jokiz

tricky ternary operators

jokiz — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 09:19:00 GMT

i has been one year since I haven't been posting in this blog, hmmm. wow, time is really that fast. one year and I haven't done much actually, just work and DOTA. Not at all productive and pretty much lagging with the current technologies out there. I don't even had the time to read my tech blog feeds in google reader. Time to catch up (hopefully).

Let's start with a piece of code that I bumped into recently in migrating some of the business rules in our bank application. See if you can easily deduce what the code actually meant and suggest something to make it readable:

bool isReduced = (!isReduced) ? hasExceed : true

some coding guidelines doesn't recommend the use of ternary operators since they find it hard to read. i'd say, not all the time, but the code above had a hard time expressing his intent to me, ;p.

bcp and errorlevel checks

jokiz — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:54:39 GMT

we have a number of batch scripts at work which executes sql-related tasks for each of our project releases. last time, i incorporated errorlevel checks so we know if there was a problem with the execution and in order to abort the rest of the operations if something else has gone wrong.

i was surprised this weekend when one the bcp operation failed but it continued to execute the latter commands. it turns out that the errorlevel variable is not populated correctly by bcp version 8 which comes with sql server 2000 (see kb here). Luckily, it was already resolved with bcp version 9 which comes with sql server 2005.

C# Trivia #6

jokiz — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:43:00 GMT

As I've mention in this post, I'll be continuing the trivia series here in my blog. I've encountered a good one from internal chat yesterday, here it is:

will this compile?

[Test]
public void IntTests()
{
    int i = 1;
    if(i != null)
    {
        Debug.Write("jokiz"); 
    }
}

my first pocket pc

jokiz — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:31:00 GMT

i purchased my very first pocket pc last week and i have'nt really used it extensively. except for calendar and the gps software bundled which has been very useful travelling in this new country. i'm thinking of installing an rss reader so i can now catch up with my blog feeds during my two hour daily travel to work, any pocket pc rss reader that you guys personally recommend so i don't have to try everything out there? also, if you have any other apps that you recommend, just drop a comment, thanks a lot!

windows xp search containing text problems

jokiz — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:07:15 GMT

i've been told by one of my officemates that the windows xp search containing text does not work with all file types. of course mr. skeptical always verify it and was surprised that indeed it does not work for all file types, even with C# cs files! just sharing!

winword repaginating issue

jokiz — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:13:00 GMT

we have a document that keeps on repaginating eveytime i open it in winword. i found a post in usenet that you just have to save it as a webpage (html) then resave it as word document and it did solve the problem. just sharing!

deltree = rd /s

jokiz — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:48:00 GMT

for years i thought deltree (deletes a folder and all the files in it) was removed from the DOS days. before it was not included in the default command set but available as a separated executable. i just stumbled in one of our post build events which does the same with the remove directory command with a /s switch. fyi for those who also don't know about it.

Debugging stored procedures on SQL Server 2005

jokiz — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:41:00 GMT

My current task in our project is majorly in MSSQL. I wanted to debug a chain of stored procedures and I have just found out that MS has removed debugging tools out of SQL Server 2005 client tools and relied more on visual studio's. I have experienced debugging both from SQL Server 2005 Query Analyzer and from VS 2003 and I favor that of visual studio. Back then the stored proc was constructing a dynamic sql statement (don't ask! ;p) and visual studio watches can cater for long strings (yeah it sounds messy) compared to query analyzer which just truncates it to its max capacity.

Our usual setup in my past companies is we usually have a local sql server database (developer edition) on our boxes and the build server also has its own. Of course we are administrators of our local databases so debugging is not an issue.

Stored procedure debugging for SQL Server 2000 needs execute permission on master.sp_sdidebug. However for SQL Server 2005, they have renamed it to sp_enable_sql_debug. And guess what, you have to be a member of sysadmin role in order for you to debug SQL Server 2005 stored procedures, wth!

We can't have sysadmin roles in our current setup where development databases are in a farm and we usually are just dbo's of just our project databases. <sigh>

More info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlclr/archive/2006/07/07/659332.aspx

SQL Implicit Commands

jokiz — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:48:00 GMT

Not being an SQL guy, i'm really not used to implicit commands from T-SQL. By implicit, I mean those simplified commands which does the same thing as those documented in every SQL books.

I first encountered a query below from a teammate:

FROM Table1 T1 JOIN Table2 ON ...

Every book includes all those type of joins, LEFT OUTER JOIN, RIGHT OUTER JOIN, INNER JOIN AND CROSS JOIN, so my initial reaction was, wtf, what join is that. Then I later found out that it just mean an INNER JOIN.
I also encountered a comma in between tables

FROM Table1, Table2

And when I searched through usenet, it's just a shortcut for CROSS JOIN.

FROM Table1 a, Table2 b WHERE a.Id = b.FkID

on the other hand, will use an INNER JOIN

Any other implicit commands that you know of for SQL?

VSS to Subversion to Clearcase

jokiz — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:40:00 GMT

follow up to my post about visual source safe and subversion (which has a good google page rank), now i'm exploring rational clearcase.

we are using clearcase at work and i can see a very close similarities with visual source safe. although the previous post sounds like i'm favoring vss over subversion, it all turns out that i like subversion more. actually, i didn't find any issues or difficulties working with subversion, besides, it's the preferred version control by most of the gurus.

there are a number of new stuff with clearcase that i need to familiarize myself with and one of them is the types of view. most differences are just the terms but this dynamic view topic puzzled me on how it works under the hood as i read the wiki. luckily, the company offers in-house trainings but i guess it will be scheduled months after i finish the enhancement task that i have which starts this monday.

Tracking active item in Solution Explorer

jokiz — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:28:00 GMT

I find it hard when the currently active code sheet or item is not highlighted in solution explorer and there were times when i couldn't easily see where the option is so this is for my future reference.

VS 2003: Tools->Options->Environment->Projects and Solution
VS 2005: Tools->Options->Projects and Solution

welcome to singapore!

jokiz — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 09:10:41 GMT

I arrived this noon, new job to start this Monday. I hope this will be interesting.

C# Trivia Question Series

jokiz — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:16:44 GMT

Some of you know about the C# trivia series that I started in MSForum's C# section. Good thing some of these posts were revived since they were missing months ago. Here are the links:

Trivia #1 - Arraylist's initial size
Trivia #2 - String concatenations and compiler
Trivia #3 - Passing reference types
Trivia #4 - CollectionBase flaw regarding strongly-typed collections
Trivia #5 - Operator overloading gotchas

I'm planning to continue the series through this blog. So time to dig up those .NET framework tidbits that an average .NET developer might not be aware of.

we're moving backwards

jokiz — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:49:12 GMT

This is technically another rant (long overdue), sorry to the guys involved.

1. From test-driven development to deadline-driven development

We are practicing test-driven development and continuous integration (okay, just some!). I saw the following code comment in one of our code sheets:

Search uses ShipmentCriteria as intermediate object between UI and search engine. ShipmentCriteria is unnecessary but due to tight schedule, i couldnt delete it from the current implementation lest ill end up rewriting the presentation. Perhaps in a test driven development environment we can refactor this but for the deadline driven, this will do.

There are also ignored test cases with a comment "New search engine using deadline driven methodology."

Projects will always have deadlines, and in our company, developers are the ones estimating their tasks. It's up to you to give an estimate which covers the inclusion of automated tests for it (if you want to, but actually nobody is forcing you). Yes it's normal that a team couldn't find time to include automated tests for the project especially when the release date is very near. However, there really are persons who are dedicated to the practice and finds time to include some tests especially for the crucial functionality. Checking the subversion logs, he's the only one who have added test cases for the application. If you are really dedicated to improve the project, drop your email and blog reading routine and contribute to the project by including tests for your feature (look who's talking, :p).

I've been monitoring the Unit Tests of my previous project and for the past couple of months, you won't notice an inclusion of the new test case in it, just modifications to adapt to the new requirements. Coverage for the tests is continuously dropping sad to say.

2. From subversion to non-versioned

My two teammates are working on the same task and chose to not integrate with my created versioned solution (I don't know why).

I saw the junior guy using a CSV parser from some library when he asked me a question. When I visited our lead's desk, I saw him doing a normal string.Split routine in his code for parsing (proven to be problematic!). Smells fishy!

I found out that they are working in a non-versioned environment. I asked them how are they integrating? Senior guy is giving junior guy latest copy of his bits every morning. Hmmm, interesting...

3. From ASP.NET to ASP classic

was surprised why my teammate was coding a simple webpage table form in asp style (foreach script blocks in aspx page)
a consultant saw the implementation and commented that it's not the way we do in .NET (of course)
consultant proposed to do all the html creation logic in codebehind and assign the formed HTML (really?)
I proposed using asp.net data controls and databinding
teamlead commented data controls are costly pointing at hidden viewstate (classic argument)
me and junior guy did the page using asp.net data controls
code is now constructing an HtmlTable instance in the codebehind, lead's code, but he agreed to change it (thank god)

Web application projects and build server issues

jokiz — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:52:27 GMT

Normally, you don't have Visual Studio installed in build servers. Unless you're using the setup and deployment package which can only be compiled by the IDE executable devenv.exe, that's the time that you install VS.

As such, you only have the .NET SDK installed and just uses MSBUILD to compile the VS2005 projects. MSBUILD can compile visual studio projects with the help of its targets files. The SDK comes with the default targets files to compile common type of projects. However, if you are using Web application projects, it uses a different targets file ("Microsoft.WebApplication.targets"), which ships with VS2005 SP1. Basically you just include the said targets file in your trunk and edit the project file for the path of the said targets file. Thanks to this post.