, and at least a hundred other things that you have not thought of yet. According to Scrum, the first thing you should do is create a list. Place the highest priority items at the top of the list and the lower priority items lower in the list. For example, creating the shopping cart and buying the domain name might be high priority items and creating a Facebook page might be a lower priority item. In Scrum, this list is called the Product Backlog. How do you prioritize the items in the Product Backlog? Different stakeholders in the project might have different priorities. Gary, your division VP, thinks that it is crucial that the e-commerce site has a mobile app. Sally, your direct manager, thinks taking advantage of new HTML5 features is much more important. Multiple people are pulling you in different directions. According to Scrum, it is important that you always designate one person, and only one person, as the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the person who decides what items should be added to the Product Backlog and the priority of the items in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner could be the customer who is paying the bills, the project manager who is responsible for delivering the project, or a customer representative. The critical point is that the Product Owner must always be a single person and that single person has absolute authority over the Product Backlog. Sprints and the Sprint Backlog So now the developer team has a prioritized list of items and they can start work. The team starts implementing the first item in the Backlog — the shopping cart — and the team is making good progress. Unfortunately, however, half-way through the work of implementing the shopping cart, the Product Owner changes his mind. The Product Owner decides that it is much more important to create the product catalog before the shopping cart. With some frustration, the team switches their developmental efforts to focus on implementing the product catalog. However, part way through completing this work, once again the Product Owner changes his mind about the highest priority item. Getting work done when priorities are constantly shifting is frustrating for the developer team and it results in lower productivity. At the same time, however, the Product Owner needs to have absolute authority over the priority of the items which need to get done. Scrum solves this conflict with the concept of Sprints. In Scrum, a developer team works in Sprints. At the beginning of a Sprint the developers and the Product Owner agree on the items from the backlog which they will complete during the Sprint. This subset of items from the Product Backlog becomes the Sprint Backlog. During the Sprint, the Product Owner is not allowed to change the items in the Sprint Backlog. In other words, the Product Owner cannot shift priorities on the developer team during the Sprint. Different teams use Sprints of different lengths such as one month Sprints, two-week Sprints, and one week Sprints. For high-stress, time critical projects, teams typically choose shorter sprints such as one week sprints. For more mature projects, longer one month sprints might be more appropriate. A team can pick whatever Sprint length makes sense for them just as long as the team is consistent. You should pick a Sprint length and stick with it. Daily Scrum During a Sprint, the developer team needs to have meetings to coordinate their work on completing the items in the Sprint Backlog. For example, the team needs to discuss who is working on what and whether any blocking issues have been discovered. Developers hate meetings (well, sane developers hate meetings). Meetings take developers away from their work of actually implementing stuff as opposed to talking about implementing stuff. However, a developer team which never has meetings and never coordinates their work also has problems. For example, Fred might get stuck on a programming problem for days and never reach out for help even though Tom (who sits in the cubicle next to him) has already solved the very same problem. Or, both Ted and Fred might have started working on the same item from the Sprint Backlog at the same time. In Scrum, these conflicting needs – limiting meetings but enabling team coordination – are resolved with the idea of the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for coordinating the work of the developer team which happens once a day. To keep the meeting short, each developer answers only the following three questions: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What do you plan to do today? 3. Any impediments in your way? During the Daily Scrum, developers are not allowed to talk about issues with their cat, do demos of their latest work, or tell heroic stories of programming problems overcome. The meeting must be kept short — typically about 15 minutes. Issues which come up during the Daily Scrum should be discussed in separate meetings which do not involve the whole developer team. Stories and Tasks Items in the Product or Sprint Backlog – such as building a shopping cart or creating a Facebook page – are often referred to as User Stories or Stories. The Stories are created by the Product Owner and should represent some business need. Unlike the Product Owner, the developer team needs to think about how a Story should be implemented. At the beginning of a Sprint, the developer team takes the Stories from the Sprint Backlog and breaks the stories into tasks. For example, the developer team might take the Create a Shopping Cart story and break it into the following tasks: · Enable users to add and remote items from shopping cart · Persist the shopping cart to database between visits · Redirect user to checkout page when Checkout button is clicked During the Daily Scrum, members of the developer team volunteer to complete the tasks required to implement the next Story in the Sprint Backlog. When a developer talks about what he did yesterday or plans to do tomorrow then the developer should be referring to a task. Stories are owned by the Product Owner and a story is all about business value. In contrast, the tasks are owned by the developer team and a task is all about implementation details. A story might take several days or weeks to complete. A task is something which a developer can complete in less than a day. Some teams get lazy about breaking stories into tasks. Neglecting to break stories into tasks can lead to “Never Ending Stories” If you don’t break a story into tasks, then you can’t know how much of a story has actually been completed because you don’t have a clear idea about the implementation steps required to complete the story. Scrumboard During the Daily Scrum, the developer team uses a Scrumboard to coordinate their work. A Scrumboard contains a list of the stories for the current Sprint, the tasks associated with each Story, and the state of each task. The developer team uses the Scrumboard so everyone on the team can see, at a glance, what everyone is working on. As a developer works on a task, the task moves from state to state and the state of the task is updated on the Scrumboard. Common task states are ToDo, In Progress, and Done. Some teams include additional task states such as Needs Review or Needs Testing. Some teams use a physical Scrumboard. In that case, you use index cards to represent the stories and the tasks and you tack the index cards onto a physical board. Using a physical Scrumboard has several disadvantages. A physical Scrumboard does not work well with a distributed team – for example, it is hard to share the same physical Scrumboard between Boston and Seattle. Also, generating reports from a physical Scrumboard is more difficult than generating reports from an online Scrumboard. Estimating Stories and Tasks Stakeholders in a project, the people investing in a project, need to have an idea of how a project is progressing and when the project will be completed. For example, if you are investing in creating an e-commerce site, you need to know when the site can be launched. It is not enough to just say that “the project will be done when it is done” because the stakeholders almost certainly have a limited budget to devote to the project. The people investing in the project cannot determine the business value of the project unless they can have an estimate of how long it will take to complete the project. Developers hate to give estimates. The reason that developers hate to give estimates is that the estimates are almost always completely made up. For example, you really don’t know how long it takes to build a shopping cart until you finish building a shopping cart, and at that point, the estimate is no longer useful. The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall. Building a brick wall is very straightforward. After you learn how to add one brick to a wall, you understand everything that is involved in adding a brick to a wall. There is no additional research required and no surprises. If, on the other hand, I assembled a team of scientists and asked them to find a cure for cancer, and estimate exactly how long it will take, they would have no idea. The problem is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know how to cure cancer, I need to do a lot of research here, so I cannot even begin to estimate how long it will take. So developers hate to provide estimates, but the Product Owner and other product stakeholders, have a legitimate need for estimates. Scrum resolves this conflict by using the idea of Story Points. Different teams use different units to represent Story Points. For example, some teams use shirt sizes such as Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. Some teams prefer to use Coffee Cup sizes such as Tall, Short, and Grande. Finally, some teams like to use numbers from the Fibonacci series. These alternative units are converted into a Story Point value. Regardless of the type of unit which you use to represent Story Points, the goal is the same. Instead of attempting to estimate a Story in hours (which is doomed to failure), you use a much less fine-grained measure of work. A developer team is much more likely to be able to estimate that a Story is Small or X-Large than the exact number of hours required to complete the story. So you can think of Story Points as a compromise between the needs of the Product Owner and the developer team. When a Sprint starts, the developer team devotes more time to thinking about the Stories in a Sprint and the developer team breaks the Stories into Tasks. In Scrum, you estimate the work required to complete a Story by using Story Points and you estimate the work required to complete a task by using hours. The difference between Stories and Tasks is that you don’t create a task until you are just about ready to start working on a task. A task is something that you should be able to create within a day, so you have a much better chance of providing an accurate estimate of the work required to complete a task than a story. Burndown Charts In Scrum, you use Burndown charts to represent the remaining work on a project. You use Release Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a project and you use Sprint Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a particular Sprint. You create a Release Burndown chart by calculating the remaining number of uncompleted Story Points for the entire Product Backlog every day. The vertical axis represents Story Points and the horizontal axis represents time. A Sprint Burndown chart is similar to a Release Burndown chart, but it focuses on the remaining work for a particular Sprint. There are two different types of Sprint Burndown charts. You can either represent the remaining work in a Sprint with Story Points or with task hours (the following image, taken from Wikipedia, uses hours). When each Product Backlog Story is completed, the Release Burndown chart slopes down. When each Story or task is completed, the Sprint Burndown chart slopes down. Burndown charts typically do not always slope down over time. As new work is added to the Product Backlog, the Release Burndown chart slopes up. If new tasks are discovered during a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart will also slope up. The purpose of a Burndown chart is to give you a way to track team progress over time. If, halfway through a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart is still climbing a hill then you know that you are in trouble. Team Velocity Stakeholders in a project always want more work done faster. For example, the Product Owner for the e-commerce site wants the website to launch before tomorrow. Developers tend to be overly optimistic. Rarely do developers acknowledge the physical limitations of reality. So Project stakeholders and the developer team often collude to delude themselves about how much work can be done and how quickly. Too many software projects begin in a state of optimism and end in frustration as deadlines zoom by. In Scrum, this problem is overcome by calculating a number called the Team Velocity. The Team Velocity is a measure of the average number of Story Points which a team has completed in previous Sprints. Knowing the Team Velocity is important during the Sprint Planning meeting when the Product Owner and the developer team work together to determine the number of stories which can be completed in the next Sprint. If you know the Team Velocity then you can avoid committing to do more work than the team has been able to accomplish in the past, and your team is much more likely to complete all of the work required for the next Sprint. Scrum Master There are three roles in Scrum: the Product Owner, the developer team, and the Scrum Master. I’v e already discussed the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the one and only person who maintains the Product Backlog and prioritizes the stories. I’ve also described the role of the developer team. The members of the developer team do the work of implementing the stories by breaking the stories into tasks. The final role, which I have not discussed, is the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team is following the Scrum process. For example, the Scrum Master is responsible for making sure that there is a Daily Scrum meeting and that everyone answers the standard three questions. The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing (non-technical) impediments which the team might encounter. For example, if the team cannot start work until everyone installs the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio then the Scrum Master has the responsibility of working with management to get the latest version of Visual Studio as quickly as possible. The Scrum Master can be a member of the developer team. Furthermore, different people can take on the role of the Scrum Master over time. The Scrum Master, however, cannot be the same person as the Product Owner. Using SonicAgile SonicAgile (SonicAgile.com) is an online tool which you can use to manage your projects using Scrum. You can use the SonicAgile Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of stories. You can estimate the size of the Stories using different Story Point units such as Shirt Sizes and Coffee Cup sizes. You can use SonicAgile during the Sprint Planning meeting to select the Stories that you want to complete during a particular Sprint. You can configure Sprints to be any length of time. SonicAgile calculates Team Velocity automatically and displays a warning when you add too many stories to a Sprint. In other words, it warns you when it thinks you are overcommitting in a Sprint. SonicAgile also includes a Scrumboard which displays the list of Stories selected for a Sprint and the tasks associated with each story. You can drag tasks from one task state to another. Finally, SonicAgile enables you to generate Release Burndown and Sprint Burndown charts. You can use these charts to view the progress of your team. To learn more about SonicAgile, visit SonicAgile.com. Summary In this post, I described many of the basic concepts of Scrum. You learned how a Product Owner uses a Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of tasks. I explained why work is completed in Sprints so the developer team can be more productive. I also explained how a developer team uses the daily scrum to coordinate their work. You learned how the developer team uses a Scrumboard to see, at a glance, who is working on what and the state of each task. I also discussed Burndown charts. You learned how you can use both Release and Sprint Burndown charts to track team progress in completing a project. Finally, I described the crucial role of the Scrum Master – the person who is responsible for ensuring that the rules of Scrum are being followed. My goal was not to describe all of the concepts of Scrum. This post was intended to be an introductory overview. For a comprehensive explanation of Scrum, I recommend reading Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Project-Management-Microsoft-Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=la_B001H6ODMC_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345224000&sr=1-1

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Hack Fest Going Strong!

- by Yolande Poirier

Today was the first day of the Hack Fest at Devoxx, the Java developer conference in Belgium. The Hack Fest started with the Raspberry Pi & Leap Motion hands-on lab. Vinicius Senger introduced the Java Embedded, Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Java Champion Geert Bevin presented the Leap Motion, a controller sensing your hands and fingers to play games by controlling the mouse as an example. "Programmers are cooler than musicians because they can create entire universe using all senses" explained Geert In teams, participants started building applications using Raspberry Pi, sensors and relays. One team tested the performance of Tomcat, Java EE and Java Embedded Suite on the Raspberry Pi. Another used built an text animation using a LCD screen. Teams are using the Leap Motion to close and open programs on the desktop and other teams are using it as a game control.

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PASS: Bylaw Change 2013

- by Bill Graziano

PASS launched a Global Growth Initiative in the Summer of 2011 with the appointment of three international Board advisors. Since then we’ve thought and talked extensively about how we make PASS more relevant to our members outside the US and Canada. We’ve collected much of that discussion in our Global Growth site. You can find vision documents, plans, governance proposals, feedback sites, and transcripts of Twitter chats and town hall meetings. We also address these plans at the Board Q&A during the 2012 Summit. One of the biggest changes coming out of this process is around how we elect Board members. And that requires a change to the bylaws. We published the proposed bylaw changes as a red-lined document so you can clearly see the changes. Our goal in these bylaw changes was to address the changes required by the global growth initiatives, conduct a legal review of the document and address other minor issues in the document. There are numerous small wording changes throughout the document. For example, we replaced every reference of “The Corporation” with the word “PASS” so it now reads “PASS is organized…”. Board Composition The biggest change in these bylaw changes is how the Board is composed and elected. This discussion starts in section VI.2. This section now says that some elected directors will come from geographic regions. I think this is the best way to make sure we give all of our members a voice in the leadership of the organization. The key parts of this section are: The remaining Directors (i.e. the non-Officer Directors and non-Vendor Appointed Directors) shall be elected by the voting membership (“Elected Directors”). Elected Directors shall include representatives of defined PASS regions (“Regions”) as set forth below (“Regional Directors”) and at minimum one (1) additional Director-at-Large whose selection is not limited by region. Regional Directors shall include, but are not limited to, two (2) seats for the Region covering Canada and the United States of America. Additional Regions for the purpose of electing additional Regional Directors and additional Director-at-Large seats for the purpose of expanding the Board shall be defined by a majority vote of the current Board of Directors and must be established prior to the public call for nominations in the general election. Previously defined Regions and seats approved by the Board of Directors shall remain in effect and can only be modified by a 2/3 majority vote by the then current Board of Directors. Currently PASS has six At-Large Directors elected by the members. These changes allow for a Regional Director position that is elected by the members but must come from a particular region. It also stipulates that there must always be at least one Director-at-Large who can come from any region. We also understand that PASS is currently a very US-centric organization. Our Summit is held in America, roughly half our chapters are in the US and Canada and most of the Board members over the last ten years have come from America. We wanted to reflect that by making sure that our US and Canadian volunteers would continue to play a significant role by ensuring that two Regional seats are reserved specifically for Canada and the US. Other than that, the bylaws don’t create any specific regional seats. These rules allow us to create Regional Director seats but don’t require it. We haven’t fully discussed what the criteria will be in order for a region to have a seat designated for it or how many regions there will be. In our discussions we’ve broadly discussed regions for United States and Canada Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Australia, New Zealand and Asia (also known as Asia Pacific or APAC) Mexico, South America, and Central America (LATAM) As you can see, our thinking is that there will be a few large regions. I’ve also considered a non-North America region that we can gradually split into the regions above as our membership grows in those areas. The regions will be defined by a policy document that will be published prior to the elections. I’m hoping that over the next year we can begin to publish more of what we do as Board-approved policy documents. While the bylaws only require a single non-region specific At-large Director, I would expect we would always have two. That way we can have one in each election. I think it’s important that we always have one seat open that anyone who is eligible to run for the Board can contest. The Board is required to have any regions defined prior to the start of the election process. Board Elections – Regional Seats We spent a lot of time discussing how the elections would work for these Regional Director seats. Ultimately we decided that the simplest solution is that every PASS member should vote for every open seat. Section VIII.3 reads: Candidates who are eligible (i.e. eligible to serve in such capacity subject to the criteria set forth herein or adopted by the Board of Directors) shall be designated to fill open Board seats in the following order of priority on the basis of total votes received: (i) full term Regional Director seats, (ii) full term Director-at-Large seats, (iii) not full term (vacated) Regional Director seats, (iv) not full term (vacated) Director-at-Large seats. For the purposes of clarity, because of eligibility requirements, it is contemplated that the candidates designated to the open Board seats may not receive more votes than certain other candidates who are not selected to the Board. We debated whether to have multiple ballots or one single ballot. Multiple ballot elections get complicated quickly. Let’s say we have a ballot for US/Canada and one for Region 2. After that we’d need a mechanism to merge those two together and come up with the winner of the at-large seat or have another election for the at-large position. We think the best way to do this is a single ballot and putting the highest vote getters into the most restrictive seats. Let’s look at an example: There are seats open for Region 1, Region 2 and at-large. The election results are as follows: Candidate A (eligible for Region 1) – 550 votes Candidate B (eligible for Region 1) – 525 votes Candidate C (eligible for Region 1) – 475 votes Candidate D (eligible for Region 2) – 125 votes Candidate E (eligible for Region 2) – 75 votes In this case, Candidate A is the winner for Region 1 and is assigned that seat. Candidate D is the winner for Region 2 and is assigned that seat. The at-large seat is filled by the high remaining vote getter which is Candidate B. The key point to understand is that we may have a situation where a person with a lower vote total is elected to a regional seat and a person with a higher vote total is excluded. This will be true whether we had multiple ballots or a single ballot. Board Elections – Vacant Seats The other change to the election process is for vacant Board seats. The actual changes are sprinkled throughout the document. Previously we didn’t have a mechanism that allowed for an election of a Board seat that we knew would be vacant in the future. The most common case is when a Board members moves to an Officer role in the middle of their term. One of the key changes is to allow the number of votes members have to match the number of open seats. This allows each voter to express their preference on all open seats. This only applies when we know about the opening prior to the call for nominations. This all means that if there’s a seat will be open at the start of the next Board term, and we know about it prior to the call for nominations, we can include that seat in the elections. Ultimately, the aim is to have PASS members decide who sits on the Board in as many situations as possible. We discussed the option of changing the bylaws to just take next highest vote-getter in all other cases. I think that’s wrong for the following reasons: All voters aren’t able to express an opinion on all candidates. If there are five people running for three seats, you can only vote for three. You have no way to express your preference between #4 and #5. Different candidates may have different information about the number of seats available. A person may learn that a Board member plans to resign at the end of the year prior to that information being made public. They may understand that the top four vote getters will end up on the Board while the rest of the members believe there are only three openings. This may affect someone’s decision to run. I don’t think this creates a transparent, fair election. Board members may use their knowledge of the election results to decide whether to remain on the Board or not. Admittedly this one is unlikely but I don’t want to create a situation where this accusation can be leveled. I think the majority of vacancies in the future will be handled through elections. The bylaw section quoted above also indicates that partial term vacancies will be filled after the full term seats are filled. Removing Directors Section VI.7 on removing directors has always had a clause that allowed members to remove an elected director. We also had a clause that allowed appointed directors to be removed. We added a clause that allows the Board to remove for cause any director with a 2/3 majority vote. The updated text reads: Any Director may be removed for cause by a 2/3 majority vote of the Board of Directors whenever in its judgment the best interests of PASS would be served thereby. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the authority of any Director to act as in an official capacity as a Director or Officer of PASS may be suspended by the Board of Directors for cause. Cause for suspension or removal of a Director shall include but not be limited to failure to meet any Board-approved performance expectations or the presence of a reason for suspension or dismissal as listed in Addendum B of these Bylaws. The first paragraph is updated and the second and third are unchanged (except cleaning up language). If you scroll down and look at Addendum B of these bylaws you find the following: Cause for suspension or dismissal of a member of the Board of Directors may include: Inability to attend Board meetings on a regular basis. Inability or unwillingness to act in a capacity designated by the Board of Directors. Failure to fulfill the responsibilities of the office. Inability to represent the Region elected to represent Failure to act in a manner consistent with PASS's Bylaws and/or policies. Misrepresentation of responsibility and/or authority. Misrepresentation of PASS. Unresolved conflict of interests with Board responsibilities. Breach of confidentiality. The bold line about your inability to represent your region is what we added to the bylaws in this revision. We also added a clause to section VII.3 allowing the Board to remove an officer. That clause is much less restrictive. It doesn’t require cause and only requires a simple majority. The Board of Directors may remove any Officer whenever in their judgment the best interests of PASS shall be served by such removal. Other There are numerous other small changes throughout the document. Proxy voting. The laws around how members and Board members proxy votes are specific in Illinois law. PASS is an Illinois corporation and is subject to Illinois laws. We changed section IV.5 to come into compliance with those laws. Specifically this says you can only vote through a proxy if you have a written proxy through your authorized attorney. English language proficiency. As we increase our global footprint we come across more members that aren’t native English speakers. The business of PASS is conducted in English and it’s important that our Board members speak English. If we get big enough to afford translators, we may be able to relax this but right now we need English language skills for effective Board members. Committees. The language around committees in section IX is old and dated. Our lawyers advised us to clean it up. This section specifically applies to any committees that the Board may form outside of portfolios. We removed the term limits, quorum and vacancies clause. We don’t currently have any committees that this would apply to. The Nominating Committee is covered elsewhere in the bylaws. Electronic Votes. The change allows the Board to vote via email but the results must be unanimous. This is to conform with Illinois state law. Immediate Past President. There was no mechanism to fill the IPP role if an outgoing President chose not to participate. We changed section VII.8 to allow the Board to invite any previous President to fill the role by majority vote. Nominations Committee. We’ve opened the language to allow for the transparent election of the Nominations Committee as outlined by the 2011 Election Review Committee. Revocation of Charters. The language surrounding the revocation of charters for local groups was flagged by the lawyers. We have allowed for the local user group to make all necessary payment before considering returning of items to PASS if required. Bylaw notification. We’ve spent countless meetings working on these bylaws with the intent to not open them again any time in the near future. Should the bylaws be opened again, we have included a clause ensuring that the PASS membership is involved. I’m proud that the Board has remained committed to transparency and accountability to members. This clause will require that same level of commitment in the future even when all the current Board members have rolled off. I think that covers everything. I’d encourage you to look through the red-line document and see the changes. It’s helpful to look at the language that’s being removed and the language that’s being added. I’m happy to answer any questions here or you can email them to [email protected].

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Python - calculate multinomial probability density functions on large dataset?

- by Seafoid

Hi, I originally intended to use MATLAB to tackle this problem but the inbuilt functions has limitations that do not suit my goal. The same limitation occurs in NumPy. I have two tab-delimited files. The first is a file showing amino acid residue, frequency and count for an in-house database of protein structures, i.e. A 0.25 1 S 0.25 1 T 0.25 1 P 0.25 1 The second file consists of quadruplets of amino acids and the number of times they occur, i.e. ASTP 1 Note, there are 8,000 such quadruplets. Based on the background frequency of occurence of each amino acid and the count of quadruplets, I aim to calculate the multinomial probability density function for each quadruplet and subsequently use it as the expected value in a maximum likelihood calculation. The multinomial distribution is as follows: f(x|n, p) = n!/(x1!*x2!*...*xk!)*((p1^x1)*(p2^x2)*...*(pk^xk)) where x is the number of each of k outcomes in n trials with fixed probabilities p. n is 4 four in all cases in my calculation. I have created three functions to calculate this distribution. # functions for multinomial distribution def expected_quadruplets(x, y): expected = x*y return expected # calculates the probabilities of occurence raised to the number of occurrences def prod_prob(p1, a, p2, b, p3, c, p4, d): prob_prod = (pow(p1, a))*(pow(p2, b))*(pow(p3, c))*(pow(p4, d)) return prob_prod # factorial() and multinomial_coefficient() work in tandem to calculate C, the multinomial coefficient def factorial(n): if n <= 1: return 1 return n*factorial(n-1) def multinomial_coefficient(a, b, c, d): n = 24.0 multi_coeff = (n/(factorial(a) * factorial(b) * factorial(c) * factorial(d))) return multi_coeff The problem is how best to structure the data in order to tackle the calculation most efficiently, in a manner that I can read (you guys write some cryptic code :-)) and that will not create an overflow or runtime error. To data my data is represented as nested lists. amino_acids = [['A', '0.25', '1'], ['S', '0.25', '1'], ['T', '0.25', '1'], ['P', '0.25', '1']] quadruplets = [['ASTP', '1']] I initially intended calling these functions within a nested for loop but this resulted in runtime errors or overfloe errors. I know that I can reset the recursion limit but I would rather do this more elegantly. I had the following: for i in quadruplets: quad = i[0].split(' ') for j in amino_acids: for k in quadruplets: for v in k: if j[0] == v: multinomial_coefficient(int(j[2]), int(j[2]), int(j[2]), int(j[2])) I haven'te really gotten to how to incorporate the other functions yet. I think that my current nested list arrangement is sub optimal. I wish to compare the each letter within the string 'ASTP' with the first component of each sub list in amino_acids. Where a match exists, I wish to pass the appropriate numeric values to the functions using indices. Is their a better way? Can I append the appropriate numbers for each amino acid and quadruplet to a temporary data structure within a loop, pass this to the functions and clear it for the next iteration? Thanks, S :-)

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Given a large set of vertices in a non-convex polygon, how can i find the edges?

- by tommy chheng

I have a set of vertices(called A) and I want to find all the border vertices such that this border vertices set is an outline of the shape. Many of the vertices in A are redundant because they are inside the shape, I want to get rid of these vertices. My question is similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/477867/best-algorithm-to-find-the-edges-polygon-of-vertices but i need it to work for a non-convex polygon case.

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Best practice for structuring a new large ASP.NET MVC2 plus EF4 VS2010 solution?

- by Nick

Hi, we are building a new web application using Microsoft ASP.NET MVC2 and Entity Framework 4. Although I am sure there is not one right answer to my question, we are struggling to agree a VS2010 solution structure. The application will use SQL Server 2008 with a possible future Azure cloud version. We are using EF4 with T4 POCOs (model-first) and accessing a number of third-party web-services. We will also be connecting to a number of external messaging systems. UI is based on standard ASP.NET (MVC) with jQuery. In future we may deliver a Silverlight/WPF version - as well as mobile. So put simply, we start with a VS2010 blank solution - then what? I have suggested 4 folders Data (the EF edmx file etc), Domain (entities, repositories), Services (web-services access), Presentation (web ui etc). However under Presentation, creating the ASP.NET MVC2 project obviously creates it's own Models folder etc and it just doesn't seem to fit too well in this proposed structure. I'm also missing a business layer (or does this sit in the domain?). Again I am sure there is no one right way to do it, but I'd really appreciate your views on this. Thanks

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How Do You Insert Large Blobs Into Oracle 10G Using System.Data.OracleClient?

- by discwiz

Trying to insert 315K Gif files into an Oracle 10g database. Everytime I get this error "ora-01460: unimplemented or unreasonable conversion requested" whe I run the stored procedure. It appears that there is a 32K limit if I use a stored procedure. I read online that this does not apply if you are doing a direct insert, but I do not know how to create the insert string for a Byte Array. This is a thick client running on the server so not worried about SQL Injection attacks. Any help would be greatly appreciated. FYI, code in vb.net. Thanks, Dave

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Will OpenGL give me any FPS improvement over CoreAnimation for scrolling a large image?

- by Ben Roberts

Hi, I'm considering re-writing the menu system of my iPhone app to use Open GL just to improve the smoothness of scrolling a big image (480x1900px) across the screen. I'm looking at doing this as a way to improve on using the method/solution as described here (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1443140/smoother-uiview). This solution was a big improvement over the previous implementation but it's still not perfect and as this is the first thing the user will see I'd like it to be as flawless as possible. Will switching to OpenGL give me the sort of smooth scrolling I'm looking for? I've stayed clear of OpenGL until now as this is my first app and core animation has handled everything else I've thrown at it well enough, would be good to know if this alternative implementation is likely to work! thanks

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Sending large serialized objects over sockets is failing only when trying to grow the byte Array, bu

- by FinancialRadDeveloper

I have code where I am trying to grow the byte array while receiving the data over my socket. This is erroring out. public bool ReceiveObject2(ref Object objRec, ref string sErrMsg) { try { byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; byte[] byArrAll = new byte[0]; bool bAllBytesRead = false; int iRecLoop = 0; // grow the byte array to match the size of the object, so we can put whatever we // like through the socket as long as the object serialises and is binary formatted while (!bAllBytesRead) { if (m_socClient.Receive(buffer) > 0) { byArrAll = Combine(byArrAll, buffer); iRecLoop++; } else { m_socClient.Close(); bAllBytesRead = true; } } MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(buffer); BinaryFormatter bf1 = new BinaryFormatter(); ms.Position = 0; Object obj = bf1.Deserialize(ms); objRec = obj; return true; } catch (System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException se) { objRec = null; sErrMsg += "SocketClient.ReceiveObject " + "Source " + se.Source + "Error : " + se.Message; return false; } catch (Exception e) { objRec = null; sErrMsg += "SocketClient.ReceiveObject " + "Source " + e.Source + "Error : " + e.Message; return false; } } private byte[] Combine(byte[] first, byte[] second) { byte[] ret = new byte[first.Length + second.Length]; Buffer.BlockCopy(first, 0, ret, 0, first.Length); Buffer.BlockCopy(second, 0, ret, first.Length, second.Length); return ret; } Error: mscorlibError : The input stream is not a valid binary format. The starting contents (in bytes) are: 68-61-73-43-68-61-6E-67-65-73-3D-22-69-6E-73-65-72 ... Yet when I just cheat and use a MASSIVE buffer size its fine. public bool ReceiveObject(ref Object objRec, ref string sErrMsg) { try { byte[] buffer = new byte[5000000]; m_socClient.Receive(buffer); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(buffer); BinaryFormatter bf1 = new BinaryFormatter(); ms.Position = 0; Object obj = bf1.Deserialize(ms); objRec = obj; return true; } catch (Exception e) { objRec = null; sErrMsg += "SocketClient.ReceiveObject " + "Source " + e.Source + "Error : " + e.Message; return false; } } This is really killing me. I don't know why its not working. I have lifted the Combine from a suggestion on here too, so I am pretty sure this is not doing the wrong thing? I hope someone can point out where I am going wrong

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Silverlight performance with a large number of Objects Org Chart.

- by KC

Hello, I’m working on a org chart project(SL 3) and I’m seeing the UI thread hang when the chart is building around 2,000 nodes and when it renders it takes about a min and then FPS drop to a crawl. Here is the code flow. Page.xaml.cs calls a wcf service that returns a list of AD users. Then we use Linq to build a collection of nodes to bind to the Orgchart.cs OrgChart.cs is a canvas and displays a collection of nodes and connecting lines. Node.cs is a canvas and has user data can contain children nodes. NodeContent.xaml is a user control that has borders so I can set the background, textblocks to display user's data, Events that handle the selected and expaned nodes, and storyboards that resize the nodes when they are selected or expanded.I noticed during hours of debugging , here in the InitializeComponent(); section where it loads the xaml it seems to be where the preformance hit is happening. System.Windows.Application.LoadComponent(this, new System.Uri("/Silverlight.Custom;component/NodeContent.xaml", System.UriKind.Relative)); So I guess I have two questions. Can threading help in any way with the UI thread hanging while drawing the nodes? How can I avoid the hit when calling this user control? Any advice or direction anyone can lend would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, KC

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Large PHP enable web form - around 75 field - how best to send email with all fields?

- by Derek

Have created simple Ajax enabled contact forms before that have around 12 fields - worked fine.... Now working on a PHP enabled web page for job applications that has around 100 fields. The ajax technique I was using was to send request via querystrings (&val1=test;&val2=test2 and etc ...) That is not going to scale very well with larger form with 100+ fields. Any suggestions to point me in the right direction would be appreciated. Maybe use jQuery Form plug-in instead? http://jquery.malsup.com/form/#getting-started Derek

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In MySQL, what is the most effective query design for joining large tables with many to many relatio

- by lighthouse65

In our application, we collect data on automotive engine performance -- basically source data on engine performance based on the engine type, the vehicle running it and the engine design. Currently, the basis for new row inserts is an engine on-off period; we monitor performance variables based on a change in engine state from active to inactive and vice versa. The related engineState table looks like this: +---------+-----------+---------------+---------------------+---------------------+-----------------+ | vehicle | engine | engine_state | state_start_time | state_end_time | engine_variable | +---------+-----------+---------------+---------------------+---------------------+-----------------+ | 080025 | E01 | active | 2008-01-24 16:19:15 | 2008-01-24 16:24:45 | 720 | | 080028 | E02 | inactive | 2008-01-24 16:19:25 | 2008-01-24 16:22:17 | 304 | +---------+-----------+---------------+---------------------+---------------------+-----------------+ For a specific analysis, we would like to analyze table content based on a row granularity of minutes, rather than the current basis of active / inactive engine state. For this, we are thinking of creating a simple productionMinute table with a row for each minute in the period we are analyzing and joining the productionMinute and engineEvent tables on the date-time columns in each table. So if our period of analysis is from 2009-12-01 to 2010-02-28, we would create a new table with 129,600 rows, one for each minute of each day for that three-month period. The first few rows of the productionMinute table: +---------------------+ | production_minute | +---------------------+ | 2009-12-01 00:00 | | 2009-12-01 00:01 | | 2009-12-01 00:02 | | 2009-12-01 00:03 | +---------------------+ The join between the tables would be engineState AS es LEFT JOIN productionMinute AS pm ON es.state_start_time <= pm.production_minute AND pm.production_minute <= es.event_end_time. This join, however, brings up multiple environmental issues: The engineState table has 5 million rows and the productionMinute table has 130,000 rows When an engineState row spans more than one minute (i.e. the difference between es.state_start_time and es.state_end_time is greater than one minute), as is the case in the example above, there are multiple productionMinute table rows that join to a single engineState table row When there is more than one engine in operation during any given minute, also as per the example above, multiple engineState table rows join to a single productionMinute row In testing our logic and using only a small table extract (one day rather than 3 months, for the productionMinute table) the query takes over an hour to generate. In researching this item in order to improve performance so that it would be feasible to query three months of data, our thoughts were to create a temporary table from the engineEvent one, eliminating any table data that is not critical for the analysis, and joining the temporary table to the productionMinute table. We are also planning on experimenting with different joins -- specifically an inner join -- to see if that would improve performance. What is the best query design for joining tables with the many:many relationship between the join predicates as outlined above? What is the best join type (left / right, inner)?

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C# Begin/EndReceive - how do I read large data?

- by ryeguy

When reading data in chunks of say, 1024, how do I continue to read from a socket that receives a message bigger than 1024 bytes until there is no data left? Should I just use BeginReceive to read a packet's length prefix only, and then once that is retrieved, use Receive() (in the async thread) to read the rest of the packet? Or is there another way? edit: I thought Jon Skeet's link had the solution, but there is a bit of a speedbump with that code. The code I used is: public class StateObject { public Socket workSocket = null; public const int BUFFER_SIZE = 1024; public byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE]; public StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); } public static void Read_Callback(IAsyncResult ar) { StateObject so = (StateObject) ar.AsyncState; Socket s = so.workSocket; int read = s.EndReceive(ar); if (read > 0) { so.sb.Append(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(so.buffer, 0, read)); if (read == StateObject.BUFFER_SIZE) { s.BeginReceive(so.buffer, 0, StateObject.BUFFER_SIZE, 0, new AyncCallback(Async_Send_Receive.Read_Callback), so); return; } } if (so.sb.Length > 0) { //All of the data has been read, so displays it to the console string strContent; strContent = so.sb.ToString(); Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Read {0} byte from socket" + "data = {1} ", strContent.Length, strContent)); } s.Close(); } Now this corrected works fine most of the time, but it fails when the packet's size is a multiple of the buffer. The reason for this is if the buffer gets filled on a read it is assumed there is more data; but the same problem happens as before. A 2 byte buffer, for exmaple, gets filled twice on a 4 byte packet, and assumes there is more data. It then blocks because there is nothing left to read. The problem is that the receive function doesn't know when the end of the packet is. This got me thinking to two possible solutions: I could either have an end-of-packet delimiter or I could read the packet header to find the length and then receive exactly that amount (as I originally suggested). There's problems with each of these, though. I don't like the idea of using a delimiter, as a user could somehow work that into a packet in an input string from the app and screw it up. It also just seems kinda sloppy to me. The length header sounds ok, but I'm planning on using protocol buffers - I don't know the format of the data. Is there a length header? How many bytes is it? Would this be something I implement myself? Etc.. What should I do?

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Any Open Source Pregel like framework for distributed processing of large Graphs?

- by Akshay Bhat

Google has described a novel framework for distributed processing on Massive Graphs. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1582716.1582723 I wanted to know if similar to Hadoop (Map-Reduce) are there any open source implementations of this framework? I am actually in process of writing a Pseudo distributed one using python and multiprocessing module and thus wanted to know if someone else has also tried implementing it. Since public information about this framework is extremely scarce. (A link above and a blog post at Google Research)

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Why do .NET winforms scale improperly at large DPI settings?

- by Alex

My .NET application (VB.NET 3.5 if you really must know) forms do not properly format when rendered at high DPI settings. All of the fixes I've found so far simply explain the cause of the problem as "certain UI elements do not scale properly". I was wondering if anyone had a more meaningful explanation? Thanks!

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