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• Software Requirement Specifications for Web Applications

  - by illuminatedtiger

  Hi guys, I'm looking for some guidance/books to read when it comes to creating a software requirement specification for a web application. For inspiration I have read some spec documents for desktop based applications. The documents I have read capture a systems functional requirements in use cases which tend to be rather data oriented with use cases centered around the various CRUD operations the application is intended to perform. I like this structure however I'm finding it rather difficult to marry it to what my web application needs to do, mostly reading data as opposed to manipulating it. I've had a go at writing some use cases however they all tend to boil down to "Search for item", "Change view of search results" or "User selects facet to refine search results". This doesn't sound quite right to me and makes me wonder if I'm going about this the right way. Are there planning differences between web based and desktop based applications?

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• Reporting framework for extending definition & execution to the end users (ASP.Net)

  - by Kabeer

  Hello. My application is a product which will have reporting capabilities. The product, when in production, is expected to have several ad-hoc report defined by the end users. I am looking for a platform that can be tailored to harness the business entities and extend reporting capabilities (definition & execution) to the end user. Here are some constraints: From the usability standpoint, I like what MS Access reports offer. But of course it is not suitable for the target web application. However, it certainly is a source of inspiration usability wise. Cost is a constraint. So something recommended from open source world will be appreciated. Otherwise too I'd like to know. The product in question is somewhat 'generic' in nature. Mine is a ASP.Net platform.

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• Web UI for showing like/dislike community comments side-by-side

  - by Justin Grant

  We want to add a comments/reviews feature to our website's plugin gallery, so users can not only vote up or down a particular plugin, but also leave an optional short comment about what they liked or didn't like about it. I'm looking for inspiration, ideally a good implementation elsewhere on the web which isn't annoying to end users, isn't impossibly complex to develop, and which enables users to see both good and bad comments side-by-side, like this: Like: 57 votes Dislike: 8 votes --------------------------------- -------------------------------- "great plugin, saved me hours..." "hard to install" "works well on MacOS and Ubuntu" "Broken on Windows Vista with UAC enabled" "integrates well with version 3.2" More... More... Anyone know a site which does something like this?

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• Orbital equations, and power required to run them

  - by Adam Davis

  Due to a discussion on the SO IRC today, I'm curious about orbital mechanics, and The equations needed to solve orbital problems The computing power required to solve complex problems The question in particular is calculating when the Earth will plow into the Sun (or vice versa, depending on the frame of reference). I suspect that all the gravitational pulls within our solar system may need to be calculated, which makes me wonder what type of computer cluster is required, or can this be done on a single box? I don't have the experience to do a back of the napkin test here, but perhaps you do? Also, much thx to Gortok for the original inspiration (see comments).

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• Building a minimal plugin architecture in Python.

  - by dF

  I have an application, written in Python, which is used by a fairly technical audience (scientists). I'm looking for a good way to make the application extensible by the users, i.e. a scripting/plugin architecture. I am looking for something extremely lightweight. Most scripts, or plugins, are not going to be developed and distributed by a third-party and installed, but are going to be something whipped up by a user in a few minutes to automate a repeating task, add support for a file format, etc. So plugins should have the absolute minimum boilerplate code, and require no 'installation' other than copying to a folder (so something like setuptools entry points, or the Zope plugin architecture seems like too much.) Are there any systems like this already out there, or any projects that implement a similar scheme that I should look at for ideas / inspiration?

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• Is there a language designed for code golf?

  - by J S

  I am not really a fan of code golf, but I have to wonder, is there an esoteric language designed for it? I mean a language with following properties: Common programs may be expressed in very short amount of characters It uses ASCII character set effectively (for example, common operators are not identifiers, so they don't have to be separated by whitespace, character usage is distributed more or less evenly because we cannot use Huffman coding and so on) Except the terse syntax, it should have very expressible and clean semantics (like, let's say, Python or Scheme); it shouldn't be difficult to program in It doesn't need features for large scale programs, such as OOP, but it definitely should allow custom functions and data structures It should have a large standard library, identifiers in this library should be as short as possible Maybe it should be called CG? Languages that can be a source of inspiration are Forth, APL and Joy.

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• Multiple Payment options within the same order

  - by Rob Y

  I have a requirement to be able to accept different forms of payment within the same order - ie not just the usual credit card or paypal for the whole thing, but perhaps paypal for one item, cheque for another. I know this sounds quite crazy, but there is a good business reason for the requirement so I can't just push back. The best way I can think of implementing it at the moment is to have kind of a hub page, where you can "launch off" into multiple flows for each of the payments by opening new windows. I can't figure out a way of doing this in a linear flow as for example you can't guarantee that a user will come back from paypal, so you'd then lose the user completely. Is there a neater way of doing this that anyone can think of, or can anyone point me to an example of a site that does somethign similar for inspiration?

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• Simple and efficient distribution of C++/Boost source code (amalgamation)

  - by Arrieta

  Hello: My job mostly consists of engineering analysis, but I find myself distributing code more and more frequently among my colleagues. A big pain is that not every user is proficient in the intricacies of compiling source code, and I cannot distribute executables. I've been working with C++ using Boost, and the problem is that I cannot request every sysadmin of every network to install the libraries. Instead, I want to distribute a single source file (or as few as possible) so that the user can g++ source.c -o program. So, the question is: can you pack the Boost libraries with your code, and end up with a single file? I am talking about the Boost libraries which are "headers only" or "templates only". As an inspiration, please look at the distribution of SQlite or the Lemon Parser Generator; the author amalgamates the stuff into a single source file which is trivial to compile. Thank you.

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• Is Kohana worth giving up on due to lack of Documentation & Examples?

  - by Asaf

  Hello, I've recently chose Kohana for a new project I'm doing And quite frankly, it's going a bit slow due to lack of resources. I've stumbled again and again on problems that I can't find a solution to Examples are probably the hardest to come by, so I'm considering Switching, especially because I'm only starting and I am still able to do it without to much trouble. I've been looking at CodeIgniter, although I know that Kohana is a branch out, CodeIgniter has far more examples and documentation, I'm wondering about your opinion. Edit: I would love to see some complete Kohana sites example, so that I would have a really quick reference. Nothing like already-working code to give you inspiration.

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• jQuery plugin to have Facebook styled search box with image thumbnails?

  - by Michael Mao

  Hello everyone: I will work on a search box with inspiration from Facebook where image thumbnails would be displayed besides the auto-suggested matches. This is the goal : link to sample image I wonder if there is any jQuery plugin that would just do this. I tried to search for a one but unable to find. If there is no plugin for this task, I'd like to know the basic plugins needed to implemented such an auto-suggest/image thumbnail display combination. Any suggestion and hint is welcomed. Thanks a lot!

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• Ideas for band site, which technology to use?

  - by brux

  I am attempting to design and build a website for my friends band. There is minimal content to be included such as bio,news,enbemdded Audio/Visual material. My web dev expertise is average. I'm basicaly looking for inspiration, I was edging towards embedding a silverlight deepzoom xap object to add some visual stimulation, perhaps by featuring a high res photo of the bandshardware/equipment which zooms when mouseover occurs. Does anyone have any cool ideas for a central feature for this site, and which way to approact it in terms of technique (js,css,silverlight etc) If anyone has any immediate ideas which they think would be cool then I am eager to hear them! Also if anyone can link me to any cool band sites they have come across recently I would be greatful,nothing too complicated though please I will be doing all the work myself. Im want the site to be simple but have a certain wow factor!

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• Why are regular expressions such a complicated, cryptic mess?

  - by steffenj

  Often when I see regular expressions, I only see a total mess of characters. Why does it have to be this way? I guess what I really want to know is: are there alternatives to regular expressions that basically do the same thing but are implemented in a human readable language? [UPDATE] Thanks for all the great responses and inspiration! I wanted to highlight this particular link which shows how a (working) alternative would look like, which may also be a good starting point for learning or "simple" regex expressions. But you also quickly get a feel for the verbosity tradeoff.

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• Craftsmanship Tour: Day 2 Obtiva

  - by Liam McLennan

  I like Chicago. It is a great city for travellers. From the moment I got off the plane at O’Hare everything was easy. I took the train to ‘the Loop’ and walked around the corner to my hotel, Hotel Blake on Dearborn St. Sadly, the elevated train lines in downtown Chicago remind me of ‘Shall We Dance’. Hotel Blake is excellent (except for the breakfast) and the concierge directed me to a pizza place called Lou Malnati's for Chicago style deep-dish pizza. Lou Malnati’s would be a great place to go with a group of friends. I felt strange dining there by myself, but the food and service were excellent. As usual in the United States the portion was so large that I could not finish it, but oh how I tried. Dave Hoover, who invited me to Obtiva for the day, had asked me to arrive at 9:45am. I was up early and had some time to kill so I stopped at the Willis Tower, since it was on my way to the office. Willis Tower is 1,451 feet (442 m) tall and has an observation deck at the top. Around the observation deck are a set of acrylic boxes, protruding from the side of the building. Brave soles can walk out on the perspex and look between their feet all the way down to the street. It is unnerving. Obtiva is a progressive, craftsmanship-focused software development company in downtown Chicago. Dave even wrote a book, Apprenticeship Patterns, that provides a catalogue of patterns to assist aspiring software craftsmen to achieve their goals. I spent the morning working in Obtiva’s software studio, an open xp-style office that houses Obtiva’s in-house development team. For lunch Dave Hoover, Corey Haines, Cory Foy and I went to a local Greek restaurant (not Dancing Zorbas). Dave, Corey and Cory are three smart and motivated guys and I found their ideas enlightening. It was especially great to chat with Corey Haines since he was the inspiration for my craftsmanship tour in the first place. After lunch I recorded a brief interview with Dave. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera went flat so I missed recording some interesting stuff. Interview with Dave Hoover In the evening Obtiva hosted an rspec hackfest with David Chelimsky and others. This was an excellent opportunity to be around some of the very best ruby programmers. At 10pm I went back to my hotel to get some rest before my train north the next morning.

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• Executable Resumes

  - by Liam McLennan

  Over the past twelve months I have been thinking a lot about executable specifications. Long considered the holy grail of agile software development, executable specifications means expressing a program’s functionality in a way that is both readable by the customer and computer verifiable in an automatic, repeatable way. With the current generation of BDD and ATDD tools executable specifications seem finally within the reach of a significant percentage of the development community. Lately, and partly as a result of my craftsmanship tour, I have decided that soon I am going to have to get a job (gasp!). As Dave Hoover describes in Apprenticeship Patters, “you … have mentors and kindred spirits that you meet with periodically, [but] when it comes to developing software, you work alone.” The time may have come where the only way for me to feel satisfied and enriched by my work is to seek out a work environment where I can work with people smarter and more knowledgeable than myself. Having been on both sides of the interview desk many times I know how difficult and unreliable the process can be. Therefore, I am proposing the idea of executable resumes. As a journeyman programmer looking for a fruitful work environment I plan to write an application that demonstrates my understanding of the state of the art. Potential employers can download, view and execute my executable resume and judge wether my aesthetic sensibility matches their own. The concept of the executable resume is based upon the following assertion: A line of code answers a thousand interview questions Asking people about their experiences and skills is not a direct way of assessing their value to your organisation. Often it simple assesses their ability to mislead an interviewer. An executable resume demonstrates: The highest quality code that the person is able to produce. That the person is sufficiently motivated to produce something of value in their own time. That the person loves their craft. The idea of publishing a program to demonstrate a developer’s skills comes from Rob Conery, who suggested that each developer should build their own blog engine since it is the public representation of their level of mastery. Rob said: Luke had to build his own lightsaber – geeks should have to build their own blogs. And that should be their resume. In honour of Rob’s inspiration I plan to build a blog engine as my executable resume. While it is true that the world does not need another blog engine it is as good a project as any, it is a well understood domain, and I have not found an existing blog engine that I like. Executable resumes fit well with the software craftsmanship metaphor. It is not difficult to imagine that under the guild system master craftsmen may have accepted journeymen based on the quality of the work they had produced in the past. We now understand that when it comes to the functionality of an application that code is the final arbiter. Why not apply the same rule to hiring?

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• NetBeans Podcast 62

  - by TinuA

  Download mp3: 49 minutes – 39.5 MB Subscribe to the NetBeans Podcast on iTunes NetBeans Community News with Geertjan and Tinu What's NEW? Recap of a SUCCESSFUL NetBeans Community Day at JavaOne2012! Want to know what you missed? Download slides for: NetBeans Community Keynote NetBeans and JavaFX panel NetBeans and Java EE panel NetBeans Platform panel Visit the JavaOne Content Catalog for slides, and audio and video recordings of all NetBeans sessions at JavaOne 2012. (Type in keyword "NetBeans".) NetBeans Governance Board elections are done. Congratulations to Anton Epple and Hermien Pellissier, the new members of the 20th Board! How would you grade the NetBeans team on NetBeans IDE 7.2? Take the NetBeans 7.2 Satisfaction Survey. NetBeans IDE 7.3 Beta 2 is available for download. The first beta debuted at JavaOne with support for HTML5. Watch videos of HTML5 support in NetBeans and visit Geertjan's blog for a beginner's guide to HTML5 development. It's a busy Fall on the NetBeans Calendar with stops at Devoxx 2012, JavaOne Latin America, Jay Day Munich, Jay Days Sweden  JavaOne 2012 Reflections NetBeans had a fantastic showing at JavaOne 2012--from the full-day lineup of NetBeans Community Day to the numerous BOFs, Labs, and sessions at the main conference. But better to hear it in these short interviews with members of the community who attended JavaOne 2012. Veteran attendees and first-timers, panel participants and award winners, the interviewees share their experience of the conference, from highlights and insights, to new discoveries and inspiration. Listen in to why attending JavaOne is a tech pilgrimage every Java developer ought to make.   07:50   Anton Epple - Eppleton Consulting (Germany); Recipient of 2012 NetBeans Community Recognition Award 17:10   Henry Arousell and Thomas Boqvist - Bjorn Lunden Information (Sweden) 24:45   Glenn Holmer - Weyco Group, Inc. (USA); Recipient of 2012 NetBeans Community Recognition Award 33:09   Timon Veenstra - Agrosense (The Netherlands); 2012 Duke's Choice Award winner (Agrosense in the Nov/Dec '12 issue of Java Magazine.) 40:19   Rob Terplowski, - Linden, Inc. (USA) More thoughts about NetBeans Day and JavaOne can also be found in two recent NetBeans Zone articles: "Reflections on JavaOne 2012 by the NetBeans Community: Part 1 and Part 2". *Have ideas for NetBeans Podcast topics? Send them to nbpodcast at netbeans dot org. *Subscribe to the official NetBeans page on Facebook! Check us out as well on Twitter, YouTube, and Google+.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 15, 2010 - 2 -- #883

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Vibor Cipan, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Kirupa, and Xianzhong Zhu. Shoutouts (thought I gave up on them, didn't you?): Jesse Liberty has the companion video to his WP7 OData post up: New Video: Master/Detail in WinPhone 7 with oData Michael Scherotter who made the first Ball Watch SL1 app back in the day, has a Virtual Event: Creating an Entry for the BALL Watch Silverlight Contest... sounds like the thing to do if you want in on this :) Even if you don't speak Portuguese, you can check this out: MSN Brazil Uses Silverlight to Showcase the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Erik Mork and crew have their latest up: This Week in Silverlight – Teched and Quizes Michael Klucher has a post up to give you some relief if you're having Trouble Installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools Portuguese above and now French... Jeremy Alles has a post up about [WP7] Windows Phone 7 challenge for french readers ! Just a note, not that it makes any difference, but Adam Kinney turned @SilverlightNews over to me today. I am the only one that has ever posted on it, but still having it all to myself feels special :) From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 tutorial: HOW TO use PathListBox and Sample Data Crank up that new version of Blend and follow along with Vibor Cipan's PathListBox tutorial ... oh, and sample data too. Cool INotifyPropertyChanged implementation Chris Klug shows off some INotifyPropertyChange goodness he is not implementing, and credits a blog by Manuel Felicio for some inspiration. Check out that post as well... I've tagged his blog... I needed *another* one :) Silverlight Tip: Using LINQ to Select the Largest Available Webcam Resolution With no Silverlight Tip of the Day today, Pete Brown stepped up with this tip for finding the largest available webcam resolution using LINQ ... and read the comment from Rene as well. Creating a Master-Detail UI in Blend Kirupa has a very nice Master/Detail UI post up with backrounder info and the code for the project. There's a running example in the post for you to get an idea what you're learning. Get started with Farseer Physics 2.1.3 in Silverlight 3 Xianzhong Zhu has a Silverlight 3 tutorial up for Farseer Physics 2.1.3 ... might track for Silverlight 4, but hey, WP7 is kinda/sort Silverlight 3, right? ... lots of code and external links. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• What is a better abstraction layer for D3D9 and OpenGL vertex data management?

  - by Sam Hocevar

  My rendering code has always been OpenGL. I now need to support a platform that does not have OpenGL, so I have to add an abstraction layer that wraps OpenGL and Direct3D 9. I will support Direct3D 11 later. TL;DR: the differences between OpenGL and Direct3D cause redundancy for the programmer, and the data layout feels flaky. For now, my API works a bit like this. This is how a shader is created: Shader *shader = Shader::Create( " ... GLSL vertex shader ... ", " ... GLSL pixel shader ... ", " ... HLSL vertex shader ... ", " ... HLSL pixel shader ... "); ShaderAttrib a1 = shader->GetAttribLocation("Point", VertexUsage::Position, 0); ShaderAttrib a2 = shader->GetAttribLocation("TexCoord", VertexUsage::TexCoord, 0); ShaderAttrib a3 = shader->GetAttribLocation("Data", VertexUsage::TexCoord, 1); ShaderUniform u1 = shader->GetUniformLocation("WorldMatrix"); ShaderUniform u2 = shader->GetUniformLocation("Zoom"); There is already a problem here: once a Direct3D shader is compiled, there is no way to query an input attribute by its name; apparently only the semantics stay meaningful. This is why GetAttribLocation has these extra arguments, which get hidden in ShaderAttrib. Now this is how I create a vertex declaration and two vertex buffers: VertexDeclaration *decl = VertexDeclaration::Create( VertexStream<vec3,vec2>(VertexUsage::Position, 0, VertexUsage::TexCoord, 0), VertexStream<vec4>(VertexUsage::TexCoord, 1)); VertexBuffer *vb1 = new VertexBuffer(NUM * (sizeof(vec3) + sizeof(vec2)); VertexBuffer *vb2 = new VertexBuffer(NUM * sizeof(vec4)); Another problem: the information VertexUsage::Position, 0 is totally useless to the OpenGL/GLSL backend because it does not care about semantics. Once the vertex buffers have been filled with or pointed at data, this is the rendering code: shader->Bind(); shader->SetUniform(u1, GetWorldMatrix()); shader->SetUniform(u2, blah); decl->Bind(); decl->SetStream(vb1, a1, a2); decl->SetStream(vb2, a3); decl->DrawPrimitives(VertexPrimitive::Triangle, NUM / 3); decl->Unbind(); shader->Unbind(); You see that decl is a bit more than just a D3D-like vertex declaration, it kinda takes care of rendering as well. Does this make sense at all? What would be a cleaner design? Or a good source of inspiration?

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• Bad Data is Really the Monster

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Bad Data is really the monster – is an article written by Bikram Sinha who I borrowed the title and the inspiration for this blog. Sinha writes: “Bad or missing data makes application systems fail when they process order-level data. One of the key items in the supply-chain industry is the product (aka SKU). Therefore, it becomes the most important data element to tie up multiple merchandising processes including purchase order allocation, stock movement, shipping notifications, and inventory details… Bad data can cause huge operational failures and cost millions of dollars in terms of time, resources, and money to clean up and validate data across multiple participating systems. Yes bad data really is the monster, so what do we do about it? Close our eyes and hope it stays in the closet? We’ve tacked this problem for some years now at Oracle, and with our latest introduction of Oracle Enterprise Data Quality along with our integrated Oracle Master Data Management products provides a complete, best-in-class answer to the bad data monster. What’s unique about it? Oracle Enterprise Data Quality also combines powerful data profiling, cleansing, matching, and monitoring capabilities while offering unparalleled ease of use. What makes it unique is that it has dedicated capabilities to address the distinct challenges of both customer and product data quality – [different monsters have different needs of course!]. And the ability to profile data is just as important to identify and measure poor quality data and identify new rules and requirements. Included are semantic and pattern-based recognition to accurately parse and standardize data that is poorly structured. Finally all of the data quality components are integrated with Oracle Master Data Management, including Oracle Customer Hub and Oracle Product Hub, as well as Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition and Oracle CRM. Want to learn more? On Tuesday Nov 15th, I invite you to listen to our webcast on Reduce ERP consolidation risks with Oracle Master Data Management I’ll be joined by our partner iGate Patni and be talking about one specific way to deal with the bad data monster specifically around ERP consolidation. Look forward to seeing you there!

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• Databases and Beer

  - by Johnm

  It is a bit of a no-brainer: Include the word "beer" in a subject line of an e-mail or blog post title and you can be certain that it will be read. While there are times this practice might be a ploy to increase readership, it is not the case for this blog post. There is inspiration that can be drawn from other industries to which we, as database professionals, can apply in our industry. In this post I will highlight one of my favorite participants of the brewing industry. The Boston Beer Company started in the 1970s in Boston, Massachusetts. Others may be more familiar with this company through their Samuel Adams Boston Lager and other various seasonal beers. I am continually inspired by their commitment to mastery of the brewing process to which they evangelize frequently in their commercials. They also are continually in pursuit of pushing the boundaries of beer as we know it while working within traditional constraints. A recent example of this is their collaboration with Weihenstephan Brewery of Munich, Germany to produce the soon to be released Infinium beer. This beer, while brewed as an ale, is touted as something closer to something like Champaign - all while complying with the Reinheitsgebot. The Reinheitsgebot is also known as the "German Beer Purity Law" which was originated in 1516. This law states that beer is to consist of water, barley, hops and yeast. That's it. Quite a limiting constraint indeed. and yet, The Boston Beer Company pushed forward. Much like the process of brewing, the discipline of database design and architecture is one that is continually in process and driven by the pursuit of mastery. While we do not have purity laws to constrain us, we have many other types: best practices, company policies, government regulations, security and budgets. Through our fellow comrades, we discuss the challenges and constraints in which we operate. We boil down the principles and theories that define our profession. We reassemble these into something that is complementary to the business needs that we must fulfill. As a result, it is not uncommon to see something amazingly innovative in a small business who is pushing the boundaries of their database well beyond its intended state. It is equally common to see innovation in the use of features available in the more advanced features of databases that are found in large businesses. The tag line for The Boston Beer Company is: "Take Pride In Your Beer.", I would like to offer an alternative and say "Take Pride In Your Database." So, As you pour your next Boston Lager into a frosted glass, consider those who spend their lives mastering the craft of brewing and strive to interject their spirit into everything that you do as a database professional. Cheers!

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• Retail in New York - a walk down 5th Avenue

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  It's the week of the NRF Big Show and all eyes in the retail industry are on New York. The Big Apple is famous for Big Retail -with a proliferation of incredibly iconic stores. The environment is exciting and familiar even to people visiting this small island for the first time. Most of us have travelled down Fifth Avenue watching movies and TV even if we have never set foot on American soil. I find it one of the most exciting retail cities in the world and I am thrilled this year to be here with so many of Oracle's International retail customers who are joining us for the Retail Exchange. The Oracle program brings retailers from all over the planet together to share ideas and be inspired by New York retail and the NRF event. The show celebrates its 100th year in 2011 and New York itself has been recognized globally as the capital of innovative retail for just as long.  Fifth Avenue is where many global brands have placed their flagship stores, and businesses are in constant competition to set themselves apart from their competitors - both in the store and from the street.  These flag ship retail destinations present what today's customers are finding most exciting and delightful about retail. For the tourist market, they may only visit these stores once, but the impression that a trip to a flagship store leaves with a customer can last a lifetime.  One of the stores that is currently turning heads on Fifth Avenue is Hollister, sister brand to Abercrombie and Fitch, which has filled its shop front with a massive live video (and audio) feed of surfers on the beach in California.  To complete the effect, they also have troughs of water in front of the video screens to bring the sea to the street.  And this isn't the only kind of surfing that retailers are considering today and multi-channel retail is a hot topic that all of the retailers joining the Retail Exchange are considering.   The rest of the world looks to the brands along Fifth Avenue for inspiration - how they take advantage of new opportunities, how they set themselves apart from their competitors and how they keep their products fresh and desirable. With these inspiring pioneers in New York, it's little wonder that NRF's Big Show is so popular, and that New York is viewed as one of the retail capitals of the world. It is a pleasure to be here with so many of the world's greatest international retailers.

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• Dadaism and Agility

  - by alexhildyard

  We all have our little bugbears, and something that has given me particular pause over the years is the place of Agility in the software development life cycle. While I have seen it used successfully on both small and Enterprise-level projects, I have also seen many instances in which long-standing technical debt has also originated under its watch. Ironically the problem in such cases seems to me not that the practitioners in question have failed to follow due process (Test, Develop, Refactor -- a common "what" of Agile), but basically that they have missed the point (the "why" of Agile). It's probably a sign of my age that I'm much more interested in the "why" than the "what", since I feel that the latter falls out naturally from the former, but that this is not a reciprocal relationship.Consider Dadaism, precursor to the Surrealist movement in the early part of the twentieth century. Anyone could stand up and proclaim he or she was Dada; anyone could write cut-ups, or pull words out a hat, or produce gibberish on duelling typewriters under the inspiration of Dada. And all that took place at such performances was a manifestation of Dada, and all the artefacts that resulted were also Dada. Hence one commentator's engimatic observation that 'when one speaks of Dada, then one speaks of Dada. But when one does not speak of Dada, one still speaks of Dada.'What is Dada? Literally, Dada is what you say it is. But that's also missing the point. Dada is about erecting a framework within which utterances like this are valid; Dada is about preparing a stage for itself. Dadaism exemplifies the purity of a process-driven ideology -- in fact an ideology that is almost pure process, with nothing extraneous in the way of formal method, and while perhaps Agile delivery should not embrace the liberties of Dadaism too literally, some of the similarities nevertheless are salutary.Agile -- like Dada -- is an attitude; it is about *being* agile; it is not really about doing a specific set of things that are somehow *part* of being Agile. It is an abstract base rather than an implementation, a characteristic rather than a factor. It is the pragmatic response to the need for change in the face of partial information, ephemeral requirements and a healthy dose of systematic uncertainty. In practice this will usually mean repeatedly making the smallest useful changes to a system, recognising that systems evolve, and that all change carries risk. It will usually mean that instead of investing effort in future-proofing a system against a known technology roadmap, one instead invests one's energies in the daily repetition and incremental development of processes best designed to accommodate change quickly. But though it may mean these things in practice, it isn't actually *about* either of these things; it's about the mindset, the attitude that conceives of such responses as sensible solutions given the larger and ultimately unclassifiable thing that constitutes the development lifecycle of a specific project.

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• Using Query Classes With NHibernate

  - by Liam McLennan

  Even when using an ORM, such as NHibernate, the developer still has to decide how to perform queries. The simplest strategy is to get access to an ISession and directly perform a query whenever you need data. The problem is that doing so spreads query logic throughout the entire application – a clear violation of the Single Responsibility Principle. A more advanced strategy is to use Eric Evan’s Repository pattern, thus isolating all query logic within the repository classes. I prefer to use Query Classes. Every query needed by the application is represented by a query class, aka a specification. To perform a query I: Instantiate a new instance of the required query class, providing any data that it needs Pass the instantiated query class to an extension method on NHibernate’s ISession type. To query my database for all people over the age of sixteen looks like this: [Test] public void QueryBySpecification() { var canDriveSpecification = new PeopleOverAgeSpecification(16); var allPeopleOfDrivingAge = session.QueryBySpecification(canDriveSpecification); } To be able to query for people over a certain age I had to create a suitable query class: public class PeopleOverAgeSpecification : Specification<Person> { private readonly int age; public PeopleOverAgeSpecification(int age) { this.age = age; } public override IQueryable<Person> Reduce(IQueryable<Person> collection) { return collection.Where(person => person.Age > age); } public override IQueryable<Person> Sort(IQueryable<Person> collection) { return collection.OrderBy(person => person.Name); } } Finally, the extension method to add QueryBySpecification to ISession: public static class SessionExtensions { public static IEnumerable<T> QueryBySpecification<T>(this ISession session, Specification<T> specification) { return specification.Fetch( specification.Sort( specification.Reduce(session.Query<T>()) ) ); } } The inspiration for this style of data access came from Ayende’s post Do You Need a Framework?. I am sick of working through multiple layers of abstraction that don’t do anything. Have you ever seen code that required a service layer to call a method on a repository, that delegated to a common repository base class that wrapped and ORMs unit of work? I can achieve the same thing with NHibernate’s ISession and a single extension method. If you’re interested you can get the full Query Classes example source from Github.

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• SQLAuthority News – 1600 Blog Post Articles – A Milestone

  - by pinaldave

  It was really a very interesting moment for me when I was writing my 1600th milestone blog post. Now it`s a lot more exciting because this time it`s my 1600th blog post. Every time I write a milestone blog post such as this, I have the same excitement as when I was writing my very first blog post. Today I want to write about a few statistics of the blog. Statistics I am frequently asked about my blog stats, so I have already published my blog stats which are measured by WordPress.com. Currently, I have more than 22 Million+ Views on this blog from various sources. There are more than 6200+ feed subscribers in Google Reader only; I think I don`t have to count all other subscribers. My LinkedIn has 1250+ connection, while my Twitter has 2150+. Because I feel that I`m well connected with the Community, I am very thankful to you, my readers. Today I also want to say Thank You to those experts who have helped me to improve. I have maintained a list of all the articles I have written. If you go to my first articles, you will notice that they were a little different from the articles I am writing today. The reason for this is simple: I have two kinds of people helping me write all the better: readers and experts. To my Readers You read the articles and gave me feedback about what was right or wrong, what you liked or disliked. Quite often, you were helpful in writing guest posts, and I also recognize how you were a bit brutal in criticizing some articles, making me re-write them. Because of you, I was able to write better blog posts. To Experts You read the articles and helped me improve. I get inspiration from you and learned a lot from you. Just like everybody, I am a guy who is trying to learn. There are times when I had vague understanding of some subjects, and you did not hesitate to help me. Number of Posts Many ask me if the number of posts is important to me. My answer is YES. Actually, it`s just not about the number of my posts; it is about my blog, my routine, my learning experience and my journey. During the last four years, I have decided that I would be learning one thing a day. This blog has helped me accomplish this goal because in here I have been able to keep my notes and bookmarks. Whatever I learn or experience, I blog and share it with the Community. For me, the blog post number is more than just a number: it`s a summary of my experiences and memories. Once again, thanks for reading and supporting my blog! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Milestone, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Superman

  - by Pinal Dave

  I enjoyed comparing developers to Spiderman so much, that I have decided to continue the trend and encourage some of my favorite people (developers) with another favorite superhero – Superman.  Superman is probably the most famous superhero – and one of the most inspiring. Everyone has their own favorite, but Superman has been the longest enduring of all comic book characters.  Clark Kent has inspired multiple movie series, TV shows, books, cartoons, and costumes.  Superman’s enduring popularity has been attributed to his superhuman strength, integrity, dedication to good, and his humility in keeping his identity a secret. So how are developers like Superman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Secret Identities They have secret identities.  I’m not saying that all developers wear thick glasses and go by an alias like “Clark Kent.”  But developers certainly work in the background, making sure everything runs smoothly, often without recognition.  Like Superman, when they have done their job right, no one knows they were there. Working Alone You don’t have to work alone.  Superman doesn’t have a sidekick like Robin or Bat Girl, but he is a major player in the Justice League.  Developers have amazing skills, and they shouldn’t be afraid to unite those skills to solve some of the world’s major problems (like slow networks). Daily Inspiration Developers are inspiring.  Clark Kent works at The Daily Planet, Metropolis’ newspaper, which is lucky because he can keep some of the publicity Superman inspires under wraps.  Developers might go unnoticed sometimes, but when people hear about some of the tasks they accomplish on a daily basis, it inspires awe. Discover Your Superpowers You have to discover your superpowers.  Clark Kent didn’t just wake up one morning with the full understanding that he could fly, leap tall buildings in a single bound, and was stronger than a speeding locomotive.  He slowly discovered these powers (after a few comic book-worthy misunderstandings!).  Developers are always learning and growing as well.  You probably won’t wake up with super powers, either, but years of practice and continuing education can get you close. Every Day is a New Day The story continues.  The Superman comic books are still being printed, and have been in print since 1938.  There have been two TV series, (one, Smallville, was on TV for ten seasons) and multiple cartoon adaptations.  There have been multiple movies, with many different actors.  A new reboot came out last year, and another is set to premier in 2016.   So, developers, when you are having a bad day or a problem seems unsolvable – remember, the story will continue!  There is always tomorrow. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• How to prepare for a telephone interview: ‘Develop an Interview Cheat Sheet’

  - by Maria Sandu

  At Oracle we often do telephone interviews in different stages of the process with candidates, due to the fact that we hire native speakers into other countries. On this blog we already have an article with tips and tricks for phone interviews that can help you during the telephone interviews. To help you prepare even better for a telephone interview we would like to introduce you the basics of developing a cheat sheet. The benefit of a telephone interview is that you will be sitting at home, at your table or desk, during the interview, and not in front of someone. So use this to your advantage. The Monster website has some useful and interesting tips and tricks for developing a cheat sheet. Carole Martin, who wrote this article, says that a cheat sheet will help you feel more prepared and confident when speaking to managers over the phone. Important to keep in mind is that you shouldn't memorise what's on the sheet or check it off during the interview. Only use your cheat sheet to remind you of key facts. Here are some suggestions to include on it: • Divide a piece of paper in 2 by drawing a line. Write on one side of the paper a list of requirements as mentioned in the job description. On the other side list your qualities to fulfill the requirements of the employer. This will help you in answering questions about why you are the best candidate for the job and how you fit the role. • Do research on the company, the industry sector and the competitors, so you will get a feeling for the company’s business and can ask more in-depth questions. • Be prepared for the most used introduction question: “Tell me a bit about yourself”. Prepare a 60-second personal statement or pitch in which you summarise who you are and what you can offer, so you will be able to sell yourself from on the very beginning. • Write down a minimum of 5 good examples to answer behavioral interview questions ("Tell me about a time when..." or "Give me an example of a time..." ). These questions are used by interviewers to see how you deal with similar situations as you might encounter in the job. Interviewers use this question as past behaviour is scientifically proven to be the best predictor for future behaviour. • List five questions to ask the interviewer about the job, the company and the industry to help you get a good understanding if the role and company really fit your needs and wants. To get some inspiration check this article on inc.com • Find out how much you are worth on the job market and determine your needs based on your living expenses, especially when moving abroad. • Ask for permission from the people you plan to use as a reference. Also make sure you have your CV at hand and an overview of your grades. Feel free to comment on this article and let us know what your experience is with developing a cheat sheet for a telephone interview. Good luck with the preparation of your sheet.

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