Posts made by RichardInToronto

RichardInToronto

Hi Rene, I have no experience with kdb+, and I don't know if it works with your development tools. I went to a couple of live demonstrations of it a few years ago. There is a "Q" programming language that was similar to SQL, and less verbose. I can't remember if it was aggregation, but the speed was incredible. You might want investigate it: kdb+ | KX[^] Hope that helps.

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Richard Rogers LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrcdn/

RichardInToronto

My bet is that ProcessCarrierAnimations isn't executed if ProcessFlyouts returns true. If ProcessCarrierAnimations should still be called, you could remove one of the "vertical bars", changing the "short-circuit" OR into a regular logical-OR. Richard

RichardInToronto

Hi Mycroft, I don't know if you saw my responses, later in this thread. http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/4097394/Re-Csharp-code.aspx[^] Thanks for your advice.

RichardInToronto

Hi David, I'm actually very inclined to write a console app, or maybe even a service. It's the guy who is directing my work who is kind of against it, for no apparent reason. I don't have the capability of writing the code at the Client site, where I'm working. I do have VS 2010 installed here at home though, so I may give it a whirl. I tend to think that it would be pretty! A simple and elegant solution. Thanks!

RichardInToronto

Mycroft, Jörgen, and David, Thank you all for your responses. This is a short project for a small consulting firm. I am the only coder, and I'm afraid to say I'm also the business analyst. The issues I perceive are: 1. Using SSIS 2005, I cannot "monitor" a folder for new or updated CSV files. The File System Task component does not appear to be capable of doing this. 2. I have written a very simple SSIS package to copy the data from a csv file with a fixed file name. Even if there were a component that monitors a folder with a filemask like (*.csv), how would I pass the filename to the Flat File Source component? 3. I would only want to move the csv file to the archiving folder if the import of the data completed with a return code of zero, which includes calling a stored proc on the server. What is the standard way of informing the user that an error occurred in a SSIS task? Is all this possible in a SSIS package? Thanks, Richard

RichardInToronto

Hello, I will be creating a process that imports time series data from CSV files into an MSSQL database. After the data from the CSV file is processed, the CSV file is moved to an archive folder. If there are multiple CSV files in the processing folder, the process will import them as a batch. The name(s) of the CSV file(s) will include date information. At the start of a new day, a new CSV file will be created, I'll use some kind of naming convention for the file to indicate what date it's for. During the day, the CSV file will be appended to. I am pondering whether I should: - Create a SSIS task to perform this process, and schedule it to run every X minutes - Create a C# Console application that monitors the processing folder, for mods to an existing file, and additional .csv files (for batch processing) What do you think the advantages/disadvantages of either approach are? Which one would you use? Also, can I use LINQ in any way to read the CSV data? I'm using MSSQL 2005. Thanks a lot for any pointers/suggestions/best practices. Richard Rogers

RichardInToronto

Just a few thoughts I had, but this isn't something I've studied formally: - The universe had a beginning, and as such it must've had a finite size to start with, no? Maybe it had infinite density, but I don't understand how if something had a finite size, it could have an infinite density. - In the storage of a computer, a three dimensional array, lets say 5X5X5, still looks like a single dimensional array of 125 elements. If space in the universe models that of the insides of a computer (scary oversimplification), then all the dimensions (up to and even including string theory), could really be boiled down to one. Somebody educate me... - You wouldn't have to sandpaper the earth - it's already extremely smooth. If you were to shrink planet earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be thousands of times smoother than a regularly manufactured billiard ball. No offense meant to any billiard ball manufacturers here... - Is the surface of the earth two dimensions? I wouldn't think so, but I could be wrong. - The process of making a basketball in a factory involves creating a strip of rubber, and then cutting out contours so that the rubber is stitched together. The strip of rubber must still be three dimensions before it's sewn together to become a basketball, no? I don't believe in infinity. Not quite sure what the difference between theory and fact is, perhaps it has to be observed, no? How, by definition, could infinity be observed? Richard http://www.RichardRogers.ca/ (IM) rogersrr_ca@hotmail.com

RichardInToronto

There has been such a flurry of activity providing evidence of intelligent life on planets other than our own. I especially like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGkRjduIngc[^]

RichardInToronto

One of the reasons I am stearing away from full-time employment and more interested in contract work is because of the issues associated with raises. It is rare when I see full-time employee developers: - Whose reputation soars - Who work hard on grunt projects and persevere and succeed to get into the club so that they can work on more interesting projects - Who are so valued by their companies that the company offers them more money so that they don't "defect" to a competitor. More often, I see developers whose reputation is undermined by gossip, who get bored working on inane projects, and that there is zero loyalty between employers and employees. I also think that it is somewhat absurd to base a raise based on how a developer interacts with his team-mates. How would you like to rate a house constructor on whether he plays sports, or how quickly he responds to your voice messages? A developer should be measured and awarded based on clear and easily measured objectives, like bugs per # of lines of code. My opinion is that the review process for developers, as I have seen it, is usually useless. I have never seen a developer who knew what his/her key performance indicators are. As a result, the comments from the review come as a complete surprise, which everyone knows is a no-no. You might want to read this book. I read it, and it helped me: www.corporateconfidential.com. You should at least watch this: http://www.corporateconfidential.com/press/CNNHeadlineNews02282006.php4. I wish you luck in your review! Richard

RichardInToronto

You'll probably not have time to read the books before you hire some people. I recommend these books: - "Software Conflict 2.0", Author: Robert L. Glass - "Career Guide for the High-Tech Professional", - "Now, Discover Your Strengths", Marcus Buckingham & Donald Clifton. - "The Personality Code", Travis Bradberry. I haven't completed the first three, but there's some valuable content in all of them. I just heard about the fourth book, so can't vouch for it's content. The review of the book does make mention of how contrasting personalities can greatly influence the outcome of a project. You might find these articles perturbing and a bit off topic as well: http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/the_death_of_th.html Richard

RichardInToronto

Hello developers, There is an inherently anonymous aspect to the web. The socialogists/political among us may argue that the web is the pinnacle of human freedom, by giving voice to the voiceless, allowing people to voice often controversial opinions, without having to worry about reprisal. As long as you aren't making serious threats or otherwise abusing your right to free speech, the web is a great place to voice strong opinions. You have to be prepared to throw those opinions in the garbage can or seriously revise them; online web posts can be ripped apart. My new favourite slogan is "Strong opinions, weakly held". I thank Bob Sutton for coming up with such a great phrase: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/strong_opinions.html Although I've made lots of blunders in my career, I haven't ever gone to an anonymous group of developers to air or get solutions to them. I make technical mistakes, and I make CLM's - Career Limiting Moves. Most of the time, my social gaffe's outweigh my technical oversights, and talking to a bunch of introverted developers who talk to computers all day about my social blunders don't help me. Why would it? 90% of the time, if I see another developer struggling with a social/non-technical issue, I wouldn't be able to help them. The nature of our work doesn't readily lend itself to soft-skills and being good interpersonally. In fact, I think there is a chasm that exists in IT. On the left side of the chasm are development skills and on the right side are interpersonal skills. The chasm was so large years ago, people hardly recognized that it existed. Over the last twenty years, the business community has seen that it exists, and that tech people need to become better inter-personally. Even though the media and I insist that developers must get better in the soft-skills, I don't observe that trend going on too much. I can be social and outgoing, but not after a solid 40 hour week of hard-core coding. In my opinion, the traits that make me a good developer impede my progress in becoming better inter-personally. How do accuracy, attention to detail, and not making assumptions during development, help you become better inter-personally? THEY DON'T! To become a better people-person, you have to see the larger picture, you have to paint with a broad brush, and use your intuition to make assumptions about peoples background. The two areas are so divergent, and I would wager mo

RichardInToronto

Hello developers, I've read through your responses shown above, and am quite surprised; most of the responses were completely off topic. What adds to my surprise is that I feel quite strongly on "pet projects", and would think that a lot of developers are like minded. Why the heck would you ask permission from your company to do a personal project? So that they can fire you if you're spending time coding on an interesting project that isn't related to your work and will forward your career? Don't be ridiculous - go and code your best project at home, on your own computer, on your own time. Most employment agreements, and even some contract agreements I've signed stipulate that any code written on the premises is their own. Intellectual Property that you alone create doesn't have any legal rights as long as you implement it in a company you work for/with. I have been working contract for most of the last ten years. Software Development, in my opinion, is the most dynamic industry in the work world today. None of my employers have ever acknowledged this simple fact. Do you think companies are looking out for the careers of their employees? Get a grip!!! Most of the time, please correct me if I'm wrong, they are so focused on the time it will take to develop something, they have absolutely no longer range plans, 1-3 or 3-5 years hence. No company vision, no employee vision, except maybe grow the company by increasing revenue and head count. Most companies I've worked with feel that if they don't pay 100% attention to develop something quickly, there isn't any need to plan for the future; there won't be one for the company. This is especially true for software development companies that are smaller. How does this relate to pet projects? Most of the time, I see developers coding away their careers in a pigeon hole. You're a developer with strong database skills? Well guess what, we're going to have you focus on that. Your skills are in that area, and it's only logical to use your best skills, right? How can you ever have a broad exposure to different types of development projects, unless you take your career into your own hands? Pet projects are the only way. I worked with Delphi for 10 years. How am I going to move away from a shrinking market, and broaden my career? I'm going to code from home. Not only am I going to code in a new language, I'm also going to do a type of development I haven't been involved in before, namely Business Intelligence. I hope I have helped you guys, and I hope this post s

RichardInToronto

RichardInToronto

Hello, My task is to convert race results like this to XML: http://www.sportstats.ca\res1997\nord10k.htm You can see that there are 1,948 race results. I need to create 1,948 xml elements. I would like to see XML data like this: 1 29:41 2:59 1868 Rachid TBAHI Sleepy Hollow NY 1/213 1/1216 Men 30-34 I've shown just the first entry, and would expect to see 1,947 more. A few months ago, I wrote some C# code that would convert the URL above to the kind of XML I wanted. I noticed that the race results were all after a

tag. I found that I had to use a C# regular expression to parse the race results. Creating one regular expression isn't so bad, but there is so much race results data, conforming to many different regular expressions, that this becomes a large project for me.

Recently, I found out about Dapper and thought it would be able to make this a manageable project. Their website is here: http://www.dapper.net/

I have tried unsuccessfully to create a Dapp that will do this. If you look at the source html for the sportstats URL, you will see that there isn't anything delineating the attributes I need to capture. It's not like a CSV file - it's more like an old fashioned mainframe fixed width file. I can't seem to define fields for the Dapp, as a result.

Any suggestions are most welcome!

Richard Rogers

RichardInToronto

My history of exercise goes way back. I think I'm very atypical of many programmers from an exercise perspective. Around 1979-80, I went on a few bike trips on Vancouver island with my dad and brother. These gentler (~500 mile) trips prepared me for one of my prouder athletic achievements. In 1981, just after I learned basic on the trs-80, I cycled across Canada from Vancouver, BC to Kingston, Ontario. This was ~3000 km, it took us about 40 days. I cycled with 4 other guys, we had a driver to drive the camper, and raised about $20K for Easter Seals. Around 1986, when I was at college in Vancouver, I started hacking around with a squash racquet. I moved to Toronto in 1987 and joined a squash club. I continued playing squash quite a bit until I got married in 1994. Somewhere in those years, I also discovered long distance running. As far as I can recall correctly, from 1994 - 2002, I didn't do any type of exercise. I gained 40 pounds. In 2002, I was living in the country and started running. The running was great. My highest mileage weeks got me to over 80 km/week. I did two 30K races, two full marathons, several 1/2 marathons and multiple 10K races. As I hit 40 years old, I was in my best endurance shape ever. As of 2006, I've moved back to the city, from the country, and running is nowhere near as enjoyable. My family and I joined a great exercise club where I have picked up squash again, and am slowly working my way up the Tuesday night ladder. I'm not as thin as I was during the running years, but I would venture to say that my vo2max is better. The next 10K race I enter (May 2007) will prove me right/wrong. In my opinion, practitioners of Software Development seems more prone to lethargic, non-active lifestyles than other professions. I certainly like electronic games, beer and pizza, and chocolate. I recently read an article on how one soft. dev. company gets its workers away from the remote: http://tinyurl.com/38ahoz Here's to our vo2max and long lives! Richard

RichardInToronto

Hi Stefan, Thanks for your help. Richard

RichardInToronto

Hi, By calling Dataset.WriteXml, my code produces XML as listed below. The user can also load the XML file, and I will use Dataset.ReadXML to do this. Preferably before calling that method, I would like to validate the schema of the XML to ensure that it has the same structure as an XML file produced by WriteXml. How can I do that? At present, I am loading the XML file and writing code like this: ValidXml = (LoadedOk) & (dsKeysAndValues.Tables[dsnKeysAndValues].Columns[KeyGroup] != null) & (dsKeysAndValues.Tables[dsnKeysAndValues].Columns[ValueGroup] != null) ; The code not only doesn’t work, but it also doesn’t seem elegant – if the XML file is large, it will take time just to load the file, before I can validate it. How can I validate the schema of XML to ensure that it matches what I am expecting? Thanks for your help, pointers, and time! Richard The mystery is out there – in the XML-Files (X-files music follows…) XML produced using WriteXml: K1 V9999

RichardInToronto

Hi Marc, I love this forum; it shows that developers all over the world (Canada, US, UK, lots more) are all dealing with the same issues. I personally feel that software development is the trickiest profession - lots of hidden traps, and not much common wisdom offered by colleagues/companies. In regards to your frustration about code reviews, style guidelines, I can relate directly. In my last position, the quality of a programmers code was determined by one programmer, who was a brown-noser to management. Not only did he not have as much development experience as I did, but he also emphasized speed and time to completion! "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell? Who/what is that? Comments? What the !@#$ do you need those for? Extra functionality that would be a boon to user productivity, and that I dreamed up while implementing? Why did you write and test that code, when we didn't ask for it? Team code reviews? Only in one company I've worked for in Canada, and that was mainframe development back in the early nineties. I take a lot of pride in my work - I do think style and thought put into coding is still relevant. I hate it when management says that your code should be indistiguishable from other developers in the project, especially when there are often no coding standards at all. I personally believe that a programmer will produce better work when: - His/her name is in the code - He/she feels they aren't just writing code, but is involved in a group process and that the whole group needs to learn - There isn't just an emphasis on code, but an emphasis on thinking, and - Each developer is recognized as a unique person, that their contributions are diverse, and conformance to an arbitrary rule is ridiculous. I find it naive to believe that many companies who pay lip service to coding practices and forward thinking policies actually work this way. In virtually every company I've worked, there is a big gap between what management says, and what the programmers reporting to those managers actually are told to do. Management walking the talk? More like management enforcing coding practices that bolster short term financial objectives! If houses are all about location, location, location then code is all about minimal time to write, the least possible number of bugs, and definitely not about modularity, extensibility, simplicity to understand, performance, or elegance. In regards to how emotionally involved I am/have been at work, I offer these points as evidence: - Waking up at 4am in a cold sweat,

RichardInToronto

Thanks for your help Sreenath.

RichardInToronto

Thanks for the help Mike.