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• Where can I find the videos for MIX 2010?

  - by tom greene

  Are they online? Never mind, found it: http://live.visitmix.com/

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• PHP: How to begin testing large, existing codebase, and test for regression on production site?

  - by anonymous coward

  I'm in charge of at least one large body of existing PHP code, that desperately needs tests, and as well I need some method of checking the production site for errors. I've been working with PHP for many years, but am unfortunately new to testing. (Sorry!). While writing tests for code that has predictable outcomes seems easy enough, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around just how I can test the live site, to ensure proper output. I know that in a test environment, I could set up the database in a known state... but are there proper methods or techniques for testing a live site? Where should I begin? [I am aware of PHPUnit and SimpleTest, but haven't chosen one over the other yet]

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• JQuery (1.4.2)/Firefox (3.6.3) - .before and .after not working on div

  - by user355561

  I am trying to have a title bar appear when the user clicks on a box. It works perfectly in I.E. 8.0 but not at all in firefox 3.6.3. HTML [code] @import url('style.css'); blah blah blah save changes [/code] Javascript [code] $(document).ready(function(){ $("#edit2").live('click',function(){ if($("#menu").length == 0){ $("#edit2").before(''); } if($("#menu2").length == 0){ $("#edit2").after(''); } this.contentEditable = true; this.focus(); }); $("#edit2").live('blur',function(){ $("#menu").remove(); //$("#menu2").remove(); this.contentEditable = false; }); }); [/code] Could anyone suggest why it's not working? I have managed to use similar code to add/remove new table rows in both browser but I just can't see why this doesn't also work.

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• How do you deal with non-logical people in the workplace?

  - by unrealtrip

  I ask this because you are probably the best audience I could think of. I program for a living, and it goes hand in hand with my personality type which is likely true for most of us, as such I live and work in the world of logic and logical decisions. A problem I have is in dealing with people that live and work in a world of emotional responses and reactions that typically make no sense, or have any real bearing on any given situation. What is the trick to dealing with these people? It is nothing but an act of futility, leading to utter exasperation dealing with people like this when attempting to get them to understand some pretty basic concepts. How do you do it?

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• refactor this javascript code

  - by nathanvda

  I have two click-events, that are nearly similar, but not quite. I am wondering how to refactor them best: $('.remove_fields.dynamic').live('click', function(e) { var $this = $(this); var after_removal_trigger_node = $this.closest(".nested-fields").parent(); trigger_removal_callback($this); e.preventDefault(); $this.closest(".nested-fields").remove(); trigger_after_removal_callback(after_removal_trigger_node); }); $('.remove_fields.existing').live('click', function(e) { var $this = $(this); var after_removal_trigger_node = $this.closest(".nested-fields").parent(); trigger_removal_callback($this); e.preventDefault(); $this.prev("input[type=hidden]").val("1"); $this.closest(".nested-fields").hide(); trigger_after_removal_callback(after_removal_trigger_node); }); As you can tell there is a fair bit of overlap. I am wondering what the best/nicest way would be to refactor this code.

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• APC on Windows makes server terminate connection

  - by vanneto

  Hello. I have a slight problem and cannot for the life of me figure out what is happening. I am running a Linux machine on a server with APC enabled. Everything works fine. Now when I enable APC on Windows the server starts terminating the connection. You know, the "Site currently unavailable" message Firefox spits out. I tried the access logs, error logs and there is nothing there to indicate an error. How could APC influence on a server like this? BTW: I have a CMS on my local server/live server. On the live server it works great with APC. On the dev server the connection terminates. The strange thing is, simpler scripts execute just fine. The CMS is using CakePHP. Any help would be very appreciated.

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• jquery selector for td in a table

  - by ooo

  i want to get a event that will fire when i click inside a td of a html table i had this: ('td').live('click', function() { alert($(this).attr('id')); }); which works but this fires inside the 'th" cells as well (not sure why). is there any selector that just fires inside td's and not th's. I tried this: ('tbody td').live('click', function() { alert($(this).attr('id')); }); but that didn't seems to stop this firing for the th's.

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• Hide / show content via CSS:hover (or JS if need be)

  - by Chris

  I have the following html: <li> <span class="one">Stuff here</span> <span class="two">More stuff</span> </li> .one { display: block; } .two { display: none; } What is the easiest method, preferably CSS only, to hide one and show two when the mouse rolls over the <li> container. If this cannot be done via CSS and only Javascript, I would prefer jQuery via something like live() as the content is updated live and do not wish to constantly rebind manually. EDIT: I forgot to mention that this has to work in IE6 :/

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• how to implement drag and drop mechanism in file upload can anyone help me?

  - by Mac

  while going through LIVE IT magazine of this month i founded that google introduced this mechanism in GMAIL so i also want to do tha same can some one help me

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• Best way to ignore less specific click event with jquery?

  - by acidzombie24

  I have the code below. The main code is in the 2nd function however the first is called which is interfering with the more specific a.One code. Whats the best way to not run code in the first function if the div i click is a .main .a.One event? $('.main .a').live('click', function () { alert('first'); //2 lines of code }); $('.main .a.One').live('click', function () { alert('second'); //lots of logic });

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• Button stops working after loading div via ajax

  - by asovgir

  I have two divs on the page: main div and secondary, which loads a separate html page using ajax. All the links within the main div trigerred by a click event continue to work correctly and reference the appropriate content, but none of the jquery outside this div works (such as the navigation). Here's my jQuery: var url; $('.main a').live('click',function() { url = $(this).attr('href'); $('.secondary').load(url); return false; }); Can anyone help me why this isn't working? I think I am supposed to trigger a callback event but I am not sure how to do so. I know this question has been asked multiple times already (usually suggesting to use .live() or .on()), but none of those solutions seemed to work for me.

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• Javascript Headscratcher

  - by Jason

  I have the following in a javascript file (using jQuery as well): $(function(){ $('#mybutton').live('click',myObject.someMethod); }); var myObject = { someMethod: function() { //do stuff } }; I get a js error on pageload that says "myObject isn't defined". However, when I change the event handler in the doc.ready function to: $('#mybutton').live('click', function(){ myObject.someMethod(); }); it works! I have code structured like the first example all over my codebase that works. W T F??

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• jQuery Hover/Click event on same DIV (Mobile Devices)

  - by Aaron

  I've written a simple script that displays circles over an image. When you hover over a circle it expands to a tooltip. $('div.tooltip').live({mouseenter:function(e){ ... animate tooltip open; },mouseleave:function(e){ ... animate tooltip closed; }}); When you click on the open tooltip it displays a lightbox with more information. $('div.tooltip').live('click',function(e){ ... open related lightbox }); Everything works as it should, except on mobile devices. When I tap the circle to open the tooltip it fires the click event and completely bypasses the mouseenter/mouseexit events. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks

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• IIS7 web farm - local or shared content?

  - by rbeier

  We're setting up an IIS7 web farm with two servers. Should each server have its own local copy of the content, or should they pull content directly from a UNC share? What are the pros and cons of each approach? We currently have a single live server WEB1, with content stored locally on a separate partition. A job periodically syncs WEB1 to a standby server WEB2, using robocopy for content and msdeploy for config. If WEB1 goes down, Nagios notifies us, and we manually run a script to move the IP addresses to WEB2's network interface. Both servers are actually VMs running on separate VMWare ESX 4 hosts. The servers are domain-joined. We have around 50-60 live sites on WEB1 - mostly ASP.NET, with a few that are just static HTML. Most are low-traffic "microsites". A few have moderate traffic, but none are massive. We'd like to change this so both WEB1 and WEB2 are actively serving content. This is mainly for reliability - if WEB1 goes down, we don't want to have to manually intervene to fail things over. Spreading the load is also nice, but the load is not high enough right now for us to need this. We're planning to configure our firewall to balance traffic across the two servers. It will detect when a server goes down and will send all the traffic to the remaining live server. We're planning to use sticky sessions for now... eventually we may move to SQL Server session state and stateless load balancing. But we need a way for the servers to share content. We were originally planning to move all the content to a UNC share. Our storage provider says they can set up a highly available SMB share for us. So if we go the UNC route, the storage shouldn't be a single point of failure. But we're wondering about the downsides to this approach: We'll need to change the physical paths for each site and virtual directory. There are also some projects that have absolute paths in their web.config files - we'll have to update those as well. We'll need to create a domain user for the web servers to access the share, and grant that user appropriate permissions. I haven't looked into this yet - I'm not sure if the application pool identity needs to be changed to this user, or if there's another way to tell IIS to use this account when connecting to the share. Sites will no longer be able to access their content if there's ever an Active Directory problem. In general, it just seems a lot more complicated, with more moving parts that could break. Our storage provider would create a volume for us on their redundant SAN. If I understand correctly, this SAN volume would be mounted on a VM running in their redundant VMWare environment; this VM would then expose the SMB share to our web servers. On the other hand, a benefit of the shared content approach is that we'd only need to deploy code to one place, and there would never be a temporary inconsistency between multiple copies of the content. This thread is pretty interesting, though some of these people are working at a much larger scale. I've just been discussing content so far, but we also need to think about configuration. I don't know if we can just use DFS replication for the applicationHost.config and other files, or if it's best to use the shared configuration feature with the config on a UNC share. What do you think? Thanks for your help, Richard

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• nginx: problem configuring a proxy_pass

  - by Ofer Bar

  I'm converting a web app from apache to nginx. In apache's httpd.conf I have: ProxyPass /proxy/ http:// ProxyPassReverse /proxy/ http:// The idea is the client send this url: http://web-server-domain/proxy/login-server-addr/loginUrl.php?user=xxx&pass=yyy and the web server calls: http://login-server-addr/loginUrl.php?user=xxx&pass=yyy My nginx.conf is attached below and it is not working. At the moment it looks like it is calling the server, but returning an application error. This seems promising but any attempt to debug this failed! I can't trace any of the calls as nginx refuses to place them in the error file. Also, placing echo statement on the login server did not help either which is weird. The nginx documentation isn't very helpful about this. Any suggestion on how to configure a proxy_pass? Thanks! user nginx; worker_processes 1; #error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log notice; #error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log info; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main; sendfile on; #tcp_nopush on; #keepalive_timeout 0; keepalive_timeout 65; #gzip on; # # The default server # server { rewrite_log on; listen 80; server_name _; #charset koi8-r; #access_log logs/host.access.log main; #root /var/www/live/html; index index.php index.html index.htm; location ~ ^/proxy/(.*$) { #location /proxy/ { # rewrite ^/proxy(.*) http://$1 break; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_buffering off; proxy_pass http://$1; #proxy_pass "http://173.231.134.36/messages_2.7.0/loginUser.php?userID=ofer.fly%40gmail.com&password=y4HTD93vrshMNcy2Qr5ka7ia0xcaa389f4885f59c9"; break; } location / { root /var/www/live/html; #if ( $uri ~ ^/proxy/(.*) ) { # proxy_pass http://$1; # break; #} #try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php; } error_page 404 /404.html; #location = /404.html { # root /usr/share/nginx/html; #} # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; #location = /50x.html { # root /usr/share/nginx/html; #} # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80 # #location ~ \.php$ { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { #root html; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; #fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/share/nginx/html$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/live/html$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # #location ~ /\.ht { # deny all; #} } # Load config files from the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; }

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• Python in command line runs the wrong version?

  - by Deflect

  I have several versions of Python installed on a Windows 7 computer. I want to run Python 2.7 by default, but for whatever reason, typing python in the command line runs Python version 2.4.5. I've tried adding C:\Python27 to my system path variable as per this question, and manually combed my path variable it to make sure Python 2.4.5 wasn't tossed in there by mistake, but that didn't fix the issue. I have to type in C:\Python27\python.exe every time I want to access the correct version of python I want. What other places can I check? How can I make the command line use the correct version of python? I also found this but it's not for windows. [EDIT] My path (separated by semicolons): C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live; C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live; C:\Windows\system32; C:\Windows; C:\Windows\System32\Wbem; C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\; C:\Program Files\Dell\DW WLAN Card\Driver; C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Roxio Shared\DLLShared\; C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Shared; c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\; c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\; c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\; C:\Program Files\TortoiseGit\bin; C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_26\bin; C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_21 ; C:\Program Files\IVI Foundation\VISA\Win64\Bin\; C:\Program Files (x86)\IVI Foundation\VISA\WinNT\Bin\; C:\Program Files (x86)\IVI Foundation\VISA\WinNT\Bin; C:\Program Files\WPIJavaCV\OpenCV_2.2.0\bin; C:\Program Files (x86)\LilyPond\usr\bin; C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin; C:\Program Files (x86)\doxygen\bin; C:\Program Files (x86)\Graphviz 2.28\bin; C:\Users\Michael\bin\Misc\cppcheck\; C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd; C:\Python27\python.exe; C:\Ruby192\bin; C:\Users\Michael\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin; C:\Python27\; [EDIT 2] Running python spews this out: 'import site' failed; used -v for traceback Python 2.4.5 (#1, Jul 22 2011, 02:01:04) [GCC 4.1.1] on mingw32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> ...and running python --version (as suggested below) seems to be an unrecognized option. (I also tried running python -v, and it appears that Python 2.4 is trying to import libraries from C:\Python27\Lib, and failed due to a syntax error when it encountered a with statement, which was added in later version, I think) Also, I'm not sure if it's significant or not, but the above python version says something about GCC and mingw32, while running C:\python27\python.exe shows this: Python 2.7.2 (default, Jun 12 2011, 15:08:59) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>>

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• Severe mysqldump performance degradation using Centos Linux, 8GB PAE and MySQL 5.0.77

  - by Duncan Harris

  We use MySQL 5.0.77 on CentOS 5.5 on VMWare: Linux dev.ic.soschildrensvillages.org.uk 2.6.18-194.11.4.el5PAE #1 SMP Tue Sep 21 05:48:23 EDT 2010 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux We have recently upgraded from 4GB RAM to 8GB. When we did this the time of our mysqldump overnight backup jumped from under 10 minutes to over 2 hours. It also caused unresponsiveness on our plone based web site due to database load. The dump is using the optimized mysqldump format and is spooled directly through a socket to another server. Any ideas on what we could do to fix gratefully appreciated. Would a MySQL upgrade help? Anything we can do to MySQL config? Anything we can do to Linux config? Or do we have to add another server or go to 64-bit? We ran a previous (non-virtual) server on 6GB PAE and didn't notice a similar issue. This was on same MySQL version, but Centos 4.4. Server config file: [mysqld] port=3307 socket=/tmp/mysql_live.sock wait_timeout=31536000 interactive_timeout=31536000 datadir=/var/mysql/live/data user=mysql max_connections = 200 max_allowed_packet = 64M table_cache = 2048 binlog_cache_size = 128K max_heap_table_size = 32M sort_buffer_size = 2M join_buffer_size = 2M lower_case_table_names = 1 innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend innodb_buffer_pool_size=1G innodb_log_file_size=300M innodb_log_buffer_size=8M innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1 innodb_file_per_table [mysqldump] # Do not buffer the whole result set in memory before writing it to # file. Required for dumping very large tables quick max_allowed_packet = 64M [mysqld_safe] # Increase the amount of open files allowed per process. Warning: Make # sure you have set the global system limit high enough! The high value # is required for a large number of opened tables open-files-limit = 8192 Server variables: mysql> show variables; +---------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +---------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | auto_increment_increment | 1 | | auto_increment_offset | 1 | | automatic_sp_privileges | ON | | back_log | 50 | | basedir | /usr/local/mysql-5.0.77-linux-i686-glibc23/ | | binlog_cache_size | 131072 | | bulk_insert_buffer_size | 8388608 | | character_set_client | latin1 | | character_set_connection | latin1 | | character_set_database | latin1 | | character_set_filesystem | binary | | character_set_results | latin1 | | character_set_server | latin1 | | character_set_system | utf8 | | character_sets_dir | /usr/local/mysql-5.0.77-linux-i686-glibc23/share/mysql/charsets/ | | collation_connection | latin1_swedish_ci | | collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci | | collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci | | completion_type | 0 | | concurrent_insert | 1 | | connect_timeout | 10 | | datadir | /var/mysql/live/data/ | | date_format | %Y-%m-%d | | datetime_format | %Y-%m-%d %H:%i:%s | | default_week_format | 0 | | delay_key_write | ON | | delayed_insert_limit | 100 | | delayed_insert_timeout | 300 | | delayed_queue_size | 1000 | | div_precision_increment | 4 | | keep_files_on_create | OFF | | engine_condition_pushdown | OFF | | expire_logs_days | 0 | | flush | OFF | | flush_time | 0 | | ft_boolean_syntax | + -><()~*:""&| | | ft_max_word_len | 84 | | ft_min_word_len | 4 | | ft_query_expansion_limit | 20 | | ft_stopword_file | (built-in) | | group_concat_max_len | 1024 | | have_archive | YES | | have_bdb | NO | | have_blackhole_engine | YES | | have_compress | YES | | have_crypt | YES | | have_csv | YES | | have_dynamic_loading | YES | | have_example_engine | NO | | have_federated_engine | YES | | have_geometry | YES | | have_innodb | YES | | have_isam | NO | | have_merge_engine | YES | | have_ndbcluster | DISABLED | | have_openssl | DISABLED | | have_ssl | DISABLED | | have_query_cache | YES | | have_raid | NO | | have_rtree_keys | YES | | have_symlink | YES | | hostname | app.ic.soschildrensvillages.org.uk | | init_connect | | | init_file | | | init_slave | | | innodb_additional_mem_pool_size | 1048576 | | innodb_autoextend_increment | 8 | | innodb_buffer_pool_awe_mem_mb | 0 | | innodb_buffer_pool_size | 1073741824 | | innodb_checksums | ON | | innodb_commit_concurrency | 0 | | innodb_concurrency_tickets | 500 | | innodb_data_file_path | ibdata1:10M:autoextend | | innodb_data_home_dir | | | innodb_adaptive_hash_index | ON | | innodb_doublewrite | ON | | innodb_fast_shutdown | 1 | | innodb_file_io_threads | 4 | | innodb_file_per_table | ON | | innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit | 1 | | innodb_flush_method | | | innodb_force_recovery | 0 | | innodb_lock_wait_timeout | 50 | | innodb_locks_unsafe_for_binlog | OFF | | innodb_log_arch_dir | | | innodb_log_archive | OFF | | innodb_log_buffer_size | 8388608 | | innodb_log_file_size | 314572800 | | innodb_log_files_in_group | 2 | | innodb_log_group_home_dir | ./ | | innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct | 90 | | innodb_max_purge_lag | 0 | | innodb_mirrored_log_groups | 1 | | innodb_open_files | 300 | | innodb_rollback_on_timeout | OFF | | innodb_support_xa | ON | | innodb_sync_spin_loops | 20 | | innodb_table_locks | ON | | innodb_thread_concurrency | 8 | | innodb_thread_sleep_delay | 10000 | | interactive_timeout | 31536000 | | join_buffer_size | 2097152 | | key_buffer_size | 8384512 | | key_cache_age_threshold | 300 | | key_cache_block_size | 1024 | | key_cache_division_limit | 100 | | language | /usr/local/mysql-5.0.77-linux-i686-glibc23/share/mysql/english/ | | large_files_support | ON | | large_page_size | 0 | | large_pages | OFF | | lc_time_names | en_US | | license | GPL | | local_infile | ON | | locked_in_memory | OFF | | log | OFF | | log_bin | OFF | | log_bin_trust_function_creators | OFF | | log_error | | | log_queries_not_using_indexes | OFF | | log_slave_updates | OFF | | log_slow_queries | OFF | | log_warnings | 1 | | long_query_time | 10 | | low_priority_updates | OFF | | lower_case_file_system | OFF | | lower_case_table_names | 1 | | max_allowed_packet | 67108864 | | max_binlog_cache_size | 4294963200 | | max_binlog_size | 1073741824 | | max_connect_errors | 10 | | max_connections | 200 | | max_delayed_threads | 20 | | max_error_count | 64 | | max_heap_table_size | 33554432 | | max_insert_delayed_threads | 20 | | max_join_size | 18446744073709551615 | | max_length_for_sort_data | 1024 | | max_prepared_stmt_count | 16382 | | max_relay_log_size | 0 | | max_seeks_for_key | 4294967295 | | max_sort_length | 1024 | | max_sp_recursion_depth | 0 | | max_tmp_tables | 32 | | max_user_connections | 0 | | max_write_lock_count | 4294967295 | | multi_range_count | 256 | | myisam_data_pointer_size | 6 | | myisam_max_sort_file_size | 2146435072 | | myisam_recover_options | OFF | | myisam_repair_threads | 1 | | myisam_sort_buffer_size | 8388608 | | myisam_stats_method | nulls_unequal | | ndb_autoincrement_prefetch_sz | 1 | | ndb_force_send | ON | | ndb_use_exact_count | ON | | ndb_use_transactions | ON | | ndb_cache_check_time | 0 | | ndb_connectstring | | | net_buffer_length | 16384 | | net_read_timeout | 30 | | net_retry_count | 10 | | net_write_timeout | 60 | | new | OFF | | old_passwords | OFF | | open_files_limit | 8192 | | optimizer_prune_level | 1 | | optimizer_search_depth | 62 | | pid_file | /var/mysql/live/mysqld.pid | | plugin_dir | | | port | 3307 | | preload_buffer_size | 32768 | | profiling | OFF | | profiling_history_size | 15 | | protocol_version | 10 | | query_alloc_block_size | 8192 | | query_cache_limit | 1048576 | | query_cache_min_res_unit | 4096 | | query_cache_size | 0 | | query_cache_type | ON | | query_cache_wlock_invalidate | OFF | | query_prealloc_size | 8192 | | range_alloc_block_size | 4096 | | read_buffer_size | 131072 | | read_only | OFF | | read_rnd_buffer_size | 262144 | | relay_log | | | relay_log_index | | | relay_log_info_file | relay-log.info | | relay_log_purge | ON | | relay_log_space_limit | 0 | | rpl_recovery_rank | 0 | | secure_auth | OFF | | secure_file_priv | | | server_id | 0 | | skip_external_locking | ON | | skip_networking | OFF | | skip_show_database | OFF | | slave_compressed_protocol | OFF | | slave_load_tmpdir | /tmp/ | | slave_net_timeout | 3600 | | slave_skip_errors | OFF | | slave_transaction_retries | 10 | | slow_launch_time | 2 | | socket | /tmp/mysql_live.sock | | sort_buffer_size | 2097152 | | sql_big_selects | ON | | sql_mode | | | sql_notes | ON | | sql_warnings | OFF | | ssl_ca | | | ssl_capath | | | ssl_cert | | | ssl_cipher | | | ssl_key | | | storage_engine | MyISAM | | sync_binlog | 0 | | sync_frm | ON | | system_time_zone | GMT | | table_cache | 2048 | | table_lock_wait_timeout | 50 | | table_type | MyISAM | | thread_cache_size | 0 | | thread_stack | 196608 | | time_format | %H:%i:%s | | time_zone | SYSTEM | | timed_mutexes | OFF | | tmp_table_size | 33554432 | | tmpdir | /tmp/ | | transaction_alloc_block_size | 8192 | | transaction_prealloc_size | 4096 | | tx_isolation | REPEATABLE-READ | | updatable_views_with_limit | YES | | version | 5.0.77 | | version_comment | MySQL Community Server (GPL) | | version_compile_machine | i686 | | version_compile_os | pc-linux-gnu | | wait_timeout | 31536000 | +---------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------+ 237 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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• Looking for advice on Hyper-v storage replication

  - by Notre1

  I am designing a 2-host Hyper-V R2 cluster with 6-10 guests stored on a SMB iSCSI SAN device (probably Promise VessRAID). I will be getting at least two of the SAN devices and need to eliminate the storage a single point of failure. Ideally, that would involve real-time failover for the storage, like the Windows failover clustering does for the hosts. This design will be used at around six of our sites, and I would like to allow for us to eventually setup a cluster at colocation site and replicate each site's VMs there for DR. (Ideally a live multi-site cluster, but a manual import of the VMs would be fine for this sort of DR.) The tools that come with enterprise SANs, like EMC and NetApp, seem to be the most commonly used items for a Hyper-V cluster, but I can't afford their prices with my budget. Outside of them, the two tools that seem to be most common for Hyper-V storage replication are SteelEye (now SIOS) DataKeeper Cluster Edition and Double-Take Availability. Originally, I was planning on using Clustered Shared Volume(s) (CSV), but it seems like replication support for these is either not available or brand new in both these products. It looks like CSVs are supported in Double-Take 5.22, see this discussion, but I don't think I want to run something that new in production. Right now, it seems like the best option for me is not to implement CSVs, implement some sort of storage replication, and upgrade to CSVs at a later date once replicating them is more mature. I would love to have live migration, and CSVs are not required for live migration if you are using one LUN per VM, so I guess this is what I'll do. I would prefer to stick to the using the Microsoft Windows Server and Hyper-V tools and features as much as possible. From that standpoint, SteelEye looks more appealing than Double-Take because they make the DataKeeper volume(s) available to the Failover Clustering Manager and then failover clustering is all configured and managed through the native Microsoft tools. Double-Take says that "clustered Hyper-V hosts are not supported," and Double-Take Availability itself seems to be what is used for the actual clustering and failover. Does anyone know if any of these replication tools work with more than two hosts in the cluster? All the information I can find on the web only uses two hosts in their examples. Are there any better tools than SteelEye and Double-Take for doing what I am trying to do, which is eliminate the storage as as single point of failure? Neverfail, AppAssure, and DataCore all seem to offer similar functionality, but they don't seems to be as popular as SteelEye and Double-Take. I have seen a number of people suggest using Starwind iSCSI SAN software for the shared storage, which includes replication (and CSV replication at that). There are a couple of reasons I have not seriously considered this route: 1) The company I work for is exclusively a Dell shop and Dell does not have any servers with that I can pack with more than six 3.5" SATA drives. 2) In the future, it could be advantegous for us to not be locked into a particular brand or type of storage and third-party replication softwares all allow replication to heterogeneous storage devices. I am pretty new to iSCSI and clustering, so please let me know if it looks like I am planning something that goes against best practices or overlooking/missing something.

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• Looking for advice on Hyper-v storage replication

  - by Notre1

  I am designing a 2-host Hyper-V R2 cluster with 6-10 guests stored on a SMB iSCSI SAN device (probably Promise VessRAID). I will be getting at least two of the SAN devices and need to eliminate the storage a single point of failure. Ideally, that would involve real-time failover for the storage, like the Windows failover clustering does for the hosts. This design will be used at around six of our sites, and I would like to allow for us to eventually setup a cluster at colocation site and replicate each site's VMs there for DR. (Ideally a live multi-site cluster, but a manual import of the VMs would be fine for this sort of DR.) The tools that come with enterprise SANs, like EMC and NetApp, seem to be the most commonly used items for a Hyper-V cluster, but I can't afford their prices with my budget. Outside of them, the two tools that seem to be most common for Hyper-V storage replication are SteelEye (now SIOS) DataKeeper Cluster Edition and Double-Take Availability. Originally, I was planning on using Clustered Shared Volume(s) (CSV), but it seems like replication support for these is either not available or brand new in both these products. It looks like CSVs are supported in Double-Take 5.22, see this discussion, but I don't think I want to run something that new in production. Right now, it seems like the best option for me is not to implement CSVs, implement some sort of storage replication, and upgrade to CSVs at a later date once replicating them is more mature. I would love to have live migration, and CSVs are not required for live migration if you are using one LUN per VM, so I guess this is what I'll do. I would prefer to stick to the using the Microsoft Windows Server and Hyper-V tools and features as much as possible. From that standpoint, SteelEye looks more appealing than Double-Take because they make the DataKeeper volume(s) available to the Failover Clustering Manager and then failover clustering is all configured and managed through the native Microsoft tools. Double-Take says that "clustered Hyper-V hosts are not supported," and Double-Take Availability itself seems to be what is used for the actual clustering and failover. Does anyone know if any of these replication tools work with more than two hosts in the cluster? All the information I can find on the web only uses two hosts in their examples. Are there any better tools than SteelEye and Double-Take for doing what I am trying to do, which is eliminate the storage as as single point of failure? Neverfail, AppAssure, and DataCore all seem to offer similar functionality, but they don't seems to be as popular as SteelEye and Double-Take. I have seen a number of people suggest using Starwind iSCSI SAN software for the shared storage, which includes replication (and CSV replication at that). There are a couple of reasons I have not seriously considered this route: 1) The company I work for is exclusively a Dell shop and Dell does not have any servers with that I can pack with more than six 3.5" SATA drives. 2) In the future, it could be advantegous for us to not be locked into a particular brand or type of storage and third-party replication softwares all allow replication to heterogeneous storage devices. I am pretty new to iSCSI and clustering, so please let me know if it looks like I am planning something that goes against best practices or overlooking/missing something.

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• Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  At the last MIX conference, Netflix announced that they are exposing their catalog of movie information using the OData protocol. This is great news! This means that you can take advantage of all of the advanced OData querying features against a live Read More......(read more)

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• Processing Email in Outlook

  - by Daniel Moth

  A. Why Goal 1 = Help others: Have at most a 24-hour response turnaround to internal (from colleague) emails, typically achieving same day response. Goal 2 = Help projects: Not to implicitly pass/miss an opportunity to have impact on electronic discussions around any project on the radar. Not achieving goals 1 & 2 = Colleagues stop relying on you, drop you off conversations, don't see you as a contributing resource or someone that cares, you are perceived as someone with no peripheral vision. Note this is perfect if all you are doing is cruising at your job, trying to fly under the radar, with no ambitions of having impact beyond your absolute minimum 'day job'. B. DON'T: Leave unread email lurking around Don't: Receive or process all incoming emails in a single folder ('inbox' or 'unread mail'). This is actually possible if you receive a small number of emails (e.g. new to the job, not working at a company like Microsoft). Even so, with (your future) success at any level (company, community) comes large incoming email, so learn to deal with it. With large volumes, it is best to let the system help you by doing some categorization and filtering on your behalf (instead of trying to do that in your head as you process the single folder). See later section on how to achieve this. Don't: Leave emails as 'unread' (or worse: read them, then mark them as unread). Often done by individuals who think they possess super powers ("I can mentally cache and distinguish between the emails I chose not to read, the ones that are actually new, and the ones I decided to revisit in the future; the fact that they all show up the same (bold = unread) does not confuse me"). Interactions with this super-powered individuals typically end up with them saying stuff like "I must have missed that email you are talking about (from 2 weeks ago)" or "I am a bit behind, so I haven't read your email, can you remind me". TIP: The only place where you are "allowed" unread email is in your Deleted Items folder. Don't: Interpret a read email as an email that has been processed. Doing that, means you will always end up with fake unread email (that you have actually read, but haven't dealt with completely so you then marked it as unread) lurking between actual unread email. Another side effect is reading the email and making a 'mental' note to action it, then leaving the email as read, so the only thing left to remind you to carry out the action is… you. You are not super human, you will forget. This is a key distinction. Reading (or even scanning) a new email, means you now know what needs to be done with it, in order for it to be truly considered processed. Truly processing an email is to, for example, write an email of your own (e.g. to reply or forward), or take a non-email related action (e.g. create calendar entry, do something on some website), or read it carefully to gain some knowledge (e.g. it had a spec as an attachment), or keep it around as reference etc. 'Reading' means that you know what to do, not that you have done it. An email that is read is an email that is triaged, not an email that is resolved. Sometimes the thing that needs to be done based on receiving the email, you can (and want) to do immediately after reading the email. That is fine, you read the email and you processed it (typically when it takes no longer than X minutes, where X is your personal tolerance – mine is roughly 2 minutes). Other times, you decide that you don't want to spend X minutes at that moment, so after reading the email you need a quick system for "marking" the email as to be processed later (and you still leave it as 'read' in outlook). See later section for how. C. DO: Use Outlook rules and have multiple folders where incoming email is automatically moved to Outlook email rules are very powerful and easy to configure. Use them to automatically file email into folders. Here are mine (note that if a rule catches an email message then no further rules get processed): "personal" Email is either personal or business related. Almost all personal email goes to my gmail account. The personal emails that end up on my work email account, go to a dedicated folder – that is achieved via a rule that looks at the email's 'From' field. For those that slip through, I use the new Outlook 2010  quick step of "Conversation To Folder" feature to let the slippage only occur once per conversation, and then update my rules. "External" and "ViaBlog" The remaining external emails either come from my blog (rule on the subject line) or are unsolicited (rule on the domain name not being microsoft) and they are filed accordingly. "invites" I may do a separate blog post on calendar management, but suffice to say it should be kept up to date. All invite requests end up in this folder, so that even if mail gets out of control, the calendar can stay under control (only 1 folder to check). I.e. so I can let the organizer know why I won't be attending their meeting (or that I will be). Note: This folder is the only one that shows the total number of items in it, instead of the total unread. "Inbox" The only email that ends up here is email sent TO me and me only. Note that this is also the only email that shows up above the systray icon in the notification toast – all other emails cannot interrupt. "ToMe++" Email where I am on the TO line, but there are other recipients as well (on the TO or CC line). "CC" Email where I am on the CC line. I need to read these, but nobody is expecting a response or action from me so they are not as urgent (and if they are and follow up with me, they'll receive a link to this). "@ XYZ" Emails to aliases that are about projects that I directly work on (and I wasn't on the TO or CC line, of course). Test: these projects are in my commitments that I get measured on at the end of the year. "Z Mass" and subfolders under it per distribution list (DL) Emails to aliases that are about topics that I am interested in, but not that I formally own/contribute to. Test: if I unsubscribed from these aliases, nobody could rightfully complain. "Admin" folder, which resides under "Z Mass" folder Emails to aliases that I was added typically by an admin, e.g. broad emails to the floor/group/org/building/division/company that I am a member of. "BCC" folder, which resides under "Z Mass" Emails where I was not on the TO or the CC line explicitly and the alias it was sent to is not one I explicitly subscribed to (or I have been added to the BCC line, which I briefly touched on in another post). When there are only a few quick minutes to catch up on email, read as much as possible from these folders, in this order: Invites, Inbox, ToMe++. Only when these folders are all read (remember that doesn't mean that each email in them has been fully dealt with), we can move on to the @XYZ and then the CC folders. Only when those are read we can go on to the remaining folders. Note that the typical flow in the "Z Mass" subfolders is to scan subject lines and use the new Ctrl+Delete Outlook 2010 feature to ignore conversations. D. DO: Use Outlook Search folders in combination with categories As you process each folder, when you open a new email (i.e. click on it and read it in the preview pane) the email becomes read and stays read and you have to decide whether: It can take 2 minutes to deal with for good, right now, or It will take longer than 2 minutes, so it needs to be postponed with a clear next step, which is one of ToReply – there may be intermediate action steps, but ultimately someone else needs to receive email about this Action – no email is required, but I need to do something ReadLater – no email is required from the quick scan, but this is too long to fully read now, so it needs to be read it later WaitingFor – the email is informing of an intermediate status and 'promising' a future email update. Need to track. SomedayMaybe – interesting but not important, non-urgent, non-time-bound information. I may want to spend part of one of my weekends reading it. For all these 'next steps' use Outlook categories (right click on the email and assign category, or use shortcut key). Note that I also use category 'WaitingFor' for email that I send where I am expecting a response and need to track it. Create a new search folder for each category (I dragged the search folders into my favorites at the top left of Outlook, above my inboxes). So after the activity of reading/triaging email in the normal folders (where the email arrived) is done, the result is a bunch of emails appearing in the search folders (configure them to show the total items, not the total unread items). To actually process email (that takes more than 2 minutes to deal with) process the search folders, starting with ToReply and Action. E. DO: Get into a Routine Now you have a system in place, get into a routine of using it. Here is how I personally use mine, but this part I keep tweaking: Spend short bursts of time (between meetings, during boring but mandatory meetings and, in general, 2-4 times a day) aiming to have no unread emails (and in the process deal with some emails that take less than 2 minutes). Spend around 30 minutes at the end of each day processing most urgent items in search folders. Spend as long as it takes each Friday (or even the weekend) ensuring there is no unnecessary email baggage carried forward to the following week. F. Other resources Official Outlook help on: Create custom actions rules, Manage e-mail messages with rules, creating a search folder. Video on ignoring conversations (Ctrl+Del). Official blog post on Quick Steps and in particular the Move Conversation to folder. If you've read "Getting Things Done" it is very obvious that my approach to email management is driven by GTD. A very similar approach was described previously by ScottHa (also influenced by GTD), worth reading here. He also described how he sets up 2 outlook rules ('invites' and 'external') which I also use – worth reading that too. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Processing Email in Outlook

  - by Daniel Moth

  A. Why Goal 1 = Help others: Have at most a 24-hour response turnaround to internal (from colleague) emails, typically achieving same day response. Goal 2 = Help projects: Not to implicitly pass/miss an opportunity to have impact on electronic discussions around any project on the radar. Not achieving goals 1 & 2 = Colleagues stop relying on you, drop you off conversations, don't see you as a contributing resource or someone that cares, you are perceived as someone with no peripheral vision. Note this is perfect if all you are doing is cruising at your job, trying to fly under the radar, with no ambitions of having impact beyond your absolute minimum 'day job'. B. DON'T: Leave unread email lurking around Don't: Receive or process all incoming emails in a single folder ('inbox' or 'unread mail'). This is actually possible if you receive a small number of emails (e.g. new to the job, not working at a company like Microsoft). Even so, with (your future) success at any level (company, community) comes large incoming email, so learn to deal with it. With large volumes, it is best to let the system help you by doing some categorization and filtering on your behalf (instead of trying to do that in your head as you process the single folder). See later section on how to achieve this. Don't: Leave emails as 'unread' (or worse: read them, then mark them as unread). Often done by individuals who think they possess super powers ("I can mentally cache and distinguish between the emails I chose not to read, the ones that are actually new, and the ones I decided to revisit in the future; the fact that they all show up the same (bold = unread) does not confuse me"). Interactions with this super-powered individuals typically end up with them saying stuff like "I must have missed that email you are talking about (from 2 weeks ago)" or "I am a bit behind, so I haven't read your email, can you remind me". TIP: The only place where you are "allowed" unread email is in your Deleted Items folder. Don't: Interpret a read email as an email that has been processed. Doing that, means you will always end up with fake unread email (that you have actually read, but haven't dealt with completely so you then marked it as unread) lurking between actual unread email. Another side effect is reading the email and making a 'mental' note to action it, then leaving the email as read, so the only thing left to remind you to carry out the action is… you. You are not super human, you will forget. This is a key distinction. Reading (or even scanning) a new email, means you now know what needs to be done with it, in order for it to be truly considered processed. Truly processing an email is to, for example, write an email of your own (e.g. to reply or forward), or take a non-email related action (e.g. create calendar entry, do something on some website), or read it carefully to gain some knowledge (e.g. it had a spec as an attachment), or keep it around as reference etc. 'Reading' means that you know what to do, not that you have done it. An email that is read is an email that is triaged, not an email that is resolved. Sometimes the thing that needs to be done based on receiving the email, you can (and want) to do immediately after reading the email. That is fine, you read the email and you processed it (typically when it takes no longer than X minutes, where X is your personal tolerance – mine is roughly 2 minutes). Other times, you decide that you don't want to spend X minutes at that moment, so after reading the email you need a quick system for "marking" the email as to be processed later (and you still leave it as 'read' in outlook). See later section for how. C. DO: Use Outlook rules and have multiple folders where incoming email is automatically moved to Outlook email rules are very powerful and easy to configure. Use them to automatically file email into folders. Here are mine (note that if a rule catches an email message then no further rules get processed): "personal" Email is either personal or business related. Almost all personal email goes to my gmail account. The personal emails that end up on my work email account, go to a dedicated folder – that is achieved via a rule that looks at the email's 'From' field. For those that slip through, I use the new Outlook 2010  quick step of "Conversation To Folder" feature to let the slippage only occur once per conversation, and then update my rules. "External" and "ViaBlog" The remaining external emails either come from my blog (rule on the subject line) or are unsolicited (rule on the domain name not being microsoft) and they are filed accordingly. "invites" I may do a separate blog post on calendar management, but suffice to say it should be kept up to date. All invite requests end up in this folder, so that even if mail gets out of control, the calendar can stay under control (only 1 folder to check). I.e. so I can let the organizer know why I won't be attending their meeting (or that I will be). Note: This folder is the only one that shows the total number of items in it, instead of the total unread. "Inbox" The only email that ends up here is email sent TO me and me only. Note that this is also the only email that shows up above the systray icon in the notification toast – all other emails cannot interrupt. "ToMe++" Email where I am on the TO line, but there are other recipients as well (on the TO or CC line). "CC" Email where I am on the CC line. I need to read these, but nobody is expecting a response or action from me so they are not as urgent (and if they are and follow up with me, they'll receive a link to this). "@ XYZ" Emails to aliases that are about projects that I directly work on (and I wasn't on the TO or CC line, of course). Test: these projects are in my commitments that I get measured on at the end of the year. "Z Mass" and subfolders under it per distribution list (DL) Emails to aliases that are about topics that I am interested in, but not that I formally own/contribute to. Test: if I unsubscribed from these aliases, nobody could rightfully complain. "Admin" folder, which resides under "Z Mass" folder Emails to aliases that I was added typically by an admin, e.g. broad emails to the floor/group/org/building/division/company that I am a member of. "BCC" folder, which resides under "Z Mass" Emails where I was not on the TO or the CC line explicitly and the alias it was sent to is not one I explicitly subscribed to (or I have been added to the BCC line, which I briefly touched on in another post). When there are only a few quick minutes to catch up on email, read as much as possible from these folders, in this order: Invites, Inbox, ToMe++. Only when these folders are all read (remember that doesn't mean that each email in them has been fully dealt with), we can move on to the @XYZ and then the CC folders. Only when those are read we can go on to the remaining folders. Note that the typical flow in the "Z Mass" subfolders is to scan subject lines and use the new Ctrl+Delete Outlook 2010 feature to ignore conversations. D. DO: Use Outlook Search folders in combination with categories As you process each folder, when you open a new email (i.e. click on it and read it in the preview pane) the email becomes read and stays read and you have to decide whether: It can take 2 minutes to deal with for good, right now, or It will take longer than 2 minutes, so it needs to be postponed with a clear next step, which is one of ToReply – there may be intermediate action steps, but ultimately someone else needs to receive email about this Action – no email is required, but I need to do something ReadLater – no email is required from the quick scan, but this is too long to fully read now, so it needs to be read it later WaitingFor – the email is informing of an intermediate status and 'promising' a future email update. Need to track. SomedayMaybe – interesting but not important, non-urgent, non-time-bound information. I may want to spend part of one of my weekends reading it. For all these 'next steps' use Outlook categories (right click on the email and assign category, or use shortcut key). Note that I also use category 'WaitingFor' for email that I send where I am expecting a response and need to track it. Create a new search folder for each category (I dragged the search folders into my favorites at the top left of Outlook, above my inboxes). So after the activity of reading/triaging email in the normal folders (where the email arrived) is done, the result is a bunch of emails appearing in the search folders (configure them to show the total items, not the total unread items). To actually process email (that takes more than 2 minutes to deal with) process the search folders, starting with ToReply and Action. E. DO: Get into a Routine Now you have a system in place, get into a routine of using it. Here is how I personally use mine, but this part I keep tweaking: Spend short bursts of time (between meetings, during boring but mandatory meetings and, in general, 2-4 times a day) aiming to have no unread emails (and in the process deal with some emails that take less than 2 minutes). Spend around 30 minutes at the end of each day processing most urgent items in search folders. Spend as long as it takes each Friday (or even the weekend) ensuring there is no unnecessary email baggage carried forward to the following week. F. Other resources Official Outlook help on: Create custom actions rules, Manage e-mail messages with rules, creating a search folder. Video on ignoring conversations (Ctrl+Del). Official blog post on Quick Steps and in particular the Move Conversation to folder. If you've read "Getting Things Done" it is very obvious that my approach to email management is driven by GTD. A very similar approach was described previously by ScottHa (also influenced by GTD), worth reading here. He also described how he sets up 2 outlook rules ('invites' and 'external') which I also use – worth reading that too. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Agile Development

  - by James Oloo Onyango

  Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table.   His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts.   "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere.   "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months."   "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon."   Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!"   You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do.   Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress.   After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus.   At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard.   You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is.   Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents.   While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked.   The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom.   On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens.   **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing."   As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.)   As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you.     The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude.   You slog your way through them.   On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand.   ****   Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design!   Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka.   **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it."   ****   The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time?   Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!"   You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek.   Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give.    On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1."   As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head.   A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy.   In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off.     Rupert Industries: Project Alpha   Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity."   "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit."   Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product.   * * *   "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing.   During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed.   At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system."   A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true.   The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation.   As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost.   At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning.   * * *   The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it."   Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them."   You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release."   "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get."   So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards.   Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one."   "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays."   One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can.   The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks.   Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board.   "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well.   So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones.   The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."   In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks.   And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements,   Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour.   "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration."   * * *   The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!"   "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code."   "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case.   As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team.   Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized.   The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case.   Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?"   You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration."   Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones."   You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit."   "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either.   Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something."   Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration.   By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more.   The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed.   The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner.   Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment.   Indeed, things are looking up!

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• Dynamic connection for LINQ to SQL DataContext

  - by Steve Clements

  If for some reason you need to specify a specific connection string for a DataContext, you can of course pass the connection string when you initialise you DataContext object.  A common scenario could be a dev/test/stage/live connection string, but in my case its for either a live or archive database.   I however want the connection string to be handled by the DataContext, there are probably lots of different reasons someone would want to do this…but here are mine. I want the same connection string for all instances of DataContext, but I don’t know what it is yet! I prefer the clean code and ease of not using a constructor parameter. The refactoring of using a constructor parameter could be a nightmare.   So my approach is to create a new partial class for the DataContext and handle empty constructor in there. First from within the LINQ to SQL designer I changed the connection property to None.  This will remove the empty constructor code from the auto generated designer.cs file. Right click on the .dbml file, click View Code and a file and class is created for you! You’ll see the new class created in solutions explorer and the file will open. We are going to be playing with constructors so you need to add the inheritance from System.Data.Linq.DataContext public partial class DataClasses1DataContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext    {    }   Add the empty constructor and I have added a property that will get my connection string, you will have whatever logic you need to decide and get the connection string you require.  In my case I will be hitting a database, but I have omitted that code. public partial class DataClasses1DataContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext {    // Connection String Keys - stored in web.config    static string LiveConnectionStringKey = "LiveConnectionString";    static string ArchiveConnectionStringKey = "ArchiveConnectionString";      protected static string ConnectionString    {       get       {          if (DoIWantToUseTheLiveConnection) {             return global::System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[LiveConnectionStringKey].ConnectionString;          }          else {             return global::System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[ArchiveConnectionStringKey].ConnectionString;          }       }    }      public DataClasses1DataContext() :       base(ConnectionString, mappingSource)    {       OnCreated();    } }   Now when I new up my DataContext, I can just leave the constructor empty and my partial class will decide which one i need to use. Nice, clean code that can be easily refractored and tested.   Share this post :

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• ASP.NET AJAX Microsoft tutorial

  - by Yousef_Jadallah

  Many people asking about the previous link of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 documentation that started with  http://www.asp.net/ajax/documentation/live which support .NET 2. Actually, this link has been removed but instead you can visit  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb398874.aspx which illustrate the version that Supported for .NET  4, 3.5 . Hope this help.

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