Nothing is impossible

SSIS - Never expected it to be so good ...

2011-07-16T11:19:00.001-07:00

For past 6 months I am looking into SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) as a ETL technology. Frankly, I never expected that it would be so mature a platform. With SSIS Microsoft directly competes with Informatica (which has ben around for years) in ETL space. At first glance it looked as a battle between a mouse and a dinosaur. However, Microsoft's Business Intelligence Suite is gradually gaining pace and recognition. It is now a very mature platform. The suite consists of Integration Services, Analysis Services and Reporting Services. It has a development environment in form of BIDS (Business Intelligence Studio) which is ok. The provision for C# based custom scripts is quite good. The framework options are also reasonable. The SQL Data validation options are pretty ok. However, debugging the C# custom scripts is still a pain. Overall it is a decent bet given the fact that it ships free with SQL Server as compared to the costs associated with Informatica.

WF 4.0 State machine workflow

2011-07-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been working on WF 4.0. On the look of it Workflow Foundation looks pretty impressive. The XAML based designer for developing the workflow is pretty responsive. I got a chance to evaluate State Machine workflow and did manage a quick Proof of Concept within just a day or two. The persistence and tracking capabilities with SQL Server are good and robust. However, not support for Oracle persistence which means develop you own custom instance store to persist long running workflows. Hmmm.. something not very impressive ... It is light and performance of WF 4.0 is 10 times faster than that of WF 3.0. However, there are few concerns around testability of XAML based workflow and also maintainability. One needs to carefully devise a strategy to migrate the existing workflow instances when a workflow undergoes a version change. It has decent support for transactions, exception handling and bookmarking. Overall I am pleased with what is on the plate!

WPF 4.0

2011-07-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Microsoft's user interface technology ... aa much much advanced version of so called "Windows development". It has great graphic capabilities, very responsive and with a great control toolkit. With Expression Studio as far as creativity and rich user experience goes sky is the limit. It has a strong MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern .. pretty much on the lines of Model-View -Provider. A strong Prism (advanced Composite Application Block) library with unity container for IoC makes enterprise development pretty elegant. Overall the roadmap for WPF looks very promising. With Silverlight which is a subset of WPF for web, Microsoft has captured the attention of developers towards rich user experience on web too. Definitely WPF and Silverlight are excellent technologies to watch out for in future!

Workflow and .NET

2010-04-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

What is a workflow?

A worklfow is a sequence of steps or activities. It depicts interation between humans and the systems. The flow is often depicted using a document that is passed from one step to another.

Elements in a workflow

Steps: These include steps such as Start,Fail,Suspend,Decision,Custom etc.
Document: Contains the details that are passed across various steps.
Document Fields: These are details contained in a document.
Sequence of steps: Indicates which is next step for a specific step
Users and Roles: Users and their roles within the workflow
Condition: Conditions that trigger the steps.
Handlers: Handle specific events

Workflow Technology in .NET

Windows Workflow Foundation is one of the important additions to the .NET 3.0 technologies. It looks promising and worth an evaluation. It is in-process, has a decent designer integrated with Visual Studio and a service interface. However, the key factors for me are Persistence mechanism, Performance and scalability, Clean interaction mechanism with web applications.

Here is the link that describes this technolgy in more details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/dd851337.aspx

Test Driven Development (TDD)

2010-04-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

What is TDD?

Test Driven Development (TDD) is a software technique that relies on testing (in an automated fashion) the unit of work before implementing it.

It is based on the principle “Red-Green-Refactor”

Red implies fail
Green implies pass
Refactor the code still ensuring that the test passes.

TDD has its roots in extreme programming. In TDD the software developer first writes a test that fails. The developer then writes the code to make the failing test pass. Finally, the code is refactored and the test is verified to ensure that it still passes.

There are quite a number of tools available for TDD. A combination of Nunit (for writing unit tests), NMock (a mocking framework) and Cruise Control.Net (for continuous integration) works well for .NET developers. The test contains assertion indicating the success or failure of the test.

Few Dos and the Don’ts for TDD

Write unit test only for the intended target
Choose a test name to clearly indicate the intention of the test
Write the test as fail first and not pass first i.e. write test to fail and not pass in all cases.
Write separate unit tests to test separate functionalities rather than reuse the existing ones.
Do not write unit tests that run incredibly slow. Use mocks instead of slow interfaces.
Avoid excessive code in setup to set the data for testing the target.
Avoid God Objects (overdependence on functionality that are center of the implementation)
Avoid over use of mock objects
Do not compromise on encapsulation and data hiding to achieve 100% code coverage
Do not use one unit test to generate data for another unit test
Do not make environment specific assumption.
Do not use logging or tracing if the test passes.

Few Useful links

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottdockendorf/archive/2004/10/06/238811.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730844(VS.80).aspx

http://codebetter.com/blogs/darrell.norton/articles/50337.aspx

http://martinfowler.com/articles/mocksArentStubs.html

Effective software development using SCRUM

2010-01-25T19:56:00.000-08:00

What is SCRUM?
SCRUM is an iterative incremental framework and is a perfect fit for small self organizing software teams. It is rapidly being adopted by the developer community. Below I have put a quick brief of the process based on my experience of participating in the same.

Who is involved ...
The key roles in SCRUM are:

Scrum Master: person responsible for maintaining the processes
Product Owner: person who represents the stake holders
The Team: typically 5-9 cross-functional persons

The stakeholders interact with the Product Owner while the team focuses on the deliverables.

The Artifacts ...
The list of all the product features (typically written in form of User Stories) are prioritized by the Product Owner and listed in the Product Backlog. During each iteration called a Sprint (of 2-4 weeks duration) a potentially shippable set of user stories from the product backlog is included in the Sprint Backlog. The selection is purely based on priority computed using business value and effort needed to implement.

A user story included in the sprint backlog is further divided into more manageable tasks. Typically a task spans 12-15 hours and a day consists of 6 hours. A publicly displayed Burndown Chart daily tracks the progress of the team during a sprint.

The Meetings ..
There are a bunch of ceremonies the team needs to participate in.

Sprint Planning : 6-8 hours begining of each sprint for planning and estimation
Sprint Review : 3-5 hours end of each sprint to review and demo the sprint deliverable
Sprint Retrospective : 3-5 hours end of each sprint to reflect on the completed sprint and brainstorm over the scope for improvements
Daily Scrum : Not more than 15 mins. during which each team member answers 3 Qs:

Q1 - What did I do yesterday?

Q2 -What will I do today?

Q3 -Is there anything in my way?

During the sprint planning meeting, the team collectively estimates the tasks using techniques such as Planning Poker. Each team member voluntarily picks up a task based on his velocity.

The Advantages ..

Significant advantages of adopting SCRUM:

Focuses on business value, stakeholder participation and collective ownership of the product by the team
Fits very well with agile practices such as pair programming, continuous integration, test driven development.
Effective in adapting to changing business needs.
The team is small, more focused and productive.
Stakeholders can see working software more frequently

Client side scripting libraries - RIA

2009-09-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

While surfing over the internet I came across couple of excellent lightweight open source client side libraries. These libraries make Rich Internet Application (RIA) development look so easy and powerful.

http://jqueryui.com/
http://www.extjs.com/

The significant advantages include:
- Abstraction of lower lever javascript complexities
- Good effects
- Excellent themes

Microsoft decides to ship JQuery with Visual Studio
For more details visit ...
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx

ASP.NET MVC - Hopefully a good learning experience

2009-06-24T22:59:00.000-07:00

One of the things on my learning list is ASP.NET MVC. Its still in its early stages and not yet a mature framework ... however it has a good potential to be a killer framework .. Currently, there are plenty of Helper libraries available on the Internet and Codeplex to fill in the missing pieces.

I am sure the Architecture Gurus and critiques would not have appreciated the framework that Microsoft has come up with. But people .. its just a 1.0 version. It has still a long way to go .. Even ASP.NET took years of quality development to reach where it is today .. I am hoping to see this platform mature with time.

I intend to learn the MVC framework soon ... Here are a few links for anyone wishes to get his feet wet ...

ASP.NET MVC Official site: http://www.asp.net/mvc/
Scott Guthrie's blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx
MVC Contrib: http://www.codeplex.com/MVCContrib
AJAX MVC: http://www.codeplex.com/ajaxmvc
UI Toolkit for MVC: http://telerikwatch.com/2009/01/telerik-mvc-demo-app-now-available.html
Spring.NET IoC + MVC using Dependency Injection: http://devlicio.us/blogs/billy_mccafferty/archive/2008/04/04/using-spring-net-and-nhibernate-with-asp-net-mvc.aspx

Hopefully the learning experience would be enjoyable!

Indian Cuisines in Bellevue ...

2009-06-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

I am a foody and those who know me pretty much know my fascination for food. I like trying out new restaurants and nothing like "Desi khaana in Videsh" Thats the only way I keep in touch with food of India. Each weekend I visit an Indian restaurant.. so I thought I will put together the list of restaurants in Bellevue/Seattle area that I have tried out.

I have rated them on the scale of 1 to 10. I hope to append to this list as and when it grows.

Chutneys - 8
Pabla - 6
Taj Palace - 6
Kanishka - 9 (Good Sunday buffet!)
Mehfil - 6
Kabab Palace - 6 (Nice Kababs and fish pakoda)
Bengal Tiger - 5
Malay Satay Hut - 5
Tandoori Kitchen - 4

Other restaurants that I have tried:

Mediterranean Kitchen - 7
Thai Ginger - 6

Next on the list:

Taste of India
Shamiana
Naan & Curry
Udupi Palace / Namasthe (veg)
Curry Leaf
Haveli

Unfortunately, none of them have 10/10. But, I hope to see some better Indian food in future ....

My first shot at Crystal Reports ....

2009-06-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

Past 5 days I have spent putting my head into migrating 5 reports from Crystal Enterprise 8.5 to 10.0. I was wished "Best of Luck" when I started my task and soon I figured out what it meant. With ZERO experience on a Reporting tool I was in for some serious "fun".

The day 1 was spent in figuring out how to tweak the tables to get the desired result just to discover that the approach totally "rubbish" especially if you have schema changes. After breaking my head in search of right steps .. end of day 4, I came up with 5 reports .. Last day was pretty much integration with the .NET and loads of testing. I felt quite relieved that the effort was not in vain .. though I must admit it could have been much simpler .. In the past, I have seen developers crib about Crystal Reports. However, what amazes me is that it is still used by such a wide developer community. So the question is: Is the tool so bad, or are the developers struggling to learn it?In my opinion its a mix of both!

Below are some of the things (in my opinion) which Crystal Enterprise 10.0 lacks and I hope are easier in the later versions:

1. The designer is not developer friendly and does an average job.

2. There is only a specific way to do a task and the developer must know how.

3. The online documentation is less .. googling does not help and content in form of books is more (not my style of learning)

4. The tool is not consistent and there are issues resolving the references especially if you are using Tables and columns directly as variables in the report.

5. Never save the report with the Preview .. does not work!

6. Using the subreports is tricky, needs parameter linking and has some limitations.

7. Crystal Viewer at times gives weird results and the developer is left clueless why a specific thing is occuring .. easier solution is to reinstall the software.

Some learnings ...

1. Ask the right persons the right questions

2. Know the features of a tool and requirements thoroughly before starting a task

3. Never get stuck up if an approach fails .. keep thinking about alternate approaches

Hopefully this reporting experience was a neat one and would help me somewhere down the road ...