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  • How to get a good picture of the health of a level-based game from analytics?

    - by ADB
    I am designing a level-based game where the user completes the level 1, then 2, 3 and so on. There are 200 levels and each is rather short: 60-ish seconds. I am tracking Each played, completed (cleared for the first time), failed and cleared level Milestones: number of players to reach level 1, 5, 10, etc. Also for number of failed and played levels. Separate new players from returning ones. However, I still find it difficult to get a clear picture of what is going on from the stats. So what are the best practices for determining where I am losing players?

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  • Help with off-game tasks

    - by peoro
    I love writing video games for fun, and often do that. I noticed, anyway, that most of the times implementing the gameplay itself doesn't take too much time to me (maybe because I already did that plenty times and know what and how to do for most of the things), but when I try to implement off-game stuff I get lost. By off-game I mean what is not gameplay: menus, cutscenes between levels, world map to choose levels, saving and loading status, managing replays ... Only tried to write a few of these a few times, but always failed; that's why I never really completed and distributed a game. Are these common problems? And where should I start to do this? Where could I find some books/guides about such stuff?

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  • Testing for Adjacent Cells In a Multi-level Grid

    - by Steve
    I'm designing an algorithm to test whether cells on a grid are adjacent or not. The catch is that the cells are not on a flat grid. They are on a multi-level grid such as the one drawn below. Level 1 (Top Level) | - - - - - | | A | B | C | | - - - - - | | D | E | F | | - - - - - | | G | H | I | | - - - - - | Level 2 | -Block A- | -Block B- | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | | - - - - - | - - - - - | | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ... | - - - - - | - - - - - | | 7 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 9 | | - - - - - | - - - - - | | -Block D- | -Block E- | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | | - - - - - | - - - - - | | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 6 | ... | - - - - - | - - - - - | | 7 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 9 | | - - - - - | - - - - - | . . . . . . This diagram is simplified from my actual need but the concept is the same. There is a top level block with many cells within it (level 1). Each block is further subdivided into many more cells (level 2). Those cells are further subdivided into level 3, 4 and 5 for my project but let's just stick to two levels for this question. I'm receiving inputs for my function in the form of "A8, A9, B7, D3". That's a list of cell Ids where each cell Id has the format (level 1 id)(level 2 id). Let's start by comparing just 2 cells, A8 and A9. That's easy because they are in the same block. private static RelativePosition getRelativePositionInTheSameBlock(String v1, String v2) { RelativePosition relativePosition; if( v1-v2 == -1 ) { relativePosition = RelativePosition.LEFT_OF; } else if (v1-v2 == 1) { relativePosition = RelativePosition.RIGHT_OF; } else if (v1-v2 == -BLOCK_WIDTH) { relativePosition = RelativePosition.TOP_OF; } else if (v1-v2 == BLOCK_WIDTH) { relativePosition = RelativePosition.BOTTOM_OF; } else { relativePosition = RelativePosition.NOT_ADJACENT; } return relativePosition; } An A9 - B7 comparison could be done by checking if A is a multiple of BLOCK_WIDTH and whether B is (A-BLOCK_WIDTH+1). Either that or just check naively if the A/B pair is 3-1, 6-4 or 9-7 for better readability. For B7 - D3, they are not adjacent but D3 is adjacent to A9 so I can do a similar adjacency test as above. So getting away from the little details and focusing on the big picture. Is this really the best way to do it? Keeping in mind the following points: I actually have 5 levels not 2, so I could potentially get a list like "A8A1A, A8A1B, B1A2A, B1A2B". Adding a new cell to compare still requires me to compare all the other cells before it (seems like the best I could do for this step is O(n)) The cells aren't all 3x3 blocks, they're just that way for my example. They could be MxN blocks with different M and N for different levels. In my current implementation above, I have separate functions to check adjacency if the cells are in the same blocks, if they are in separate horizontally adjacent blocks or if they are in separate vertically adjacent blocks. That means I have to know the position of the two blocks at the current level before I call one of those functions for the layer below. Judging by the complexity of having to deal with mulitple functions for different edge cases at different levels and having 5 levels of nested if statements. I'm wondering if another design is more suitable. Perhaps a more recursive solution, use of other data structures, or perhaps map the entire multi-level grid to a single-level grid (my quick calculations gives me about 700,000+ atomic cell ids). Even if I go that route, mapping from multi-level to single level is a non-trivial task in itself.

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  • What bugs apply to the different FindBugs reportLevels?

    - by Daniel H
    According to the Ant task, the report level is a low/medium/high setting that would look for bugs of different criticallity levels. However, there isn't anything I could find that explains which of the bugs apply to these different reporting levels. Is there somewhere that provides this, even if it is something I need to look at within the source?

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  • How to create a level with curved lines with cocos2d + Box2d on the iphone?

    - by Steven
    I'd like to create a game that has levels such as this: http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7294/picdq.png The Player moves "flies" through the level and mustn't collide with the walls. How can I create such levels? I found that piece of software: http://www.sapusmedia.com/levelsvg/ It's not that cheap, so I wonder whether there is another way to create such a level as shown in the picture above...?

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  • How to set background dynamically

    - by Mythili
    In cocos2d i am developing game with 5 levels. In my option scene am giving an option to select a sprite among 4 spritesbackground, If a sprite is selected, it should fixed as background for all levels. How to accomplish this

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  • How do I map to a parent or child in the same table with NHibernate?

    - by adolfojp
    Lets suppose that I have a Category table with a column that holds the id of a parent or child category from the same table. This design would allow me to have unlimited levels of Categories, or unlimited levels in a thread, for example. How can I map this relationship with NHibernate? Are there any disadvantages or warnings that I should take into consideration when doing this?

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  • regex help using repreated groups

    - by Chris H
    I'm trying to match rc-update -s output in python. m = re.match(r"^\s*(\w+)\s*\|{\s*(\w+)\s*}*$", " network | level1 level2 leveln ") but m is always None the hard part for me is getting the regex to match the n levels. I thought that using {}* would match the n levels, but as soon as I add the {} nothing matches. thanks.

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  • Enterprise Process Maps: A Process Picture worth a Million Words

    - by raul.goycoolea
    p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }h1 { margin-top: 0.33in; margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(54, 95, 145); page-break-inside: avoid; }h1.western { font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14pt; }h1.cjk { font-family: "DejaVu Sans"; font-size: 14pt; }h1.ctl { font-size: 14pt; } Getting Started with Business Transformations A well-known proverb states that "A picture is worth a thousand words." In relation to Business Process Management (BPM), a credible analyst might have a few questions. What if the picture was taken from some particular angle, like directly overhead? What if it was taken from only an inch away or a mile away? What if the photographer did not focus the camera correctly? Does the value of the picture depend on who is looking at it? Enterprise Process Maps are analogous in this sense of relative value. Every BPM project (holistic BPM kick-off, enterprise system implementation, Service-oriented Architecture, business process transformation, corporate performance management, etc.) should be begin with a clear understanding of the business environment, from the biggest picture representations down to the lowest level required or desired for the particular project type, scope and objectives. The Enterprise Process Map serves as an entry point for the process architecture and is defined: the single highest level of process mapping for an organization. It is constructed and evaluated during the Strategy Phase of the Business Process Management Lifecycle. (see Figure 1) Fig. 1: Business Process Management Lifecycle Many organizations view such maps as visual abstractions, constructed for the single purpose of process categorization. This, in turn, results in a lesser focus on the inherent intricacies of the Enterprise Process view, which are explored in the course of this paper. With the main focus of a large scale process documentation effort usually underlying an ERP or other system implementation, it is common for the work to be driven by the desire to "get to the details," and to the type of modeling that will derive near-term tangible results. For instance, a project in American Pharmaceutical Company X is driven by the Director of IT. With 120+ systems in place, and a lack of standardized processes across the United States, he and the VP of IT have decided to embark on a long-term ERP implementation. At the forethought of both are questions, such as: How does my application architecture map to the business? What are each application's functionalities, and where do the business processes utilize them? Where can we retire legacy systems? Well-developed BPM methodologies prescribe numerous model types to capture such information and allow for thorough analysis in these areas. Process to application maps, Event Driven Process Chains, etc. provide this level of detail and facilitate the completion of such project-specific questions. These models and such analysis are appropriately carried out at a relatively low level of process detail. (see figure 2) Fig. 2: The Level Concept, Generic Process HierarchySome of the questions remaining are ones of documentation longevity, the continuation of BPM practice in the organization, process governance and ownership, process transparency and clarity in business process objectives and strategy. The Level Concept in Brief Figure 2 shows a generic, four-level process hierarchy depicting the breakdown of a "Process Area" into progressively more detailed process classifications. The number of levels and the names of these levels are flexible, and can be fit to the standards of the organization's chosen terminology or any other chosen reference model that makes logical sense for both short and long term process description. It is at Level 1 (in this case the Process Area level), that the Enterprise Process Map is created. This map and its contained objects become the foundation for a top-down approach to subsequent mapping, object relationship development, and analysis of the organization's processes and its supporting infrastructure. Additionally, this picture serves as a communication device, at an executive level, describing the design of the business in its service to a customer. It seems, then, imperative that the process development effort, and this map, start off on the right foot. Figuring out just what that right foot is, however, is critical and trend-setting in an evolving organization. Key Considerations Enterprise Process Maps are usually not as living and breathing as other process maps. Just as it would be an extremely difficult task to change the foundation of the Sears Tower or a city plan for the entire city of Chicago, the Enterprise Process view of an organization usually remains unchanged once developed (unless, of course, an organization is at a stage where it is capable of true, high-level process innovation). Regardless, the Enterprise Process map is a key first step, and one that must be taken in a precise way. What makes this groundwork solid depends on not only the materials used to construct it (process areas), but also the layout plan and knowledge base of what will be built (the entire process architecture). It seems reasonable that care and consideration are required to create this critical high level map... but what are the important factors? Does the process modeler need to worry about how many process areas there are? About who is looking at it? Should he only use the color pink because it's his boss' favorite color? Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, these are all valid considerations that may just require a bit of structure. Below are Three Key Factors to consider when building an Enterprise Process Map: Company Strategic Focus Process Categorization: Customer is Core End-to-end versus Functional Processes Company Strategic Focus As mentioned above, the Enterprise Process Map is created during the Strategy Phase of the Business Process Management Lifecycle. From Oracle Business Process Management methodology for business transformation, it is apparent that business processes exist for the purpose of achieving the strategic objectives of an organization. In a prescribed, top-down approach to process development, it must be ensured that each process fulfills its objectives, and in an aggregated manner, drives fulfillment of the strategic objectives of the company, whether for particular business segments or in a broader sense. This is a crucial point, as the strategic messages of the company must therefore resound in its process maps, in particular one that spans the processes of the complete business: the Enterprise Process Map. One simple example from Company X is shown below (see figure 3). Fig. 3: Company X Enterprise Process Map In reviewing Company X's Enterprise Process Map, one can immediately begin to understand the general strategic mindset of the organization. It shows that Company X is focused on its customers, defining 10 of its process areas belonging to customer-focused categories. Additionally, the organization views these end-customer-oriented process areas as part of customer-fulfilling value chains, while support process areas do not provide as much contiguous value. However, by including both support and strategic process categorizations, it becomes apparent that all processes are considered vital to the success of the customer-oriented focus processes. Below is an example from Company Y (see figure 4). Fig. 4: Company Y Enterprise Process Map Company Y, although also a customer-oriented company, sends a differently focused message with its depiction of the Enterprise Process Map. Along the top of the map is the company's product tree, overarching the process areas, which when executed deliver the products themselves. This indicates one strategic objective of excellence in product quality. Additionally, the view represents a less linear value chain, with strong overlaps of the various process areas. Marketing and quality management are seen as a key support processes, as they span the process lifecycle. Often, companies may incorporate graphics, logos and symbols representing customers and suppliers, and other objects to truly send the strategic message to the business. Other times, Enterprise Process Maps may show high level of responsibility to organizational units, or the application types that support the process areas. It is possible that hundreds of formats and focuses can be applied to an Enterprise Process Map. What is of vital importance, however, is which formats and focuses are chosen to truly represent the direction of the company, and serve as a driver for focusing the business on the strategic objectives set forth in that right. Process Categorization: Customer is Core In the previous two examples, processes were grouped using differing categories and techniques. Company X showed one support and three customer process categorizations using encompassing chevron objects; Customer Y achieved a less distinct categorization using a gradual color scheme. Either way, and in general, modeling of the process areas becomes even more valuable and easily understood within the context of business categorization, be it strategic or otherwise. But how one categorizes their processes is typically more complex than simply choosing object shapes and colors. Previously, it was stated that the ideal is a prescribed top-down approach to developing processes, to make certain linkages all the way back up to corporate strategy. But what about external influences? What forces push and pull corporate strategy? Industry maturity, product lifecycle, market profitability, competition, etc. can all drive the critical success factors of a particular business segment, or the company as a whole, in addition to previous corporate strategy. This may seem to be turning into a discussion of theory, but that is far from the case. In fact, in years of recent study and evolution of the way businesses operate, cross-industry and across the globe, one invariable has surfaced with such strength to make it undeniable in the game plan of any strategy fit for survival. That constant is the customer. Many of a company's critical success factors, in any business segment, relate to the customer: customer retention, satisfaction, loyalty, etc. Businesses serve customers, and so do a business's processes, mapped or unmapped. The most effective way to categorize processes is in a manner that visualizes convergence to what is core for a company. It is the value chain, beginning with the customer in mind, and ending with the fulfillment of that customer, that becomes the core or the centerpiece of the Enterprise Process Map. (See figure 5) Fig. 5: Company Z Enterprise Process Map Company Z has what may be viewed as several different perspectives or "cuts" baked into their Enterprise Process Map. It has divided its processes into three main categories (top, middle, and bottom) of Management Processes, the Core Value Chain and Supporting Processes. The Core category begins with Corporate Marketing (which contains the activities of beginning to engage customers) and ends with Customer Service Management. Within the value chain, this company has divided into the focus areas of their two primary business lines, Foods and Beverages. Does this mean that areas, such as Strategy, Information Management or Project Management are not as important as those in the Core category? No! In some cases, though, depending on the organization's understanding of high-level BPM concepts, use of category names, such as "Core," "Management" or "Support," can be a touchy subject. What is important to understand, is that no matter the nomenclature chosen, the Core processes are those that drive directly to customer value, Support processes are those which make the Core processes possible to execute, and Management Processes are those which steer and influence the Core. Some common terms for these three basic categorizations are Core, Customer Fulfillment, Customer Relationship Management, Governing, Controlling, Enabling, Support, etc. End-to-end versus Functional Processes Every high and low level of process: function, task, activity, process/work step (whatever an organization calls it), should add value to the flow of business in an organization. Suppose that within the process "Deliver package," there is a documented task titled "Stop for ice cream." It doesn't take a process expert to deduce the room for improvement. Though stopping for ice cream may create gain for the one person performing it, it likely benefits neither the organization nor, more importantly, the customer. In most cases, "Stop for ice cream" wouldn't make it past the first pass of To-Be process development. What would make the cut, however, would be a flow of tasks that, each having their own value add, build up to greater and greater levels of process objective. In this case, those tasks would combine to achieve a status of "package delivered." Figure 3 shows a simple example: Just as the package can only be delivered (outcome of the process) without first being retrieved, loaded, and the travel destination reached (outcomes of the process steps), some higher level of process "Play Practical Joke" (e.g., main process or process area) cannot be completed until a package is delivered. It seems that isolated or functionally separated processes, such as "Deliver Package" (shown in Figure 6), are necessary, but are always part of a bigger value chain. Each of these individual processes must be analyzed within the context of that value chain in order to ensure successful end-to-end process performance. For example, this company's "Create Joke Package" process could be operating flawlessly and efficiently, but if a joke is never developed, it cannot be created, so the end-to-end process breaks. Fig. 6: End to End Process Construction That being recognized, it is clear that processes must be viewed as end-to-end, customer-to-customer, and in the context of company strategy. But as can also be seen from the previous example, these vital end-to-end processes cannot be built without the functionally oriented building blocks. Without one, the other cannot be had, or at least not in a complete and organized fashion. As it turns out, but not discussed in depth here, the process modeling effort, BPM organizational development, and comprehensive coverage cannot be fully realized without a semi-functional, process-oriented approach. Then, an Enterprise Process Map should be concerned with both views, the building blocks, and access points to the business-critical end-to-end processes, which they construct. Without the functional building blocks, all streams of work needed for any business transformation would be lost mess of process disorganization. End-to-end views are essential for utilization in optimization in context, understanding customer impacts, base-lining all project phases and aligning objectives. Including both views on an Enterprise Process Map allows management to understand the functional orientation of the company's processes, while still providing access to end-to-end processes, which are most valuable to them. (See figures 7 and 8). Fig. 7: Simplified Enterprise Process Map with end-to-end Access Point The above examples show two unique ways to achieve a successful Enterprise Process Map. The first example is a simple map that shows a high level set of process areas and a separate section with the end-to-end processes of concern for the organization. This particular map is filtered to show just one vital end-to-end process for a project-specific focus. Fig. 8: Detailed Enterprise Process Map showing connected Functional Processes The second example shows a more complex arrangement and categorization of functional processes (the names of each process area has been removed). The end-to-end perspective is achieved at this level through the connections (interfaces at lower levels) between these functional process areas. An important point to note is that the organization of these two views of the Enterprise Process Map is dependent, in large part, on the orientation of its audience, and the complexity of the landscape at the highest level. If both are not apparent, the Enterprise Process Map is missing an opportunity to serve as a holistic, high-level view. Conclusion In the world of BPM, and specifically regarding Enterprise Process Maps, a picture can be worth as many words as the thought and effort that is put into it. Enterprise Process Maps alone cannot change an organization, but they serve more purposes than initially meet the eye, and therefore must be designed in a way that enables a BPM mindset, business process understanding and business transformation efforts. Every Enterprise Process Map will and should be different when looking across organizations. Its design will be driven by company strategy, a level of customer focus, and functional versus end-to-end orientations. This high-level description of the considerations of the Enterprise Process Maps is not a prescriptive "how to" guide. However, a company attempting to create one may not have the practical BPM experience to truly explore its options or impacts to the coming work of business process transformation. The biggest takeaway is that process modeling, at all levels, is a science and an art, and art is open to interpretation. It is critical that the modeler of the highest level of process mapping be a cognoscente of the message he is delivering and the factors at hand. Without sufficient focus on the design of the Enterprise Process Map, an entire BPM effort may suffer. For additional information please check: Oracle Business Process Management.

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  • Video on Architecture and Code Quality using Visual Studio 2012&ndash;interview with Marcel de Vries and Terje Sandstrom by Adam Cogan

    - by terje
    Find the video HERE. Adam Cogan did a great Web TV interview with Marcel de Vries and myself on the topics of architecture and code quality.  It was real fun participating in this session.  Although we know each other from the MVP ALM community,  Marcel, Adam and I haven’t worked together before. It was very interesting to see how we agreed on so many terms, and how alike we where thinking.  The basics of ensuring you have a good architecture and how you could document it is one thing.  Also, the same agreement on the importance of having a high quality code base, and how we used the Visual Studio 2012 tools, and some others (NDepend for example)  to measure and ensure that the code quality was where it should be.  As the tools, methods and thinking popped up during the interview it was a lot of “Hey !  I do that too!”.  The tools are not only for “after the fact” work, but we use them during the coding.  That way the tools becomes an integrated part of our coding work, and helps us to find issues we may have overlooked.  The video has a bunch of call outs, pinpointing important things to remember. These are also listed on the corresponding web page. I haven’t seen that touch before, but really liked this way of doing it – it makes it much easier to spot the highlights.  Titus Maclaren and Raj Dhatt from SSW have done a terrific job producing this video.  And thanks to Lei Xu for doing the camera and recording job.  Thanks guys ! Also, if you are at TechEd Amsterdam 2012, go and listen to Adam Cogan in his session on “A modern architecture review: Using the new code review tools” Friday 29th, 10.15-11.30 and Marcel de Vries session on “Intellitrace, what is it and how can I use it to my benefit” Wednesday 27th, 5-6.15 The highlights points out some important practices.  I’ll elaborate on a few of them here: Add instructions on how to compile the solution.  You do this by adding a text file with instructions to the solution, and keep it under source control.  These instructions should contain what is needed on top of a standard install of Visual Studio.  I do a lot of code reviews, and more often that not, I am not even able to compile the program, because they have used some tool or library that needs to be installed.  The same applies to any new developer who enters into the team, so do this to increase your productivity when the team changes, or a team member switches computer. Don’t forget to document what you have to configure on the computer, the IIS being a common one. The more automatic you can do this, the better.  Use NuGet to get down libraries. When the text document gets more than say, half a page, with a bunch of different things to do, convert it into a powershell script instead.  The metrics warning levels.  These are very conservatively set by Microsoft.  You rarely see anything but green, and besides, you should have color scales for each of the metrics.  I have a blog post describing a more appropriate set of levels, based on both research work and industry “best practices”.  The essential limits are: Cyclomatic complexity and coupling:  Higher numbers are worse On method levels: Green :  From 0 to 10 Yellow:  From 10 to 20  (some say 15).   Acceptable, but have a look to see if there is something unneeded here. Red: From 20 to 40:   Action required, get these down. Bleeding Red: Above 40   This is the real red alert.  Immediate action!  (My invention, as people have asked what do I do when I have cyclomatic complexity of 150.  The only answer I could think of was: RUN! ) Maintainability index:  Lower numbers are worse, scale from 0 to 100. On method levels: Green:  60 to 100 Yellow:  40 – 60.    You will always have methods here too, accept the higher ones, take a look at those who are down to the lower limit.  Check up against the other metrics.) Red:  20 – 40:  Action required, fix these. Bleeding red:  Below 20.  Immediate action required. When doing metrics analysis, you should leave the generated code out.  You do this by adding attributes, unfortunately Microsoft has “forgotten” to add these to all their stuff, so you might have to add them to some of the code.  It most cases it can be done so that it is not overwritten by a new round of code generation.  Take a look a my blog post here for details on how to do that. Class level metrics might also be useful, at least for coupling and maintenance.  But it is much more difficult to set any fixed limits on those.  Any metric aggregations on higher level tend to be pretty useless, as the number of methods vary pretty much, and there are little science on what number of methods can be regarded as good or bad.  NDepend have a recommendation, but they say it may vary too.  And in these days of data binding, the number might be pretty high, as properties counts as methods.  However, if you take the worst case situations, classes with more than 20 methods are suspicious, and coupling and cyclomatic complexity go red above 20, so any classes with more than 20x20 = 400 for these measures should be checked over. In the video we mention the SOLID principles, coined by “Uncle Bob” (Richard Martin). One of them, the Dependency Inversion principle we discuss in the video.  It is important to note that this principle is NOT on whether you should use a Dependency Inversion Container or not, it is about how you design the interfaces and interactions between your classes.  The Dependency Inversion Container is just one technique which is based on this principle, but which main purpose is to isolate things you would like to change at runtime, for example if you implement a plug in architecture.  Overuse of a Dependency Inversion Container is however, NOT a good thing.  It should be used for a purpose and not as a general DI solution.  The general DI solution and thinking however is useful far beyond the DIC.   You should always “program to an abstraction”, and not to the concreteness.  We also talk a bit about the GRASP patterns, a term coined by Craig Larman in his book Applying UML and design patterns. GRASP patterns stand for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns and describe fundamental principles of object design and responsibility assignment.  What I find great with these patterns is that they is another way to focus on the responsibility of a class.  One of the things I most often found that is broken in software designs, is that the class lack responsibility, and as a result there are a lot of classes mucking around in the internals of the other classes.  We also discuss the term “Code Smells”.  This term was invented by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler when they worked with Fowler’s “Refactoring” book. A code smell is a set of “bad” coding practices, which are the drivers behind a corresponding set of refactorings.  Here is a good list of the smells, and their corresponding refactor patterns. See also this.

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  • July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 22 (sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats)

    - by Tamarick Hill
    The sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats Dynamic Management Function is used to return information about the fragmentation levels, page counts, depth, number of levels, record counts, etc. about the indexes on your database instance. One row is returned for each level in a given index, which we will discuss more later. The function takes a total of 5 input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, (4) partition_number, and (5) the mode of the scan level that you would like to run. Let’s use this function with our AdventureWorks2012 database to better illustrate the information it provides. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) As you can see from the result set, there is a lot of beneficial information returned from this DMF. The first couple of columns in the result set (database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, index_type_desc, alloc_unit_type_desc) are either self-explanatory or have been explained in our previous blog sessions so I will not go into detail about these at this time. The next column in the result set is the index_depth which represents how deep the index goes. For example, If we have a large index that contains 1 root page, 3 intermediate levels, and 1 leaf level, our index depth would be 5. The next column is the index_level which refers to what level (of the depth) a particular row is referring to. Next is probably one of the most beneficial columns in this result set, which is the avg_fragmentation_in_percent. This column shows you how fragmented a particular level of an index may be. Many people use this column within their index maintenance jobs to dynamically determine whether they should do REORG’s or full REBUILD’s of a given index. The fragment count represents the number of fragments in a leaf level while the avg_fragment_size_in_pages represents the number of pages in a fragment. The page_count column tells you how many pages are in a particular index level. From my result set above, you see the the remaining columns all have NULL values. This is because I did not specify a ‘mode’ in my query and as a result it used the ‘LIMITED’ mode by default. The LIMITED mode is meant to be lightweight so it does collect information for every column in the result set. I will re-run my query again using the ‘DETAILED’ mode and you will see we now have results for these rows. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL, ‘DETAILED’)   From the remaining columns, you see we get even more detailed information such as how many records are in a particular index level (record_count). We have a column for ghost_record_count which represents the number of records that have been marked for deletion, but have not physically been removed by the background ghost cleanup process. We later see information on the MIN, MAX, and AVG record size in bytes. The forwarded_record_count column refers to records that have been updated and now no longer fit within the row on the page anymore and thus have to be moved. A forwarded record is left in the original location with a pointer to the new location. The last column in the result set is the compressed_page_count column which tells you how many pages in your index have been compressed. This is a very powerful DMF that returns good information about the current indexes in your system. However, based on the mode you select, it could be a very resource intensive function so be careful with how you use it. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188917.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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  • Loops inside loops

    - by cozzy
    Hi, I'd like to find easier way to write loops inside loops. Here is example code of 3 levels of 'for' loops: int level = 0; int value = 0; bool next = false; for (int i0 = 0; i0 < 6; i0++) { level = 0; value = i0; method(); if (next) for (int i1 = 0; i1 < 6; i1++) { level = 1; value = i1; method(); if (next) for (int i2 = 0; i2 < 6; i2++) { level = 2; value = i2; method(); if (next) { //Do somethnig } } } } private void method() { //use int 'level' and 'value' //determine bool 'next' } I wonder if it's possible to write the same thing different way. To set number of levels(number of loops) and loop repeats. In this case levels = 3; repeats = 6;. I need it because I am using more than 20 loops inside themselves and than the code is not comprehensible. I hope my explanation was ok and thanks for help.

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  • How do I create a multi-level TreeView using F#?

    - by TwentyMiles
    I would like to display a directory structure using Gtk# widgets through F#, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to translate TreeViews into F#. Say I had a directory structure that looks like this: Directory1 SubDirectory1 SubDirectory2 SubSubDirectory1 SubDirectory3 Directory2 How would I show this tree structure with Gtk# widgets using F#? EDIT: gradbot's was the answer I was hoping for with a couple of exceptions. If you use ListStore, you loose the ability to expand levels, if you instead use : let musicListStore = new Gtk.TreeStore([|typeof<String>; typeof<String>|]) you get a layout with expandable levels. Doing this, however, breaks the calls to AppendValues so you have to add some clues for the compiler to figure out which overloaded method to use: musicListStore.AppendValues (iter, [|"Fannypack" ; "Nu Nu (Yeah Yeah) (double j and haze radio edit)"|]) Note that the columns are explicitly passed as an array. Finally, you can nest levels even further by using the ListIter returned by Append Values let iter = musicListStore.AppendValues ("Dance") let subiter = musicListStore.AppendValues (iter, [|"Fannypack" ; "Nu Nu (Yeah Yeah) (double j and haze radio edit)"|]) musicListStore.AppendValues (subiter, [|"Some Dude"; "Some Song"|]) |> ignore

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  • R + Bioconductor : combining probesets in an ExpressionSet

    - by Mike Dewar
    Hi, First off, this may be the wrong Forum for this question, as it's pretty darn R+Bioconductor specific. Here's what I have: library('GEOquery') GDS = getGEO('GDS785') cd4T = GDS2eSet(GDS) cd4T <- cd4T[!fData(cd4T)$symbol == "",] Now cd4T is an ExpressionSet object which wraps a big matrix with 19794 rows (probesets) and 15 columns (samples). The final line gets rid of all probesets that do not have corresponding gene symbols. Now the trouble is that most genes in this set are assigned to more than one probeset. You can see this by doing gene_symbols = factor(fData(cd4T)$Gene.symbol) length(gene_symbols)-length(levels(gene_symbols)) [1] 6897 So only 6897 of my 19794 probesets have unique probeset - gene mappings. I'd like to somehow combine the expression levels of each probeset associated with each gene. I don't care much about the actual probe id for each probe. I'd like very much to end up with an ExpressionSet containing the merged information as all of my downstream analysis is designed to work with this class. I think I can write some code that will do this by hand, and make a new expression set from scratch. However, I'm assuming this can't be a new problem and that code exists to do it, using a statistically sound method to combine the gene expression levels. I'm guessing there's a proper name for this also but my googles aren't showing up much of use. Can anyone help?

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  • how to determine if a character vector is a valid numeric or integer vector

    - by Andrew Barr
    I am trying to turn a nested list structure into a dataframe. The list looks similar to the following (it is serialized data from parsed JSON read in using the httr package). myList <- list(object1 = list(w=1, x=list(y=0.1, z="cat")), object2 = list(w=2, x=list(y=0.2, z="dog"))) unlist(myList) does a great job of recursively flattening the list, and I can then use lapply to flatten all the objects nicely. flatList <- lapply(myList, FUN= function(object) {return(as.data.frame(rbind(unlist(object))))}) And finally, I can button it up using plyr::rbind.fill myDF <- do.call(plyr::rbind.fill, flatList) str(myDF) #'data.frame': 2 obs. of 3 variables: #$ w : Factor w/ 2 levels "1","2": 1 2 #$ x.y: Factor w/ 2 levels "0.1","0.2": 1 2 #$ x.z: Factor w/ 2 levels "cat","dog": 1 2 The problem is that w and x.y are now being interpreted as character vectors, which by default get parsed as factors in the dataframe. I believe that unlist() is the culprit, but I can't figure out another way to recursively flatten the list structure. A workaround would be to post-process the dataframe, and assign data types then. What is the best way to determine if a vector is a valid numeric or integer vector?

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  • Dynamic Hierarchical Javascript Object Loop

    - by user1684586
    var treeData = {"name" : "A", "children" : [ {"name" : "B", "children": [ {"name" : "C", "children" :[]} ]} ]}; THE ARRAY BEFORE SHOULD BE EMPTY. THE ARRAY AFTER SHOULD BE POPULATED DEPENDING ON THE NUMBER OF NODES NEEDED THAT WILL BE DEFINED FROM A DYNAMIC VALUE THAT IS PASSED. I would like to build the hierarchy dynamically with each node created as a layer/level in the hierarchy having its own array of nodes. THIS SHOULD FORM A TREE STRUCTURE. This is hierarchy structure is described in the above code. This code has tree level simple for demonstrating the layout of the hierarchy of values. There should be a root node, and an undefined number of nodes and levels to make up the hierarchy size. Nothing should be fixed besides the root node. I do not need to read the hierarchy, I need to construct it. The array should start {"name" : "A", "children" : []} and every new node as levels would be created {"name" : "A", "children" : [HERE-{"name" : "A", "children" : []}]}. In the child array, going deeper and deeper. Basically the array should have no values before the call, except maybe the root node. After the function call, the array should comprise of the required nodes of a number that may vary with every call. Every child array will contain one or more node values. There should be a minimum of 2 node levels, including the root. It should initially be a Blank canvas, that is no predefined array values.

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  • Android - overlay small check icon over specific image in gridview or change border

    - by oscar
    I've just asked a question about an hour ago, while waiting for replies, I've thought maybe I can achieve what I want differently. I was thinking of changing the image but it would be better if I could perhaps overlay something over the top of complete levels in the gridview i.e a small tick icon At the moment, when a level has been completed I am storing that with sharedpreferences So I have a gridView layout to display images that represent levels. Let's just say for this example I have 20 levels. When one level is complete is it possible to overlay the tick icon or somehow highlight the level image. Maybe change the border of the image?? Here are the image arrays I use int[] imageIDs = { R.drawable.one, R.drawable.two, R.drawable.three, R.drawable.four, R.drawable.five, R.drawable.six etc....... and then I have my code to set the images in gridView. Obviously there is more code in between. public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { ImageView imageView; if (convertView == null) { imageView = new ImageView(context); imageView.setLayoutParams(new GridView.LayoutParams(140, 140)); imageView.setScaleType(ImageView.ScaleType.CENTER_CROP); imageView.setPadding(5, 5, 5, 5); } else { imageView = (ImageView) convertView; } imageView.setImageResource(imageIDs[position]); return imageView; would it be possible to do any of the above, even the border method would be fine. Thanks for any help

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  • How do i set the Transaction Isolation in EJB?

    - by Nitesh Panchal
    Hello, I am not able to find a way to set TransactionIsolation in ejb. Can anybody tell me how do i set it? I am using persistence. I have looked the following classes : EntityManager , EntityManagerFactory, UserTransaction. None of them seems to have any method like setTransactionIsolation or such. Do we need to change persistence.xml? I just read a book named Mastering EJB 3.0 4th edition. They gave a full 10 page theory about Isolation level that this problems occur and that occurs and such things but at the end they gave this paragraph :- "As we now know, the EJB standard does not deal with isolation levels directly, and rightly so. EJB is a component specification. It defines the behavior and contracts of a business component with clients and middleware infrastructure (containers) such that the component can be rendered as various middleware services properly. EJBs therefore are transactional components that interact with resource managers, such as the JDBC resource manager or JMS resource manager, via JTS, as part of a transaction. They are not, hence, resource components in themselves. Since isolation levels are very specific to the behavior and capabilities of the underlying resources, they should therefore be specified at the resource API levels. " What exactly does it mean? What is meant by resource level APIs? Please help me. If persistence has no way to set Isolation Level then why do they give such huge theory in an EJB book and make it heavy in weight unnecessarily :(

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  • SPSS - sum of squares change radically with slight model changes in ANOVA??

    - by Pat
    I have noticed that the sum of squares in my models can change fairly radically with even the slightest adjustment to my models???? Is this normal???? I'm using SPSS 16, and both models presented below used the same data and variables with only one small change - categorizing one of the variables as either a 2 level or 3 level variable. Details - using a 2 x 2 x 6 mixed model ANOVA with the 6 being the repeated measure i get the following in the between group analysis ------------------------------------------------------------ Source | Type III SS | df | MS | F | Sig ------------------------------------------------------------ intercept | 4086.46 | 1 | 4086.46 | 104.93 | .000 X | 224.61 | 1 | 224.61 | 5.77 | .019 Y | 2.60 | 1 | 2.60 | .07 | .80 X by Y | 19.25 | 1 | 19.25 | .49 | .49 Error | 2570.40 | 66 | 38.95 | Then, when I use the exact same data but a slightly different model in which variable Y has 3 levels instead of 2 levels I get the following ------------------------------------------------------------ Source | Type III SS | df | MS | F | Sig ------------------------------------------------------------ intercept | 3603.88 | 1 | 3603.88 | 90.89 | .000 X | 171.89 | 1 | 171.89 | 4.34 | .041 Y | 19.23 | 2 | 9.62 | .24 | .79 X by Y | 17.90 | 2 | 17.90 | .80 | .80 Error | 2537.76 | 64 | 39.65 | I don't understand why variable X would have a different sum of squares simply because variable Y gets devided up into 3 levels instead of 2. This is also the case in the within groups analysis too. Please help me understand :D Thank you in advance Pat

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  • find, excluding dir, not descending into dir, AND using maxdepth and mindepth

    - by user1680819
    This is RHEL 5.6 and GNU find 4.2.27. I am trying to exclude a directory from find, and want to make sure that directory isn't descended into. I've seen plenty of posts saying -prune will do this - and it does. I can run this command: find . -type d -name "./.snapshot*" -prune -o -print and it works. I run it through strace and verify it is NOT descending into .snapshot. I also want to find directories ONLY at a certain level. I can use mindepth and maxdepth to do this: find . -maxdepth 8 -mindepth 8 -type d and it gives me all the dirs 8 levels down, including what's in .snapshot. If I combine the prune and mindepth and maxdepth options: find . -maxdepth 8 -mindepth 8 -type d \( -path "./.snapshot/*" -prune -o -print \) the output is right - I see all the dirs 8 levels down except for what's in .snapshot, but if I run that find through strace, I see that .snapshot is still being descended into - to levels 1 through 8. I've tried a variety of different combinations, moving the precedence parens around, reording expression components - everything that yields the right output still descends into .snapshot. I see in the man page that -prune doesn't work with -depth, but doesn't say anything about mindepth and maxdepth. Can anyone offer any advice? Thanks... Bill

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  • ggplot: showing % instead of counts in charts of categorical variables

    - by wishihadabettername
    I'm plotting a categorical variable and instead of showing the counts for each category value, I'm looking for a way to get ggplot to display the percentage of values in that category. Of course, it is possible to create another variable with the calculated percentage and plot that one, but I have to do it several dozens of times and I hope to achieve that in one command. I was experimenting with something like qplot (mydataf) + stat_bin(aes(n=nrow(mydataf), y=..count../n)) + scale_y_continuous(formatter="percent") but I must be using it incorrectly, as I got errors. To easily reproduce the setup, here's a simplified example: mydata <- c ("aa", "bb", null, "bb", "cc", "aa", "aa", "aa", "ee", null, "cc"); mydataf <- factor(mydata); qplot (mydataf); #this shows the count, I'm looking to see % displayed. In the real case I'll probably use ggplot instead of qplot, but the right way to use stat_bin still eludes me. Thank you. UPDATE: I've also tried these four approaches: ggplot(mydataf, aes(y = (..count..)/sum(..count..))) + scale_y_continuous(formatter = 'percent'); ggplot(mydataf, aes(y = (..count..)/sum(..count..))) + scale_y_continuous(formatter = 'percent') + geom_bar(); ggplot(mydataf, aes(x = levels(mydataf), y = (..count..)/sum(..count..))) + scale_y_continuous(formatter = 'percent'); ggplot(mydataf, aes(x = levels(mydataf), y = (..count..)/sum(..count..))) + scale_y_continuous(formatter = 'percent') + geom_bar(); but all 4 give: Error: ggplot2 doesn't know how to deal with data of class factor The same error appears for the simple case of ggplot (data=mydataf, aes(levels(mydataf))) + geom_bar() so it's clearly something about how ggplot interacts with a single vector. I'm scratching my head, googling for that error gives a single result.

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  • McAfee Secure Messaging Service / Postini: false positive?

    - by Martin
    Hello, I'm puzzled by this email message that gets quarantined by McAfee Secure Messaging Service (it's based on Postini) for no reason that I can think of. Here are the Postini headers: X-pstn-2strike: clear X-pstn-neptune: 0/0/0.00/0 X-pstn-levels: (S: 0.02932/98.63596 CV:99.9000 FC:95.5390 LC:95.5390 R:95.9108 P:95.9108 M:97.0282 C:98.6951 ) X-pstn-settings: 3 (1.0000:1.0000) s cv gt3 gt2 gt1 r p m c X-pstn-addresses: from [db-null] X-pstn-disposition: quarantine I read the docs (http://www.mcafee-sms.com/webdocs/admin%5Fee%5Fmcafee/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=MACAFFHelp&file=header%5Foverview.html#951634) and in short, the x-pstn-settings header tells me that NONE of the filters was triggered, but the x-pstn-levels header tells me that the final score (0.02932) is low enough to classify the email as bulk/spam. Can anyone explain to me why the final score is so low when none of the filters were triggered? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to prevent this from happening? Regards, Martin

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