have a look at Twilio[^]

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

howzit! am currently use freelancers on elance. we used a team of russians on phase 1 and are busy with a crowd from india for phase 2 (they are quite big and they have a local presence - as it turns out). our phase 1 was a month late in delivery but it got done and the code is solid - mvc4+sql+kendoui etc! have a bit of a communication issue with the new lot but we are getting there. we are using the escrow funding option as opposed to time & materials, so we do have some form of recourse if it hits the fan. but, we are closely managing the project almost on a daily basis, with weekly builds & check-ins a requirement (so we can see the code) to make sure we are all on the same page and while i had a scare or two the issues are sorted for the most part. it sounds like a management issue on your part maybe, cause if you went time & materials, you would have already known by the first week already if something was amiss! especially if you had insisted on a check-in-before-pay scenario, which would have anyway required you to first approve their time-sheets for work done. worst case scenario, you would have only lost a weeks pay instead of ending up paying 7 weeks down the line. you need to draw a line in the sand and 'manage' them - definitely crack-the-whip a few times. elance also give you, as the client, the opportunity to review contractor performance and it does count against their record - permanently! they cannot erase your comments on the work they delivered. unless of course you opted to move outside of elance as per contractor request to avoid them paying the commission to elance - bad move, you would have had to cancel the job, negatively affecting your track record as a paying client, and had no access to mediation or nothing. in fact your nda may also probably be null an void. their are plenty of solid contractors, but as with any industry, it always going to be a crap shoot - especially if you didnt do your homework!

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

MehGerbil wrote:

Close: Close without saving.
Cancel: Close without saving.
OK: Save then close.
Apply: Save but don't close.

depends on what you want to ascertain; 1. close/ok; is fine for notifications like "check your mailbox" or "we accidently deleted your database", but no response is required really, its a nag prompt and can even auto close if its being ignored 2. cancel; system is about to perform an action that needs to be authorised/acknowledged, can use it for "non-repudiation" and even track as part of user activity. 3. [ok/yes/no]/cancel]; can be a little confusing for a user becasue they're not really sure if the action is going to execute correctly - cancel, revert while ignoring the requested task? yes, execute as planned? no, could mean...execute a variation on the task or dont execute at all in which case its now the same as cancel again. and also how many variations are there for the particular task? its fine for a simple confirmation like an action with one of two option like "would you like to register for our monthly newsletter" while saving their user profile, the profile gets saved anyway. i use a wizard for extremely complicated scenarios but for the most part it depends on the use cases being catered to. software dev is a complicated excercise and more often than not a single view could have multiple scenarios being catered for, so i use form input and layout to collect data for each scenario(i.e. click this and show/hide that...highlight these...re-load this grid) and simply prompt the user with an ok/cancel option - "you are doing this? ok/cancel?" and at this point pass or fail the whole scenario. if i then prompted the user with "you are doing this? yes/no/cancel?" i would be setting myself up for a moot point of my own doing because if they are not sure the we really should proceed and the whole scenario should fail...so no==cancel and we have the confusing recursion again and in most cases it because the developer is unsure/careless! it's really a language comprehension issue not a programming paradigm! know the outcome being catered for and prompt around the context of the desired outcome.

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

It's a human condition! People are inherently lazy and when encountering an obstacle, will naturally tend towards the easiest way out.

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

i'd say its a complete re-write! the migration should have been an ongoing process throughout the life of the application. as a developer, i keep abreast of the changing dev environment outside of what my employer requires of me. it helps prepare me for the jump to the next level which always comes. its a habit with me to try port our apps to the latest & greatest even to completely different platforms just in case a situation presents itself. even when using only the .net framework; as a ms dev shop our applications should be at most one step behind at most the latest service pack. good luck with that one!

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

We have what we call a process running via teamsystem - will get back to the inner workings of our build process. Basically, the customer/BA create 'qualityofservice' requests then lead dev, creates scenarios(against which testing is performed) along with all dev tasks required to make meet the request and after arguing with the previous iteration about impact of changes on system. Developers write code against a workitem, and here's the 22 million dollar answer. Check in policy only accepts check in of code compiled against a successful build. Whats in 'the build' you asked, well consider this, multiple developers on the team, limited network bandwidth(everyone on the team in cluding all the other teams at the office using the dev server that carries the database) not to mention power-failures(yes, africa truly is literally the 'dark continent' and we are not refering to skin color here we mean the power grid literally 'fails' randomly with no warning at all). In a nutshell our team works locally...yes...you got it (local) sql server. 'The build'runs a numerous scripts that can...create the database locally(even with multiple user changes to procs, triggers etc!)...create master data...generate test data...keep track of changes affecting migration(schema & data)...recompiles source code against code analysis(rules are rules - a pain in the sphincter muscle but the guys doing maintenance have loved its appearance) deploys reports...webservices...and if you ask erally nicely will set-up the perculator for morning coffee and put the lights out when the last person leave the building...if there hasnt been a power failure that is! Multiple developers all doing there own thing with minimal control over the codebase or worse no control is pure folly. The tool assists developers to propogate their changes across the dev environment ensuring standards are met in the process - do you really want each person to have to track which version of code resides in what folder exactly and on top of that trust the bloke to copy the correct version into a 'last minute' build folder...without overwriting changes made by someone else on the team, and expect it to work first time out the gates? Its complete madness! Who was it that said 'managing developers is like herding cats!!!' Dev is closed only after testing signs off, then deployed to staging server for pre-UAT testing. Even with our current system, 40-50% of dev task get sent back to the developer; thats with source control mind you. Even after the first round comes back fr

DiscountASP.com has some pretty good add-ons and plugins and they offer IIS7 with SQL 2008 - maybe a little pricy. HostMySite.com has similarly good package with options and their helpdesk support is absolutely killer - after hours e-mail support alone averages around 15-30 mins response time! happy hunting, whatever you do...dont host in south africa - they a hellish expensive(comparing price per MB of storage/bandwidth) and the one crowd has a bloke that friggin stutters on help desk/support!

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

anixi wrote:

Every place I have worked at I have had a local server (or virtual PC on a local server).

certainly not a "must have", no! in fact, except for source control, we have moved our entire dev cycle to local machine. no network issues to deal with especially when working in an office with 40 odd other developers all hogging limited bandwidth, never mind the rolling blackouts(not so bad now) that cause serious downtime with a slow network boot-up time...source control...database server...etc! we can get latest, opt for a 'dev-build' and our dev database is rebuilt through our framework, replete with the whole teams changes and test data to boot allowing us to drill down to an individual process WITH user permissions(logon as role) in a simulated live environment. now, ...if we could just get everyone to actually test their code!:sigh:

anixi wrote:

Now I am working at a new place where I am the only web developer and the IT guys are asking me to justify why I need a local server. Management have given me a PC I can use as a server but IT are asking me why I need one.

they are also trying to manage costs and they possibly had other plans for that machine you took, maybe his little brother needs a machine. i mean really, you didnt think management had a clue the machine could be used for anything else, and they should have consulted with IT before making rash decisions like that...why not, they consult with IT on just about everything business related anyway dont they?

anixi wrote:

Do you think I need a local machine with Windows 2003 as a test for deployments, UAT, a place for source control, maybe even to run Virtual PC server to help with cross browser testing?

hey boet!(south african slang for "heeey bro!") in this day and age you shouldnt have to ask whether you need VM or not - by the way...source control in the VM is not a good idea, 'ek-se'(slang for 'i tell ya'!). heck, china!(slang again for "heeey bro!") use 2003, 2008, even test with sharepoint or linux, the world is your oyster especially with cross browser testing! installing all those other browsers locally is a moot point because who in their right mind would want chrome or worse 'flock' or netscape running on their machines? use VM where you can really pound the floor and stomp the crud out of them till they bleed and when your done, simply vaporize! anyway,

would be interesting to know if any members are/were involved with the spyware the us government is implementing after the whole 9/11 debacle pushed legislation through congress that allows the government to 'watch' the populace. i bet some of you guys are actually writing code for the government...come on admit it! that's ethically reprehensible but more so because of who is doing it...supposedly the greatest democracy on earth! surely that is a violation of the constitution! The code you write is owned by you long after you leave the employers building because the corporate morality consists of individuals. YOU are responsible! It would be great if you could still keep getting paid after having left the building though.:suss:

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

the free ms sql 2008 express has reporting services included as advanced services [^] and you can also use the new charting controls[^] along with a related blog[^]. Good stuff sure to impress a client if used correctly! the express edition has limitations[^], like the way it processes multiple indexes on a table, but should be fine for most implementations short of a full enterprise scale solution.

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

Darn...i cant put 'unlocked inferno - level 40' on my time sheet?

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

talk about birds of a feather!

No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of that man; likewise no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17

I personally dont mind taking a test, but the things some of the clients ask you to do within a given timeframe can be completely befuddling. I had an interview for senior developer at this bank - one of the questions they asked was for me to write a sudoku puzzle solver!!! i dont even plat sudoku! :confused:

No one knows the things of a man save the spirit of that man, likewise no one knows the things of God save the Spirit of God whom we have received. He who is joined to the Lord, is ONE Spirit with him(Jesus) - 1Cor 2:10-16 & 6:17