Microsoft gets a new refreshed look for .NET platform... This new logo represents "wave" and the wave represents "N".
For more details checkout this post on MSDN Blogs.
Archive for October, 2008
Recently in one of my project I was suppose to download file from a secure website. Actually I have to set the scheduler job for downloading nightly builds/full files from the server and the files are placed on secure website.
Initially I tried that with file_get_contents function but it was just downloading 0KB file. Then it strike me that oh..! I can't use file_get_contents as it can't understand the HTTPS protocol here. So what could help me nothing else then our best friend CURL. file_get_contents and fopen kind of other functions works fine with any http web locations.
Here is the simple CURL file transfer function snippet which will copy file from any secure http location. Read the rest of this entry »
I would like to post one wired and interesting issue I faced before few days.
Recently I was deploying one of my project on client end. Basically it was a Web Application but unlike other setups they were going to use that by terminal access. Meaning that all Users of the Portal will be having unique login into their(client's) Windows Network Domain and users will be logging into the Portal by logging into the Server machine first with given Windows domain credentials and then to the Portal.
This setup seems to be easy and no worry as whole portal will be accessed via LOCALHOST only..! Looks odd for any web-application though but that was the requirement for the client (keeping their security concerns in mind).
I have been given Administrative User to login to the server machine and setup everything. I did setup and did my post implementation testing on the machine with my user. Everything seems to be working as expected and I gave green flag to my superior.
Later on I have been buzzed with 2 issues from the Client.
- Portal is not working in Internet Explorer at all.
- Users are not able to download files from my Portal.
I asked for login details they used for testing and which they were actually going to give to their Users.
Problems & their Solutions: Read the rest of this entry »
What is good code? The one which is following best programming patterns or the one which just does it's job simple what is required?
Better Code
Writing a better code everyday is every programmer's job and dream. A Programmer should learn from his past projects and experiences every time he start or initialize with something new. Whether it is using Patterns to solve common problem or be it writing reusable generalized code.
When it comes to writing generalized code/solution the programmer/developer has to think from wide perspective about the problem and divide the solution in a way that it could be used in other alternate situations which are not seen as of yet but could arise in future.
As programmer gains experience he learns from his experience what works out and what not in various situations. Experience teaches a Leader/Programmer by problem. The more no of problem one faces it helps him learn faster by solving them. It highly depends on the kind of work/project (enviornment) one is dealing with..!
Performance Tuning
Recently Vance Lucas wrote on his artical that early performance benchmarking is a disease but actually it is not really. I believe it depends on the kind of project you are dealing with. Although his post has targeted my one of the PHP Performance Tips artical which was related to "Writing better code with PHP... although some of them might not be useful with newer PHP versions but it does really matter.
But the question is if you/clients are more concerned about the performance which in most cases will be than it is good to start thinking about Performance from the day one. I know about firms/companies or clients looking at the Language/Tool/Framework benchmarks before taking decision on which tool/language to choose for the Project. This approach is better than crying after spending time, efforts and money on it.
Actually no one likes build a software which is great by architectural design but when it comes to performance it is real dull.
Conclusion:
Although this artical dosn't provide any tips to improve code in any language but in the end I can say that evaluating any code to Bad/Better/Best Code is relative and depends on the criterias and cases you are evaluating with. Work quality is relative to demand. As anytime we can't have good, cheap and fast all together.
Ultimately the Good code is which performs it's job perfectly and is easy to maintain in future. (It includes writing test cases and following proper commenting and everything..)
Readers' comments and thoughts are welcome as I would like to hear from you as well.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released
Oct 17
OpenOffice.Org 3.0 is released this monday and it's doing well. As I have seen early this week that due to unexpected download their engineers got to work on their website to manage the load. When I am writing this the website is back to it's normal and they have openoffice.org has recovered from the crash. They managed to allow download open office even when the site was down.
Now when it comes to features I am not able to try much with it but yes I have upgraded from 2.4 to this new release 3.0.
- There is new start center with various applications grouped up.
- Calc can have 3 times more columns then 256 in previous versions (1024 now).
- Microsoft Office 2007 file format support: So now we can open *.docx files from Microsoft Office 2007..!
- Solver and new theme in Calc.
- Native tables in Impress.
- Pretty Notes in the Margin and multiple page views in Writer
I have never tried with XML forms or ODBC connection for database previously but I got connected with my Sybase db and I was able to check all my tables and views from there. It was cool although procedures and triggers were not available but it was nice that we can even design forms in Open Office Database.
More on this.. may be this weekend..
