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• How to use MSBuild to target multiple versions of .NET Framework?

  - by McKAMEY

  I am improving the builds for an open source project which currently supports .NET Framework v2.0, v3.5, and now v4.0. Up until now, I've restricted myself to v2.0 to ensure compatibility, but with VS2010 I am interested in having real targeted builds. I'm looking for some guidance on how to edit the MSBuild csproj/soln to be able to cleanly produce builds for each target. I'm willing to have complexity in the csproj and in a batch file to control the build. My goal is to be able to have a command line script that could produce the builds without needing Visual Studio installed, but only the necessary .NET Framework(s). Ideally, I'd like to minimize dependencies on additional software (e.g. NAnt). I'm pretty sure this can be done but am having trouble finding a definitive guide on setting it up and best practices. Bonus: my next step after getting this set up will be to better support Mono Framework. Any help on doing this same thing for Mono would be much appreciated.

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• Extension methods for encapsulation and reusability

  - by tzaman

  In C++ programming, it's generally considered good practice to "prefer non-member non-friend functions" instead of instance methods. This has been recommended by Scott Meyers in this classic Dr. Dobbs article, and repeated by Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu in C++ Coding Standards (item 44); the general argument being that if a function can do its job solely by relying on the public interface exposed by the class, it actually increases encapsulation to have it be external. While this confuses the "packaging" of the class to some extent, the benefits are generally considered worth it. Now, ever since I've started programming in C#, I've had a feeling that here is the ultimate expression of the concept that they're trying to achieve with "non-member, non-friend functions that are part of a class interface". C# adds two crucial components to the mix - the first being interfaces, and the second extension methods: Interfaces allow a class to formally specify their public contract, the methods and properties that they're exposing to the world. Any other class can choose to implement the same interface and fulfill that same contract. Extension methods can be defined on an interface, providing any functionality that can be implemented via the interface to all implementers automatically. And best of all, because of the "instance syntax" sugar and IDE support, they can be called the same way as any other instance method, eliminating the cognitive overhead! So you get the encapsulation benefits of "non-member, non-friend" functions with the convenience of members. Seems like the best of both worlds to me; the .NET library itself providing a shining example in LINQ. However, everywhere I look I see people warning against extension method overuse; even the MSDN page itself states: In general, we recommend that you implement extension methods sparingly and only when you have to. So what's the verdict? Are extension methods the acme of encapsulation and code reuse, or am I just deluding myself?

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• Building a custom CMS, how to handle page settings?

  - by davidosomething

  Not a coldfusion specific question so answer however you can. I've inherited a ColdFusion project where at the top of every page various page-setting specific variables are set, such as: <cfset request.page.title = "Example Page"> <cfset request.page.machineTitle = "example_page"> <cfset request.page.isJQueryEnabled = 1> <cfset request.page.showNavigation = 1> <cfset request.page.SWFObjectVersion = 2.2> I'm thinking about creating a database table with just integer page_id varchar key varchar value I'd reduce the variables at the top of every page to just the page id, and then call the DB for the correct settings. Is this a good idea? I hate reinventing the wheel, but this is a really big project that would require many months for a full content migration to a CMS. What are the current practices for storing page settings? (e.g., what does WordPress do? Drupal? etc.)

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• Project management: Implementing custom errors in VS compilation process

  - by David Lively

  Like many architects, I've developed coding standards through years of experience to which I expect my developers to adhere. This is especially a problem with the crowd that believes that three or four years of experience makes you a senior-level developer.Approaching this as a training and code review issue has generated limited success. So, I was thinking that it would be great to be able to add custom compile-time errors to the build process to more strictly enforce this and other guidelines. For instance, we use stored procedures for ALL database access, which provides procedure-level security, db encapsulation (table structure is hidden from the app), and other benefits. (Note: I am not interested in starting a debate about this.) Some developers prefer inline SQL or parametrized queries, and that's fine - on their own time and own projects. I'd like a way to add a compilation check that finds, say, anything that looks like string sql = "insert into some_table (col1,col2) values (@col1, @col2);" and generates an error or, in certain circumstances, a warning, with a message like Inline SQL and parametrized queries are not permitted. Or, if they use the var keyword var x = new MyClass(); Variable definitions must be explicitly typed. Do Visual Studio and MSBuild provide a way to add this functionality? I'm thinking that I could use a regular expression to find unacceptable code and generate the correct error, but I'm not sure what, from a performance standpoint, is the best way to to integrate this into the build process. We could add a pre- or post-build step to run a custom EXE, but how can I return line- and file-specifc errors? Also, I'd like this to run after compilation of each file, rather than post-link. Is a regex the best way to perform this type of pattern matching, or should I go crazy and run the code through a C# parser, which would allow node-level validation via the parse tree? I'd appreciate suggestions and tales of prior experience.

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• What is your favorite API developer community site? And why? [closed]

  - by whatupwilly

  There are a lot of great sites out there that offer good documentation, tools, tips, best-practices, sample code, etc. for the API's they are publishing. A sample: http://apiwiki.twitter.com http://developer.netflix.com/ http://developers.facebook.com/ https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/detail/main.html http://code.google.com/ http://remix.bestbuy.com/ http://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.overview.html http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/webserviceapi.html There are some no-brainers that I think a good developer site should have: Hi level introduction Quick start guide API specific details - showing example request and responses Links to sample code and/or 3rd party libraries Developer registration (e.g. get an API key) Blog But what about some other things: Online-Forum or Msg Board vs. Google Group (or similar) Galleries/ShowCases - spotlighting great apps built on the API - who has done nice galleries? Community Wiki - How do people feel about letting the community have edit rights on API documentation pages Online testing tools (like Facebook has a lot of nice interactive tools to simulate request/responses) What are some packages that you would recommend to put this all together: pbwiki Google Group pages MediaWiki API vendor package such as Sonoa Systems that offers a customizable developer portal So, to summarize: What are some other great API developer portals out there What are some nice features you like on them Any recommendations on what to use to build these features out Thanks, Will Zappos.com Public API (soon to launch) Product Manager

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• Primary key/foreign Key naming convention

  - by Jeremy

  In our dev group we have a raging debate regarding the naming convention for Primary and Foreign Keys. There's basically two schools of thought in our group: 1) Primary Table (Employee) Primary Key is called ID Foreign table (Event) Foreign key is called EmployeeID 2) Primary Table (Employee) Primary Key is called EmployeeID Foreign table (Event) Foreign key is called EmployeeID I prefer not to duplicate the name of the table in any of the columns (So I prefer option 1 above). Conceptually, it is consisted with a lot of the recommended practices in other languages, where you don't use the name of the object in its property names. I think that naming the foreign key EmployeeID (or Employee_ID might be better) tells the reader that it is the ID column of the Employee Table. Some others prefer option 2 where you name the primary key prefixed with the table name so that the column name is the same throughout the database. I see that point, but you now can not visually distinguish a primary key from a foreign key. Also, I think it's redundant to have the table name in the column name, because if you think of the table as an entity and a column as a property or attribute of that entity, you think of it as the ID attribute of the Employee, not the EmployeeID attribute of an employee. I don't go an ask my coworker what his PersonAge or PersonGender is. I ask him what his Age is. So like I said, it's a raging debate and we go on and on and on about it. I'm interested to get some new perspective.

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• Fast, easy, and secure method to perform DB actions with GET

  - by rob - not a robber

  Hey All, Sort of a methods/best practices question here that I am sure has been addressed, yet I can't find a solution based on the vague search terms I enter. I know starting off the question with "Fast and easy" will probably draw out a few sighs, so my apologies. Here is the deal. I have a logged in area where an ADMIN can do a whole host of POST operations to input data relating to their profile. The way I have data structured is pretty distinct and well segmented in most tables as it relates to the ID of the admin. Now, I have a table where I dump one type of data into and differentiate this data by assigning the ADMIN's unique ID to each record. In other words, all ADMINs have this one type of data writing to this table. I just differentiate by the ADMIN ID with each record. I was planning on letting the ADMIN remove these records by clicking on a link with a query string - obviously using GET. Obviously, the query structure is in the link so any logged in admin could then exploit the URL and delete a competitor's records. Is the only way to safely do this through POST or should I pass through the session info that includes password and validate it against the ADMIN ID that is requesting the delete? This is obviously much more work for me. As they said in the auto repair biz I used to work in... there are 3 ways to do a job: Fast, Good, and Cheap. You can only have two at a time. Fast and cheap will not be good. Good and cheap will not have fast turnaround. Fast and good will NOT be cheap. haha I guess that applies here... can never have Fast, Easy and Secure all at once ;) Thanks in advance...

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• Best practice - logging events (general) and changes (database)

  - by b0x0rz

  need help with logging all activities on a site as well as database changes. requirements: * should be in database * should be easily searchable by initiator (user name / session id), event (activity type) and event parameters i can think of a database design but either it involves a lot of tables (one per event) so i can log each of the parameters of an event in a separate field OR it involves one table with generic fields (7 int numeric and 7 text types) and log everything in one table with event type field determining what parameter got written where (and hoping that i don't need more than 7 fields of a certain type, or 8 or 9 or whatever number i choose)... example of entries (the usual things): [username] login failed @datetime [username] login successful @datetime [username] changed password @datetime, estimated security of password [low/ok/high/perfect] @datetime [username] clicked result [result number] [result id] after searching for [search string] and got [number of results] @datetime [username] clicked result [result number] [result id] after searching for [search string] and got [number of results] @datetime [username] changed profile name from [old name] to [new name] @datetime [username] verified name with [credit card type] credit card @datetime datbase table [table name] purged of old entries @datetime via automated process etc... so anyone dealt with this before? any best practices / links you can share? i've seen it done with the generic solution mentioned above, but somehow that goes against what i learned from database design, but as you can see the sheer number of events that need to be trackable (each user will be able to see this info) is giving me headaches, BUT i do LOVE the one event per table solution more than the generic one. any thoughts? edit: also, is there maybe an authoritative list of such (likely) events somewhere? thnx stack overflow says: the question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed. my answer: probably is subjective, but it is directly related to my issue i have with designing a database / writing my code, so i'd welcome any help. also i tried narrowing down the ideas to 2 so hopefully one of these will prevail, unless there already is an established solution for these kinds of things.

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• best practice - loging events (general) and changes (database)

  - by b0x0rz

  need help with logging all activities on a site as well as database changes. requirements: * should be in database * should be easily searchable by initiator (user name / session id), event (activity type) and event parameters i can think of a database design but either it involves a lot of tables (one per event) so i can log each of the parameters of an event in a separate field OR it involves one table with generic fields (7 int numeric and 7 text types) and log everything in one table with event type field determining what parameter got written where (and hoping that i don't need more than 7 fields of a certain type, or 8 or 9 or whatever number i choose)... example of entries (the usual things): [username] login failed @datetime [username] login successful @datetime [username] changed password @datetime, estimated security of password [low/ok/high/perfect] @datetime [username] clicked result [result number] [result id] after searching for [search string] and got [number of results] @datetime [username] clicked result [result number] [result id] after searching for [search string] and got [number of results] @datetime [username] changed profile name from [old name] to [new name] @datetime [username] verified name with [credit card type] credit card @datetime datbase table [table name] purged of old entries @datetime etc... so anyone dealt with this before? any best practices / links you can share? i've seen it done with the generic solution mentioned above, but somehow that goes against what i learned from database design, but as you can see the sheer number of events that need to be trackable (each user will be able to see this info) is giving me headaches, BUT i do LOVE the one event per table solution more than the generic one. any thoughts? edit: also, is there maybe an authoritative list of such (likely) events somewhere? thnx stack overflow says: the question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed. my answer: probably is subjective, but it is directly related to my issue i have with designing a database / writing my code, so i'd welcome any help. also i tried narrowing down the ideas to 2 so hopefully one of these will prevail, unless there already is an established solution for these kinds of things.

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• To what extent should code try to explain fatal exceptions?

  - by Andrzej Doyle

  I suspect that all non-trivial software is likely to experience situations where it hits an external problem it cannot work around and thus needs to fail. This might be due to bad configuration, an external server being down, disk full, etc. In these situations, especially if the software is running in non-interactive mode, I expect that all one can really do is log an error and wait for the admin to read the logs and fix the problem. If someone happens to interact with the software in the meantime, e.g. a request comes in to a server that failed to initialize properly, then perhaps an appropriate hint can be given to check the logs and maybe even the error can be echoed (depending on whether you can tell if they're a technical guy as opposed to a business user). For the moment though let's not think too hard about this part. My question is, to what extent should the software be responsible for trying to explain the meaning of the fatal error? In general, how much competence/knowledge are you allowed to presume on administrators of the software, and how much should you include troubleshooting information and potential resolution steps when logging fatal errors? Of course if there's something that's unique to the runtime context this should definitely be logged; but lets assume your software needs to talk to Active Directory via LDAP and gets back an error "[LDAP: error code 49 - 80090308: LdapErr: DSID-0C090334, comment: AcceptSecurityContext error, data 525, vece]". Is it reasonable to assume that the maintainers will be able to Google the error code and work out what it means, or should the software try to parse the error code and log that this is caused by an incorrect user DN in the LDAP config? I don't know if there is a definitive best-practices answer for this, so I'm keen to hear a variety of views.

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• Should I return IEnumerable<T> or IQueryable<T> from my DAL?

  - by Gary '-'

  I know this could be opinion, but I'm looking for best practices. As I understand, IQueryable implements IEnumerable, so in my DAL, I currently have method signatures like the following: IEnumerable<Product> GetProducts(); IEnumerable<Product> GetProductsByCategory(int cateogoryId); Product GetProduct(int productId); Should I be using IQueryable here? What are the pros and cons of either approach? Note that I am planning on using the Repository pattern so I will have a class like so: public class ProductRepository { DBDataContext db = new DBDataContext(<!-- connection string -->); public IEnumerable<Product> GetProductsNew(int daysOld) { return db.GetProducts() .Where(p => p.AddedDateTime > DateTime.Now.AddDays(-daysOld )); } } Should I change my IEnumerable<T> to IQueryable<T>? What advantages/disadvantages are there to one or the other?

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• Mercurial repository usage with binary files for building setup files

  - by Ryan

  I have an existing Mercurial repository for a C++ application in a small corporate environment. I asked a co-worker to add the setup script to the repository and he added all of the dependency binaries, PDFs, and executable to the repository under an Install directory. I dislike having the binaries and dependencies in the same repository, but I'd like recommendations on best practices. Here are the options I am considering: Create a separate repository for the Installer and related files Create a subrepository for the Installer and related files Use a (yet to be identified) build dependency manager I am concerned with using a subrepository with Mercurial based on what I've read so far and the (apparently) incomplete implementation. I would like to get a project dependency system, e.g. Ivy, but I don't know all of the options and haven't had time yet to try out any options. I thought I'd use TortoiseHg as a basis, and it does not have the TortoiseHg binaries in the repository although it does have some binaries such as kdiff3.exe. Instead it uses setup.py to clone multiple repositories and build the apps. This seems reasonable for OSS, but not so much for corporate environments. Recommendations?

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• Best practice to structure large html-based project

  - by AntonAL

  I develop Rails based website, enjoying using partials for some common "components" Recently, i faced a problem, that states with CSS interference. Styles for one component (described in css) override styles for another components. For example, one component has ... <ul class="items"> ... and another component has it too. But that ul's has different meaning in these two components. On the other hand, i want to "inherit" some styles for one component from another. For example: Let, we have one component, called "post" <div class="post"> <!-- post's stuff --> <ul class="items"> ... </ul> </div And another component, called "new-post": <div class="new-post"> <!-- post's stuff --> <ul class="items"> ... </ul> <!-- new-post's stuff --> <div class="tools">...</div> </div Post and new-post have something similar ("post's stuff") and i want to make CSS rules to handle both "post" and "new-post" New post has "subcomponents", for example - editing tools, that has also: <ul class="items"> This is where CSS rules starting to interfer - some rules, targeted for ul.items (in post and new-post) applies subcomponent of new-post, called "tools" On the one hand - i want to inherit some styles On the other hand, i want to get better incapsulation What are the best practices, to avoid such kind of problems ?

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• Creating a method for wrapping a loaded image in a UIImageView

  - by eco_bach

  I have the following un my applicationDidFinishLaunching method UIImage *image2 = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"image2.jpg" ofType:nil]]; view2 = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image2]; view2.hidden = YES; [containerView addSubview:view2]; I'm simply adding an image to a view. But because I need to add 30-40 images I need to wrap the above in a function (which returns a UIImageView) and then call it from a loop. This is my first attempt at creating the function -(UIImageView)wrapImageInView:(NSString *)imagePath { UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:imagePath ofType:nil]]; UIImageView *view = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image]; view.hidden = YES; } And then to invoke it I have the following so far, for simplicity I am only wrapping 3 images //Create an array and add elements to it NSMutableArray *anArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; [anArray addObject:@"image1.jpg"]; [anArray addObject:@"image2.jpg"]; [anArray addObject:@"image3.jpg"]; //Use a for each loop to iterate through the array for (NSString *s in anArray) { UIImageView *wrappedImgInView=[self wrapImage:s]; [containerView addSubview:wrappedImgInView]; NSLog(s); } //Release the array [anArray release]; I have 2 general questions 1-Is my approach correct?, ie following best practices, for what I am trying to do (load a multiple number of images(jpgs, pngs, etc.) and adding them to a container view) 2-For this to work properly with a large number of images, do I need to keep my array creation separate from my method invocation? Any other suggestions welcome!

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• Generics vs inheritance (when no collection classes are involved)

  - by Ram

  This is an extension of this questionand probably might even be a duplicate of some other question(If so, please forgive me). I see from MSDN that generics are usually used with collections The most common use for generic classes is with collections like linked lists, hash tables, stacks, queues, trees and so on where operations such as adding and removing items from the collection are performed in much the same way regardless of the type of data being stored. The examples I have seen also validate the above statement. Can someone give a valid use of generics in a real-life scenario which does not involve any collections ? Pedantically, I was thinking about making an example which does not involve collections public class Animal<T> { public void Speak() { Console.WriteLine("I am an Animal and my type is " + typeof(T).ToString()); } public void Eat() { //Eat food } } public class Dog { public void WhoAmI() { Console.WriteLine(this.GetType().ToString()); } } and "An Animal of type Dog" will be Animal<Dog> magic = new Animal<Dog>(); It is entirely possible to have Dog getting inherited from Animal (Assuming a non-generic version of Animal)Dog:Animal Therefore Dog is an Animal Another example I was thinking was a BankAccount. It can be BankAccount<Checking>,BankAccount<Savings>. This can very well be Checking:BankAccount and Savings:BankAccount. Are there any best practices to determine if we should go with generics or with inheritance ?

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• Handling close-to-impossible collisions on should-be-unique values

  - by balpha

  There are many systems that depend on the uniqueness of some particular value. Anything that uses GUIDs comes to mind (eg. the Windows registry or other databases), but also things that create a hash from an object to identify it and thus need this hash to be unique. A hash table usually doesn't mind if two objects have the same hash because the hashing is just used to break down the objects into categories, so that on lookup, not all objects in the table, but only those objects in the same category (bucket) have to be compared for identity to the searched object. Other implementations however (seem to) depend on the uniqueness. My example (that's what lead me to asking this) is Mercurial's revision IDs. An entry on the Mercurial mailing list correctly states The odds of the changeset hash colliding by accident in your first billion commits is basically zero. But we will notice if it happens. And you'll get to be famous as the guy who broke SHA1 by accident. But even the tiniest probability doesn't mean impossible. Now, I don't want an explanation of why it's totally okay to rely on the uniqueness (this has been discussed here for example). This is very clear to me. Rather, I'd like to know (maybe by means of examples from your own work): Are there any best practices as to covering these improbable cases anyway? Should they be ignored, because it's more likely that particularly strong solar winds lead to faulty hard disk reads? Should they at least be tested for, if only to fail with a "I give up, you have done the impossible" message to the user? Or should even these cases get handled gracefully? For me, especially the following are interesting, although they are somewhat touchy-feely: If you don't handle these cases, what do you do against gut feelings that don't listen to probabilities? If you do handle them, how do you justify this work (to yourself and others), considering there are more probable cases you don't handle, like a supernonva?

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• How to implement a network protocol?

  - by gotch4

  Here is a generic question. I'm not in search of the best answer, I'd just like you to express your favourite practices. I want to implement a network protocol in Java (but this is a rather general question, I faced the same issues in C++), this is not the first time, as I have done this before. But I think I am missing a good way to implement it. In fact usually it's all about exchanging text messages and some byte buffers between hosts, storing the status and wait until the next message comes. The problem is that I usually end up with a bunch of switch and more or less complex if statements that react to different statuses / messages. The whole thing usually gets complicated and hard to mantain. Not to mention that sometimes what comes out has some "blind spot", I mean statuses of the protocol that have not been covered and that behave in a unpredictable way. I tried to write down some state machine classes, that take care of checking start and end statuses for each action in more or less smart ways. This makes programming the protocol very complicated as I have to write lines and lines of code to cover every possible situation. What I'd like is something like a good pattern, or a best practice that is used in programming complex protocols, easy to mantain and to extend and very readable. What are your suggestions?

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• Is it "right" to translate error messages?

  - by Iraklis

  This is somehow subjective depending on the target translation language, but bear with me for a sec. I have recently been involved in a translation project. The goal was to translate the strings of an MVC framework to the Greek language. 70% of the language strings of the framework where translated, however 30% where intentionally left out. The decision was that we will not translate error messages aimed towards the developer of the application. The reasoning behind this (in short) was: are aimed towards designers/programmers. Programmers ( and even designers :) ) should have a basic understanding of English, at least enough so they can search on it on Google if they do not know what it means. (racist?) are aimed towards the developer and in a perfect world should not be displayed to the end user of the application as they concern the inner workings of the web application itself. i.e "You must set the database name in your database config file." and perhaps most importantly, they make the life of the developer harder when he tries to get more information/help regarding the error. For example the above error yields 8 results in Google (in quotes), whereas its Greek translation yields exactly 0. I know that this depends on the popularity of the target translation language and the application itself. For example I'm guessing that there are is vast amount of documentation regarding German SAP error messages (i know, i know, SAP IS German, but you get the point), as opposed to Greek Error Messages documentation regarding random application X which has about 500 installations worldwide. So to summarize: When you develop language translation packs for your applications do you translate error messages? Do you only do for predominant languages like English/Spanish/German/French? Or do you live them intact? I'm not looking for the "right" or "correct" answer, I'm looking for a "best-practices" answer, or if this problem is defined in any "official" standard/policy that you have had experience with.

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• When to use @Singleton in a Jersey resource

  - by dexter

  I have a Jersey resource that access the database. Basically it opens a database connection in the initialization of the resource. Performs queries on the resource's methods. I have observed that when I do not use @Singleton, the database is being open at each request. And we know opening a connection is really expensive right? So my question is, should I specify that the resource be singleton or is it really better to keep it at per request especially when the resource is connecting to the database? My resource code looks like this: //Use @Singleton here or not? @Path(/myservice/) public class MyResource { private ResponseGenerator responser; private Log logger = LogFactory.getLog(MyResource.class); public MyResource() { responser = new ResponseGenerator(); } @GET @Path("/clients") public String getClients() { logger.info("GETTING LIST OF CLIENTS"); return responser.returnClients(); } ... // some more methods ... } And I connect to the database using a code similar to this: public class ResponseGenerator { private Connection conn; private PreparedStatement prepStmt; private ResultSet rs; public ResponseGenerator(){ Class.forName("org.h2.Driver"); conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:h2:testdb"); } public String returnClients(){ String result; try{ prepStmt = conn.prepareStatement("SELECT * FROM hosts"); rs = prepStmt.executeQuery(); ... //do some processing here ... } catch (SQLException se){ logger.warn("Some message"); } finally { rs.close(); prepStmt.close(); // should I also close the connection here (in every method) if I stick to per request // and add getting of connection at the start of every method // conn.close(); } return result } ... // some more methods ... } Some comments on best practices for the code will also be helpful.

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• How to design authentication in a thick client, to be fail safe?

  - by Jay

  Here's a use case: I have a desktop application (built using Eclipse RCP) which on start, pops open a dialog box with 'UserName' and 'Password' fields in it. Once the end user, inputs his UserName and Password, a server is contacted (a spring remote-servlet, with the client side being a spring httpclient: similar to the approaches here.), and authentication is performed on the server side. A few questions related to the above mentioned scenario: If said this authentication service were to go down, what would be the best way to handle further proceedings? Authentication is something that I cannot do away with. Would running the desktop client in a "limited" mode be a good idea? For instance, important features/menus/views will be disabled, rest of the application will be accessible? Should I have a back up authentication service running on a different machine, working as a backup? What are the general best-practices in this scenario? I remember reading about google gears and how it would let you edit and do stuff offline - should something like this be designed? Please let me know your design/architectural comments/suggestions. Appreciate your help.

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• C++ struct, public data members and inheritance

  - by Marius

  Is it ok to have public data members in a C++ class/struct in certain particular situations? How would that go along with inheritance? I've read opinions on the matter, some stated already here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/952907/practices-on-when-to-implement-accessors-on-private-member-variables-rather-than http://stackoverflow.com/questions/670958/accessors-vs-public-members or in books/articles (Stroustrup, Meyers) but I'm still a little bit in the shade. I have some configuration blocks that I read from a file (integers, bools, floats) and I need to place them into a structure for later use. I don't want to expose these externally just use them inside another class (I actually do want to pass these config parameters to another class but don't want to expose them through a public API). The fact is that I have many such config parameters (15 or so) and writing getters and setters seems an unnecessary overhead. Also I have more than one configuration block and these are sharing some of the parameters. Making a struct with all the data members public and then subclassing does not feel right. What's the best way to tackle that situation? Does making a big struct to cover all parameters provide an acceptable compromise (I would have to leave some of these set to their default values for blocks that do not use them)?

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• Do you ever make a code change and just test rather than trying to fully understand the change you'v

  - by Clay Nichols

  I'm working in a 12 year old code base which I have been the only developer on. There are times that I'll make a a very small change based on an intuition (or quantum leap in logic ;-). Usually I try to deconstruct that change and make sure I read thoroughly the code. However sometimes, (more and more these days) I just test and make sure it had the effect I wanted. (I'm a pretty thorough tester and would test even if I read the code). This works for me and we have surprisingly (compared to most software I see) few bugs escape into the wild. But what I'm wondering is whether this is just the "art" side of coding. Yes, in an ideal world you would exhaustively read every bit of code that your change modified, but I in practice, if you're confident that it only affects a small section of code, is this a common practice? I can obviously see where this would be a disastrous approach in the hands of a poor programmer. But then, I've seen programmers who ostensibly are reading the code and break stuff left and right (in their own code based which only they have been working on).

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• How to handle too many files in Qt

  - by mree

  I'm not sure how to ask this, but here goes the question: I'm migrating from J2SE to Qt. After creating some small applications in Qt, I noticed that I've created way too many files compared to what I would've create if I was developing in Java (I use Netbeans). For an example, for a GUI to Orders, I'd have to create Main Order Search Window Edit Order Dialog Manage Order Dialog Maybe some other dialogs... For Java, I don't have to create a new file for every new Dialog, the Dialog will be created in the JFrame class itself. So, I will only be seeing 1 file for Orders which has other Dialogs in it. However, in Qt, I'd have to create 1 ui file, 1 header file, 1 cpp file for each of the Dialog (I know I can just put the cpp in the header, but it's easier to view codes in seperate files). So, in the end, I might end up with 3 (if there are 3 dialogs) x3 files = 9 files for the GUI in Qt, compared to Java which is only 1 file. I do know that I can create a GUI by coding it manually. But it seems easy on small GUIs but not some on complicated GUIs with lots of inputs, tabs and etc. So, is there any suggestion on how to minimize the file created in Qt?

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• Organising files and classes in XCode (iPhone application)

  - by pulegium

  It's a generic question and really a newbie one too, so bear with me... I'm playing with some iPhone development, and trying to create a simple "flip type" application. Nothing sophisticated, let's say on the flip side is a short application summary, bit like 'help' and on the main screen is a simple board game, let's say tic-tac-toe or similar. Now, XCode has generated me 'Main View', 'Flipside View' and 'Application Delegate' folders, with default template files in them. Now the question is where do I create appropriate 'MVC' classes? Let's say (V)iew classes are going to be the ones that have been automatically created. So the Flipside view class is responsible for generating text/images etc on the 'help' view. 'Main View' class is what draws the items on the table and updates the counters, etc. Where should I place the 'controller' class? And also, should it only be dealing with proxying only to the model? According to this the controller method is called from the view and manipulates the method classes. Similarly, the results from model are passed back to the view class by the controller issuing the calls to appropriate view methods. Similarly, where does the model class go? or should I just create a new folder for each, controller and model class files? What I'm after is the best practices, or just a short description how people normally structure their applications. I know it's very specific and also undefined... I came from Django background, so the way stuff is organised there is slightly different. Hope this makes sense, sorry if it's all bit vague, but I have to start somewhere :) And yes I've read quite few docs on the apple developer site, but trouble is that the documents are either going into too much detail about the language/framework/etc and the examples are way too simplistic. Actually, this leads me to the final question, has anyone know any good example of relatively complete application tutorial which I could use as a reference in organising my files?...

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• How do software projects go over budget and under-deliver?

  - by Carlos

  I've come across this story quite a few times here in the UK: NHS Computer System Summary: We're spunking £12 Billion on some health software with barely anything working. I was sitting the office discussing this with my colleagues, and we had a little think about. From what I can see, all the NHS needs is a database + middle tier of drugs/hospitals/patients/prescriptions objects, and various GUIs for doctors and nurses to look at. You'd also need to think about security and scalability. And you'd need to sit around a hospital/pharmacy/GPs office for a bit to figure out what they need. But, all told, I'd say I could knock together something with that kind of structure in a couple of days, and maybe throw in a month or two to make it work in scale. If I had a few million quid, I could probably hire some really excellent designers to make a maintainable codebase, and also buy appropriate hardware to run the system on. I hate to trivialize something that seems to have caused to much trouble, but to me it looks like just a big distributed CRUD + UI system. So how on earth did this project bloat to £12B without producing much useful software? As I don't think the software sounds so complicated, I can only imagine that something about how it was organised caused this mess. Is it outsourcing that's the problem? Is it not getting the software designers to understand the medical business that caused it? What are your experiences with projects gone over budget, under delivered? What are best practices for large projects? Have you ever worked on such a project?

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