Category Archives: computing

Sequential .NET Unit Tests

So we’re on: .NET 3.5, NHibernate 2.0, MSTest, Linq, SQL Server 2005. I wasn’t able to find a decent bootstrap-able database for integration testing of our data access layer, so we chose the next best thing—SQL Server must run on localhost when the tests run. The rest is easy. Each test case asks for a fresh database [...]

Setting Those Column Lengths

In which I pick on the X in VARCHAR(X)… We’re all good at putting up a table in a relational database. We’re even better at guessing hard limits for the VARCHAR columns. But is it really such a good idea to put all those hard limits? I think software written for the future should not make assumptions [...]

Good Coding Practices

Reduce Asymmetries I recently created an incremental update collection of classes which featured some version-aware processing. Let there be an application having a given version, a resource also having a version, and a collection of updates which can transition resources from a start version to an end version. The problem at hand is to come [...]

Migrate Your URLs Gracefully

When URLs on your website become invalid, it’s good practice to deprecate rather than remove them, such as to give time to your visitors and the search engines to adapt to the new links. Personally, I have three versions of my website, (Version 1, Version 2, you’re looking at Version 3 now) and I’ve been [...]

Proving the Concept, Part I

Upon releasing my Java virus to major antivirus companies, on the Sun forums, and on computer virus mailing lists, one reply was “your virus is not interesting, because the virus that proved the concept has already been produced”. Well, in defense of my effort, I need to point out that “Strange Brew”, the first Java [...]