Rampid Byter

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

Business, Programming

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.

Offbeat

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.

SQL Server

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.

Offbeat

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.

Offbeat

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.

Business

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.

Business