Oracle
My new bane is Oracle. I've always held the notion that Oracle was always more configurable than SqlServer (my DB of choice). Unfortunately, what i've been realizing recently is that I was right in my assumption. There's a problem though. Oracle is configurable in all the wrong places. I didn't realize that I had been so spoiled by MS's Identity property and "IF EXISTS" method. Recreating the IDENTITY functionality means creating a SEQUENCE for a table then creating a trigger on the table which auto-increments the column for you. This is a function that's taken care of via switch in SQLServer. ugh...just slightly annoying. But what I think bugs me most about Oracle is the expectations/community. For instance, WHY IS EVERYTHING IN CAPS?! I FEEL LIKE I'M CONSTANTLY YELLING AT MY DATABASE. SERIOUSLY, WHO PROGRAMS LIKE THIS? WHO MADE THE DECISION TO WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS? ugh, it just gets on my nerves because you have to had underscores to denote word seperation as opposed to camel case. Compounding the problem more is Oracle's 30 character limit for object identification. Now I'm forced to truncate and abbreviate a lot of my object's names. That means it's going to be harder to understand what's going on. Great, just what I need.
We'll ignore the fact that the DB structure I'm working on isn't even in first normal form.
House Warming Party Recap
First, I have to start off saying that is was nice to get together and see some familiar faces although Kman and several others faked on us! Nice job fellas. Hopefully we can plan house warming party part II soon and round up Kman, Rowbear, Rman II, DaBeeBee, and others.
The pizza and drinks were kewl. Crashing the $!#$#*!&) out of Grand Theft Auto IV PS3 was car-azy, ha. I have the Xbox 360 version and we beat the heck out of it big time. If you do not have GTA IV, go get it and experience the hype.
Someone else faked on us, nice job here too. "Oh, I am not ready now... ". So, off we went to the temple. The visit was interesting, but I did enjoy the feature and the tasty candy. It was not the jammed packed temple of past times, maybe next time.
Framework Refactor Part 1
I am not sure how far this series will get, but I have some free time at the moment. Let us see where it goes. We will address each of the major issues and propose several solutions and move forward to an improved document framework.
One of the major issues enumerated in the first post was the lack of rich text formatting, specifically bold, italics, underline, etc. All of the rich formatting needed to communicate and deliver professional looking documents. Old school monotype documents are out!
Problem: The problem as stated above is the current framework does not support rich text formatting.
Cause: The architectural components and design restrict the framework. Consequently, all dynamic content inherits the formatting of the letter template.
Solution: The current solution can be extended to support rich text formatting or discard the current components and redesign the solution. My initial feeling is to discard the mess and its cumbersome authoring tools.
WordPress Formatting
I need to confirm this, but I think WordPress has a couple "bugs", which are getting on my nerves. First, I explicitly set the paragraph formatting to justified. Meaning, I highlight each paragraph and apply the justify property as needed.
Why does WordPress assume that any and all text after the justified paragraph is justified too? How does Word handle this? I copied the text from a post, explicitly justified some of the paragraphs and inserted new text. The new text does not inherit the justified format.
Second, I have noticed that a justified paragraph after a list does not justify the text. The justify property is set, so what is the problem? Is this a bug? It may not be WordPress, but something is wrong here. Is the CSS hosed? Arggh!
Document Framework
A couple of days ago, I posted an article regarding assistance on two proposals. One of the responses included a high-level architecture diagram of a document generation framework, which generates letters, forms, and reports.
I reviewed the architecture diagram earlier today and must say the framework design would benefit from some major refactoring. Below is an outline of the major issues:
- The letters and forms do not support rich-text formatting (i.e. bold, italics, underline, etc.)
- The letter and form definition is both complex and resource intensive (i.e. insert statements across many table, relationships, etc.)
- The document entities do not model a document, instead it models the tables (i.e. active record design pattern)
- The process and business rules are tightly coupled to the business services.
- The framework does not support complex recipient naming rules properly; complex and repetitive code provides the functionality.
- The parameter set methods do not re-use data or utilize any caching strategies, so data is re-fetched to set common parameters.
- The framework lacks comprehensive exception and alerting functionality, which creates issues including UI usability issues.
- The framework lacks self-management functionality (i.e. reprint, cancel, etc.). This is an application requirement issue too.
- The framework does not support attachments, so both the primary document and related attachments are managed separately.
- The framework delivery mechanism is flawed, which creates data anomalies and requires hot fixes to correct.
- Many more issues ...
Theme of the Week R.I.P.
Did the Theme of the Week fade to black? I really enjoyed seeing each theme realized by the creativity of various team members. Also, I found that some team members posses fine artistic talents. I think I am going to create a virtual whiteboard to keep the themes alive!
Pets and Science
Have you ever had a favorite pet that you loved like a part of your family and then they up and died on you? Well thanks to science you don't have to put up with that pesky heart break you might experience after such a loss. You broke your pet of that bad habit of pooping on the rug, you can break them of that nasty habit of leaving you by dying. That's right science shows us that your dog is just a bunch of DNA! So, when your pet kicks the bucket you don't have to have that tough talk with the kids... you just pick up your clone and your pet is good as new! Sure you will have to train them again, but you can give them cute names like Sparky 2.0 or Mr. Snuggles the Third! For more information on how to pick up your pet clone visit www.bestfriendsagain.com. Watch out for these other services coming soon... Mom and Dad Forever and Grandparents Never Die! Or why settle for raising your kids once when you can experience the joys all over again. Did your child end up a total nut job? Well now you can fix it, by being a better parent for their clone! Why should God get to have all the fun, when science can put you in control of your own life... or... lives?
Appropriate Storage Engine
I am working on 2 personal projects, which utilize MySQL as the data store. For the initial project, I used the wizard and selected most default values to setup the database. Now, I realize I should have read about the various storage engines before creating the database.
I will not go into much detail, but wanted to outline my specific example. I am designing a public records website and am using MySQL. The data will be static with batch updates as needed, so fast SELECT operations are key. Also, I need full-text search functionality.
Initially, I selected the InnoDB table type and now discover that I need to use the MyISAM table type. InnoDB provides transaction support and high read-write concurrency features, but these features are not necessary for the read-only data application.
Carlos Mencia
Tonight, Comedy Central is airing Carlos Mencia - Performance Enhanced. I am not a Carlos Mencia fan, but thought I would check it out for a few minutes. Well, a few minutes were more than enough to remind me this guy is not funny.
The material for his routine centers around racism and handicapped topics, which are old and played out. Not to mention his delivery is horrible. Also, I just learned that his Mind of Mencia show was renewed and will premiere tomorrow night. Horrible.
House Warming Party
Whose bright idea was it to have the party THIS weekend? If Scooter had not called me, I would have thought that we were going to hold it the first week of June. This would give us time to plan a few of the details, but NO!
I called a couple friends of mine, but they are not available. I will keep checking and hope to confirm availability in the next day or two. Scooter is providing the home; I am providing the party peeps, who is buying the food, drinks, etc?
Scooter ... should we initiate a cover charge or use the honor system? I should collect for the crowd augmentation services too. If I hear, "good lord that is expensive", we will have to open up a can of you know what on you.