Alex Yakunin's blog

I'm back :)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:56:00 +0000

I'm happy to announce I'm returning back after almost 1 year long absence here ;)

So what's changed? Actually, a lot.

In December 2010 I decided to start a new software project. My primary goal was to build a product that must be attractive for a wide set of categories of people. So after some period of research (I'll tell about this later) I came to the following idea:

There is no single place on the web, where you can compare yourself with other people by the whole set of metrics that are relevant to you. I'm talking about nearly any metrics - e.g. your birth date, height, the number of hours you spent at work during this month, the highest place you've ever visited, the deepest dive you've made, the number of miles you run this week, your reputation on Stack Overflow and so on.
Most of the ratings on the web are global, but local ratings seem more important in our life. E.g. what my ~ 2.5K reputation on Stack Overflow says about me in general? Nearly nothing. But being compared with reputation of developers in my city (Ekaterinburg, 1.5M population) or in some company here it becomes more meaningful: Stack Overflow is in English, so local developers rarely answer there. The same can be said about nearly any metric: almost no one remembers his position in global rating on Stack Overflow, but I bet you'd definitely remember you're #1 (#2, #3) on Stack Overflow in your city.
If we're able to compare an arbitrary set of such metrics for arbitrary groups of people in real time (e.g. your productivity measured by RescueTime + the number of LOCs you committed + the number of tasks closed in issue tracker), we bring Google Analytics to the world of achievements and productivity of people. This must be a precious tool for business - at least, I'd definitely use such a tool. And it is attractive for people as well, since they can identify and highlight their local or global successes (e.g. attach them to a CV). Moreover, I'd use such a tool to compare and fix successes of my kids.
If we're able to fix nearly any facts, we can identify the most popular facts in a particular group of people. And this set of facts must nicely describe what's common in this group. E.g. if it's a group of bodybuilders, most of them publish the weight they push, muscle size, etc.; if it's a group of developers, they compare their reputation on Stack Overflow, number of committed lines of code, lists of technologies they use, etc. Travelers might count the number of countries they visited, driving fans - the horsepower of their cars, and so on. Imagine, you're visiting some event and instantly see the most popular activities and achievements for the whole group of people there. IMO, that's cool!

Home page of 9facts.com displays the topmost
achievements in your country, city and groups
you're in, including your friends' group.

So that's what 9facts must finally evolve to - a tool allowing you to share and compare arbitrary (but mainly measurable) facts about your own and other people. Currently we're just in the beginning - "About 9facts" page fully describes the current state of the project; the limitations it has now include:

Absence of an API allowing third-party apps to push facts with measurable data to it, although there are few integrated data providers grabbing some facts from Facebook, Twitter and Stack Overflow. Also, you can enter the facts manually there - our presentation explains what's so unique in this part.
We can't log facts with data sequences (i.e. data change charts).
Some of essential social features aren't implemented yet - e.g. there are no comments, messages, notifications about your high positions in tops and so on.
UI/UX certainly needs to be improved as well - some actions and implied results there are far from being obvious.

But the good thing is that it already works, and you already can compare yourself with the people nearby you (or in your city, country and so on) right now. You can do this in 3 steps:

Register or sign in to 9facts
Specify your city or country in account settings - otherwise you facts won't appear in city / country tops.
Enable as many of fact providers as you can, and / or try to add some facts about you manually. If you don't know what to add, look up the biggest top to get some ideas (remember, there is "Add fact like this" action in context menu of any fact).

I'd highly appreciate if you share your impression with us. There are several ways of doing this: create a fact about Alex Yakunin on 9facts, send an email to info@9facts.com or leave a feature request @ UserVoice.

More information about the current state of 9facts is provided in my post describing the latest update.

So what I'm going to write about? We've learned a lot during last 6 months:

9facts is an independent startup. X-tensive acts as co-investor here, but a part of money was raised from another investor. So I think I'll be able to tell a story about this, if / when we'll raise the next amount.
We've built a new team for this project in pretty short time, so in particular, we should quickly enforce agile development, coding standards and practices. I can't say we fully succeeded with this, but I'm happy with the result.
We are using DataObjects.Net in this project, so it's a sort of "eat your own dog's food" experience for me. We use DO in almost all the projects we run, but personally I didn't have any remarkable experience with ASP.NET MVC before 9facts, so now I know quite well how to use DO efficiently in this scenario. Splitting the application into tiers, using federation (sharding), performing schema and data upgrades, using caches, running certain actions periodically - these are just some topics I can cover.
There is a JavaScript library plus certain amount of server-side code allowing us to handle AJAX requests (we don't sent regular POST requests at all), errors and many other things in unified fashion. Our ASP.NET MVC handlers processing form update requests (actually, any AJAX requests) usually contain much less code then you usually see in examples handling standard POST requests, although they are much better ready to real-world scenarios (in particular, error handling). Take a look at this page's network traffic to understand what I mean. I can add that normally we don't use client-side MVVM (although we use knockout in few cases), i.e. the rendering is usually performed on the server side. IMO, that's the most convenient scenario for ASP.NET MVC applications.
We're extensively using Task Parallel Library (TPL) and PLINQ, so I can share some experience related to this part as well.
Finally, it might be interesting why I decided to develop something new, how I was peeking the ideas and so on.

That was a brief list of topics I'm going to expand during next months. I hope you'll like this new kind of content in my blog.

Right way to buy DataObjects.Net

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:55:00 +0000

Today we've got a nice order: some guy has ordered DataObjects.Net using pretty old coupon code (upgrade from v3.9) providing 60% discount. I tried to find it in Google, but failed - i.e. there is no info about it at our web sites. On the other hand, promo code was really enabled, so discount was provided.

Initially I was thinking about asking him to make a refund and use one of actual coupon codes. Obviously, this idea was really bad - in fact, it's our own mistake, he just found it (probably, occasionally). And Alexis Kochetov proposed a better idea: we must give him additional 10% discount. So we'll prolong his subscription for additional 2 months :)

Of course, the gap is closed now :)

Link to Jon Skeet's post about new "async" and "await" keywords in C# 5

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:02:00 +0000

I just found a great post explaining how new "async" and "await" keywords in C# 5 really work.

Summary: likely, you know that LINQ, from compiler's side, is actually a language-integrated sequence monad; so new "async" and "await" keywords in C# 5 bring another one - a language-integrated continuation monad.

When (0+x)*1 != x, or dealing with legacy data

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:49:00 +0000

I just remembered, that in the beginning of summer Alex Ustinov has told me a nice story about legacy data import. That time he was fighting with importing legacy data from some old .DBF database using SQL Server Data Transformation Services.

He said, "I tried to pull out the data column directly “as is”, but failed - the data type of column value returned by provider sometimes differed from the expected one. Probably, that was a result of some a bug in the data provider I used, or... Anyway, I immediately remembered that in order to convert the number to an integer data type in VB, you can simply add 0 (zero) to it. So I did this, and discovered that data import was almost fully fixed: the new script was capable of importing all the rows but one! I repaired this by multiplying the expression by 1 :)".

I instantly imagined the following code:

var target = (0 + source) * 1 ` My friend, believe me, this is necessary!

It's ridiculous, of course, but in fact such decisions are quite frequent, if we speak about legacy code. It’s easier to work around the issue rather than understand what kind of bug is there (in DBF file itself, or in data provider – who knows?), taking into account there is almost no issue-related information about either. All this stuff was born before the Internet became really popular – precisely, a million years ago.

P.S. I’m retelling this relying only on my own memory, so there can be some terminological mistakes. Thanks god, I didn't deal with VB long enough to forget it :)

Concurrency problem :)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:09:00 +0000

Imagine we have a concurrent integer counter, that doesn't support "Increment and read" operation, but supports two separate operations: "Increment" and "Read". Can it be used to generate sequences of unique integer numbers concurrently, and if so, how?

To be precise, I want to write a program involving only such counter for concurrency control, that, being executed concurrently, would produce a sequence of unique numbers in each thread. I.e. I want to ensure no one number is shared among these sequences.

The answer is here (although I'm not absolutely sure it is correct), but I'd suggest you to solve the puzzle by your own first.

Initially it seems the problem is far from being practical - nearly any implementation of concurrent counter supports "Increment and Read" operation. But it looks like we've found one that doesn't :)

Highly recommended application: PivotalTracker

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:39:00 +0000

Take a look at it - it's simply a great tool for agile developers.

We started to use it few weeks ago, and, even while there is no good result from the point of planning and predictions yet (at least for DataObjects.Net project), it is really useful anyway. Its main benefit for me is that I'm always know what's important right now \ what are the tasks I should spend my time on. When you take part in a set of projects + have certain amount of correspondence, it isn't always easy to do this. Finally, it's quite easy to re-arrange the stories there and see what happens.

PivotalTracker rules.

New posts

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Fri, 28 May 2010 06:12:00 +0000

See:

Users from Russia and CIS countries, apply for discounts!
DataObjects.Net editions and prices, final version
Free licenses for DataObjects.Net and Help Server for bloggers, article writers and user group speakers - there is an exact description of what we expect here.

Two announcements

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:17:00 +0000

I just published two announcements in DataObjects.Net blog. Check out:

DataObjects.Net v4.3 RC1 with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 support is available

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:48:00 +0000

See this post for details.

P.S. We've finally decided to publish all the posts related to DataObjects.Net in its own blog - this must be definitely more convenient for the people interested in it. The idea of spreading all of such posts in personal blogs was deeply wrong :( So further I'll be blogging about everything except DataObjects.Net itself here.

Testing cross-posting to company blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Sat, 08 May 2010 06:54:00 +0000

Please ignore this entry.

I'm back

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:40:00 +0000

Now I almost fully recovered from paratonsillitis - not sure, why, but quinsy I got few weeks ago has finally "evolved" into it. Thanks god no one else from my family was infected.

Since many tasks were waiting my attention, it worth to mention the most important ones. So what's going to happen soon:

v4.2 will be updated to include latest fixes. Few days ago I added support for VS.NET 2010 (.NET 3.5 only) into its installation scripts, as well as installation of XSD enabling IntelliSense for <Xtensive.Storage> configuration section - thanks to Peter Šulek (Peter, I updated XSD a bit according with the latest changes).
My primary goal is v4.3 installer. There is no exact release date yet, but if there will be no any serious issues, you might expect VS2010 & .NET 4.0 version quite soon.
New pricing and licensing policy will be announced shortly - that's one of reasons we delayed v4.3 release. Now it includes protected components, which will function until the end of June 2010. The restriction is compile-time only, i.e. runtime components will be fully usable further. We're going to use this period to integrate full-featured licensing system into DataObjects.Net.
Update: the final pricing model is announced.
We've finally decided to migrate our support forums to OSQA - we liked StackExchange, but e-mail correspondence with its team after this announcement has lead us to conclusion that it's better to migrate to different software. So I also looking for good Unix hosting in US/EU to run our new support web site based on OSQA - unfortunately, they don't sell hosted solution yet.
After getting this done, I'll switch back to Xtensive.Practices development.

Stay tuned! I'll try to compensate recent absence of my posts.

DataObjects.Net v4.2.0 installers are updated

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:40:00 +0000

I decided to update v4.2.0 installers to the latest nightly build (from stable branch), since we’ve fixed a set of annoying bugs during last two week.So there is nothing new yet, just fixes. But if you're using v4.2 in production, it's highly recommended to update it.

As usual, the latest build can be found in Downloads area.

P.S. The publishing process isn't finished yet. Track the build date there, it will be changed when publication is finished.

Status update

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:01:00 +0000

I'm a bit late with my planned schedule for Xtensive.Practices - the end of the last week was spent mainly on bug reports (this month we have a very limited number of people working on DO4, since there is a temporary, but strong demand for them on other projects we run, so I was responsible for resolving part of reported bugs). I hope to finish planned works for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC during this week.

Another important news is that we're going to show DataObjects.Net 4.3 RC on the next week:

Migration to PostSharp 2.0 is already finished. This was the most complex part, since new APIs are quite different to the old ones.
We must migrate to .NET 4.0 & VS.NET 2010 now. Mainly this implies upgrade of .csproj files, a set of renames and few conditional compilation instructions. So as you might suspect, it won't be possible to build DO4 on VS.NET 2008 after this step, although we'll continue supporting .NET 3.5.

So stay tuned. If it will be possible, we'll try to show something related to VS2010 even on this week.

New ASP.NET MVC Sample update + screenshots

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:11:00 +0000

I just updated ASP.NET MVC sample described in my previous post:

I ripped out all the stuff that isn't directly related to usage of DO4 with ASP.NET MVC. Mainly, it was all the stuff related to login & user registration. I'm going to return back & update this part when a generic security helpers will appear (to show the standard approach to this problem instead of one more example).
Paging is implemented for Persons list. This is really pretty simple with .Take & .Skip, although you must remember that it's not a good idea to use this approach for really large sets of large data (e.g. millions of rows - check out the plans produced for such queries). But... Since almost any grid uses exactly this approach, I bet almost no one cares about this ;) I'll show much more efficient paging later.
The sample generates 100K entities by default on its first start now - just to show that paging really works ;) This must take about 10 seconds on moderate PCs.
MVVM-like models are passed to almost all the views now. That's good from the point of design.
Finally, I extracted a lot of common stuff to Helpers. They handle almost everything related to errors, messages and even web site title and header.

Finally, I created a set of screenshots showing various aspects of this sample and shared them in Picasa. Here they are (as slideshow):

As usual, all the changes are already @ Google Code. Today's nightly build will include this sample as well.

New ASP.NET MVC Sample

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:39:00 +0000

I just pushed new ASP.NET MVC sample for DO4 to Google Code - actually, that's my today's attempt to create a new ASP.NET MVC application from scratch and try to efficiently use DO4 there.

So far the sample is really simple:

It is based on default ASP.NET MVC application template;
But there is a new PersonController, views and test for it. So it's possible to view, create and remove Persons there.

The sample shows how to:

Handle DataObjects.Net model validation errors: you must notice I don't use ASP.NET validators at all there, so all the checks are performed by validation framework integrated into DO4. See Person.OnValidate() method - there is even a type-level check. Obviously, this doesn't mean ASP.NET MVC validation is incompatible with DO4 - you can enable it by simply adding data annotations to PersonEditModel.
Handle version conflicts. Try to edit the same objects in two browser windows.
Implement View Model <-> Business Model mapping (as far as I understand, usage of separate view model is recommended pattern for ASP.NET MVC). I used pretty simple approach here - in fact, all the mapping code is located inside PersonEditModel and its base type (EntityModel), but possibly, this is even better, since the sample is purely educational now.
Use transactions - both in ASP.NET MVC controllers and unit tests.
Rollback the transaction in case of errors. SQL Profiler will show that transactions are really rolled back in case of any errors. Btw, the same is true for tests.

That's all for now. Obviously, all this stuff is crude from the point of APIs (although I tried to make the code look nicer), but clear APIs is what I'm going to do during the next week. If you'll get any ideas related to possible improvements of this sample, please leave them in comments.

Screenshots of this sample are shown here.

P.S. Yesterday I promised to write my ideas on ASP.NET MVC helpers - as you see, this part isn't completed yet. But I hard-coded a part of them :) Tomorrow I'll try to add an advanced grid to this sample - I want to evaluate the most important use cases first.

Intermediate info on upcoming post about ASP.NET MVC 2 helpers

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:35:00 +0000

In short, I've spent all the day reading about ASP.NET MVC 2 and watching videos related to it. So far I'm really impressed - although there are still some minor lacks (e.g. I hate strings in code), there is a quite solid and consistent model.

If I'd be choosing between ASP.NET MVC and classic ASP.NET for new web application now, I'd definitely use ASP.NET MVC.

I'm still thinking about possible helpers and samples we must provide for it. The post describing my thoughts will be published only tomorrow.

Why forced SQL statement caching isn't always a good option

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:23:00 +0000

Dmitri Maximov just sent me a link to an article perfectly explaining why forced statement caching isn't always a good option. "Forced statement caching" (sp_executesql or sp_prepexec) is frequently used in ORM tools as default query execution approach.

The subject of that article is related to DataObjects.Net - it has so-called boolean branchinf feature influencing on produced queries (and thus their cached query plans as well).

Xtensive.Practices, ASP.NET helpers

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:20:00 +0000

So I'm thinking about the following set of helpers to implement for regular ASP.NET:

1) SessionManager from Xtensive.Storage.Web.

If you don't know, this is an IHttpModule automatically providing Session for each web request. More details are described here.

But to consider this part completed, it must be extended to automatically attach a DisconnectedState to Session provided by it for a particular web request. This feature might be quite useful for long-running transaction scenarios - e.g. wizards, where actual database modification must be performed only on the final step, although the data is updated during all the steps there.

I'm thinking about the following syntax:

TData SessionManager.Demand().GetDisconnected<TData>(string key = null) where TData : class will attach cached DisconnectedState and deserialize cached data (of TData type) after doing this. If result of this call isn't null, it will be serialized & placed back to cache on successful completion of transaction.
SessionManager.Demand().SetDisconnected<TData>(string key = null, TData value) where TData : class will set the specified value. If null, the cached one will be removed.

2) Validator control (of course, server-side only) that automatically validates version of a particular object (i.e. performs an optimistic version check).

Not sure to which control these validators must be attached - probably, they must be attachable only to our special invisible controls identifying the object.

Any ideas are welcome here.

3) Paging helpers.

Actually I'm absolutely not sure if this is necessary at all - there are plenty of paging examples for LINQ like this and that, and any of them must work.

So may be we must just add something like IQueryable<T>.Page(int pageSize, int pageIndex = 0) extension method with its LINQ translator forwarding it to .Skip(...).Take(...) sequence? But AFAIK all the grids for ASP.NET that support LINQ are capable of adding this sequence automatically.

Thus... May be we must just show a sample here? Again, any ideas are welcome.

Please leave your opinions and requests in comments. The similar post for ASP.NET MVC will appear shortly.

Topics related to KeyGenerator in our support forum

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:20:00 +0000

The most current search results for "KeyGenerator" keyword: http://goo.gl/dVzp

This topic explains the concept pretty well.

Birth of Xtensive.PnP (patterns and practices)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:20:00 +0000

The time has come :) I'm going to establish Xtensive.PnP (patterns and practices) solution in our repository on this week.

The idea behind this step is to separate use case oriented code to a set of "PnP" assemblies. I have the following layout of this solution in my mind:

Xtensive.PnP.dll will contain all the code dependent only on DataObjects.Net
Xtensive.PnP.Technology.dll will contain the code dependent on a particular technology, e.g. there must be Xtensive.PnP.AspNetMvc.dll for ASP.NET MVC 2.

So to start using a particular pattern, you must:

Add reference to the assembly implementing it
Register all the types from either the whole assembly or a particular namespace (if there are several patterns in this assembly) to DomainConfiguration.Types to enable its support.

What project are expected to be there? I imagine the following:

Web: helpers related to ASP.NET applications; initially there will be just SessionManager.
Wpf: helpers related to WPF applications. We must provide SessionManager analogue there returning Session for the current Window or its part (this is quite desirable in MDI case) and allowing to propagate the changes among them. This part will be based on more advanced WPF sample we're working on.
AspNetMvc: helpers related to ASP.NET MVC 2. Shortly I'll describe what I already have in mind here.
Wcf: helpers related to WCF. Such types as DisconnectedResult<T> and ModificationSet (from WCF sample) will be there.
Localization: reusable types from Localization sample.
Security: our security framework. Initially there will be just base types for Principal, User and Role + service managing all of them and a set of helper extension methods to Session object. Likely, ASP.NET Membership Provider will be there as well. ACLs will appear there a bit later - our initial goal is to provide a basic API that can be used.

My further PnP plans include:

Tagging: attaching tags to items is one of typical problems developers deal with, and we're going to help you a bit here - by providing a framework for this. The case here is very close to localization: we'll propose a working approach + some helpers (may be, query preprocessor - I'm not sure for now) simplifying usage of this API.
Sync: most likely it will be implemented as PnP pattern as well.
Undo-redo: "redo" support is already provided - it is our Operations framework used by DisconnectedState. So here we must add undo operations logging support (by nearly the same way) and add few helper types allowing to persist these info for each executed transaction and study it later.
Multitenancy: if you're developing a SaaS application, you must think how to scale it up. So this pattern must help to solve this issue. Base tenant type (with arbitrary key), service and Session extensions allowing to specify current tenant, domain module that automatically adds either a reference to tenant type (or its key fields) to the beginning of each primary key and index, query preprocessor automatically injecting tenant-related constraint to any query and service automatically providing Domain for a particular tenant based on its hash is the implementation plan I keep in mind here.
Something else? Your ideas are welcome.

I'm going to implement PnP project mainly by my own forces:

Although each of these projects seems pretty complex, its complexity is mainly related to design and the way of integration with DO4, but not the amount of code (from this point all the projects must be relatively simple). So it's a good task for framework architect.
This might help me to gather more information related to practical usage of DO4.

And, what's more important, I'd like to involve you in this process. Currently I have the following implementation plan:

I'll work in 2 week iterations; so almost any of PnP projects will require 2 or 4 weeks.
First week in each iteration will be spent on gathering requirements and samples. To maintain a discussion, I'll create a topic in feature requests forum for each feature (PnP project) planned to be implemented in this iteration, where I will describe the features I keep in mind and will discuss the exact implementation with you. I'd be glad to hear any ideas on proposed or additional features.
By the end of first week I'll make final decision on actual implementation, as well as on implementation time.
The actual work on implementation will be started on the beginning of the second week. If any issues will be faced there, I'll talk about them with you.
When feature is implemented, it will immediately appear in the nightly build (possibly, this will be done even earlier). So it will appear in release after some period of testing.
Documentation for each feature will be written during next feature's spec. duscussion phase.

Finally, here is my plan for the next 4 weeks:

April 5 - April 11: discuss features for Web, AspNetMvc and Localization PnP projects and migrate existing code to PnP solution. The only new project here is AspNetMvc project, so that's why they come together. Goal of this phase is to develop ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC samples utilizing binding, error handling, versions (optimistic locking), validation, paging and DisconnectedState (e.g. for wizard).
April 12 - April 18: implement the decisions.
April 19 - April 25: discuss features for Wpf and Wcf projects. I intentionally want to wait with this, since Denis Krjuchkov is working on new WCF sample now. Goal of this phase is to develop N-tier and regular samples utilizing data binding, error handling, versions (optimistic locking), validation, paging and, obviously, DisconnectedState. Likely, we'll start discussing all the stuff here immediately when it's done; moreover, corresponding projects will appear in PnP solution shortly after appearance of new sample. But since I'd like to have a realistic plan, let's schedule this for 3rd week for now. If the time will permit, we'll go faster.
April 26 - May 2: implement the decisions.
Having this done, I'll switch to Security.

If you have any ideas on possible improvements for the proposed process, feel free to share them in comments.

P.S. It seems I'm the only person @ Xtensive writing absolutely serious posts today. Hopefully, you already have got enough smiles during April Fools' Day :)

Topics related to DisconnectedState in our support forum

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:19:00 +0000

I made search for "DisconnectedState" keyword in our support forum. Since this feature is poorly documented yet, I hope this information will be helpful, if you're trying to use it.

Here is the link to the most current search results: http://goo.gl/xjGP

Btw, what do you think, is it a good idea - to add such search links to similar sections of Manual?

"Guess, who" quest

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:22:00 +0000

Our designer just shared the photos of our team members that, by his optinion, express their characters best of all. Definitely a "must see" page, if you'd like to know "who is who" @ our team ;)

Dmitri Maximov talks about our new "Envy" project

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:34:00 +0000

Here is the whole story. If you'd like the idea, don't forget to leave a comment there. AFAIK, they spent a lot of time on planning and discussions.

DataObjects.Net v4.2 installer is updated

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:28:00 +0000

I finally decided to update v4.2 installer to the latest nightly build - there are few more minor fixes (the issues are described in our support forum). It is uploading to our Download area right now.

This also perfectly demonstrates our new "continuous stability" policy - now we really can publish a bugfix release on the next day.

Why next day? Currently each night is spent on thorough testing of "stable" branch:

Default test sequence conststs of 1020 storage-independent tests (Core, etc.) + 1550 storage-dependent ones on 10 different database engines (so efficiently there are 1020 + 10 * 1550 tests) running on each commit. This sequence exposes about 95-99% of issues immediately.
Nightly test sequence is running all storage-dependent tests in 6 different configurations (overriding default mappings with 3 different inheritance mapping strategies and 2 different TypeId mapping policies, details are here), so efficiently there are 1020 + 60 * 1550 = 94K tests. And they really take several hours to run on our testing farm consisting of 4 dedicated, but moderate PCs. A joke around this: when a PC gets old, it is plugged into matrix as an Agent (our testing PCs are named AgentSmith, AgentJohnson, AgentThompson, etc.).

So on each morning it's quite precisely known if our current build is really stable.

Viva Mercurial! Viva TeamCity!

Xtensive Spectator: our corporate Skype bot :)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Yakunin) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:59:00 +0000

We use Skype for for many of our in-company talks - mainly, because of its group chats. Historically we had "Came in, came out" chat there ("Пришел, ушел" in Russian) - and there are quite simple rules for writing into this chat:

If employee enters our office, it writes "++" there (or "+1" ;) )
If employee leaves our office, it writes "--" there
If someone starts to work @ home, it types "++ @ home", and vice versa
Generally, it's a bad idea to write anything else to this chat.

Profit:

All of us know when someone comes or leaves the office
All of us know who cames too late (actually, this doesn't work as we expected)
Finally, it's possible to make some statistics based on this info.

The last part (statistics) was implemented few months ago: Marat Faskhiev has written a Skype bot capable of participating in our "Came in, came out" chat and providing textual reports on commands like "report" sent to it personally.

Screenshots

++ and -- messages:

Reports:

("month" is report showing hours we spent in March; only a part of employees is visible on screenshots)

Obviously, this is just a kind of evaluation for us - i.e. as far as I know, such a "big brother" isn't seriously taken into account by most of our employees; on the other hand, I believe finally it can be useful. Statistics it provides gives some insight on how much time people really spend on work, and which of them work harder.

And, what is more attractive, such a bot can be extended to e.g. do the following:

Pariticipate in all important Skype chats as corporate chat recorder
Provide browser-based UI allowing to search chat history & provide permalinks to certain discussions (e.g. related to bugs), and obviously, browse various statistics
Operate as intagration point: e.g. with RSS feeds (most likely there are such bots), issue trackers, build server, Twitter and so on.

So the question is: what do you think, can this tiny application evolve to a corporate tool for small companies like ours, that intensively use Skype, and what features must be added to it to make it really useful?

Btw, would you like to see it as DO4 sample application?