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• Apps UX Launches Blueprints for Mobile User Experiences

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceAt Oracle OpenWorld 2012 this year, the Oracle Applications User Experience (Apps UX) team announced the release of Mobile User Experience Functional Design Patterns. These patterns are designed to work directly with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware, specifically, ADF Mobile.  The Oracle Application Development Framework for mobile users enables developers to build one application that can be deployed to multiple mobile device platforms. These same mobile design patterns provide the guidance for Oracle teams to develop Fusion Mobile expenses. Application developers can use Oracle’s mobile design patterns to design iPhone, Android, or browser-based smartphone applications. We are sharing our mobile design patterns and their baked-in, scientifically proven usability to enable Oracle customers and partners to build mobile applications quickly.A different way of thinking and designing. Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo, Senior Manager of Mobile User Experiences for Apps UX, says mobile design has to be compelling. “It needs to be optimized for the device, and be visually rich and simple,” she said. “What is really key is that you are designing for a user’s most personal device, the device that they will have with them at all times of the day.”Katy Massucco, director of the overall design patterns site, said: “You need to start with a simplified task flow. Everything should be a natural interaction. The action should be relevant and leveraging the device. It should be seamless.”She suggests that developers identify the essential tasks that a user would want to do while mobile. “They need to understand the user and the context,” she added. ?A sample inline action design patternWhat people are sayingReactions to the release of the design patterns have been positive. Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fusion User Experience Advocate (FXA), has already demo’ed Fusion Mobile Expenses widely.  Fellow Oracle Ace Director Ronald van Luttikhuizen, called it a “cool demo by @debralilley of the new mobile expenses app.” FXA member Floyd Teter says he is already cooking up some plans for using mobile design patterns.  We hope to see those ideas at Collaborate or ODTUG in 2013. For another perspective on why user experience is such an important focus for mobile applications, check out this video by John King, Director, and Monty Latiolais, President, both from ODTUG, or the Oracle Development Tools User Group.In a separate interview by e-mail, Latiolais wrote: “I enjoy the fact we can take something that, in the past, has been largely subjective, and now apply to it a scientifically proven look and feel. Trusting Oracle’s UX Design Patterns, the presentation really can become one less thing to worry about. As someone with limited ADF experience, that is extremely beneficial.”?King, who was also interviewed by e-mail, wrote: “User Experience is about making the task at hand as easy and error-free as possible. Oracle's UX labs worked hard to make the User Experience in the new Fusion Applications as good as possible; ADF makes adding tested, consistent, user experiences a declarative exercise by leveraging that work. As we move applications onto mobile platforms, user experience is the driving factor. Customers are "spoiled" by a bevy of fantastic applications, and ours cannot disappoint them. Creating applications that enable users to quickly and effectively accomplish whatever task is at hand takes thought and practice. Developers must become ’power users’ and then create applications that they and their users will love.”

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• Construction Paper, Legos, and Architectural Modeling

  I can remember as a kid playing with construction paper and Legos to explore my imagination. Through my exploration I was able to build airplanes, footballs, guns, and more, out of paper. Additionally I could create entire cities, robots, or anything else I could image out of Legos.  These toys, I now realize were in fact tools that gave me an opportunity to explore my ideas in the physical world through the use of modeling.  My imagination was allowed to run wild as I, unknowingly at the time, made design decisions that directly affected the models I was building from the raw materials.  To prove my point further, I can remember building a paper airplane that seemed to go nowhere when I tried to throw it. So I decided to attach a paper clip to the plane before I decided to throw it the next time to test my concept that by adding more weight to the plane that it would fly better and for longer distances. The paper airplane allowed me to model my design decision through the use of creating an artifact in that I created a paper airplane that was carrying extra weight through the incorporation of the paper clip in to the design. Also, I remember using Legos to build all sorts of creations, and these creations became artifacts of my imagination. As I further and further defined my Lego creations through the process of playing I was able to create elaborate artifacts of my imagination. These artifacts represented design decision I had made in the evolution of my creation through my child like design process. In some form or fashion the artifacts I created as a kid are very similar to the artifacts that I create when I model a software architectural concept or a software design in that the process of making decisions is directly translated in to a tangible model in the form of an architectural model. Architectural models have been defined as artifacts that depict design decisions of a system’s architecture.  The act of creating architectural models is the act of architectural modeling. Furthermore, architectural modeling is the process of creating a physical model based architectural concepts and documenting these design decisions. In the process of creating models, the standard notation used is Architectural modeling notation. This notation is the primary method of capturing the essence of design decisions regarding architecture.  Modeling notations can vary based on the need and intent of a project; typically they range from natural language to a diagram based notation. Currently, Unified Markup Language (UML) is the industry standard in terms of architectural modeling notation  because allows for architectures to be defined through a series of boxes, lines, arrows and other basic symbols that encapsulate design designs in to virtual components, connectors, configurations and interfaces.  Furthermore UML allows for additional break down of models through the use of natural language as to explain each section of the model in plain English. One of the major factors in architectural modeling is to define what is to be modeled. As a basic rule of thumb, I tend to model architecture based on the complexity of systems or sub sub-systems of architecture. Another key factor is the level of detail that is actually needed for a model. For example if I am modeling a system for a CEO to view then the low level details will be omitted. In comparison, if I was modeling a system for another engineer to actually implement I would include as much detailed information as I could to help the engineer implement my design.

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• What Color is your Jetpack ?

  - by JoshReuben

  I’m a programmer, Im approaching 40, and I’m fairly decent at my job – I’ll keep doing what I’m doing for as long as they let me!   So what are your career options if you know how to code? A Programmer could be ..   An Algorithm developer Pros Interesting High barriers of entry, potential for startup competitive factor Cons Do you have the skill, qualifications? What are working conditions n this mystery niche ? micro-focus An Academic Pros Low pressure Job security – or is this an illusion ? Cons Low Pay Need a PhD A Software Architect Pros: strategic, rather than tactical Setting technology platform and high level vision You say how it should work, others have to figure out why its not working the way its supposed to ! broad view – you are paid to learn (how do you con people into paying for you to learn ??) Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! competitive – everyone wants to do it ! loose touch with underlying tech in tough times, first guy to get the axe ! A Software Engineer Pros: interesting, always more to learn fun I can do it Fallback Cons: Nothing new under the sun – been there, done that Dealing with poor requirements, deadlines, other peoples code, overtime C#, XAML, Web - Low barriers of entry –> à race to the bottom A Team leader Pros: Setting code standards and proposing technology choices Cons: Glorified developer – more often than not! Inspecting other peoples code and debugging the problems they cannot fix Dealing with mugbies and prima donas Responsible for QA of others A Project Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Cons Low barrier of entry High pressure Responsible for QA of others Loosing touch with technology A lot of bullshit meetings Have to be an asshole A Product Manager Pros No need for debugging other peoples code Learning new skillset of sales and marketing Cons Travel (I'm a family man) May need to know the bs details of an uninteresting product things I want to work with: AI, algorithms, Numerical Computing, Mathematica, C++ AMP – unfortunately, the work here is few & far between. VS & TFS Extensibility, DSLs (Workflow , Lightswitch), Code Generation – one day, code will write code ! Unity3D, WebGL – fun, fun, fun ! Modern Web – Knockout, SignalR, MVC, Node.Js ??? (tentative – I'll wait until things stabilize as this area is undergoing a pre-Cambrian explosion) Things I don’t want to work with: (but will if I'm asked to !) C# – same old, same old – not learning anything new here Old code – blech ! Environment with code & fix mentality , ad hoc requirements, excessive overtime Pc support, System administration – even after 20 years, people still ask you to do this sometimes ! debugging – my skills are just not there yet Oracle Old tech: VB 6, XSLT, WinForms, Net 3.51 or less Old style Web dev Information Systems: ASP.NET webforms, Reporting services / crystal reports, SQL Server CRUD with manual data layer, XAML MVVM – variations of the same concept, ad nauseaum. Low barriers of entry –> race to the bottom.  Metro – an elegant API coupled to a horrendous UX – I'll wait for market penetration viability before investing further in this.   Conclusion So if you are in a slump, take heart: Programming is a great career choice compared to every other job !

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• Investigating Strategies For Functional Decomposition

  - by Liam McLennan

  Introducing Functional Decomposition Before I begin I must apologise. I think I am using the term ‘functional decomposition’ loosely, and probably incorrectly. For the purpose of this article I use functional decomposition to mean the recursive splitting of a large problem into increasingly smaller ones, so that the one large problem may be solved by solving a set of smaller problems. The justification for functional decomposition is that the decomposed problem is more easily solved. As software developers we recognise that the smaller pieces are more easily tested, since they do less and are more cohesive. Functional decomposition is important to all scientific pursuits. Once we understand natural selection we can start to look for humanities ancestral species, once we understand the big bang we can trace our expanding universe back to its origin. Isaac Newton acknowledged the compositional nature of his scientific achievements: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants   The Two Strategies For Functional Decomposition of Computer Programs Private Methods When I was working on my undergraduate degree I was taught to functionally decompose problems by using private methods. Consider the problem of painting a house. The obvious solution is to solve the problem as a single unit: public void PaintAHouse() { // all the things required to paint a house ... } We decompose the problem by breaking it into parts: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { // everything required to paint the undercoat } private void PaintTopcoat() { // everything required to paint the topcoat } The problem can be recursively decomposed until a sufficiently granular level of detail is reached: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { prepareSurface(); fetchUndercoat(); paintUndercoat(); } private void PaintTopcoat() { fetchPaint(); paintTopcoat(); } According to Wikipedia, at least one computer programmer has referred to this process as “the art of subroutining”. The practical issues that I have encountered when using private methods for decomposition are: To preserve the top level API all of the steps must be private. This means that they can’t easily be tested. The private methods often have little cohesion except that they form part of the same solution. Decomposing to Classes The alternative is to decompose large problems into multiple classes, effectively using a class instead of each private method. The API delegates to related classes, so the API is not polluted by the sub-steps of the problem, and the steps can be easily tested because they are each in their own highly cohesive class. Additionally, I think that this technique facilitates better adherence to the Single Responsibility Principle, since each class can be decomposed until it has precisely one responsibility. Revisiting my previous example using class composition: public class HousePainter { private undercoatPainter = new UndercoatPainter(); private topcoatPainter = new TopcoatPainter(); public void PaintAHouse() { undercoatPainter.Paint(); topcoatPainter.Paint(); } } Summary When decomposing a problem there is more than one way to represent the sub-problems. Using private methods keeps the logic in one place and prevents a proliferation of classes (thereby following the four rules of simple design) but the class decomposition is more easily testable and more compatible with the Single Responsibility Principle.

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• How can a developer realize the full value of his work [closed]

  - by Jubbat

  I, honestly, don't want to work as a developer in a company anymore after all I have seen. I want to continue developing software, yes, but not in the way I see it all around me. And I'm in London, a city that congregates lots of great developers from the whole world, so it shouldn't be a problem of location. So, what are my concerns? First of all, best case scenario: you are paying managers salary out of yours. You are consistently underpaid by making up for the average manager negative net return plus his whole salary. Typical scenario. I am a reasonably good developer with common sense who cares for readable code with attention to basic principles. I have found way too often, overconfident and arrogant developers with a severe lack of common sense. Personally, I don't want to follow TDD or Agile practices like all the cool kids nowadays. I would read about them, form my own opinion and take what I feel is useful, but don't follow it sheepishly. I want to work with people who understand that you have to design good interfaces, you absolutely have to document your code, that readability is at the top of your priorities. Also people who don't have a cargo cult mentality too. For instance, the same person who asked me about design patterns in a job interview, later told me that something like a List of Map of Vector of Map of Set (in Java) is very readable. Why would someone ask me about design patterns if they can't even grasp encapsulation? These kind of things are the norm. I've seen many examples. I've seen worse than that too, from very well paid senior devs, by the way. Every second that you spend working with people with such lack of common sense and clear thinking, you are effectively losing money by being terribly inefficient with your time. Yet, with all these inefficiencies, the average developer earns a high salary. So I tried working on my own then, although I don't like the idea. I prefer healthy exchange of opinions and ideas and task division. I then did a bit of online freelancing for a while but I think working in a sweatshop might be more enjoyable. Also, I studied computer engineering and you are in an environment in which your client will presume you don't have any formal education because there is no way to prove it. Again, you are undervalued. You could try building a product, yes. But, of course, luck is a big factor. I wonder if there is a way to work in something you can do well, software development, and be valued for the quality of your work and be paid accordingly, and where you and only you get fairly paid for the value you generate. I know that what I have written seems somehow unlikely but I strongly feel this way. Hopefully someone will understand me and has already figured this out. I don't think I'm alone in this kind of feeling.

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• Bowing to User Experience

  As a consumer of geeky news it is hard to check my Google Reader without running into two or three posts about Apples iPad and in particular the changes to the developer guidelines which seemingly restrict developers to using Apples Xcode tool and Objective-C language for iPad apps. One of the alternatives to Objective-C affected, is MonoTouch, an option with some appeal to me as it is based on the Mono implementation of C#. Seemingly restricted is the key word here, as far as I can tell, no official announcement has been made about its fate. For more details around MonoTouch for iPhone OS, check out Miguel de Icazas post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Apr-28.html. These restrictions have provoked some outrage as the perception is that Apple is arrogantly restricting developers freedom to create applications as they choose and perhaps unwittingly shortchanging iPhone/iPad users who wont benefit from these now never-to-be-made great applications. Apples response has mostly been to say they are concentrating on providing a certain user experience to their customers, and to do this, they insist everyone uses the tools they approve. Which isnt a surprising line of reasoning given Apple restricts the hardware used and content of the apps already. The vogue term for this approach is curated, as in a benevolent museum director selecting only the finest artifacts for display or a wise gardener arranging the plants in a garden just so. If this is what a curated experience is like it is hard to argue that consumers are not responding. My iPhone is probably the most satisfying piece of technology I own. Coming from the Razr, it really was an revolution in how the form factor, interface and user experience all tied together. While the curated approach reinvented the smart phone genre, it is easy to forget that this is not a new approach for Apple. Macbooks and Macs are Apple hardware that run Apple software. And theyve been successful, but not quite in the same way as the iPhone or iPad (based on early indications). Why not? Well a curated approach can only be wildly successful if the curator a) makes the right choices and b) offers choices that no one else has. Although its advantages are eroding, the iPhone was different from other phones, a unique, focused, touch-centric experience. The iPad is an attempt to define another category of computing. Macs and Macbooks are great devices, but are not fundamentally a different user experience than a PC, you still have windows, file folders, mouse and keyboard, and similar applications. So the big question for Apple is can they hold on to their market advantage, continuing innovating in user experience and stay on top? Or are they going be like Xerox, and the rest of the world says thank you for the windows metaphor, now let me implement that better? It will be exciting to watch, with Android already a viable competitor and Microsoft readying Windows Phone 7. And to close the loop back to the restrictions on developing for iPhone OS. At this point the main target appears to be Adobe and Adobe Flash. Apples calculation is that a) they dont need those developers or b) the developers they want will learn Apples stuff anyway. My guess is that they are correct; that as much as I like the idea of developers having more options, I am not going to buy a competitors product to spite Apple unless that product is just as usable. For a non-technical consumer, I dont know that this conversation even factors into the buying decision. If it did, wed be talking about how Microsoft is trying to retake a slice of market share from the behemoth that is Linux.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; dotTrace Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  Jetbrains which is famous for the Resharper tool has also a profiler in its portfolio. I downloaded dotTrace 5.2 Professional (569€+VAT) to check how far I can profile the startup of VS2012. The most interesting startup option is “.NET Process”. With that you can profile the next started .NET process which is very useful if you want to profile an application which is not started by you.     I did select Tracing as and Wall time to get similar options across all profilers. For some reason the attach option did not work with .NET 4.5 on my home machine. But I am sure that it did work with .NET 4.0 some time ago. Since we are profiling devenv.exe we can also select “Standalone Application” and start it from the profiler. The startup time of VS does increase about a factor 3 but that is ok. You get mainly three windows to work with. The first one shows the threads where you can drill down thread wise where most time is spent. I The next window is the call tree which does merge all threads together in a similar view. The last and most useful view in my opinion is the Plain List window which is nearly the same as the Method Grid in Ants Profiler. But this time we do get when I enable the Show system functions checkbox not a 150 but 19407 methods to choose from! I really tried with Ants Profiler to find something about out how VS does work but look how much we were missing! When I double click on a method I do get in the lower pane the called methods and their respective timings. This is something really useful and I can nicely drill down to the most important stuff. The measured time seems to be Wall Clock time which is a good thing to see where my time is really spent. You can also use Sampling as profiling method but this does give you much less information. Except for getting a first idea where to look first this profiling mode is not very useful to understand how you system does interact.   The options have a good list of presets to hide by default many method and gray them out to concentrate on your code. It does not filter anything out if you enable Show system functions. By default methods from these assemblies are hidden or if the checkbox is checked grayed out. All in all JetBrains has made a nice profiler which does show great detail and it has nice drill down capabilities. The only thing is that I do not trust its measured timings. I did fall several times into the trap with this one to optimize at places which were already fast but the profiler did show high times in these methods. After measuring with Tracing I was certain that the measured times were greatly exaggerated. Especially when IO is involved it seems to have a hard time to subtract its own overhead. What I did miss most was the possibility to profile not only the next started process but to be able to select a process by name and perhaps a count to profile the next n processes of this name. Next: YourKit

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• Get More From Your Service Request

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Leveraging Service Request Best Practices Use best practices to get there faster. In the daily conversations I have with customers, they sometimes express frustration over their Service Requests. They often feel powerless to make needed changes, so their sense of frustration grows. To help you avoid some of the frustration you might feel in dealing with your Service Requests (SR), here are a few pointers that come from our best practice discussions. Be proactive. If you can anticipate some of the questions that Support will ask, or the information they may need, try to provide this up front, when you log the SR. This could be output from the Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA), if this is a database issue, or the output from another diagnostic tool, if you’re an EBS customer. Any information you can supply that helps us understand the situation better, helps us resolve the issue sooner. As you use some of these tools proactively, you might even find the solution to the problem before you log an SR! Be right. Make sure you have the correct severity level. Since you select the initial severity level, it’s easy to accept the default without considering how significant this may be. Business impact is the driving factor, so make sure you take a moment to select the severity level that is appropriate to the situation. Also, make sure you ask us to change the severity level, should the situation dictate. Be responsive! If this is an important issue to you, quickly follow up on any action plan submitted to you by Oracle Support. The support engineer assigned to your Service Request will be able to move the issue forward more aggressively when they have the needed information. This is crucial in resolving your issues in a timely manner. Be thorough. If there are five questions in the action plan, make sure you provide an answer for all five questions in one response, rather than trickling them in one at a time. This will allow the engineer to look at all of the information as a whole and to avoid multiple trips to your SR, saving valuable time and getting you a resolution sooner. Be your own advocate! You know your situation best; make sure Oracle Support understands both how and why this issue is important to you and your company. Use the escalation process if you're concerned that your SR isn't going the right direction, the right pace, or through the right person. Don't wait until you're frustrated and angry. An escalation is as simple as a quick conversation on the phone and can be amazingly effective in getting your issues back on track. The support manager you speak with is empowered to make any needed changes. Be our partner. You can make your support experience better. When your SR has been resolved, you may receive a survey request. This is intended to get your feedback about how your SR went and what we can do to improve your overall support experience. Oracle Support is here to help you. Our goal with any Service Request is to provide the best possible solution as quickly as possible. With your help, we’ll be able to do this with your Service Request too.  

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• Representing Mauritius in the 2013 Bench Games

  Only by chance I came across an interesting option for professionals and enthusiasts in IT, and quite honestly I can't even remember where I caught attention of Brainbench and their 2013 Bench Games event. But having access to 600+ free exams in a friendly international intellectual competition doesn't happen to be available every day. So, it was actually a no-brainer to sign up and browse through the various categories. Most interestingly, Brainbench is not only IT-related. They offer a vast variety of fields in their Test Center, like Languages and Communication, Office Skills, Management, Aptitude, etc., and it can be a little bit messy about how things are organised. Anyway, while browsing through their test offers I added a couple of exams to 'My Plan' which I would give a shot afterwards. Self-assessments Actually, I took the tests based on two major aspects: 'Fun Factor' and 'How good would I be in general'... Usually, you have to pay for any kind of exams and given this unique chance by Brainbench to simply train this kind of tests was already worth the time. Frankly speaking, the tests are very close to the ones you would be asked to do at Prometric or Pearson Vue, ie. Microsoft exams, etc. Go through a set of multiple choice questions in a given time frame. Most of the tests I did during the Bench Games were based on 40 questions, each with a maximum of 3 minutes to answer. Ergo, one test in maximum 2 hours - that sounds feasible, doesn't it? The Measure of Achievement While the 2013 Bench Games are considered a worldwide friendly competition of knowledge I was really eager to get other Mauritians attracted. Using various social media networks and community activities it all looked quite well at the beginning. Mauritius was listed on rank #19 of Most Certified Citizens and rank #10 of Most Master Level Certified Nation - not bad, not bad... Until... the next update of the Bench Games Leaderboard. The downwards trend seemed to be unstoppable and I couldn't understand why my results didn't show up on the Individual Leader Board. First of all, I passed exams that were not even listed and second, I had better results on some exams listed. After some further information from the organiser it turned out that my test transcript wasn't available to the public. Only then results are considered and counted in the competition. During that time, I actually managed to hold 3 test results on the Individuals... Other participants were merciless, eh, more successful than me, produced better test results than I did. But still I managed to stay on the final score board: An 'exotic' combination of exam, test result, country and person itself Representing Mauritius and the Visual FoxPro community in that fun event. And although I mainly develop in Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2 and C# using .NET Framework from 2.0 to 4.5 since a couple of years I still managed to pass on Master Level. Hm, actually my Microsoft Certified Programmer (MCP) exams are dated back in June 2004 - more than 9 years ago... Look who got lucky... As described above I did a couple of exams as time allowed and without any preparations, but still I received the following mail notification: "Thank you for recently participating in our Bench Games event.  We wanted to inform you that you obtained a top score on our test(s) during this event, and as a result, will receive a free annual Brainbench subscription.  Your annual subscription will give you access to all our tests just like Bench Games, but for an entire year plus additional benefits!" -- Leader Board Notification from Brainbench Even fun activities get rewarded sometimes. Thanks to @Brainbench_com for the free annual subscription based on my passed 2013 Bench Games Master Level exam. It would be interesting to know about the total figures, especially to see how many citizens of Mauritius took part in this year's Bench Games. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be able to participate in other challenges like this in the future.

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• Class design issue

  - by user2865206

  I'm new to OOP and a lot of times I become stumped in situations similar to this example: Task: Generate an XML document that contains information about a person. Assume the information is readily available in a database. Here is an example of the structure: <Person> <Name>John Doe</Name> <Age>21</Age> <Address> <Street>100 Main St.</Street> <City>Sylvania</City> <State>OH</State> </Address> <Relatives> <Parents> <Mother> <Name>Jane Doe</Name> </Mother> <Father> <Name>John Doe Sr.</Name> </Father> </Parents> <Siblings> <Brother> <Name>Jeff Doe</Name> </Brother> <Brother> <Name>Steven Doe</Name> </Brother> </Siblings> </Relatives> </Person> Ok lets create a class for each tag (ie: Person, Name, Age, Address) Lets assume each class is only responsible for itself and the elements directly contained Each class will know (have defined by default) the classes that are directly contained within them Each class will have a process() function that will add itself and its childeren to the XML document we are creating When a child is drawn, as in the previous line, we will have them call process() as well Now we are in a recursive loop where each object draws their childeren until all are drawn But what if only some of the tags need to be drawn, and the rest are optional? Some are optional based on if the data exists (if we have it, we must draw it), and some are optional based on the preferences of the user generating the document How do we make sure each object has the data it needs to draw itself and it's childeren? We can pass down a massive array through every object, but that seems shitty doesnt it? We could have each object query the database for it, but thats a lot of queries, and how does it know what it's query is? What if we want to get rid of a tag later? There is no way to reference them. I've been thinking about this for 20 hours now. I feel like I am misunderstanding a design principle or am just approaching this all wrong. How would you go about programming something like this? I suppose this problem could apply to any senario where there are classes that create other classes, but the classes created need information to run. How do I get the information to them in a way that doesn't seem fucky? Thanks for all of your time, this has been kicking my ass.

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• Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer?

  - by Asian Angel

  Most people have a single monitor for their computers, many have two, and some individuals enjoy “3 monitor plus” goodness. This week we would like to know how many monitors you use with your computer. Photo by DamnedNice. A good majority of people have a single monitor that they use with their computers and that single monitor serves their needs very well. It could be that these individuals do not engage in a heavy amount of work or play on their computers…they just need to do the basics like checking e-mail, using I.M., working with photos, etc. Another possibility is the use of virtual desktop software such as Dexpot, Yodm 3D, or Sysinternals Desktops on Windows systems. Linux systems such as Ubuntu already have that wonderful multi-desktop functionality built in. The wonderful part about virtual desktops is that a single monitor can feel equivalent to a small army of monitors. The ability to separate your open windows into “categories” and spread them out across multiple desktops is definitely nice. With each passing year dual monitor setups are becoming more common. Having twice the screen real-estate visible at the same time can be extremely convenient when you are multi-tasking. Perhaps you like to monitor your system’s stats and an e-mail account on the second monitor while working with software on the first. It certainly beats having windows popping up and down on your screen constantly while keeping on top of everything! Next we have the people who have three or more monitors in use with their computers. This may be a result of the type of work they do, an experiment to see if multiple monitors are right for them, or the cool, geeky factor that comes with having all those monitors. Needless to say these individuals can induce a good amount of envy and/or inspiration in the rest of us when we see their awesome setups. Are you perfectly content with a single monitor? Do you have two or more monitors that you use? If you have two or more monitors are they actually that useful to you? Perhaps you are getting ready even now to add additional monitors to your system. Whatever your situation may be at the moment, let us know your thoughts (and possible multi-monitor plans) in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster World of Warcraft Theme for Windows 7 Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download Oh No! WikiLeaks Published Santa Claus’s Naughty List [Video] Remember the Milk Now Supports HTTPS Encryption for the Entire Session

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• Is Visual Source Safe (The latest Version) really that bad? Why? What's the Best Alternative? Why? [closed]

  - by hanzolo

  Over the years I've constantly heard horror stories, had people say "Real Programmers Dont Use VSS", and so on. BUT, then in the workplace I've worked at two companies, one, a very well known public facing high traffic website, and another high end Financial Services "Web-Based" hosted solution catering to some very large, very well known companies, which is where I currently Reside and everything's working just fine (KNOCK KNOCK!!). I'm constantly interfacing with EXTREMELY Old technology with some of these financial institutions.. OLD LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE.. which leads me to the conclusion that if it works "LEAVE IT", and that maybe there's some value in old technology? at least enough value to overrule a rewrite!? right?? Is there something fundamentally flawed with the underlying technology that VSS uses? I have a feeling that if i said "someone said VSS Sucks" they would beg to differ, most likely give me this look like i dont know -ish, and I'd never gain back their respect and my credibility (well, that'll be hard to blow.. lol), BUT, give me an argument that I can take to someone whose been coding for 30 years, that builds Platforms that leverage current technology (.NET 3.5 / SQL 2008 R2 ), write's their own ORM with scaffolding and is able to provide a quality platform that supports thousands of concurrent users on a multi-tenant hosted solution, and does not agree with any benefits from having Source Control Integrated, and yet uses the Infamous Visual Source Safe. I have extensive experience with TFS up to 2010, and honestly I think it's great when a team (beyond developers) can embrace it. I've worked side by side with someone whose a die hard SVN'r and from a purist standpoint, I see the beauty in it (I need a bit more, out of my SS, but it surely suffices). So, why are such smarties not running away from Visual Source Safe? surely if it was so bad, it would've have been realized by now, and I would not be sitting here with this simple old, Check In, Check Out, Version Resistant, Label Intensive system. But here I am... I would love to drop an argument that would be the end all argument, but if it's a matter of opinion and personal experience, there seems to be too much leeway for keeping VSS. UPDATE: I guess the best case is to have the VSS supporters check other people's experiences and draw from that until we (please no) experience the breaking factor ourselves. Until then, i wont be engaging in a discussion to migrate off of VSS.. UPDATE 11-2012: So i was able to convince everyone at my work place that since MS is sun downing Visual Source Safe it might be time to migrate over to TFS. I was able to convince them and have recently upgraded our team to Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012. The migration was fairly painless, had to run analyze.exe which found a bunch of errors (not sure they'll ever affect the project) and then manually run the VSSConverter.exe. Again, painless, except it took 16 hours to migrate 5 years worth of everything.. and now we're on TFS.. much more integrated.. much more cooler.. so all in all, VSS served it's purpose for years without hick-up. There were no horror stories and Visual Source Save as source control worked just fine. so to all the nay sayers (me included). there's nothing wrong with using VSS. i wouldnt start a new project with it, and i would definitely consider migrating to TFS. (it's really not super difficult and a new "wizard" type converter is due out any day now so migrating should be painless). But from my experience, it worked just fine and got the job done.

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• Data Formatters temporarily unavailable

  - by iphone newbie

  I'm currently working on an iPhone app. This app has a login screen, also a signup screen. After the user has successfully signed up, I dismiss the signup view, then the app automatically logs in using the created account. After which, the login view is dismissed, showing the main view. I'm trying to modify this by immediately dismissing the login view, since I already have the account details of the user when the signup is successful. Basically, the ideal flow is: after the user successfully signs up, I save the username and password in a singleton class, then dismiss the signup view. When I get to the parent view (which is the login screen), I have a variable that checks if there was a successful signup. If that variable is true, I want to immediately dismiss the login view. However, I come across this error message: Data Formatters temporarily unavailable, will re-try after a 'continue'. (Unknown error loading shared library "/Developer/usr/lib/libXcodeDebuggerSupport.dylib") I'm not really sure why this happens. I have no problems dismissing the login view when I go through the actual login procedure - which of course also dismisses the login view if the user inputs a correct username and password. I'm not exactly sure, but I'm starting to think that the iPhone cannot handle dismissing 2 view controllers almost at the same time. Is it possible that I'm dismissing the login view too quickly? Is that a factor? Is there anyway for me to be able to dismiss 2 view controllers almost simultaneously without coming across this error message?

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• Support for nested model and class validation with ASP.NET MVC 2.0

  - by Diep-Vriezer

  I'm trying to validate a model containing other objects with validation rules using the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes was hoping the default MVC implementation would suffice: var obj = js.Deserialize(json, objectInfo.ObjectType); if(!TryValidateModel(obj)) { // Handle failed model validation. } The object is composed of primitive types but also contains other classes which also use DataAnnotications. Like so: public class Entry { [Required] public Person Subscriber { get; set; } [Required] public String Company { get; set; } } public class Person { public String FirstName { get; set;} [Required] public String Surname { get; set; } } The problem is that the ASP.NET MVC validation only goes down 1 level and only evaluates the properties of the top level class, as can be read on digitallycreated.net/Blog/54/deep-inside-asp.net-mvc-2-model-metadata-and-validation. Does anyone know an elegant solution to this? I've tried xVal, but they seem to use a non-recursive pattern (http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2009/01/10/xval-a-validation-framework-for-aspnet-mvc/). Someone must have run into this problem before right? Nesting objects in your model doesn't seem so weird if you're designing a web service.

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• Silverlight and Encryption, how to store/generate they key/iv pair?

  - by cmaduro

  I have a Silverlight app that connects to a php webservice. I want to encrypt the communication between the webservice and the Silverlight client. I'm not relying on SSL. I'm encrypting/decrypting the POST string myself using AES 256bit Key and IV. The big questions then are: How do I generate a random unique key/iv pair in PHP. How do I share this key/iv pair between the web service and silverlight client in a secure way. It seems impossible without having some kind of hard coded key or iv on the client. Which would compromise security. This is a public website, there are no logins. Just the requirement of secure communication. I can hard code the seed for the key/iv (which is hashed with SHA256 with a time stamp salt and then assigned as the key or iv) in PHP source code, that's on the server so that is pretty safe. However on the client the seed for the key/iv pair would be visible, if it is hard coded. Further more using a time stamp as the basis for uniqueness/randomness is definitely not ok, since timestamps are predictable. It does however provide a common factor between the C# code and the PHP code. The only other option that I can think of would be to have a 3rd service involved that provides the key/iv to the Silverlight client, as well as the php webservice. This of course start the cycle anew, with the question of how to store the credentials for accessing the key/iv distribution service on the Silverlight client. Sounds like the solution is then asymmetric encryption, since sensitive data will be viewed only on the administrative back end of the website. Unfortunately Silverlight has no asymmetric encryption classes. The solution? Roll my own Diffie-Hellman key exchange! Plug that key into AES256!

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• Good examples of MapServer / OpenLayers

  - by MarkJ

  I want to convince some clients to use MapServer and OpenLayers. Please can anyone suggest attractive websites to show off the possiblities! The clients will be impressed by: A density map (otherwise known as a heat map, colour-shaded grid coverage, contour plot...). The ability for the user to download the underlying data for the density map, restricted to the area being viewed, in some format such as netCDF. Standard OpenLayers stuff. Zooming, panning, scale bar, overview map... Different base layers. Could be WMS, Google, Bing... Searching for a placename, map is panned to display the place. MapServer.org seems to be down right now :( But from memory their examples didn't have the "wow" factor. The OpenLayers examples demonstrate only one or two features per example - I want something to wow the clients by showing all the capabilities in one example. PS If you have good examples that use some other open source tools, post them by all means. But just JavaScript please: customer says no rich client.

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• Migrating complex SVN branch hierarchy to Mercurial

  - by Christian Hang

  Our team has been using SVN for managing an application of decent size and over time a rather complex hierarchy of branches and tags has built up, which is following the basic standard layout for SVN repositories, but is more nested: |-trunk |-branches | |-releases | | |-releaseA | | `-releaseB | `-features | |-featureX | `-featureY |-tags |-releaseA | |-beta | `-RTP `-releaseB |-beta `-RTP (The feature branches are obviously temporary branches but we have to take them into consideration as it won't be feasible to close all of them at once in the near future) For several reasons but primarily because merges have been becoming an increasing pain, we are considering to switch to Mercurial. The main problem we are currently facing is migrating the existing code base without losing our history. I've tried several migration tools (e.g., yasvn2hg, hg convert and svn2hg) with yasvn2hg being the most promising, but none of them seem to be able to deal with nested hierarchies but they all assume that branches and tags are organized in one flat directory respectively. The choice between named branches or clones as the conversion target of old SVN branches is not a limiting factor in this case, as either solution would be appreciated. We are currently experimenting with both options and how they would fit into our current processes but haven't decided on one yet. I'd obviously be interested in recommendations or experiences with similar setups concerning that issue as well. So, what is the best way to convert a nested SVN branch hierarchy like this to Mercurial? Converting one branch at a time into a separate repository would be quite annoying and I am not sure if that would be the right approach in the first place, depending on how the tools handle historic merges and need to be aware of all other branches?

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• Why is the UpdatePanel Response size changing on alternate requests?

  - by Decker

  We are using UpdatePanel in a small portion of a large page and have noticed a performance problem where IE7 becomes CPU bound and the control within the UpdatePanel takes a long time (upwards of 30 seconds) to render. We also noticed that Firefox does not seem to suffer from these delays. We ran both Fiddler (for IE) and Firebug (for Firefox) and noticed that the real problem lied with the amount of data being returned in update panel responses. Within the UpdatePanel control there is a table that contains a number of ListBox controls. The real problem is that EVERY OTHER TIME the response (from making ListBox selections) alternates from 30K to 430K. Firefox handles the 400+K response in a reasonable amount of time. For whatever reason, IE7 goes CPU bound while it is presumably processing this data. So irrespective of whether or not we should be using an UpdatePanel or not, we'd like to figure out why every other async postback response is larger by a factor of more than 10 than the previous one. When the response is in the 30K range, IE updates the display within a second. On the alternate times, the response time is well over 10 times longer. Any idea why this alternating behavior should be happening with an UpdatePanel?

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• What's the "best" database for embedded?

  - by mawg

  I'm an embedded guy, not a database guy. I've been asked to redesign an existing system which has bottlenecks in several places. The embedded device is based around an ARM 9 processor running at 220mHz. There should be a database of 50k entries (may increase to 250k) each with 1k of data (max 8 filed). That's approximate - I can try to get more precise figures if necessary. They are currently using SqlLite 2 and planning to move to SqlLite 3. Without starting a flame war - I am a complete d/b newbie just seeking advice - is that the "best" decision? I realize that this might be a "how long is a piece of string?" question, but any pointers woudl be greatly welcomed. I don't mind doing a lot of reading & research, but just hoped that you could get me off to a flying start. Thanks. p.s Again, a total rewrite, might not even stick with embedded Linux, but switch to eCos, don't worry too much about one time conversion between d/b formats. Oh, and accesses should be infrequent, at most one every few seconds. edit: ok, it seems they have 30k entries (may reach 100k or more) of only 5 or 6 fields each, but at least 3 of them can be a search key for a record. They are toying with "having no d/b at all, since the data are so simple", but it seems to me that with multiple keys, we couldn't use fancy stuff like a quicksort() type search (recursive, binary search). Any thoughts on "no d/b", just data-structures? Btw, one key is 800k - not sure how well SqlLite handles that (maybe with "no d/b" I have to hash that 800k to something smaller?)

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• Why use short-circuit code?

  - by Tim Lytle

  Related Questions: Benefits of using short-circuit evaluation, Why would a language NOT use Short-circuit evaluation?, Can someone explain this line of code please? (Logic & Assignment operators) There are questions about the benefits of a language using short-circuit code, but I'm wondering what are the benefits for a programmer? Is it just that it can make code a little more concise? Or are there performance reasons? I'm not asking about situations where two entities need to be evaluated anyway, for example: if($user->auth() AND $model->valid()){ $model->save(); } To me the reasoning there is clear - since both need to be true, you can skip the more costly model validation if the user can't save the data. This also has a (to me) obvious purpose: if(is_string($userid) AND strlen($userid) > 10){ //do something }; Because it wouldn't be wise to call strlen() with a non-string value. What I'm wondering about is the use of short-circuit code when it doesn't effect any other statements. For example, from the Zend Application default index page: defined('APPLICATION_PATH') || define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application')); This could have been: if(!defined('APPLICATION_PATH')){ define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application')); } Or even as a single statement: if(!defined('APPLICATION_PATH')) define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application')); So why use the short-circuit code? Just for the 'coolness' factor of using logic operators in place of control structures? To consolidate nested if statements? Because it's faster?

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• Binary Trees in Scheme

  - by Javier

  Consider the following BNF defining trees of numbers. Notice that a tree can either be a leaf, a node-1 with one subtrees, or a node-2 with two subtrees. tree ::= (’leaf number) | (’node-1 tree) | (’node-2 tree tree) a. Write a template for recursive procedures on these trees. b. Define the procedure (leaf-count t) that returns the number of leaves in t > (leaf-count ’(leaf 5)) 1 > (leaf-count ’(node-2 (leaf 25) (leaf 17))) 2 > (leaf-count ’(node-1 (node-2 (leaf 4) (node-2 (leaf 2) (leaf 3))))) 3 Here's what I have so far: ;define what a leaf, node-1, and node-2 is (define leaf list) (define node-1 list) (define node-2 list) ;procedure to decide if a list is a leaf or a node (define (leaf? tree) (number? (car tree))) (define (node? tree) (pair? (car tree))) (define (leaf-count tree) (cond ((null? tree) 0) ((number? tree) 0) ((leaf? tree) 1) (else (+ (leaf-count (car tree)) (leaf-count (cdr tree)))))) It looks like it should run just fine, but when I try to run it using a simple test case like (leaf-count '(leaf 5)) I get the following error message: car: expects argument of type pair; given leaf What does this error message mean? I am defining a leaf as a list. But for some reason, it's not seeing that and gives me that error message.

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• Shift-reduce: when to stop reducing?

  - by Joey Adams

  I'm trying to learn about shift-reduce parsing. Suppose we have the following grammar, using recursive rules that enforce order of operations, inspired by the ANSI C Yacc grammar: S: A; P : NUMBER | '(' S ')' ; M : P | M '*' P | M '/' P ; A : M | A '+' M | A '-' M ; And we want to parse 1+2 using shift-reduce parsing. First, the 1 is shifted as a NUMBER. My question is, is it then reduced to P, then M, then A, then finally S? How does it know where to stop? Suppose it does reduce all the way to S, then shifts '+'. We'd now have a stack containing: S '+' If we shift '2', the reductions might be: S '+' NUMBER S '+' P S '+' M S '+' A S '+' S Now, on either side of the last line, S could be P, M, A, or NUMBER, and it would still be valid in the sense that any combination would be a correct representation of the text. How does the parser "know" to make it A '+' M So that it can reduce the whole expression to A, then S? In other words, how does it know to stop reducing before shifting the next token? Is this a key difficulty in LR parser generation?

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• MS SQL server and Trees

  - by Julian

  Im looking for some way of extrating data form a tree table as defined below. Table Tree Defined as :- TreeID uniqueidentifier TreeParent uniqueidentifier TreeCode varchar(50) TreeDesc varchar(100) Data some (23k rows), Parent Refs back into ID in table The following SQL renders the whole tree (takes arround 2 mins 30) I need to do the following. 1) Render each Tree Node with its LVL 1 parent 2) Render all nodes that have a Description that matches a TreeDesc like 'SomeText%' 3) Render all parent nodes that are for a single tree id. Items 2 and 3 take 2mins30 so this needs to be a lot faster! Item 1, just cant work out how to do it with out killing SQL or taking forever any sugestions would be helpfull Thanks Julian WITH TreeCTE(TreeCode, TreeDesc, depth, TreeParent, TreeID) AS ( -- anchor member SELECT cast('' as varchar(50)) as TreeCode , cast('Trees' as varchar(100)) as TreeDesc, cast('0' as Integer) as depth, cast('00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' as uniqueidentifier) as TreeParent, cast('00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' as uniqueidentifier) as TreeID UNION ALL -- recursive member SELECT s.TreeCode, s.TreeDesc, cte.depth+1, isnull(s.TreeParent, cast('00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' as uniqueidentifier)), isnull(s.TreeID, cast('00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' as uniqueidentifier)) FROM pdTrees AS S JOIN TreeCTE AS cte ON isnull(s.TreeParent, cast('00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' as uniqueidentifier)) = isnull( cte.TreeID , cast('00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' as uniqueidentifier)) ) -- outer query SELECT s.TreeID, s.TreeCode, s.TreeDesc, s.depth, s.TreeParent FROM TreeCTE s

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• Fitting Gaussian KDE in numpy/scipy in Python

  - by user248237

  I am fitting a Gaussian kernel density estimator to a variable that is the difference of two vectors, called "diff", as follows: gaussian_kde_covfact(diff, smoothing_param) -- where gaussian_kde_covfact is defined as: class gaussian_kde_covfact(stats.gaussian_kde): def __init__(self, dataset, covfact = 'scotts'): self.covfact = covfact scipy.stats.gaussian_kde.__init__(self, dataset) def _compute_covariance_(self): '''not used''' self.inv_cov = np.linalg.inv(self.covariance) self._norm_factor = sqrt(np.linalg.det(2*np.pi*self.covariance)) * self.n def covariance_factor(self): if self.covfact in ['sc', 'scotts']: return self.scotts_factor() if self.covfact in ['si', 'silverman']: return self.silverman_factor() elif self.covfact: return float(self.covfact) else: raise ValueError, \ 'covariance factor has to be scotts, silverman or a number' def reset_covfact(self, covfact): self.covfact = covfact self.covariance_factor() self._compute_covariance() This works, but there is an edge case where the diff is a vector of all 0s. In that case, I get the error: File "/srv/pkg/python/python-packages/python26/scipy/scipy-0.7.1/lib/python2.6/site-packages/scipy/stats/kde.py", line 334, in _compute_covariance self.inv_cov = linalg.inv(self.covariance) File "/srv/pkg/python/python-packages/python26/scipy/scipy-0.7.1/lib/python2.6/site-packages/scipy/linalg/basic.py", line 382, in inv if info>0: raise LinAlgError, "singular matrix" numpy.linalg.linalg.LinAlgError: singular matrix What's a way to get around this? In this case, I'd like it to return a density that's essentially peaked completely at a difference of 0, with no mass everywhere else. thanks.

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• Why is TransactionScope operation is not valid?

  - by Cragly

  I have a routine which uses a recursive loop to insert items into a SQL Server 2005 database The first call which initiates the loop is enclosed within a transaction using TransactionScope. When I first call ProcessItem the myItem data gets inserted into the database as expected. However when ProcessItem is called from either ProcessItemLinks or ProcessItemComments I get the following error. “The operation is not valid for the state of the transaction” I am running this in debug with VS 2008 on Windows 7 and have the MSDTC running to enable distributed transactions. The code below isn’t my production code but is set out exactly the same. The AddItemToDatabase is a method on a class I cannot modify and uses a standard ExecuteNonQuery() which creates a connection then closes and disposes once completed. I have looked at other posting on here and the internet and still cannot resolve this issue. Any help would be much appreciated. using (TransactionScope processItem = new TransactionScope()) { foreach (Item myItem in itemsList) { ProcessItem(myItem); } processItem.Complete(); } private void ProcessItem(Item myItem) { AddItemToDatabase(myItem); ProcessItemLinks(myItem); ProcessItemComments(myItem); } private void ProcessItemLinks(Item myItem) { foreach (Item link in myItem.Links) { ProcessItem(link); } } private void ProcessItemComments(Item myItem) { foreach (Item comment in myItem.Comments) { ProcessItem(comment); } } Here is top part of the stack trace. Unfortunatly I cant show the build up to this point as its company sensative information which I can not disclose. Hope this is enough information. at System.Transactions.TransactionState.EnlistPromotableSinglePhase(InternalTransaction tx, IPromotableSinglePhaseNotification promotableSinglePhaseNotification, Transaction atomicTransaction) at System.Transactions.Transaction.EnlistPromotableSinglePhase(IPromotableSinglePhaseNotification promotableSinglePhaseNotification) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.EnlistNonNull(Transaction tx) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.Enlist(Transaction tx) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.Activate(Transaction transaction) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionInternal.ActivateConnection(Transaction transaction) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open()

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