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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Texas Industries, Inc.

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryTexas Industries, Inc. (TXI) is a leading supplier of cement, aggregate, and consumer product building materials for residential, commercial, and public works projects. TXI is based in Dallas and employs around 2,000 employees. The customer had the challenge of decentralized and manual processes for entering 180,000 vendor invoices annually.  Invoice entry was a time- and resource-intensive process that entailed significant personnel requirements. TXI implemented a centralized solution leveraging Oracle WebCenter Imaging, a smart routing solution that enables users to capture invoices electronically with Oracle WebCenter Capture and Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition to send  the invoices through to Oracle Financials for approvals and processing.  TXI significantly lowered resource needs for payable processing,  increase productivity by 80% and reduce invoice processing cycle times by 84%—from 20 to 30 days to just 3 to 5 days, on average. Company OverviewTexas Industries, Inc. (TXI) is a leading supplier of cement, aggregate, and consumer product building materials for residential, commercial, and public works projects. With operating subsidiaries in six states, TXI is the largest producer of cement in Texas and a major producer in California. TXI is a major supplier of stone, sand, gravel, and expanded shale and clay products, and one of the largest producers of bagged cement and concrete  products in the Southwest. Business ChallengesTXI had the challenge of decentralized and manual processes for entering 180,000 vendor invoices annually.  Invoice entry was a time- and resource-intensive process that entailed significant personnel requirements. Their business objectives were: Increase the efficiency of core business processes, such as invoice processing, to support the organization’s desire to maintain its role as the Southwest’s leader in delivering high-quality, low-cost products to the construction industry Meet the audit and regulatory requirements for achieving Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance Streamline entry of 180,000 invoices annually to accelerate processing, reduce errors, cut invoice storage and routing costs, and increase visibility into payables liabilities Solution DeployedTXI replaced a resource-intensive, paper-based, decentralized process for invoice entry with a centralized solution leveraging Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g. They worked with the Oracle Partner Keste LLC to develop a smart routing solution that enables users to capture invoices electronically with Oracle WebCenter Capture and then uses Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition and the Oracle WebCenter Imaging workflow to send the invoices through to Oracle Financials for approvals and processing. Business Results Significantly lowered resource needs for payable processing through centralization and improved efficiency  Enabled the company to process invoices faster and pay bills earlier, allowing it to take advantage of additional vendor discounts Tracked to increase productivity by 80% and reduce invoice processing cycle times by 84%—from 20 to 30 days to just 3 to 5 days, on average Achieved a 25% reduction in paper invoice storage costs now that invoices are captured digitally, and enabled a 50% reduction in shipping costs, as the company no longer has to send paper invoices between headquarters and production facilities for approvals “Entering and manually processing more than 180,000 vendor invoices annually was time and labor intensive. With Oracle Imaging and Process Management, we have automated and centralized invoice entry and processing at our corporate office, improving productivity by 80% and reducing invoice processing cycle times by 84%—a very important efficiency gain.” Terry Marshall, Vice President of Information Services, Texas Industries, Inc. Additional Information TXI Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content Oracle WebCenter Capture Oracle WebCenter Forms Recognition

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  • Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer

    - by TheBeefMightBeTough
    I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws.

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  • Meet Matthijs, Dutch Inside Sales Representative for Oracle Direct

    - by Maria Sandu
    Today we would like to share some information around the Dutch Core Technology team in Malaga. Matthijs is one of the team members who decided to relocate from the Netherlands to Malaga to join Oracle Direct two years ago. Matthijs: “For the past two years I have been working as an Oracle Direct Core Technology Inside Sales representative for Named Accounts in the Netherlands, based in Malaga, Spain. In my case, working for the Dutch OD Core Technology team means that I am responsible for the Account Management of Larger companies in the Travel & Transportation and the Manufacturing, Retail & Distribution sector. I work together with the Oracle Field Account Managers and our Field Sales Management in the Netherlands where I am often the main point of contact for customers. This means that I deal with their requests and I manage their various issues, provide solutions and suggestions based on the Oracle Core Technology portfolio. I work on interesting projects with end-customers, making financial proposals and building business cases. It is a very interesting sales environment and for the last two years I improved my skills substantially. This month I will finish my Inside Sales career in Malaga to move to a position within Field Sales in the Netherlands. Oracle Direct has proven to be a great stepping stone for my career. Boost your personal development One of the reasons for joining Oracle was to boost my personal & career development. You can choose from various different trainings to follow all over Europe which enable you to reach both your personal and professional goals. Furthermore, you can decide your own career path and plan the steps necessary to achieve your goal. Many people aim to grow into Field Sales in their native countries, Business Development or Sales Management, but there are many possibilities once you decide to join Oracle. Overall, working at Oracle means working for an international company and one of the worldwide leaders in Enterprise Hardware & Software. Here you get all the tools necessary to develop yourself personally & professionally. Another great advantage of working for Oracle Direct is working from our office in Malaga, Southern Spain where we have over 400 employees from many countries across EMEA. It is a truly international environment! Working and living in Spain gives you an excellent opportunity to learn Spanish and of course enjoy the Spanish lifestyle, cuisine, beaches and much, much more!” Interview day Utrecht If you are inspired by the story of Matthijs and would like to explore the opportunity to join the Technology Sales team for the Dutch market in Malaga, let us know! We will organise an Interview day in the Oracle office in Utrecht on the 18th and 19th of September. We currently have multiple openings in the Core Technology team that focus on selling our Database portfolio in the Dutch market. We are looking for native Dutch speakers with a Bachelors degree, 2-5 years sales experience (ideally in IT) who are willing to relocate to Malaga for at least 2 years! For more information please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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  • Setting values and display Text in Android Spinner

    - by kaibuki
    Hi, I need help in setting up value and display text in spinner. as per now I am populating my spinner by array adapter e.g mySpinner.setAdapter(myAdapter); and as far as I know after doing this the display text and the value of spinner at same position is same. The other attribute that I can get from spinner is the position on the item. now in my case I want to make spinner like the drop down box, which we have in .NET. which holds a text and value. where as text is displayed and value is at back end. so if I change drop down box , I can either use its selected text or value. but its not happening in android spinner case. For Example: Text Value Cat 10 Mountain 5 Stone 9 Fish 14 River 13 Loin 17 so from above array I am only displaying non-living objects text, and what i want is that when user select them I get there value i.e. like when Mountain selected i get 5 I hope this example made my question a bit more clear... thankx

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  • Hidden Features of C#?

    - by Serhat Özgel
    This came to my mind after I learned the following from this question: where T : struct We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc. Some of us even mastered the stuff like Generics, anonymous types, lambdas, linq, ... But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know? Here are the revealed features so far: Keywords yield by Michael Stum var by Michael Stum using() statement by kokos readonly by kokos as by Mike Stone as / is by Ed Swangren as / is (improved) by Rocketpants default by deathofrats global:: by pzycoman using() blocks by AlexCuse volatile by Jakub Šturc extern alias by Jakub Šturc Attributes DefaultValueAttribute by Michael Stum ObsoleteAttribute by DannySmurf DebuggerDisplayAttribute by Stu DebuggerBrowsable and DebuggerStepThrough by bdukes ThreadStaticAttribute by marxidad FlagsAttribute by Martin Clarke ConditionalAttribute by AndrewBurns Syntax ?? operator by kokos number flaggings by Nick Berardi where T:new by Lars Mæhlum implicit generics by Keith one-parameter lambdas by Keith auto properties by Keith namespace aliases by Keith verbatim string literals with @ by Patrick enum values by lfoust @variablenames by marxidad event operators by marxidad format string brackets by Portman property accessor accessibility modifiers by xanadont ternary operator (?:) by JasonS checked and unchecked operators by Binoj Antony implicit and explicit operators by Flory Language Features Nullable types by Brad Barker Currying by Brian Leahy anonymous types by Keith __makeref __reftype __refvalue by Judah Himango object initializers by lomaxx format strings by David in Dakota Extension Methods by marxidad partial methods by Jon Erickson preprocessor directives by John Asbeck DEBUG pre-processor directive by Robert Durgin operator overloading by SefBkn type inferrence by chakrit boolean operators taken to next level by Rob Gough pass value-type variable as interface without boxing by Roman Boiko programmatically determine declared variable type by Roman Boiko Static Constructors by Chris Easier-on-the-eyes / condensed ORM-mapping using LINQ by roosteronacid Visual Studio Features select block of text in editor by Himadri snippets by DannySmurf Framework TransactionScope by KiwiBastard DependantTransaction by KiwiBastard Nullable<T> by IainMH Mutex by Diago System.IO.Path by ageektrapped WeakReference by Juan Manuel Methods and Properties String.IsNullOrEmpty() method by KiwiBastard List.ForEach() method by KiwiBastard BeginInvoke(), EndInvoke() methods by Will Dean Nullable<T>.HasValue and Nullable<T>.Value properties by Rismo GetValueOrDefault method by John Sheehan Tips & Tricks nice method for event handlers by Andreas H.R. Nilsson uppercase comparisons by John access anonymous types without reflection by dp a quick way to lazily instantiate collection properties by Will JavaScript-like anonymous inline-functions by roosteronacid Other netmodules by kokos LINQBridge by Duncan Smart Parallel Extensions by Joel Coehoorn

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  • C code won't compile

    - by cc
    Please help me to understand why the following code will not compile: #include <stdio.h> //#include <iostream> //using namespace std; int main(void){ int i,k,x,y,run,e,r,s,m,count=0; char numbers[19][19]; for(i=0;i<19;i++){ for (k=0;k<19;k++){ numbers[i][k]='.'; } } void drawB(){ printf(" 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 \n"); printf ("0 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[0][0],numbers[0][1],numbers[0][2],numbers[0][3],numbers[0][4], numbers[0][5],numbers[0][6],numbers[0][7],numbers[0][8],numbers[0][9], numbers[0][10],numbers[1][11],numbers[1][12],numbers[1][13],numbers[0][14] ,numbers[0][15],numbers[0][16],numbers[0][17],numbers[0][18]); printf ("1 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[1][0],numbers[1][1],numbers[1][2],numbers[1][3],numbers[1][4], numbers[1][5],numbers[1][6],numbers[1][7],numbers[1][8],numbers[1][9], numbers[1][10],numbers[1][11],numbers[1][12],numbers[1][13],numbers[1][14] ,numbers[1][15],numbers[1][16],numbers[1][17],numbers[1][18]); printf ("2 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" numbers[2][0],numbers[2][1],numbers[2][2],numbers[2][3],numbers[2][4], numbers[2][5],numbers[2][6],numbers[2][7],numbers[2][8],numbers[2][9], numbers[2][10],numbers[2][11],numbers[2][12],numbers[2][13],numbers[2][14] ,numbers[2][15],numbers[2][16],numbers[2][17],numbers[2][18]); printf ("3 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[3][0],numbers[3][1],numbers[3][2],numbers[3][3],numbers[3][4], numbers[3][5],numbers[3][6],numbers[3][7],numbers[3][8],numbers[3][9], numbers[3][10],numbers[3][11],numbers[3][12],numbers[3][13],numbers[3][14] ,numbers[3][15],numbers[3][16],numbers[3][17],numbers[3][18]); printf ("4 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[4][0],numbers[4][1],numbers[4][2],numbers[4][3],numbers[4][4], numbers[4][5],numbers[4][6],numbers[4][7],numbers[4][8],numbers[4][9], numbers[4][10],numbers[4][11],numbers[4][12],numbers[4][13],numbers[4][14] ,numbers[4][15],numbers[4][16],numbers[4][17],numbers[4][18]); printf ("5 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[5][0],numbers[5][1],numbers[5][2],numbers[5][3],numbers[5][4], numbers[5][5],numbers[5][6],numbers[5][7],numbers[5][8],numbers[5][9], numbers[5][10],numbers[5][11],numbers[5][12],numbers[5][13],numbers[5][14] ,numbers[5][15],numbers[5][16],numbers[5][17],numbers[5][18]); printf ("6 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[6][0],numbers[6][1],numbers[6][2],numbers[6][3],numbers[6][4], numbers[6][5],numbers[6][6],numbers[6][7],numbers[6][8],numbers[6][9], numbers[6][10],numbers[6][11],numbers[6][12],numbers[6][13],numbers[6][14] ,numbers[6][15],numbers[6][16],numbers[6][17],numbers[6][18]); printf ("7 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[7][0],numbers[7][1],numbers[7][2],numbers[7][3],numbers[7][4], numbers[7][5],numbers[7][6],numbers[7][7],numbers[7][8],numbers[7][9], numbers[7][10],numbers[7][11],numbers[7][12],numbers[7][13],numbers[7][14] ,numbers[7][15],numbers[7][16],numbers[7][17],numbers[7][18]); printf ("8 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[8][0],numbers[8][1],numbers[8][2],numbers[8][3],numbers[8][4], numbers[8][5],numbers[8][6],numbers[8][7],numbers[8][8],numbers[8][9], numbers[8][10],numbers[8][11],numbers[8][12],numbers[8][13],numbers[8][14] ,numbers[8][15],numbers[8][16],numbers[8][17],numbers[8][18]); printf ("9 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[9][0],numbers[9][1],numbers[9][2],numbers[9][3],numbers[9][4], numbers[9][5],numbers[9][6],numbers[9][7],numbers[9][8],numbers[9][9], numbers[9][10],numbers[9][11],numbers[9][12],numbers[9][13],numbers[9][14] ,numbers[9][15],numbers[9][16],numbers[9][17],numbers[9][18]); printf ("0 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[10][0],numbers[10][1],numbers[10][2],numbers[10][3],numbers[10][4], numbers[10][5],numbers[10][6],numbers[10][7],numbers[10][8],numbers[10][9], numbers[10][10],numbers[10][11],numbers[10][12],numbers[10][13],numbers[10][14] ,numbers[10][15],numbers[10][16],numbers[10][17],numbers[10][18]); printf ("1 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[11][0],numbers[11][1],numbers[11][2],numbers[11][3],numbers[11][4], numbers[11][5],numbers[11][6],numbers[11][7],numbers[11][8],numbers[11][9], numbers[11][10],numbers[11][11],numbers[11][12],numbers[11][13],numbers[11][14] ,numbers[11][15],numbers[11][16],numbers[11][17],numbers[11][18]); printf ("2 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[12][0],numbers[12][1],numbers[12][2],numbers[12][3],numbers[12][4], numbers[12][5],numbers[12][6],numbers[12][7],numbers[12][8],numbers[12][9], numbers[12][10],numbers[12][11],numbers[12][12],numbers[12][13],numbers[12][14] ,numbers[12][15],numbers[12][16],numbers[12][17],numbers[12][18]); printf ("3 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[13][0],numbers[13][1],numbers[13][2],numbers[13][3],numbers[13][4], numbers[13][5],numbers[13][6],numbers[13][7],numbers[13][8],numbers[13][9], numbers[13][10],numbers[13][11],numbers[13][12],numbers[13][13],numbers[13][14] ,numbers[13][15],numbers[13][16],numbers[13][17],numbers[13][18]); printf ("4 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[14][0],numbers[14][1],numbers[14][2],numbers[14][3],numbers[14][4], numbers[14][5],numbers[14][6],numbers[14][7],numbers[14][8],numbers[14][9], numbers[14][10],numbers[14][11],numbers[14][12],numbers[14][13],numbers[14][14] ,numbers[14][15],numbers[14][16],numbers[14][17],numbers[14][18]); printf ("5 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[15][0],numbers[15][1],numbers[15][2],numbers[15][3],numbers[15][4], numbers[15][5],numbers[15][6],numbers[15][7],numbers[15][8],numbers[15][9], numbers[15][10],numbers[15][11],numbers[15][12],numbers[15][13],numbers[15][14] ,numbers[15][15],numbers[15][16],numbers[15][17],numbers[15][18]); printf ("6 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[16][0],numbers[16][1],numbers[16][2],numbers[16][3],numbers[16][4], numbers[16][5],numbers[16][6],numbers[16][7],numbers[16][8],numbers[16][9], numbers[16][10],numbers[16][11],numbers[16][12],numbers[16][13],numbers[16][14] ,numbers[16][15],numbers[16][16],numbers[16][17],numbers[16][18]); printf ("7 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[17][0],numbers[17][1],numbers[17][2],numbers[17][3],numbers[17][4], numbers[17][5],numbers[17][6],numbers[17][7],numbers[17][8],numbers[17][9], numbers[17][10],numbers[17][11],numbers[17][12],numbers[17][13],numbers[17][14] ,numbers[17][15],numbers[17][16],numbers[17][17],numbers[17][18]); printf ("8 %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c %c \n\n" ,numbers[18][0],numbers[18][1],numbers[18][2],numbers[18][3],numbers[18][4], numbers[18][5],numbers[18][6],numbers[18][7],numbers[18][8],numbers[18][9], numbers[18][10],numbers[18][11],numbers[18][12],numbers[18][13],numbers[18][14] ,numbers[18][15],numbers[18][16],numbers[18][17],numbers[18][18]); } void checkSurrounded (int x,int y){ //numbers [x-1,y-1 ] , numbers [x-1,y ] , numbers [x-1,y+1 ] //numbers [x,y-1 ] , numbers [x,y ] , numbers [x,y+1 ] //numbers [x+1,y-1, ] , numbers [x+1,y ] , numbers [x+1,y+1 ] if(numbers[x][y]=='A'){ if((numbers[x-1][y-1]=='B') && (numbers[x-1][y]=='B') && (numbers[x-1][y+1]=='B') && (numbers[x][y-1]=='B') && (numbers[x][y+1]=='B') && (numbers[x+1][y-1]=='B') && (numbers[x+1][y]=='B')){ numbers[x][y]='B';} } if(numbers[x][y]=='B'){ if((numbers[x-1][y-1]=='A') && (numbers[x-1][y]=='A') && (numbers[x-1][y+1]=='A') && (numbers[x][y-1]=='A') && (numbers[x][y+1]=='A') && (numbers[x+1][y-1]=='A') && (numbers[x+1][y]=='A')){ numbers[x][y]='A'; } } } /** void checkArea(){ //detect enemy stone //store in array //find adjacent enemy stones // store the enemy stones in the array //keep on doing this until there are no more enemy stones that are adjacent for (s=0;s<19;s++) { for (m=0;m<19;m++) { if (numbers[s][m]=='A'){ count++; } } } }//end fn void checkAdjacent(int x, int y){ if (numbers [x][y]=='A'){ if((numbers[x][y-1]=='B' && numbers [x-1][y]=='B' && numbers[x][y+1]=='B' && numbers[x+1][y]=='B')){ } } } void getUserInput(){ int run=1; while(run){ printf("Enter x coordinate\n"); scanf("%d",&x); printf("Enter y coordinate\n"); scanf("%d",&y); if((x>18 || y>18 || x<0 || y<0) && !( numbers[x][y]=='.' )){ printf("invalid imput\n"); } else{ numbers[x][y]='B'; run=0; drawB(); } } } */ void getCupInput(){ //go through borad //starting from [0][0] //stop at first player stone //save as target x and target y //surround target x and target y //if already surrounded //start looking in borad again from last position //at end of board reset to [0][0] for(s=0;s<19;s++) { for(m=0;m<19;m++) { if (numbers[s][m]==0){ count++; } } } x=x-2; y=y+2; numbers[x][y]='A'; drawB(); } while(1){ //getUserInput(); getCupInput(); } system("pause"); return 0; }

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  • Resizing video best practices (frame size)

    - by undefined
    I have read the following which is from Best Practices for Encoding Video with the VP6 Codec on the Adobe website here - http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/encoding_video_print.html. It is talking about common video ratios (320x240, 640x480) Although these ratios are standard, and should be used to avoid distorting the video, the size of the encoded video is not set in stone. The original web video sizes used heights and widths that were evenly divisible by 16. This was mandatory for many early codecs. Although this is not necessary for modern codecs, you should stick to even heights and widths. What do they mean by 'even heights and widths'. I am thinking about encoding my video at 400x300 to make it slightly bigger, this is still 4x3 format but should I just stick at 320x240 and resize it on the screen? Clearly there are benefits to this in terms of storage size and delivery costs. In some places on my site I want to show the video at 400x300 but in others I want it to play full screen so this is why I am wondering if a larger original size (400x300) will give better results when blown up. Any thoughts?

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  • Questions about the MVC architecture

    - by ah123
    I started coding a considerably complicated web application, and it became quite a mess. So I figured I'd try to organize it in a better way. MVC seemed appropriate. I've never used MVC before, and researching about it I'm trying to consolidate a better perception of it (and my questions obviously reflect what I think I've learned so far). My questions are slightly JavaScript oriented: What object should make "AJAX" requests? The Controller or the Model? (seperation -- should the Model just store/manipulate the data, should it not care/know where the data came from, or should it be the one fetching it?) Should the Model call View functions providing them with data as arguments or should the View query (reference) the Model within itself? (seperation principles in mind, "the View shouldn't care/know where it gets the data from" -- is that correct?) In general, should the View "know" of the Model's existance, and vice-versa? Is the Controller the only thing gluing them together or is that simply incorrect? (I really doubt that statement is generally correct) There's a good chance I'd want to port this into a desktop/mobile application, so I would like to seperate components in a way that will allow me to achieve that task, replacing the current source of the data, HTTP requests, with DB access, and replacing the View. Maybe every approach that I've asked about is still "valid" MVC and it's just up to me to choose. I understand that nothing is set in stone, I'm just trying to have a (better) general idea in my head.

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  • How do I get an overview and a methodology for programming in Python

    - by Peter Nielsen
    I've started to learn Python and programming from scratch. I have not programmed before so it's a new experience. I do seem to grasp most of the concepts, from variables to definitions and modules. I still need to learn a lot more about what the different libraries and modules do and also I lack knowledge on OOP and classes in Python. I see people who just program in Python like that's all they have ever done and I am still just coming to grips with it. Is there a way, some tools, a logical methodology that would give me an overview or a good hold of how to handle programming problems ? For instance, I'm trying to create a parser which we need at the office . I also need to create a spider that would collect links from various websites. Is there a formidable way of studying the various modules to see what is needed ? Or is it just nose to the grind stone and understand what the documentation says ? Sorry for the lengthy question..

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  • Debug NAudio MP3 reading difference?

    - by Conrad Albrecht
    My code using NAudio to read one particular MP3 gets different results than several other commercial apps. Specifically: My NAudio-based code finds ~1.4 sec of silence at the beginning of this MP3 before "audible audio" (a drum pickup) starts, whereas other apps (Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, WavePad) show ~2.5 sec of silence before that same drum pickup. The particular MP3 is "Like A Rolling Stone" downloaded from Amazon.com. Tested several other MP3s and none show any similar difference between my code and other apps. Most MP3s don't start with such a long silence so I suspect that's the source of the difference. Debugging problems: I can't actually find a way to even prove that the other apps are right and NAudio/me is wrong, i.e. to compare block-by-block my code's results to a "known good reference implementation"; therefore I can't even precisely define the "error" I need to debug. Since my code reads thousands of samples during those 1.4 sec with no obvious errors, I can't think how to narrow down where/when in the input stream to look for a bug. The heart of the NAudio code is a P/Invoke call to acmStreamConvert(), which is a Windows "black box" call which I can't think how to error-check. Can anyone think of any tricks/techniques to debug this?

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  • How to delete sentences starting with a lower case letter?

    - by Ron
    Hello: In the example below the following regex (".*?") was used to remove all dialogue first. The next step is to remove all remaining sentences starting with a lower case letter. Only sentences starting with an upper case letter should remain. Example: exclaimed Wade. Indeed, below them were villages, of crude huts made of timber and stone and mud. Rubble work walls, for they needed little shelter here, and the people were but savages. asked Arcot, his voice a bit unsteady with suppressed excitement. replied Morey without turning from his station at the window. Below them now, less than half a mile down on the patchwork of the Nile valley, men were standing, staring up, collecting in little groups, gesticulating toward the strange thing that had materialized in the air above them. In the example above the following should be deleted only: exclaimed Wade. asked Arcot, his voice a bit unsteady with suppressed excitement. replied Morey without turning from his station at the window. A useful regex or simple Perl or python code is appreciated. I'm using version 7 of Textpipe. Thanks.

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  • Lucene setboost doesn't work

    - by Keven
    Hi all, OUr team just upgrade lucene from 2.3 to 3.0 and we are confused about the setboost and getboost of document. What we want is just set a boost for each document when add them into index, then when search it the documents in the response should have different order according to the boost I set. But it seems the order is not changed at all, even the boost of each document in the search response is still 1.0. Could some one give me some hit? Following is our code: String[] a = new String[] { "schindler", "spielberg", "shawshank", "solace", "sorcerer", "stone", "soap", "salesman", "save" }; List strings = Arrays.asList(a); AutoCompleteIndex index = new Index(); IndexWriter writer = new IndexWriter(index.getDirectory(), AnalyzerFactory.createAnalyzer("en_US"), true, MaxFieldLength.LIMITED); float i = 1f; for (String string : strings) { Document doc = new Document(); Field f = new Field(AutoCompleteIndexFactory.QUERYTEXTFIELD, string, Field.Store.YES, Field.Index.NOT_ANALYZED); doc.setBoost(i); doc.add(f); writer.addDocument(doc); i += 2f; } writer.close(); IndexReader reader2 = IndexReader.open(index.getDirectory()); for (int j = 0; j < reader2.maxDoc(); j++) { if (reader2.isDeleted(j)) { continue; } Document doc = reader2.document(j); Field f = doc.getField(AutoCompleteIndexFactory.QUERYTEXTFIELD); System.out.println(f.stringValue() + ":" + f.getBoost() + ", docBoost:" + doc.getBoost()); doc.setBoost(j); }

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  • Why is debugging better in an IDE?

    - by Bill Karwin
    I've been a software developer for over twenty years, programming in C, Perl, SQL, Java, PHP, JavaScript, and recently Python. I've never had a problem I could not debug using some careful thought, and well-placed debugging print statements. I respect that many people say that my techniques are primitive, and using a real debugger in an IDE is much better. Yet from my observation, IDE users don't appear to debug faster or more successfully than I can, using my stone knives and bear skins. I'm sincerely open to learning the right tools, I've just never been shown a compelling advantage to using visual debuggers. Moreover, I have never read a tutorial or book that showed how to debug effectively using an IDE, beyond the basics of how to set breakpoints and display the contents of variables. What am I missing? What makes IDE debugging tools so much more effective than thoughtful use of diagnostic print statements? Can you suggest resources (tutorials, books, screencasts) that show the finer techniques of IDE debugging? Sweet answers! Thanks much to everyone for taking the time. Very illuminating. I voted up many, and voted none down. Some notable points: Debuggers can help me do ad hoc inspection or alteration of variables, code, or any other aspect of the runtime environment, whereas manual debugging requires me to stop, edit, and re-execute the application (possibly requiring recompilation). Debuggers can attach to a running process or use a crash dump, whereas with manual debugging, "steps to reproduce" a defect are necessary. Debuggers can display complex data structures, multi-threaded environments, or full runtime stacks easily and in a more readable manner. Debuggers offer many ways to reduce the time and repetitive work to do almost any debugging tasks. Visual debuggers and console debuggers are both useful, and have many features in common. A visual debugger integrated into an IDE also gives you convenient access to smart editing and all the other features of the IDE, in a single integrated development environment (hence the name).

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  • ASP.Net MVC - how can I easily serialize query results to a database?

    - by Mortanis
    I've been working on a little property search engine while I learn ASP.Net MVC. I've gotten the results from various property database tables and sorted them into a master generic property response. The search form is passed via Model Binding and works great. Now, I'd like to add pagination. I'm returning the chunk of properties for the current page with .Skip() and .Take(), and that's working great. I have a SearchResults model that has the paged result set and various other data like nextPage and prevPage. Except, I no longer have the original form of course to pass to /Results/2. Previously I'd have just hidden a copy of the form and done a POST each time, but it seems inelegant. I'd like to serialize the results to my MS SQL database and return a unique key for that results set - this also helps with a "Send this query to a friend!" link. Killing two birds with one stone. Is there an easy way to take an IQueryable result set that I have, serialize it, stick it into the DB, return a unique key and then reverse the process with said key? I'm using Linq to SQL currently on a MS SQL Express install, though in production it'll be on MS SQL 2008.

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  • Cross Platform C library for GUI Apps?

    - by Moshe
    Free of charge, simple to learn/use, Cross Platform C library for GUI Apps? Am I looking for Qt? Bonus question: Can I develop with the said library/toolkit on Mac then recompile on PC/Linux? Super Bonus Question: Link to tutorial and/or download of said library. (RE)EDIT: The truth is that I'm in the process of catching up on the C family (coming from web development - XHTML/PHP/MySQL) to learn iPhone development. I do understand that C is not C++ or ObjectiveC but I want to keep the learning curve as simple as possible. Not to get too off topic, but I am also on the lookout for good starter books and websites. I've found this so far. I'm trying to kill many birds with one stone here. I don understand that there are platform specific extensions, but I will try to avoid those for porting purposes The idea is that I want to write the code on one machine and just compile thrice. (Mac/Win/Linux) If Objective C will compile on Windows and Linux as well as OS X then that's good. If I must use C++, that's also fine. EDIT: Link to QT Please...

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  • Designing a different kind of tag cloud.

    - by animuson
    Rather than having a bunch of links that are all different sizes, I want all of my tags to be the same size. However, my goal is to minimize the amount of space required to make the cloud, aka minimizing the number of lines used. Take this example: Looks like any normal tag cloud. However, look at all that extra space around the 'roughdiamond' tag, which could be filled in by other tags like 'stone' down near the bottom, which could effectively eliminate an entire extra line from the cloud. How would I go about getting the words to fill in whatever space possible above them before starting a new line? I'm not talking about reorganizing them to find the absolute minimum number of lines required. If I was going through the list in the image, 'pendant', 'howlite', and 'igrice' would go to line 1 filling it up, 'roughdiamond' would go to line 2 because line 1 is full, 'tourmaline' would go to line 3 because it can't fit on lines 1 or 2, same with 'emberald', but 'pearl' would go to line 2 because it can fit there since there is extra space. I figure there would probably be some way of doing this in CSS that would simply cause the links to collapse into any fillable space it can fit in to.

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  • Anything like Heroku for PHP or .NET?

    - by Wayne M
    In my area PHP is very widespread, so is .NET. Ruby not so much; most places have never heard of it. For some personal things I am "forced" to choose Rails because I want to take advantage of Heroku - the ability to deploy and scale on the cloud very easily is the main reason. Also, they offer a small FREE plan that I can use for demo sites or, in this case, for my business' static page; as a totally bootstrapped startup I have maybe $50 or so in initial capital and cannot afford to pay monthly fees while I'm getting started. Are there any similar offerings for other languages? Specifically, I really like the small, 5MB site for free that Heroku offers - is there anything like that for PHP and/or .NET? I'm not even that concerned about the "cloud" part, but that would be a nice bonus. If there is, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone and pick up a useful skill as I'm doing my own thing instead of using something that nobody else knows or cares about. I should add I'm specifically interested in something that offers a free plan. As I said, Heroku has a 5mb plan that you can have as many as you want for free; I have yet to find anything similar for any other platform, and to be honest I'm not too thrilled about using Ruby on Rails for everything simply to take advantage of this.

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  • Highlighting a custom UIButton

    - by Dan Ray
    The app I'm building has LOTS of custom UIButtons laying over top of fairly precisely laid out images. Buttonish, controllish images and labels and what have you, but with a clear custom-style UIButton sitting over top of it to handle the tap. My client yesterday says, "I want that to highlight when you tap it". Never mind that it immediately pushes on a new uinavigationcontroller view... it didn't blink, and so he's confused. Oy. Here's what I've done to address it. I don't like it, but it's what I've done: I subclassed UIButton (naming it FlashingUIButton). For some reason I couldn't just configure it with a background image on control mode highlighted. It never seemed to hit the state "highlighted". Don't know why that is. So instead I wrote: -(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { [self setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"grey_screen"] forState:UIControlStateNormal]; [self performSelector:@selector(resetImage) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.2]; [super touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event]; } -(void)resetImage { [self setBackgroundImage:nil forState:UIControlStateNormal]; } This happily lays my grey_screen.png (a 30% opaque black box) over the button when it's tapped and replaces it with happy emptyness .2 of a second later. This is fine, but it means I have to go through all my many nibs and change all my buttons from UIButtons to FlashingUIButtons. Which isn't the end of the world, but I'd really hoped to address this as a UIButton category, and hit all birds with one stone. Any suggestions for a better approach than this one?

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  • dm_exec_query_stats returning stale data?

    - by VoiceOfUnreason
    I've been testing my app on a SQL Server 2005 database, and am trying to establish a preliminary picture of the query performance using sys.dm_exec_query_stats. Problem: there's a particular query that I'm interested in, because total_elapsed_time and last_elapsed_time are both large numbers. When I tickle my app to invoke that query (this runs successfully), then refresh my view of the stats, I find that 1) execution_count has incremented (expected) 2) last_execution_time has updated to now (expected) 3) last_elapsed_time is still a large value (not expected - I anticipated a new value) 4) total_elapsed_time is unchanged (contradiction?) If last_elapsed_time refers to the execution that happened @ last_execution_time, then the total_elapsed_time should have increased? This documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189741(SQL.90).aspx tells me that last_execution_time is the last time the plan was executed, and last_elapsed_time comes from the "most recently executed plan", but doesn't tell me why those might be different. The query itself is uncomplicated (SELECT/WHERE/ORDER BY - parameters appearing in the where clause, but no clever operations), the table has maybe 25 rows in it right now. Questions: 1) What's the real relationship between execution_count, last_execution_time, and last_elapsed_time? 2) Where is the documentation of this relationship (manual, third party book, blog, bug ticket, stone tablets...) ?

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  • Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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  • SQL SERVER – WRITELOG – Wait Type – Day 17 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    WRITELOG is one of the most interesting wait types. So far we have seen a lot of different wait types, but this log type is associated with log file which makes it interesting to deal with. From Book On-Line: WRITELOG Occurs while waiting for a log flush to complete. Common operations that cause log flushes are checkpoints and transaction commits. WRITELOG Explanation: This wait type is usually seen in the heavy transactional database. When data is modified, it is written both on the log cache and buffer cache. This wait type occurs when data in the log cache is flushing to the disk. During this time, the session has to wait due to WRITELOG. I have recently seen this wait type’s persistence at my client’s place, where one of the long-running transactions was stopped by the user causing it to roll back. In the future, I will see if I could re-create this situation once again on my machine to validate the relation. Reducing WRITELOG wait: There are several suggestions to reduce this wait stats: Move Transaction Log to Separate Disk from mdf and other files. Avoid cursor-like coding methodology and frequent committing of statements. Find the most active file based on IO stall time based on the script written over here. You can also use fn_virtualfilestats to find IO-related issues using the script mentioned over here. Check the IO-related counters (PhysicalDisk:Avg.Disk Queue Length, PhysicalDisk:Disk Read Bytes/sec and PhysicalDisk :Disk Write Bytes/sec) for additional details. Read about them over here. There are two excellent resources by Paul Randal, I suggest you understand the subject from those videos. The links to videos are here and here. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Ghost Records, Backups, and Database Compression…With a Pinch of Security Considerations

    - by Argenis
      Today Jeffrey Langdon (@jlangdon) posed on #SQLHelp the following questions: So I set to answer his question, and I said to myself: “Hey, I haven’t blogged in a while, how about I blog about this particular topic?”. Thus, this post was born. (If you have never heard of Ghost Records and/or the Ghost Cleanup Task, go see this blog post by Paul Randal) 1) Do ghost records get copied over in a backup? If you guessed yes, you guessed right. The backup process in SQL Server takes all data as it is on disk – it doesn’t crack the pages open to selectively pick which slots have actual data and which ones do not. The whole page is backed up, regardless of its contents. Even if ghost cleanup has run and processed the ghost records, the slots are not overwritten immediately, but rather until another DML operation comes along and uses them. As a matter of fact, all of the allocated space for a database will be included in a full backup. So, this poses a bit of a security/compliance problem for some of you DBA folk: if you want to take a full backup of a database after you’ve purged sensitive data, you should rebuild all of your indexes (with FILLFACTOR set to 100%). But the empty space on your data file(s) might still contain sensitive data! A SHRINKFILE might help get rid of that (not so) empty space, but that might not be the end of your troubles. You might _STILL_ have (not so) empty space on your files! One approach that you can follow is to export all of the data on your database to another SQL Server instance that does NOT have Instant File Initialization enabled. This can be a tedious and time-consuming process, though. So you have to weigh in your options and see what makes sense for you. Snapshot Replication is another idea that comes to mind. 2) Does Compression get rid of ghost records (2008)? The answer to this is no. The Ghost Records/Ghost Cleanup Task mechanism is alive and well on compressed tables and indexes. You can prove this running a simple script: CREATE DATABASE GhostRecordsTest GO USE GhostRecordsTest GO CREATE TABLE myTable (myPrimaryKey int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,                       myWideColumn varchar(1000) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Default string value')                         ALTER TABLE myTable REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE) GO INSERT INTO myTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 10 DELETE myTable WHERE myPrimaryKey % 2 = 0 DBCC TRACEON(2514) DBCC CHECKTABLE(myTable) TraceFlag 2514 will make DBCC CHECKTABLE give you an extra tidbit of information on its output. For the above script: “Ghost Record count = 5” Until next time,   -Argenis

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  • Ghost Records, Backups, and Database Compression…With a Pinch of Security Considerations

    - by Argenis
      Today Jeffrey Langdon (@jlangdon) posed on #SQLHelp the following questions: So I set to answer his question, and I said to myself: “Hey, I haven’t blogged in a while, how about I blog about this particular topic?”. Thus, this post was born. (If you have never heard of Ghost Records and/or the Ghost Cleanup Task, go see this blog post by Paul Randal) 1) Do ghost records get copied over in a backup? If you guessed yes, you guessed right. The backup process in SQL Server takes all data as it is on disk – it doesn’t crack the pages open to selectively pick which slots have actual data and which ones do not. The whole page is backed up, regardless of its contents. Even if ghost cleanup has run and processed the ghost records, the slots are not overwritten immediately, but rather until another DML operation comes along and uses them. As a matter of fact, all of the allocated space for a database will be included in a full backup. So, this poses a bit of a security/compliance problem for some of you DBA folk: if you want to take a full backup of a database after you’ve purged sensitive data, you should rebuild all of your indexes (with FILLFACTOR set to 100%). But the empty space on your data file(s) might still contain sensitive data! A SHRINKFILE might help get rid of that (not so) empty space, but that might not be the end of your troubles. You might _STILL_ have (not so) empty space on your files! One approach that you can follow is to export all of the data on your database to another SQL Server instance that does NOT have Instant File Initialization enabled. This can be a tedious and time-consuming process, though. So you have to weigh in your options and see what makes sense for you. Snapshot Replication is another idea that comes to mind. 2) Does Compression get rid of ghost records (2008)? The answer to this is no. The Ghost Records/Ghost Cleanup Task mechanism is alive and well on compressed tables and indexes. You can prove this running a simple script: CREATE DATABASE GhostRecordsTest GO USE GhostRecordsTest GO CREATE TABLE myTable (myPrimaryKey int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,                       myWideColumn varchar(1000) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Default string value')                         ALTER TABLE myTable REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE) GO INSERT INTO myTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 10 DELETE myTable WHERE myPrimaryKey % 2 = 0 DBCC TRACEON(2514) DBCC CHECKTABLE(myTable) TraceFlag 2514 will make DBCC CHECKTABLE give you an extra tidbit of information on its output. For the above script: “Ghost Record count = 5” Until next time,   -Argenis

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  • SQL Server Scripts I Use

    - by Bill Graziano
    When I get to a new client I usually find myself using the same set of scripts for maintenance and troubleshooting.  These are all drop in solutions for various maintenance issues. Reindexing.  I use Michelle Ufford’s (SQLFool) re-indexing script.  I like that it has a throttle and only re-indexes when needed.  She also has a variety of other interesting scripts on her blog too. Server Activity.  Adam Machanic is up to version 10 of sp_WhoIsActive.  It’s a great replacement for the sp_who* stored procedures and does so much more.  If a server is acting funny this is one of the first tools I use. Backups.  Tara Kizer has a great little T-SQL script for SQL Server backups.  Wait Stats.  Paul Randal has a great script to display wait stats.  The biggest benefit for me is that his script filters out at least three dozen wait stats that I just don’t care about (for example LAZYWRITER_SLEEP). Update Statistics.  I didn’t find anything I liked so I wrote a simple script to update stats myself.  The big need for me was that it had to run inside a time window and update the oldest statistics first.  Is there a better one? Diagnostic Queries.  Glenn Berry has a huge collection of DMV queries available.  He also just highlighted five of them including two I really like dealing with unused indexes and suggested indexes. Single Use Query Plans.  Kim Tripp has a script that counts the number of single-use query plans.  This should guide you in whether to enable the Optimize for Adhoc Workloads option in SQL Server 2008. Granting Permissions to Developers.  This is one of those scripts I didn’t even know I needed until I needed it.  Kendra Little wrote it to grant a login read-only permission to all the databases.  It also grants view server state and a few other handy permissions.   What else do you use?  What should I add to my list?

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  • Silverlight Cream for November 20, 2011 - 2 -- #1170

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Washington, Oliver Fuh, Jeremy Likness, Derik Whittaker, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Handling Extremely Large Data Sets in Silverlight" Jeremy Likness WP7: "31 Days of Mango | Day #8: Contacts API" Jeff Blankenburg LightSwitch: "LightSwitch Chat Application Using A Data Source Extension" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up Check out Shawn Wildermuth's take on the AppStore and WP7 in general: 40,000 Apps - What Does It Mean? Be sure to check out Jesse Liberty & Paul Betts new book: Programming Reactive Extensions and LINQ, I've just had a little time to look at mine, but don't let the size fool you... this is the good stuff! From SilverlightCream.com: LightSwitch Chat Application Using A Data Source Extension In his latest LightSwitch post, Michael Washington gives up code that will enable two people using the same LightSwitch app to chat. Great detailed tutorial as usual! Handling AdControl Fetching Exception WindowsPhoneGeek turns the blog reigns over to Oliver Fuh for this post about using the AdControl in your WP7 app and handling a common exception you get with the Microsoft AdControl Handling Extremely Large Data Sets in Silverlight In this excerpt from his book, Jeremy Likness discusses reading *LARGE* data sets with Silverlight using 3 different patterns: OData, WCF RIA Services, and MVVM. Using MVVM with the AutoCompleteTextBox in Silverlight 4 Derik Whittaker takes a break from WinRT to discuss the Silverlight 4 AutoCompleteTextBox and MVVM ... including a custom Behavior to allow the backing property to be updated and a command to trigger background searches Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking Jesse Liberty scored Peter Torr on his Latest Yet Another Podcast .. talking about Multitasking on Windows Phone including background agents, the backstack, and other Mango features 31 Days of Mango | Day #8: Contacts API Jeff Blankenburg's Day 8 is about a new namespace on WP7: Microsoft.Phone.UserData ... now giving us the ability to treat the user's contact list like a local database 31 Days of Mango | Day #9: Calendar API On Day 9 in his series, Jeff Blankenburg revisits the Microsoft.Phone.UserData namespace and looks at another set of data: the calendar Want to Decompile Silverlight XAP files? Try JustDecompile Beta! Michael Crump has a post up about the new free developer productivity tool from Telerik that provides assembly browsing and decompiling: JustDecompile ... Just download it! 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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