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• links for 2011-01-12

  - by Bob Rhubart

  WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Template Customization (Javier Ductor's Blog) "Recently, we have been involved in a WebCenter Spaces customization project. A customer sent us a prototype website in HTML, and we had to transform Spaces to set the same look and feel as in the prototype..." Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn webcenter enteprise2.0) Matt Carter: Risky Business "Incorporating risk detection and mitigation capabilities into apps is becoming all the rage. There are plenty of real-life examples of cases where prevention of cyber-security threats and fraudsters might have kept governments and companies out of the news, and with more money in their accounts." (tags: oracle otn security middleware) John Brunswick: 5 Surprisingly Good Benefits of Corporate Blogs "Some may still propose that not all corporations are going to be able to provide the five benefits above and are more focused around shameless self promotion of products and services.  If that is the case, that corporation is most likely not producing something of high value." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 blogging) InfoQ: IT And Architecture: Inside-Out Perspectives The software industry is in disarray, costs are escalating, and quality is diminishing. Promises of newer technologies and processes and methodologies in IT are still far from materializing on any significant scale. Bruce Laidlaw and Michael Poulin - each with more than 30 years of experience compared notes on the past and present of IT and provide insights on what IT needs to make progress. (tags: ping.fm) SOA & Middleware: Canceling a running composite instance - example Useful tips from Niall Commiskey. (tags: soa middleware oracle) BPEL 11.1.1.2 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology) "A new certification was released simultaneously with the E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Maintenance Pack late last year: the use of BPEL 11g Version 11.1.1.2 with E-Business Suite 12.1.3." -- Steven Chan (tags: oracle bpel) Marc Kelderman: OSB: Deploy Service Level Agreement (SLA), aka Alert Rule "The big issue with these SLAs is the deployment. If you have dozens of services, with multiple operations, and you have a lot of environments it takes a while to create them...[But] I have a nice workaround." - Mark Kelderman  (tags: oracle otn soa osb sla) @myfear: Java EE 7 - what's coming up for 2012? First hints. "Even if the actual Java EE 6 version is still not too widespread, we already have seen the first signs of the next EE 7 version written to the sky." -- Markus "myfear" Eisele (tags: oracle otn oracleace java)

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• Gamification in the enterprise updates, September edition

  - by erikanollwebb

  Things have been a little busy here at GamifyOracle.  Last week, I attended a small conference in San Diego on Enterprise Gamification.  Mario Herger of SAP, Matt Landes of Google and I were on a panel discussion about how to introduce and advocate gamification in your organization.  I gave a talk as well as a workshop on gamification.  The workshop was a new concept, to take our Design Jam from Applications User Experience and try it with people outside of user experience.  I have to say, the whole thing was a great success, in great part because I had some expert help from Teena Singh from Apps UX.  We took a flow from expense reporting and created a scenario about sales reps who are on the road a lot and how we needed them to get their expense reports filed by the end of the fiscal year.  We divided the attendees into groups and gave them a little over two hours to work out how they might use game mechanics to gamify the flows.   We even took the opportunity to re-use the app our fab dev team in our Mexico Development Center put together to gamify the event including badges, points, prizes and a leaderboard.  Since I am a firm believer that you can't gamify everything (or at least, not everything well), I focused my talk prior to the workshop on when it works, and when it might not, including pitfalls to gamifying badly.  I was impressed that the teams all considered what might go wrong with gamifying expenses and built into their designs some protections against that.  I can't wait to take this concept on the road again, it really was a fun day. Now that we have gotten through that set of events, we're wildly working on our next project for next week.  I'm doing a focus group at Oracle OpenWorld on Gamification in the Enterprise.  To do that, Andrea Cantu and I are trying to kill as many trees as possible while we work out some gamification concepts to present (see proof below!).  It should be a great event and I'm hoping we learn a lot about what our customers think about the use of gamification in their companies and in the products they use. So that's the news so far from GamifyOracle land.  I'll try to get more out about those events and more after next week. And if you will be at OOW, ping me and we can discuss in person!  I'd love to know what everyone is thinking in the area.

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• The Birth of SSAS Compare

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  Noemi Moreno, Red Gate Business Intelligence Specialist Software vendors – even Microsoft – tend to forget about the needs of business intelligence developers. We are a rare and rather invisible species. For example, BIDS remained in VS 2008 until SQL Server 2012. It took until this release before we got something as simple as an “undo” function. Before I joined Red Gate as a BI specialist, I worked on SQL Development. I’ll never forget the time I discovered Red Gate’s SQL Compare tool and how it reduced the task of preparing a database release from a couple of days to ten minutes. When I moved to SSAS, MDX and cubes, I became frustrated with the deployment process because I couldn’t find a tool that made Cube releases as easy as they are with SQL Compare. This became my quest. I pitched the idea to a few people in Red Gate’s regular Down Tools Week, when everyone puts down their day-to-day tasks and works on their own projects. My task was to reason with a roomful of cynical developers, hardened to the blandishments of project managers, for help to develop a tool that would compare two different SSAS databases and create the script to process only the objects that needed processing, thereby reducing release time to only a few minutes. I walked to the podium and gave them the full story of the distressed BI specialists, doomed to spend tedious hours preparing deployment scripts. A few developers recovered from their torpor to cast a languid eye at my presentation. It wasn’t enough. In a sudden impulse, I blurted out a promise to perform a flamenco dance for just the team if the tool was able to successfully compare two SSAS databases and generate a script by the end of the week. I was lucky enough that some of them believed me and jumped in: David Pond (Dev), Matt Burton (Dev), Tilman Bregler (Dev), Shobana Sekar (Test), Ruchija Raj (Test), Nick Sutherland (Product Manager) and Irma Tanovic (BI). They didn’t know that Irma and I would be away on a conference in Amsterdam and would leave them without our support. But to my surprise, they had a working tool by the time we came back – basic, and with a few bugs, but a working tool nonetheless! Seeing it compare a very basic SSAS database, detect the changes and generate the scripts was amazing! Something that normally takes half a day was done in under a minute. Since then, a few months have passed and a BI Tools team has been created at Red Gate to work full time on BI tools for BI developers, starting with SSAS Compare. How cool is that? So download the free beta and give us your feedback. And the flamenco? I still need to deliver that. Tilman reminds me every day! I need to get the full flamenco costume.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: HarQen Nodal

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. We wrapped the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge last week at OpenWorld, and this week, I’ll be sharing all the entries. All the teams that entered our challenge did a ton of work and built really interesting integrations with Oracle Social Network, and I want to showcase their hard work and innovative ideas. Today, I give you Nodal from the HarQen (@harqen) team, Kris Gösser (@krisgosser), Jesse Vogt (@jesse_vogt) and Matt Stockton (@mstockton). The guys from HarQen built Nodal to provide a visual way to navigate your connections and conversations in Oracle Social Network and view relationships. Using Nodal, you can: Search through names and profiles in Oracle Social Network. Choose people and view their social graphs in a visually useful way. Expand nodes in the social graph and add that person’s social graph to the Nodal view for comparison. Move nodes around and lock them in place for easier viewing, using a physics engine for movement. Adjust the physics engine properties according to your viewing preferences. Select nodes in the social graph and create a conversation directly based on the selection. Here are some shots of Nodal. They really don’t do the physics engine justice, but maybe the guys at Harqen will post a video of what they did for your viewing pleasure. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }   Nodal’s visuals wowed the judges and the audience, and anyone with a decent-sized social network presence understands the need for good network visualization. Tools like Nodal allow you to discover hidden connections in your network and maximize the value of your weak ties and find mavens, a very important key to getting work done. Thanks to the HarQen team for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week.

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• Convert Mac font to Windows format?

  - by Moshe

  I have a font that was used on Mac OS X 10.5. Mac recognizes it as a font file. Windows Vista shows it as a "File". Changing the file extension doesn't work. I tried both .otf and .ttf and neither worked. (Surprise! I didn't thinks so, but I'd be a fool for asking if that was the answer, so I tried...) Perhaps I need to try a different extension? Are there any utilities to convert the font? A Windows equivalent? It's called Franco. (FrancoNormal, actually.) Thanks. EDIT: DFontSplitter didn't work. I saw something online about "data fork" and "resource fork" that has to match up. Can someone please explain that? Do I need both for a font conversion? What do I tell my graphic designer to send me? EDIT 2: The font doesn't work when downloaded to Mac OS X either. (A different machine from the original.) "Get Info" reveals that there is no file extension, leading me to believe that this is the newer font format. Where wold I find the the "data fork" and "resource fork" on the Mac? I want to be able to tell the designer exactly where to look. EDIT 3: DFontSplitter works on the original computer but not on my PC. I converted and emailed myself the fonts from the graphic designers laptop. I guess it has to do with the data being stored in a "fork" whatnot. Thanks, Matt for that article. Thank you again for your help!

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• Scanning website for vulnerablities

  - by Kristen

  I have found that the local school's website installed a Perl Calendar - this was years ago, it has not been used for ages, but Google has it indexed (which is how I found it) and it full of Viagra links and the like ... program was by Matt Kruse, here is details of the exploit: http://www.securiteam.com/exploits/5IP040A1QI.html I've got the school to remove that, but I think they also have MySQL installed and I'm aware that out-of-the-box there have been some exploits of Admin Tools / Login in old versions. For all I know they also have PHPBB and the like installed ... The school is just using some cheap, shared hosting; the HTTP response header I get is: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) Chili!Soft-ASP/3.6.2 mod_ssl/2.8.14 OpenSSL/0.9.6b PHP/4.4.9 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 I'm looking for some means of checking if they have other junk installed (quite possibly from way back, and now unused) that might put the site at risk. I'm more interested in something that can scan for things like the MySQL Admin exploit rather than open ports etc. My guess is that they have little control over the hosting space that they have - but I'm a Windows DEV, so this *nix stuff is all Greek to me. I found http://www.beyondsecurity.com/ which looks like it might do what I want (within their evaluation :) ) but I have a worry about how to find out if they are well known / honest - otherwise I will be tipping them a wink with a Domain Name that may be at risk! Many thanks.

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• Problems with "Read Only" on a Samba share from Windows machines

  - by fistameeny

  Hi, We have a Ubuntu 10.04 Server that has a bunch of Samba shares on it that Windows workstations connect to. Each Windows workstation has a valid username/password to access the shares, which have restricted access governed by Samba. The problem we are experiencing is that Samba doesn't seem to be able to mimic the Windows way of handling "Read Only" attributes. Say I have two users, UserA and UserB, both a group called Staff - UserA creates a file that is readable/writeable by the group (ie. chmod rwxrwx---). If UserA then sets the "Read Only" flag, this changes the permissions to r-xr-x--- (i.e. no write for anyone). As UserB is in the same group as UserA, they should be able to remove the "Read Only" permission - however, they can't as Samba won't allow it. Is there a way to force Samba to allow users within the same group to remove the "Read Only" from a file not created by them? Edit: The Samba smb.conf is as follows: The share is defined in the smb.conf as: [global] log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . obey pam restrictions = yes map to guest = bad user encrypt passwords = true passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passdb backend = tdbsam dns proxy = no netbios name = ubsrv server string = ubsrv unix password sync = yes os level = 20 syslog = 0 usershare allow guests = yes panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d max log size = 1000 pam password change = yes workgroup = workgroup [Projects] valid users = @Staff writeable = yes user = @Staff create mode = 0777 path = /srv/samba/Projects directory mode = 0777 store dos attributes = Yes The folder itself looks like this: ls -l /srv/samba/ drwxrwxrwx 2 nobody Staff 4096 2010-11-04 10:09 Projects Thanks in advance, Matt

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• Problems with "Read Only" on a Samba share from Windows machines

  - by fistameeny

  We have a Ubuntu 10.04 Server that has a bunch of Samba shares on it that Windows workstations connect to. Each Windows workstation has a valid username/password to access the shares, which have restricted access governed by Samba. The problem we are experiencing is that Samba doesn't seem to be able to mimic the Windows way of handling "Read Only" attributes. Say I have two users, UserA and UserB, both a group called Staff - UserA creates a file that is readable/writeable by the group (ie. chmod rwxrwx---). If UserA then sets the "Read Only" flag, this changes the permissions to r-xr-x--- (i.e. no write for anyone). As UserB is in the same group as UserA, they should be able to remove the "Read Only" permission - however, they can't as Samba won't allow it. Is there a way to force Samba to allow users within the same group to remove the "Read Only" from a file not created by them? Edit: The Samba smb.conf is as follows: The share is defined in the smb.conf as: [global] log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . obey pam restrictions = yes map to guest = bad user encrypt passwords = true passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passdb backend = tdbsam dns proxy = no netbios name = ubsrv server string = ubsrv unix password sync = yes os level = 20 syslog = 0 usershare allow guests = yes panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d max log size = 1000 pam password change = yes workgroup = workgroup [Projects] valid users = @Staff writeable = yes user = @Staff create mode = 0777 path = /srv/samba/Projects directory mode = 0777 store dos attributes = Yes The folder itself looks like this: ls -l /srv/samba/ drwxrwxrwx 2 nobody Staff 4096 2010-11-04 10:09 Projects Thanks in advance, Matt

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• Can't get intel atom g-500 video driver to work with ubuntu 10.10 netbook edition.

  - by Matthew

  First of all I am completely new to Linux, so if you respond, please do so in a 'linux for dummies' tone so that my brain will be able to process it. I recently installed ubuntu on my dell mini-inspiron 1010. It has one GB of ram and an intel atom processor that uses the intel 500 graphic accelerator driver for windows and can run 1024x768 comfortably in xp. When I was installing ubuntu had quite a bit of trouble with my display and I am still unable to adjust my settings from 800x600x0x0 and there is no hardware acceleration. I visited the intel site and installed the linux drivers with the help of a friend but still no change. I tried adding resolution settings through xconf but they could not be applied even after I added the values. I am probably going about this totally wrong, but I've spent quite a lot of time browsing through forums and still haven't found a solution. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also any other beginner tips that you have would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Matt

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• How do I run multiple MVC apps within a subdomain on IIS7?

  - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt

  Hello and thanks for looking. Background I am currently wrapping up a development contract and the client would like for me to push a build of the application to their IIS 7-based server in which they would like to run multiple MVC apps. One of the issues I have off of the bat is that this server is already a subdomain on their larger network. So, if I enter SERVERNAME in my browser, it automatically directs to SERVERNAME.COMPANYNAME.COM. Now, this is just fine if I place my application in the default website/root. In this scenario, clicking a link that requests admin.html directs to `SERVERNAME.COMPANYNAME.COM/admin.html' as usual. BUT they want me to place the app in a subdomain on this server so that they can also run other apps on the same server. So I assume that I need MYAPP.SERVERNAME.COMPANYNAME.COM but I have no idea how to do that. Complicating matters is that my app and the future ones they wish to install are all MVC based which intercepts and re-writes URLs. I assume that this takes care of itself if I can just successfully get my app into a subdomain to begin with. What I have tried Creating a new site on the server in it's own app pool Setting the binding for that site to MYAPP.SERVERNAME.COMPANYNAME.COM Setting the binding for that site to MYAPP Setting the binding for that site to MYAPP.SERVERNAME Setting the binding for that site to MYAPP.SERVERNAME.COM Setting the binding for that site to MYAPP.COMPANYNAME.COM Nothing is working. Am I missing something simple here? Thanks, Matt

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• Ubuntu 10.10 forgets desktop theme.

  - by Marcelo Cantos

  I am running Ubuntu in VirtualBox (on a Windows 7 host). Several times now, the top-level menu bar, the task bar — and seemingly every system dialog — have forgotten the out-of-the-box "Ambiance" theme they conform to when I first installed the system. Window captions still preserve the theme, but pretty much nothing else does. I have searched high and low on Google for assistance with this problem. Everything I've found suggests either running some gconf reset or deleting .gconf* .gnome* and other similar directories. I have followed all this advice and nothing works. I still get a boring Windows-95-style gray 3D look and feel. On previous occasions, after much messing around I've given up and rebooted the VM instance, and been pleasantly suprised to see the original "Ambience" theme restored throughout the UI, but invariably it disappears again some time later, usually after a reboot, so I can never figure out what I did that broke it. Here's a sample from Ubuntu's site of what I want it to look like. And here's a screenshot of my system as it currently looks. Also note that my GNOME Terminals normally have a nice purple semi-translucent look, and as can be seen from the screenshot, they are now just a solid matt white. This last time (just this morning), trying numerous combinations all the usual tricks and rebooting several times hasn't fixed it, so here I am on SU wondering: How do I recover the out-of-the-box theme for my Gnome/Ubuntu desktop, noting that blowing away all config files — as suggested in many places online — fails to achieve this? EDIT: It might help to know that it seems to fail either after I resize the VM instance, forcing the Ubuntu desktop to resize itself, or after I play around with Compiz settings. I haven't been able to figure out which of these it is, and it could be neither. Given the amount of pain I have had to go through to get things back to normal (and given that I am at a loss as to how to do so), it has proven difficult to definitively isolate the cause.

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• iptables blank after reboot

  - by theillien

  We've started encountering an issue with iptables on our RHEL 6.3 systems in that after a reboot, when the service starts, the rules are not loaded. We get the empty ruleset: [msnyder@matt-test ~]$ sudo iptables -L Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination This is in spite of the fact that we have rules defined and the service is, indeed, running. That I know because when I run service iptables start it simply drops back to the prompt. If I run service iptables restart it actually stops and then restarts the service. And, of course, if I run service iptables stop it indicates that iptables is actually stopping. Knowing that I need to restart the service, I do so and the rules load up properly. They simply don't get loaded after a reboot. Unless they get loaded differently during a reboot I don't see how our rules would be wrong. If they were, they wouldn't even load during a service restart. Has anyone else ever encountered this? EDIT: The rules are already saved in /etc/sysconfig/iptables. They are not added on the fly from the command line so service iptables save is unnecessary.

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• how do i add images from drable folder instead of url in this code

  - by hayya anam

  i used the following URL https://github.com/jgilfelt/android-mapviewballoons source in my application is show image by using url how do i give images form my own drawable folder?? i found this mapview url which show images inbaloon but is show images by url i wanna show myown iamges how i do? howi give my own images from my folder public class CustomMap extends MapActivity { MapView mapView; List<Overlay> mapOverlays; Drawable drawable; Drawable drawable2; CustomItemizedOverlay<CustomOverlayItem> itemizedOverlay; CustomItemizedOverlay<CustomOverlayItem> itemizedOverlay2; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); mapView = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.mapview); mapView.setBuiltInZoomControls(true); mapOverlays = mapView.getOverlays(); // first overlay drawable = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.marker); itemizedOverlay = new CustomItemizedOverlay<CustomOverlayItem>(drawable, mapView); GeoPoint point = new GeoPoint((int)(51.5174723*1E6),(int)(-0.0899537*1E6)); CustomOverlayItem overlayItem = new CustomOverlayItem(point, "Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)", "(M gives Bond his mission in Daimler car)", "http://ia.media-imdb.com/images /M/MV5BMTM1MTk2ODQxNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTY5MDg0NA@@._V1._SX40_CR0,0,40,54_.jpg"); itemizedOverlay.addOverlay(overlayItem); GeoPoint point2 = new GeoPoint((int)(51.515259*1E6),(int)(-0.086623*1E6)); CustomOverlayItem overlayItem2 = new CustomOverlayItem(point2, "GoldenEye (1995)", "(Interiors Russian defence ministry council chambers in St Petersburg)", "http://ia.media-imdb.com/images M/MV5BMzk2OTg 4MTk1NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjExNTgzNA@@._V1._SX40_CR0,0,40,54_.jpg"); itemizedOverlay.addOverlay(overlayItem2); mapOverlays.add(itemizedOverlay); // second overlay drawable2 = getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.marker2); itemizedOverlay2 = new CustomItemizedOverlay<CustomOverlayItem> (drawable2, mapView); GeoPoint point3 = new GeoPoint((int)(51.513329*1E6),(int)(-0.08896*1E6)); CustomOverlayItem overlayItem3 = new CustomOverlayItem(point3, "Sliding Doors (1998)", "(interiors)", null); itemizedOverlay2.addOverlay(overlayItem3); GeoPoint point4 = new GeoPoint((int)(51.51738*1E6),(int)(-0.08186*1E6)); CustomOverlayItem overlayItem4 = new CustomOverlayItem(point4, "Mission: Impossible (1996)", "(Ethan & Jim cafe meeting)", "http://ia.media-imdb.com/images /M/MV5BMjAyNjk5Njk0MV 5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTA4MjIyMQ@@._V1._SX40_CR0,0,40,54_.jpg"); itemizedOverlay2.addOverlay(overlayItem4); mapOverlays.add(itemizedOverlay2); final MapController mc = mapView.getController(); mc.animateTo(point2); mc.setZoom(16); } @Override protected boolean isRouteDisplayed() { return false; } }

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• Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined

  - by AnApprentice

  I'm working to built a contact list that is grouped by the first letter of the contact's last name. After a succesfull ajax request, the contact is pushed to addContact: Ajax success: ko.utils.arrayForEach(dataJS.contactList, function(c) { contactsModel.addContact(c); }); contactsModel.addContact: //add a contact in the right spot under the right letter contactsModel.addContact = function(newContact) { //grab first character var firstLetter = (newContact.lname || "").charAt(0).toUpperCase(); //if it is a number use # if (!isNaN(firstLetter)) { firstLetter = "#"; } //do we already have entries for this letter if (!this.letterIndex[firstLetter]) { //new object to track this letter's contacts var letterContacts = { letter: firstLetter, contacts: ko.observableArray([]) }; this.letterIndex[firstLetter] = letterContacts; //easy access to it //put the numbers at the end if (firstLetter === "#") { this.contactsByLetter.push(letterContacts); } else { //add the letter in the right spot for (var i = 0, lettersLength = this.contactsByLetter().length; i < lettersLength; i++) { var letter = this.contactsByLetter()[i].letter; if (letter === "#" || firstLetter < letter) { break; } } this.contactsByLetter.splice(i, 0, letterContacts); } } var contacts = this.letterIndex[firstLetter].contacts; //now we have a letter to add our contact to, but need to add it in the right spot var newContactName = newContact.lname + " " + newContact.fname; for (var j = 0, contactsLength = contacts().length; j < contactsLength; j++) { var contactName = contacts()[j].lName + " " + contacts()[j].fName; if (newContactName < contactName) { break; } } //add the contact at the right index contacts.splice(j, 0, newContact); }.bind(contactsModel); The contacts json object from the server looks like this: { "total_pages": 10, "page": page, "contactList": [{ "photo": "http://homepage.mac.com/millhouse/Family%20Tree/images/PersonListIcon.png", "lname": "Bond", "id": 241, "fname": "James", "email": "[email protected]"}, While this works in jsfiddle, when I try it locally, I get the following error during the first push to addContact: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined jQuery.jQuery.extend._Deferred.deferred.resolveWithjquery-1.5.1.js:869 donejquery-1.5.1.js:6591 jQuery.ajaxTransport.send.callbackjquery-1.5.1.js:7382 Ideas? Thanks

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• Removing duplicate elements with XSLT

  - by user1439459

  I need to eliminate duplicate elements from my XML using a specific node (ItemID) My XML Looks as follows; <XML> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>723073</ItemID> <ColorID>02</ColorID> <Description>Pentel LR7 Energel Metal Tip Refill 0.7mm</Description> <MainCategory>WRITING INSTRUMENTS</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Refill</SubCategory> <LineNum> 1.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 6.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 10.0200000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 8.4200000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 60.1200000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName>Black</ColorName> <UOM>EA</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637542_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>903420</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>STEPHENS JUNIOR Stapler Half Strip KW586</Description> <MainCategory>OFFICE SUNDRIES</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Staplers</SubCategory> <LineNum> 2.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 3.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 32.2500000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 13.5400000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 96.7500000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Ea</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637547_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>867241</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>TRODAT PRINTY S/Inking Stamp Copy 4911</Description> <MainCategory>STAMPS DATERS NUMBERERS</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Self Inking Stamps</SubCategory> <LineNum> 3.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 1.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 42.1500000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 5.9000000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 42.1500000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Ea</UOM> <Backorder> 1.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637548_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>941151</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>PENTEL Correction Tape 5mx5mm ZT35</Description> <MainCategory>OFFICE SUNDRIES</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Correction Fluid/Pens/Tape</SubCategory> <LineNum> 4.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 2.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 25.1500000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 7.0400000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 50.3000000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Ea</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637549_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>801215</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>MONDI ROTATRIM Copy Paper A4 80Gsm White</Description> <MainCategory>A4 Paper</MainCategory> <SubCategory>White Bond Paper</SubCategory> <LineNum> 5.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 100.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 29.0100000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 406.1400000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 2901.0000000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Pkt 500</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637552_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SALESID> CAP716197SO</SALESID> <INVOICEID> CAP600795SI</INVOICEID> <INVOICEDATE>2010/05/06</INVOICEDATE> <NUMBERSEQUENCEGROUP /> <LINENUM> 2.0000000</LINENUM> <ITEMID>805236</ITEMID> <INVENTDIMID> CAP0000594_061</INVENTDIMID> <NAME>Ruled Paper A4 Fnt/Marg JD76</NAME> <CONFIRMEDDLV>2010/05/06</CONFIRMEDDLV> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637543_060</INVENTTRANSID> <QTYSALES> 4.0000000</QTYSALES> <QTYORDERED> 4.0000000</QTYORDERED> <QTYBACKORDERSALES> 4.0000000</QTYBACKORDERSALES> <QTYBACKORDERINVENT> 4.0000000</QTYBACKORDERINVENT> <SALESUNIT>EA</SALESUNIT> <ORIGSALESID> CAP716197SO</ORIGSALESID> <DATAAREAID>wal</DATAAREAID> <RECID>622392608</RECID> <RecVersion>1</RecVersion> </Line> <Line> <SALESID> CAP716197SO</SALESID> <INVOICEID> CAP600795SI</INVOICEID> <INVOICEDATE>2010/05/06</INVOICEDATE> <NUMBERSEQUENCEGROUP /> <LINENUM> 3.0000000</LINENUM> <ITEMID>941150</ITEMID> <INVENTDIMID> CAP0000594_061</INVENTDIMID> <NAME>PENGUIN Correction Fluid 20ml White</NAME> <CONFIRMEDDLV>2010/05/06</CONFIRMEDDLV> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637546_060</INVENTTRANSID> <QTYSALES> 6.0000000</QTYSALES> <QTYORDERED> 6.0000000</QTYORDERED> <QTYBACKORDERSALES> 6.0000000</QTYBACKORDERSALES> <QTYBACKORDERINVENT> 6.0000000</QTYBACKORDERINVENT> <SALESUNIT>EA</SALESUNIT> <ORIGSALESID> CAP716197SO</ORIGSALESID> <DATAAREAID>wal</DATAAREAID> <RECID>622392609</RECID> <RecVersion>1</RecVersion> </Line> <Line> <SALESID> CAP716197SO</SALESID> <INVOICEID> CAP600795SI</INVOICEID> <INVOICEDATE>2010/05/06</INVOICEDATE> <NUMBERSEQUENCEGROUP /> <LINENUM> 5.0000000</LINENUM> <ITEMID>867241</ITEMID> <INVENTDIMID> CAP0000594_061</INVENTDIMID> <NAME>TRODAT PRINTY S/Inking Stamp Copy 4911</NAME> <CONFIRMEDDLV>2010/05/06</CONFIRMEDDLV> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637548_060</INVENTTRANSID> <QTYSALES> 2.0000000</QTYSALES> <QTYORDERED> 2.0000000</QTYORDERED> <QTYBACKORDERSALES> 1.0000000</QTYBACKORDERSALES> <QTYBACKORDERINVENT> 1.0000000</QTYBACKORDERINVENT> <SALESUNIT>EA</SALESUNIT> <ORIGSALESID> CAP716197SO</ORIGSALESID> <DATAAREAID>wal</DATAAREAID> <RECID>622392610</RECID> <RecVersion>1</RecVersion> </Line> </XML> You will see the XML is not identical but the tag is always in the same place, and there is currently 1 duplicate 867241 I do not want the order to change, just the element removed. Desired output would be; <XML> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>723073</ItemID> <ColorID>02</ColorID> <Description>Pentel LR7 Energel Metal Tip Refill 0.7mm</Description> <MainCategory>WRITING INSTRUMENTS</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Refill</SubCategory> <LineNum> 1.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 6.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 10.0200000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 8.4200000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 60.1200000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName>Black</ColorName> <UOM>EA</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637542_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>903420</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>STEPHENS JUNIOR Stapler Half Strip KW586</Description> <MainCategory>OFFICE SUNDRIES</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Staplers</SubCategory> <LineNum> 2.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 3.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 32.2500000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 13.5400000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 96.7500000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Ea</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637547_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>867241</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>TRODAT PRINTY S/Inking Stamp Copy 4911</Description> <MainCategory>STAMPS DATERS NUMBERERS</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Self Inking Stamps</SubCategory> <LineNum> 3.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 1.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 42.1500000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 5.9000000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 42.1500000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Ea</UOM> <Backorder> 1.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637548_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>941151</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>PENTEL Correction Tape 5mx5mm ZT35</Description> <MainCategory>OFFICE SUNDRIES</MainCategory> <SubCategory>Correction Fluid/Pens/Tape</SubCategory> <LineNum> 4.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 2.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 25.1500000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 7.0400000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 50.3000000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Ea</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637549_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SupplierID>Waltons</SupplierID> <InvoiceID>CAP600795SI</InvoiceID> <InvoiceDate>20100506</InvoiceDate> <ItemID>801215</ItemID> <ColorID /> <Description>MONDI ROTATRIM Copy Paper A4 80Gsm White</Description> <MainCategory>A4 Paper</MainCategory> <SubCategory>White Bond Paper</SubCategory> <LineNum> 5.0000000</LineNum> <Qty> 100.0000000</Qty> <UnitPriceExclTax> 29.0100000</UnitPriceExclTax> <LineTax> 406.1400000</LineTax> <LinePriceExclTax> 2901.0000000</LinePriceExclTax> <ColorName /> <UOM>Pkt 500</UOM> <Backorder> 0.0000000</Backorder> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637552_060</INVENTTRANSID> </Line> <Line> <SALESID> CAP716197SO</SALESID> <INVOICEID> CAP600795SI</INVOICEID> <INVOICEDATE>2010/05/06</INVOICEDATE> <NUMBERSEQUENCEGROUP /> <LINENUM> 2.0000000</LINENUM> <ITEMID>805236</ITEMID> <INVENTDIMID> CAP0000594_061</INVENTDIMID> <NAME>Ruled Paper A4 Fnt/Marg JD76</NAME> <CONFIRMEDDLV>2010/05/06</CONFIRMEDDLV> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637543_060</INVENTTRANSID> <QTYSALES> 4.0000000</QTYSALES> <QTYORDERED> 4.0000000</QTYORDERED> <QTYBACKORDERSALES> 4.0000000</QTYBACKORDERSALES> <QTYBACKORDERINVENT> 4.0000000</QTYBACKORDERINVENT> <SALESUNIT>EA</SALESUNIT> <ORIGSALESID> CAP716197SO</ORIGSALESID> <DATAAREAID>wal</DATAAREAID> <RECID>622392608</RECID> <RecVersion>1</RecVersion> </Line> <Line> <SALESID> CAP716197SO</SALESID> <INVOICEID> CAP600795SI</INVOICEID> <INVOICEDATE>2010/05/06</INVOICEDATE> <NUMBERSEQUENCEGROUP /> <LINENUM> 3.0000000</LINENUM> <ITEMID>941150</ITEMID> <INVENTDIMID> CAP0000594_061</INVENTDIMID> <NAME>PENGUIN Correction Fluid 20ml White</NAME> <CONFIRMEDDLV>2010/05/06</CONFIRMEDDLV> <INVENTTRANSID> CAP5637546_060</INVENTTRANSID> <QTYSALES> 6.0000000</QTYSALES> <QTYORDERED> 6.0000000</QTYORDERED> <QTYBACKORDERSALES> 6.0000000</QTYBACKORDERSALES> <QTYBACKORDERINVENT> 6.0000000</QTYBACKORDERINVENT> <SALESUNIT>EA</SALESUNIT> <ORIGSALESID> CAP716197SO</ORIGSALESID> <DATAAREAID>wal</DATAAREAID> <RECID>622392609</RECID> <RecVersion>1</RecVersion> </Line> </XML> I can use XSLT 1 or 2 Regards,

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• On Her Majesty's Secret Source Code: .NET Reflector 7 Early Access Builds Now Available

  - by Bart Read

  Dodgy Bond references aside, I'm extremely happy to be able to tell you that we've just released our first .NET Reflector 7 Early Access build. We're going to make these available over the coming weeks via the main .NET Reflector download page at: http://reflector.red-gate.com/Download.aspx Please have a play and tell us what you think in the forum we've set up. Also, please let us know if you run into any problems in the same place. The new version so far comes with numerous decompilation improvements including (after 5 years!) support for iterator blocks - i.e., the yield statement first seen in .NET 2.0. We've also done a lot of work to solidify the support for .NET 4.0. Clive's written about the work he's done to support iterator blocks in much more detail here, along with the odd problem he's encountered when dealing with compiler generated code: http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/clivet/96199.aspx. On the UI front we've started what will ultimately be a rewrite of the entire front-end, albeit broken into stages over two or three major releases. The most obvious addition at the moment is tabbed browsing, which you can see in Figure 1. Figure 1. .NET Reflector's new tabbed decompilation feature. Use CTRL+Click on any item in the assembly browser tree, or any link in the source code view, to open it in a new tab. This isn't by any means finished. I'll be tying up loose ends for the next few weeks, with a major focus on performance and resource usage. .NET Reflector has historically been a largely single-threaded application which has been fine up until now but, as you might expect, the addition of browser-style tabbing has pushed this approach somewhat beyond its limit. You can see this if you refresh the assemblies list by hitting F5. This shows up another problem: we really need to make Reflector remember everything you had open before you refreshed the list, rather than just the last item you viewed - I discovered that it's always done the latter, but it used to hide all panes apart from the treeview after a Refresh, including the decompiler/disassembler window. Ultimately I've got plans to add the whole VS/Chrome/Firefox style ability to drag a tab into the middle of nowhere to spawn a new window, but I need to be mindful of the add-ins, amongst other things, so it's possible that might slip to a 7.5 or 8.0 release. You'll also notice that .NET Reflector 7 now needs .NET 3.5 or later to run. We made this jump because we wanted to offer ourselves a much better chance of adding some really cool functionality to support newer technologies, such as Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. We've also taken the opportunity to start using WPF for UI development, which has frankly been a godsend. The learning curve is practically vertical but, I kid you not, it's just a far better world. Really. Stop using WinForms. Now. Why are you still using it? I had to go back and work on an old WinForms dialog for an hour or two yesterday and it really made me wince. The point is we'll be able to move the UI in some exciting new directions that will make Reflector easier to use whilst continuing to develop its functionality without (and this is key) cluttering the interface. The 3.5 language enhancements should also enable us to be much more productive over the longer term. I know most of you have .NET Fx 3.5 or 4.0 already but, if you do need to install a new version, I'd recommend you jump straight to 4.0 because, for one thing, it's faster, and if you're starting afresh there's really no reason not to. Despite the Fx version jump the Visual Studio add-in should still work fine in Visual Studio 2005, and obviously will continue to work in Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. If you do run into problems, again, please let us know here. As before, we continue to support every edition of Visual Studio exception the Express Editions. Speaking of Visual Studio, we've also been improving the add-in. You can now open and explore decompiled code for any referenced assembly in any project in your solution. Just right-click on the reference, then click Decompile and Explore on the context menu. Reflector will pop up a progress box whilst it decompiles your assembly (Figure 2) - you can move this out of the way whilst you carry on working. Figure 2. Decompilation progress. This isn't modal so you can just move it out of the way and carry on working. Once it's done you can explore your assembly in the Reflector treeview (Figure 3), also accessible via the .NET Reflector Explore Decompiled Assemblies main menu item. Double-click on any item to open decompiled source in the Visual Studio source code view. Use right-click and Go To Definition on the source view context menu to navigate through the code. Figure 3. Using the .NET Reflector treeview within Visual Studio. Double-click on any item to open decompiled source in the source code view. There are loads of other changes and fixes that have gone in, often under the hood, which I don't have room to talk about here, and plenty more to come over the next few weeks. I'll try to keep you abreast of new functionality and changes as they go in. There are a couple of smaller things worth mentioning now though. Firstly, we've reorganised the menus and toolbar in Reflector itself to more closely mirror what you might be used to in other applications. Secondly, we've tried to make some of the functionality more discoverable. For example, you can now switch decompilation target framework version directly from the toolbar - and the default is now .NET 4.0. I think that about covers it for the moment. As I said, please use the new version, and send us your feedback. Here's that download URL again: http://reflector.red-gate.com/Download.aspx. Until next time! Technorati Tags: .net reflector,7,early access,new version,decompilation,tabbing,visual studio,software development,.net,c#,vb

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• A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

  - by James Michael Hare

  Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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• “It’s only test code…”

  - by Chris George

  “Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems.   Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier!   Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you.   Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base.   Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.  

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• PASS: SQLRally Thoughts

  - by Bill Graziano

  The PASS Board recently decided that we wouldn’t put another US-based SQLRally on the calendar until we had a chance to review the program. I wanted to provide some of my thinking around this. Keep in mind that this is the opinion of one Board member. The Board committed to complete two SQLRally events to determine if an event modeled between SQL Saturday and the Summit was viable. We’ve completed the two events and now it’s time to step back and review the program. This is my seventh year on the PASS Board. Over that time people have asked me why PASS does certain things. Many, many times my answer has been “Because that’s the way we did it last year”. And I am tired of giving that answer. We need to take a step back and review the US-based SQLRally before we schedule another one. It would be irresponsible for me as a Board member to commit resources to this without validating that what we’re doing makes sense for the organization and our members. I have no doubt that this was a great event for the attendees. We just need to validate it’s the best use of our resources. Please keep in mind that we haven’t cancelled the event. We’ve just said we need to review it before scheduling another one. My opinion is that some fairly serious changes are needed to the model before we consider it again – IF we do it again. I’ve come to that conclusion after speaking with the Dallas organizers, our HQ team, our Marketing team, other Board members (including one of the Orlando organizers), attendees in Orlando and Dallas and visiting other similar events. I should point out that their views aren’t unanimous on nearly any part of this event -- which is one of the reasons I want to take some time and think about this before continuing. I think it’s helpful to look at the original goals of what we were trying to accomplish. Andy Warren wrote these up in August of 2010. My summary of these goals and some thoughts on each one is below. Many of these thoughts revolve around the growth of SQL Saturdays. In the two years since that document was written these events have grown significantly. The largest SQL Saturdays are now over 500 people which mean they are nearly the same size as our recent SQLRally. Our goals included: Geographic diversity. We wanted an event in an area of the country that was away from any given Summit location. I think that’s still a valid goal. But we also have SQL Saturdays all over the country. What does SQLRally bring to this that SQLSaturday doesn’t? Speaker growth. One of the stated goals was to build a “farm club” for speakers. This gives us a way for speakers to work up to speaking at Summit by speaking in front of larger crowds. What does SQLRally bring to this that the larger SQL Saturdays aren’t providing? Pre-Conference speakers is one obvious answer here. Lower price. On a per-day basis, SQLRally is roughly 1/4th the price of the Summit. We wanted a way for people to experience something Summit-like at a lower price point. The challenge is that we are very budget constrained at that lower price point. International Event Model.  (I need to write more about this but I’m out of time.  I’ll cover it in the next installment.) There are a number of things I really like about SQLRally. I love the smaller conferences. They give me a chance to meet more people than at something the size of Summit. I like the two day format. That gives you two evenings to be at social events with people. Seeing someone a second day is a great way to build a bond with that person. That’s more difficult to do at a SQL Saturday. We also need to talk about the financial aspects of the event. Last year generated a small $17,000 profit on revenues of $200,000. Percentage-wise that’s reasonable but on an absolute basis it’s not a huge amount in our budget. We think this year will lose between $30,000 and $50,000 and take roughly 1,000 hours of HQ time. We don’t have detailed financials back yet but that’s our best guess at this point. Part of that was driven by using a convention center instead of a hotel. Until we get detailed financials back we won’t have the full picture around the financial impact. This event also takes time and mindshare from our Marketing team. This may sound like a small thing but please don’t underestimate it. Our original vision for this was something that would take very little time from our Marketing team and just a few mentions in the Connector. It turned out to need more than that. And all those mentions and emails take up space we could use to talk about other events and other programs. Last I wanted to talk about some of the things I’m thinking about. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying if we just fix “X” it all gets better. Is this that much better of an event than SQL Saturdays? What if we gave a few SQL Saturdays some extra resources? When SQL Saturdays were around 250 people that wasn’t as viable. With some of those events over 500 we need to reconsider this. We need to get back to a hotel venue. That will help with cost and networking. Is this the best use of the 1,000 HQ hours that we invested in the event? Is our price-point correct? I’m leaning toward raising our price closer to Summit on a per-day basis. I think this will let us put on a higher quality event and alleviate much of the budget pressure. Should growing speakers be a focus? Having top-line pre-conference speakers helps market the event. It will also have an impact on pricing and overall profit. We should also ask if it actually does grow speakers. How many of these people will eventually register for Summit? Attend chapters? Is SQLRally a driver into PASS or is it something that chapters, etc. drive people to? Should we have one paid day and one free instead of two paid days? This is a very interesting model that is used by SQLBits in the UK. This gives you the two day aspect as well as offering options for paid and free attendees. I’m very intrigued by this. Should we focus on a topic? Buried in the minutes is a discussion of whether PASS should have a Business Analytics conference separate from Summit. This is an interesting question to consider. Would making SQLRally be focused on a particular topic make it more attractive? Would that even be a SQLRally? Can PASS effectively manage the two events? (FYI - Probably not.) Would it help differentiate it from Summit and SQL Saturday? These are all questions that I think should be asked and answered before we do this event again. And we can’t do that if we don’t take time to have the discussion. I wanted to get this published before I take off for a few days of vacation. When I get back I’d like to write more about why the international events are different and talk about where we go from here.

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• Bind to a method in WPF?

  - by Cameron MacFarland

  How do you bind to an objects method in this scenario in WPF? public class RootObject { public string Name { get; } public ObservableCollection<ChildObject> GetChildren() {...} } public class ChildObject { public string Name { get; } } XAML: <TreeView ItemsSource="some list of RootObjects"> <TreeView.Resources> <HierarchicalDataTemplate DataType="{x:Type data:RootObject}" ItemsSource="???"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Name}" /> </HierarchicalDataTemplate> <HierarchicalDataTemplate DataType="{x:Type data:ChildObject}"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Name}" /> </HierarchicalDataTemplate> </TreeView.Resources> </TreeView> Here I want to bind to the GetChildren method on each RootObject of the tree. EDIT Binding to an ObjectDataProvider doesn't seem to work because I'm binding to a list of items, and the ObjectDataProvider needs either a static method, or it creates it's own instance and uses that. For example, using Matt's answer I get: System.Windows.Data Error: 33 : ObjectDataProvider cannot create object; Type='RootObject'; Error='Wrong parameters for constructor.' System.Windows.Data Error: 34 : ObjectDataProvider: Failure trying to invoke method on type; Method='GetChildren'; Type='RootObject'; Error='The specified member cannot be invoked on target.' TargetException:'System.Reflection.TargetException: Non-static method requires a target.

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• Subdomain on different host

  - by mattsmith321

  Hi everyone! I'm trying to host a subdomain for my site with a different hosting company and I'm running into issues on how to set it up. Here are the specifics: - Domain is registered with GoDaddy. - Nameservers are pointing to DiscountASP.net where ASP.NET app has been happily running for couple of years. - Would like blog.mydomain.com to point to my account with DreamHost.com to take advantage of their LAMP stack. I have added blog.mydomain.com to DreamHost (after adding mydomain.com) via their control panel. I thought I would be able to add a subdomain entry on GoDaddy to point to DreamHost, but all they allow is blog.mydomain.com = new url. In theory I could just take our .biz or .net domain and host it on DreamHost but was hoping I could do it all with a subdomain. So, to summarize I'd like to know if what I want to do is feasible and if so, how do I go about it (given the constraints of GoDaddy, DiscountASP, & DreamHost). Thanks, Matt

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• PyGTK, Glade, Changing the window view and threads

  - by Gaunt Face

  Heya Everyone, Forgive me if this seems like a stupid question, just so far no where on the internet can I find someone offering a solution to this and I just wanted to get some feedback from someone with more experience than myself (I've only been using python, pyGTK and Glade for 2 days now). I have a UI window displaying and it updates with messages from a thread that is handling a bluetooth connection. This is fine and I have the application closing and running quite reliably, the problem is, after a bluetooth connection is made I wish to maintain the bluetooth thread (i.e. keep the connection going) but completely change the UI of the main window. Now the impression I am getting from pyGTK applications made from glade, is that the easiest thing to do is just open a new window. Is this really the best option? Can I cut the tree of widgets off at the root, maintaining the window widget but add on a new set of widgets from a separate glade file? If opening a new window is the best option, am I right in assuming that the bluetooth thread can be kept alive during this transition, providing I update any callbacks? Any help or pointers would be great. Cheers, Matt

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• Subversion - Do I need to reintegrate if I don't merge from trunk

  - by user314584

  Hi, I have read quite a bit about the need to re-integrate when you merge from a branch back to the trunk in SVN (This article was really helpful http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/2008/07/subversion-merg.html). The problem seems to come from the fact that people are regularly updating the branch from the trunk which means that the final merge back is reflective. In my use-case, we want to create a release branch which will live for as long as it takes to stabilise the branch and fix any bugs. To maintain stability we don't want to merge up from the trunk but we do want to regularly merge fixes down from the release branch so that trunk gets all the bug fixes for free. We also don't want to wait until the end of QA to merge back to trunk. We therefore want to: 1.) Create the branch 2.) Make regular changes to the branch (and trunk) 3.) Merge back to trunk regularly (daily perhaps) Since we will never merge up from trunk I don't think that we need to worry about the problems that re-intergrating is designed to fix. Can anyone see a problem with this approach? Cheers, Matt

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• GAE modeling relationship options

  - by Sway

  Hi there, I need to model the following situation and I can't seem to find a consistent example on how to do it "correctly" for the google app engine. Suppose I've got a simple situation like the following: [Company] 1 ----- M [Stare] A company has one to many stores. Each store has an address made up of a address line 1, city, state, country, postcode etc. Ok. Lets say we need to create say an "Audit". An Audit is for a company and can be across one to many stares. So something like: [Audit] 1 ------ 1 [Company] 1 ------ M [Store] Now we need to query all of the "audits" based on the Store "addresses" in order to send the "Auditors" to the right locations. There seem to be numerous articles like this one: http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/modeling.html Which give examples of creating a "ContactCompany" model class. However they also say that you should use this kind of relationship only when you "really need to" and with "care" for performance. I've also read - frequently - that you should denormalize as much as possible thereby moving all of the "query-able" data into the Audit class. So what would you suggest as the best way to solve this? I've seen that there is an Expando class but I'm not sure if that is the "best" option for this. Any help or thoughts on this would be totally appreciated. Thanks in advance, Matt

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• Efficient alternative to merge() when building dataframe from json files with R?

  - by Bryan

  I have written the following code which works, but is painfully slow once I start executing it over thousands of records: require("RJSONIO") people_data <- data.frame(person_id=numeric(0)) json_data <- fromJSON(json_file) n_people <- length(json_data) for(lender in 1:n_people) { person_dataframe <- as.data.frame(t(unlist(json_data[[person]]))) people_data <- merge(people_data, person_dataframe, all=TRUE) } output_file <- paste("people_data",".csv") write.csv(people_data, file=output_file) I am attempting to build a unified data table from a series of json-formated files. The fromJSON() function reads in the data as lists of lists. Each element of the list is a person, which then contains a list of the attributes for that person. For example: [[1]] person_id name gender hair_color [[2]] person_id name location gender height [[...]] structure(list(person_id = "Amy123", name = "Amy", gender = "F", hair_color = "brown"), .Names = c("person_id", "name", "gender", "hair_color")) structure(list(person_id = "matt53", name = "Matt", location = structure(c(47231, "IN"), .Names = c("zip_code", "state")), gender = "M", height = 172), .Names = c("person_id", "name", "location", "gender", "height")) The end result of the code above is matrix where the columns are every person-attribute that appears in the structure above, and the rows are the relevant values for each person. As you can see though, some data is missing for some of the people, so I need to ensure those show up as NA and make sure things end up in the right columns. Further, location itself is a vector with two components: state and zip_code, meaning it needs to be flattened to location.state and location.zip_code before it can be merged with another person record; this is what I use unlist() for. I then keep the running master table in people_data. The above code works, but do you know of a more efficient way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? It appears the merge() is slowing this to a crawl... I have hundreds of files with hundreds of people in each file. Thanks! Bryan

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