Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

I completed phase 1 this past Sunday morning. I spent the great deal of Sunday evening filling in the data model with test data that I used to verify the design, and began testing each and every stored procedure. It was extremely time consuming, and I was rewarded with a few failures that required tweaking. Always those little changes you make to the data types that come back to find you when testing stored procedures. Such as including an concatenated name in one procedure, and in the other only returning the last name. It’s always those silly little things that take two seconds to fix, and are the sole reason to test in the first place.

My model was verified, I tested against data, inserting, updating, and removing from the data model. Indexed the columns that I thought should be indexed, and am happy with the result. I’m starting phase 2 this week and it will hopefully be complete by the end of July. Now comes the tiered design, coupled with Enterprise Library composite controls, and of course all the interactions inbetween. I want the interface to be dynamic, or at least easily modifiable. So I’m building out a lot of composite controls, and I’m looking to start Phase 3 in August.

Phase 1 – Data model (database, stored procedures, and indexing)       

                Estimate 1 week (complete)

Phase 2 – Tier design (data access layer, business entities, business logic/processes, data providers, web services, and reusable objects)

                Estimate 4 weeks (in progress)

Phase 3 – Primary interfaces (web service consuming web portal, and smart client application)

                Estimate 2 weeks (pending)

Phase 4 – Distribution, and marketing

For a good reference I liked the articles from the Microsoft Patterns and Practice website. One good article I came across a year ago is below:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms978496.aspx

Today I finally wrote my bank about how pathetic their website has become. It used to require no less than three data entries to get into my on-line banking account. That’s grown to no less than five data entries to get into my account. One for the account, second for the PIN, third for a security question, fourth for the actual password, and fifth being either the passphrase or user selected image. I never realized how much of a pain this was because previous I kept this information saved in my firefox browser on my old desktop.

When I went to this new pc I tried entering the password more than three times that resulted in the deactivation of my access. To get access I had to call my branch, during business hours, and request that it be re-activated. In doing so I didn’t know the password, and they couldn’t tell me. So what they did was _ask me_ over the phone what I wanted the new password to be. They only verified I was who I said I was by giving the account, and my name. I could have been _anyone_, and they took the password I gave them, and told me that’d have it reset. Sure enough they changed the password to the password I told them to.

I’m appalled at this. All it would take is something to get my bank statement, call up my bank, say that I forgot my password, and whoever this was could reset my password. How terrible is that? Is that normal with banks? I can’t fathom it. So what I did was write an e-mail to my bank. I told them about my recently opened US Bank account and how I only had to enter two things. My user account name/account number and password. That was it. I told my current bank that I’m terribly disappointed with where the bank is going. I suggested just using triple DES encryption on all data flowing from the system, use a CAPTCHA, or something instead of what they’re doing. All they’re doing to me is causing me more frustration for something so stupid, and that I would be able to completely sidetrack this entire process by just calling the bank to tell them I need the password reset. I hope I don’t get the cops called on me for telling them the steps I’d use to subvert access to my account. I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me.

I know anyone who uses a SQL database, or maybe even MySQL does stored procedures at some point. I also know at some point they’re going to want to abstract stored procedures to reduce redundancy. Anyway, if you’re looking to call an existing stored procedure from within a stored procedure it’s as simple as this…

InsertCustomerAddress – stored procedure being built

. . .

@customerID    bigint,
@address1 varchar(120),
@address2 varchar(100) = NULL,

. . .

DECLARE @returnValue smallint

EXECUTE @returnValue = InsertAddress @ address1, @address2

INSERT INTO dbo.CustomerAddress
(
                CustomerID,
                AddressID
)
. . .

You see that I declared a value of @returnValue in the datatype smallint. From there I simply executed another stored procedure that returns the unique ID created by inserting a new Address record. From there I used that return address ID to insert into my customer address reference table along with the customers ID.

That seems to be about it. Just call the Execute function from within the stored procedure; you don’t necessarily need to set a value to capture the return value as many procedures may not return any values. Just call Execute with a space, the name of the stored procedure to call, and the parameters to pass in. It is possible to put the keyword ‘output’ next to each parameter whose values will be altered within the called procedure.

George Carlin died. That’s kind of a bummer. At least I’ll always be thankful I got to see him perform live. Any man that can walk onto a stage with the first words out of his mouth being “Pussy Farts!”, and still keep the audience is doing something right. It was an eclectic group in the audience from your corporate style individuals wearing nice pressed suits, hippie lesbian group, and your Joe average American. Anyway, that’s my ode to Carlin, I’m sure he’ll be missed, and especially by the Kevin Smith crowd for his outstanding contributions to Bob.

What the heck is wrong with these mainstream businesses? Why do they constantly want to pop-up live chat message boxes when I’m searching the site? If I’m on a retail website the last thing I want to have is a pop-up salesperson come up questioning my purchase choices, or offering advice. I shop online to get away from annoying sales people. I bet half these live chat people would have to forward me on to high-up people to answer my question. I swear the sales people are stalking me online with the same incompetent service, but now get to abstract the clueless expressions by transferring me to a level of live chat higher. Man that annoys me. I need a digital restraining order on businesses!

Thanks Sprint but I don’t want your help browsing cell phones! Possibly if you’d come up with better abstracts expanding on what the phone actually can and can’t do I’d appreciate it. This is about as bad as Rackspace, but at least Sprint waited until i was at the purchase page trying to guage the total price.

Business hierarchies are amusing. I think, from my experience, there are five main groups. There are the upper-upper management that ultimately gives the face to the company, typically your VP group, or the other individuals whose heads are distinctly hidden from view by the rear-end of the VP group.

From this group falls the upper-management that is directly responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, maybe weekly reviews, and are the ‘boss’ for all intensive purposes. This group breeds the underling superfluous supervisor group that tends to spread around carrying out the wishes of their direct bosses by instructing the standard work force group.

Adjacent to these groups is the IT departments. Somehow IT, much like a tumor, wedges itself into the crevasses between each of these aforementioned groups, and on occasion has it’s very own head VP group. If it’s easier you can consider the IT department the conjoined twin to the standard business hierarchy. However, IT, unlike the conjoined twin, isn’t considered very important, and is often made to follow in the path of the business group regardless of IT objections.

It’s in this regard that IT is so often and consistently ignored by all major decision makers. The hypocrisy of this situation is that often IT is able to dictate all processes that business channels must flow through providing applications for business to run off, and the majority of the time all business operations would come to a complete halt based on IT process control. I’ve seen it happen like a train derailing, it’s an event that you can’t not look at, but at the same time you want to run from very quickly. Often time the casualties are merely the number of hours IT has to work in addition to normal load to get the train back on the tracks.

The craziest thing about this entire hierarchy is that while all management, VP group, or otherwise are still at the mercy of the work force. Without the padding of the worker group at the bottom of that triangle then your triangle starts to get a little pointier at the bottom. If your company looks like an upside down triangle with more upper management than work force then I’m assuming your company is going to go in that direction as well. But I digress; it’s with that work force at the bottom that carries the sway. I’ve seen IT projects go bottom up, not the triangle again, simply because the work force did not adopt the programs they were supposed to use. It costs millions, and it’s continuing to cost millions. It’s just really funny how what comes down from the top the top sometimes has to eat. If you’re lucky they may eat cake, but often times it’s a lot worse.

I’m really excited today. I started work on my first personal commercial product. This may not be the first ‘commercial’ product I’ve built or helped build, but this is the first one that will be my very own for the new company. I’m very excited, it’s coming along great, and I’m anxiously looking forward to release date. I’ve worked out the paperwork, documentation, and have started the database modeling.

As far as the entire process goes I’d say im about 95% done with the database model. I’m going to start loading it with data, finalize the stored procedures I need for standard release 1, and then build up my three layered approach. I’m deciding on the technology to use know. I’m thinking Enterprise Library foundation, with Framework 2.0 desktop application for supporting grunt entry work, and an ASP.net 2.0 web interface to the system via web services.

I’m so excited. It’s coming together nicely and my schedule is very aggressive. I’ll be sure to link when it’s completed, but it’s still looking to be about a month of development before it’s candidate release 1 ready.

In other news I saw the Hulk movie today. Not bad, I’ll touch on that more later.

There is a little known Thai restaurant in the Eastgate area called Ban Thai. Ban Thai is located in the same chain of stores where Rhinos is located, or just look across the street from McDonalds off 32. It’s a decent place I’ve actually gone there one time previous with my cousin who was first to tell me about it.

It’s probably been eight months since my last visit. Not because of my distaste for the place but merely for the lack of interest by other friends in going with me. I hate to actually eat in the restaurant because I found the room to be dark, cramped, and the lack of an assortment of other guests always leaves me feeling awkward. The waiters are decent, they’re good about drinks, but they do make you feel a little uncomfortable.

I’d highly recommend the place as a take out Thai place, or wait until there is a group to go with you to eat inside. The food is fantastic, which completely makes up for the lack of atmosphere. I’d give the place easily 7 out of 10 in yum factor. It’s classy enough to merit deserving such good food, but not too classy as to completely keep anyone in casual attire dropping in for a bite.

I think for two people to eat very comfortably with plenty of leftovers it will run about $25. Considering the only other Thai place in this area is Bangkok’s in Milford this is a pretty rare find to find Thai in Eastgate. With the Eastgate Sizzling Wok going under new management, and the Eastgate Buffet providing semi-decent food Ban Thai is a completely welcome addition to the area. It’s been there for a while, but really seems to be a word-of-mouth recommendation for most who’ve never heard of it. So if you’re hungry for Thai give it a try.

Finished a new company website recently and I think it looks decent. I started to flex some more artistic muscle but luckily I still have my artist that I’ve been working with. I had to shelve one of the designs and go with mine because the customer started to like it more and more while I was just demoing content. So to my surprise they shelved the artists theme and went with mine.

I am kind of thrilled by that since I’m not much of an artist, at least not anymore, but I think I can get the hang of it. I’m proud of the site, even with its small size, and I think it will turn out very well for the company. I’ve started doing SEO marketing, keyword concentrations in content, and in general this is just version 1.0 of the site. We’re seeing a lot more things being added, new pages, new content, and I think we’ll over take some of the competition quickly.

I’ve found a good niche group that I’ve been working with. I have a load more clients starting to knock, meetings being set up, and things are looking bright. This site went through a bumpy patch, miscommunications, and a missed deadline of a week.

Communication, communication, and communication is the key to success it seems. If there is a delay, tell them, and if there is a disagreement resolve it. Don’t let the left hand start doing work when the right hand hasn’t even found the arm yet.

Simple but costly mistakes I tell yah. Anyway, the client didn’t seem to mind, even said they’d been in business 15 years without a website already so another week wouldn’t hurt anything. The sad thing was the site didn’t take all that long to make. I think more time was spent on the CSS layout than content simply because of lack of expertise on the subject and limited client facing.

Taking away from the project is that communication is an absolute must. It really must be true that in most things IT it’s at least 80% communication and probably 20% technology. I’m looking forward to more opportunities and will be taking away some valuable life lessons from the experience at the beginning. It’s been a semi-smooth ride with a few bumps. So here’s to http://www.jwhexcavating.com going live!

Dear Visual Studio 2008,

By the time you read this I’ll be dead, because when a computer can actually read and comprehend this I’ll most likely have died of old age. Visual Studio or VS as I so lovingly called you, you’re not the same IDE I fell in love with. You’ve changed, you seem so vain with your new dolled up look, and your cool fading WPF enhanced appearance.

You just don’t respond like you used to. Back in 98’ when I first picked you up it was just a fresh loving relationship. We didn’t need fancy frameworks, themed controls, and we were so happy together. You were only version 6 back then, but we’ve grown older. As time moved on our relationship changed, we had to try spicing things up in 02’ when you put .Net on.

It was a lot of fun. We had over 3000 classes to play around with, and let’s admit it we fooled around a lot back then. It was a little rocky at the start, we had to change to 03’ pretty quick, but we found what worked. When you showed me how great C# felt I was totally hooked, but looking back it was just lust. It wasn’t until I started to dig a little deeper that I realized all you were doing was just hiding things from me.

VS this relationship just isn’t working out. You’ve been hiding things from me for too long, and with your new attitude I just don’t see how we can keep going. I admit I’ve just been trying to use you at this point, but you don’t seem interested. You always tell me you are tired and need to restart, or you just sit there staring at me with your disabled grayed out face while you spin your cursor.

It’s over. I’m sorry, but I won’t take you constantly leaving then showing back up after removing all the things I’ve put on your form. I need to tell you something, and it may be hard to hear. I’ve been seeing someone else. I ran into your old friend C the other day, and we kicked things off. I started to compile code again instead of having to ask you to do it every time. It was refreshing to know what I’m doing counts. Your friends, CLR, and MSIL were nice to me in the beginning, but C told me the truth. You’ve been interpreting for me the whole time. I don’t need you to run my code. I’m sure I’ll see you around, maybe we can still be friends, but this is the end.

Yours truly,

Rob