How to detect bad design before it consumes your entire application?
This may seem like a fairly arbitary question but it would be nice to know the symptoms of bad design before its to late to change anything. ...
design
Encapsulating a network protocol
I'm working on an app which takes in a raw binary message (very simple, first byte is the message type, rest is payload), and then does something with it. The thing I'm trying to accomplish is making sure that the networking service is abstracted away from the rest of the app, to allow for modifying the protocol now and then without affe...
Tools and standards for technical design document
I would like to know what tools and standards are my colleagues using for technical design documents nowadays. In the past when in my company we were only delivering client-server win-apps we had word templates for our design docs. Our templates always started with the Database diagram, then the UI mockups, field mappings, functionality...
Design for converting objects
I'm trying to come up with a good design for converting a set of different objects into a common object. Basically, I receive one (of many slightly different) complex object from system A, and must convert it into a simpler object for system B. The objects I'm converting from all inherit from the same base class, so part of the convers...
Using delegates or interfaces to decouple the logging - Best practices - C#
My solutions has several projects which includes several libraries and one project for UI. Currently it is a windows forms application and I use log4net for logging. This UI project has only reference to log4net and this project maintains the configuration files. But I would like to log from my libraries as well. Usual method for doing...
Handcoded GUI application Design & Visualization
We've tools like Netbeans/Visual studio to do the GUI app for our project in java/C#. But when we're creating apps by writing code on Text-editor/IDE without using components. then how to visualize the GUI app project ? I mean let's say i want to build a contact manager app in C#/java. now with GUI builder tools i can manage multiple fil...
Should one include ID as a property on objects persisted to a database?
I am creating the model for a web application. The tables have ID fields as primary keys. My question is whether one should define ID as a property of the class? I am divided on the issue because it is not clear to me whether I should treat the object as a representation of the table structure or whether I should regard the table as a m...
How could one keep a DOB field private when displaying the user's age in years?
How would one keep a DOB field private from others if it is used to display the users age? For example, how is stackoverflow Birthday field kept private from other users? When is the display field Age changed? Is it changed just on the first of each month or randomly within an random range of Birthday? Or maybe just at the first of each ...
God Controllers - How to prevent them?
In a few MVC projects I've been working on, it has become apparent that there are a few problematic controllers that have organically grown into God classes - demi-gods each in their own domain, if you will. This question might be more of a matter 'what goes where,' but I think it's an important question with regards to SRP (Single Re...
Recurring dates on dates that do not exist
When giving the option for something to reoccur every certain amount of time how should I treat times that don't reoccur on every interval? For example what should happen to birthday reminders for February 29th? Or if I have a monthly appointment on the 31st what should happen on months that do not have a 31st day? What do you believe ...
How to create a good looking iPhone navigation controller in landscape mode?
I'm writing an iPhone app in landscape mode. I need to use NavigationControllers in it and they appear just fine. The problem is, the contents of each UIViewController that I push into the NavigationController are grouped tables. These grouped tables don't look very well in landscape mode, they take all the space and buttons look weird, ...
Can a huge existing application be ported to the web? How?
We have an integrated system (at least is that what we call it), which consists in a front-to-back-office huge C++/VB/MSSQL software that handle every single aspect of the organization. Several of our existing customers have been asking if its possible to port it to the web in a sexy web 2.0 fashion, of course it also has great value fo...
Where can I go for free design / templates for a web app?
I have started to code a web app for small businesses, and I have some trouble with the page design. I know the layout that I want, and I can code it fine, but I have always been hopeless at choosing colours / co-ordinating the elements on the page. I am wondering if there are any sites that provide free templates specifically for we...
A productive alternative to UML
I find UML hard to create quickly. I'd like to put my ideas more quickly, especially for small open sourced projects. If it was big enough I'd bother with UML but the project is too small for this kind of thing. I don't want yet another tool that will make me think "nehh I'll do it later". Any suggestions? ...
Rails - How to create a model linked to TWO of another model
I recently became drunk on the Rails koolaid and am trying to create the following: User model (this is fine) id Link model (associated with two Users) id user_id1 user_id2 Is this an instance in which I would want to use the has_and_belongs_to_many association type on the Link model? How should I do this? Ultimately, I would like...
Preventing session conflicts in PHP
Recently I stumbled on an interesting bug where entries would show up in our local custom-made ticket system from users that didn't exist in the app. After some poking around I realised that both this and another PHP app running on the same server were using $_SESSION['user'] for authentication purposes. When someone used one system and ...
How many Beans should be enough ?
Hi . I'm a undergrad Student at a German University. I have a team Programming Course .. where we have to use JavaEE/JSF to make a social networking site .. like LinkedIn. Anyway my group has created a lot of beans. Which IMHO is too much . <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> <!-- =========== FULL CONFIGURATION FILE ============...
JavaEE Design ... InfoHolders or direct Database connection ?
Hi I am a part of a student programming group an we are programming a social networking site. I have a Session bean and for every User i create a UserInfoHolder Class and my Session bean has an Instance of it. So 1 User = 1 UserHolder Instace = 1 Big Database query .. when logging in. Another Design Approach would be : No Holders. Dire...
OO Design Question -- Parent/Child(ren) -- Circular?
I'm fairly new to the OO design process, so please bear with me.... I have two entities that I need to model as classes, call them Parent and Child (it's close enough to the actual problem domain). One Parent will have one or more Children -- I have not interest, in this application, in childless Parents. Where my brain is going out to...
Mysql Database design - Storing single and multi lat longs
I have a mysql database table that will store locations for buildings and events and a few other things. All locations are stored in one table, and linked to buildings, events etc through their own many to many table. That way I can just display dots on a map, and also allow filtering etc. However the problem comes with some things havi...