I just got started using Adobe Flex SDK. I was very excited because it's the first time I've found a good, free way to create Flash applications. But then I noticed something: Flex doesn't seem to be much about making animations or designs. It seems more like an application to build forms and menus and the like... which I can already ...
I'm designing an application which deals with two sets of data - Users and Areas. The data is read from files produced by a third party. I have a User class and an Area class, and the data is read into a Users array and an Areas array (or other appropriate memory structure, depending on the technology we go with). Both classes have a ...
I am playing with a CAD application using MFC. I was thinking it would be nice to save the document (model) as an SQLite database. Advantages: I avoid file format changes (SQLite takes care of that) Free query engine Undo stack is simplified (table name, column name, new value and so on...) Opinions? ...
In Ruby-on-Rails, this is called a "polymorphic association." I have several Commentable things in my application, the tables for each are below: Post id | title | text | author (FK:Person.id) | ... Person id | name | ... Photo id | title | owner (FK:Person.id) | path | ... I'd like to add a Comments table as follows: Comments id ...
I have a question regarding the two additional columns (timeCreated, timeLastUpdated) for each record that we see in many solutions. My question: Is there a better alternative? Scenario: You have a huge DB (in terms of tables, not records), and then the customer comes and asks you to add "timestamping" to 80% of your tables. I believe ...
I am supposed to write "detailed" design documents for my job, but I always find myself overspecifying parts and getting burnt out when I realize I can't specify everything exactly in the doc or I would basically be writing the code all over again! Is there a good rule of thumb when it comes to writing design documents to help guide me ...
I have created a non-visual component in C# which is designed as a placeholder for meta-data on a form. The component has a property which is a collection of custom objects, this object is marked as Serializable and implements the GetObjectData for serilizing and public constuctor for deserilizing. In the resx file for the form it will ...
The project I'm working is using n-tier architecture. Our layers are as follows: Data Access Business Logic Business Entities Presentation The Business Logic calls down into the data access layer, and the Presentation layer calls down into the Business Logic layer, and the Business entities are referenced by all of them. Our busine...
I work a lot with decision makers looking to use technology better in their businesses. I have found that a picture is worth a thousand words and prototyping a system in a diagram of some sorts always lends a lot to a discussion. I have used Visio, UML (somewhat), Mind Maps, Flow Charts and Mocked Up WinForms to start the vision for th...
I realized that OOP is the only area where I can produce results I'm satisfied with. To be more specific - mainstream static-typed OOP like C++,C# or Java. May be it is so because I've read enough books and articles on it and because most of my programming experience is in OOP. And may be because OOP is just really good :) Each time I h...
Hello world! I have been using C# for a while now, and going back to C++ is a headache. I am trying to get some of my practices from C# with me to C++, but I am finding some resistance and I would be glad to accept your help. I would like to expose an iterator for a class like this: template <class T> class MyContainer { public: /...
Image a Button on your windows form that does something when being clicked. The click events thats raised is typically bound to a method such as protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { } What I see sometimes in other peoples' code is that the implementation of the buttons' behaviour is not put into the Bu...
I want to separate concerns here. Create and embed all the UI logic for the Custom XML designer, object model, validations etc in to a separate assembly. Then the Package framework should only register the designer information and ask for a UI Service and everything works magically. This way I don't need to play with the Package framewo...
What books do you recommend for a programmer who wants to learn about design? Every programmer needs to evolve and learn things outside of his specialization. I would like to collect a list of the best material in the field of design for such programmers. Some guidelines: I'm interested both in graphic design (use of whitespace, fon...
Hi, I believe several of us have already worked on a project where not only the UI, but also data has to be supported in different languages. Such as - being able to provide and store a translation for what I'm writing here, for instance. What's more, I also believe several of us have some time-triggered events (such as when expiring ...
"Business applications" is a little broad I know, let me narrow a bit: For example, say we are developing a suite of accounting tools. Search requirements are generally on account number, user name, street address, amount owed etc. Is implementing a "search engine style" single text box search the preferred option, or should I use a sp...
I work on an application that has a both a GUI (graphical) and API (scripting) interface. Our product has a very large installed base. Many customers have invested a lot of time and effort into writing scripts that use our product. In all of our designs and implementation, we (understandably) have a very strict requirement to maintain...
I am making the distinction between User Experience and pure User Interface (UI) design here, even though there is usually a tie-in. You can have great user interaction even with a ‘boring’ grey interface, (note that it is not a requirement!). My bookshelf contains the following: The Inmates are running the Asylum Don’t Make Me Think ...
Is there a course that can help non OO programmers how to develop in .NET in a good way? I don't mean just the syntax and how to design a class and the relationship between class but how organize a solution into projects (naming, what to put on each one) what method is more suitable to access data (dataobjects, remoting, ORM) how to desi...
I'm currently trying to pass a mono threaded program to multithread. This software do heavy usage of "refCounted" objects, which lead to some issues in multithread. I'm looking for some design pattern or something that might solve my problem. The main problem is object deletion between thread, normally deletion only decrement the refere...