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Kickin' it old school.

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

I spent Christmas at my grandmother's house in Florida this year. She very generously agreed to let me devise the menu for Christmas dinner, and I decided that sticky toffee puddings should make a second appearance in as many weeks.

Now, at home, I work with a KitchenAid stand mixer, a piece of equipment that has become pretty much standard issue for home cooks - and, particularly, bakers - these days. Nonie (that's my grandmother), however, never saw a reason to replace her vintage-fabulous Mixmaster.

At first, I was frustrated - the bowl was too wide to cream the single stick of butter and 2/3 cup of sugar effectively, and I ended up doing things by hand. Then I discovered the second (deeper and narrower) bowl - aha! So, the lesson? Always explore the depths of the cabinet before giving up, and never assume that something as adorable as the Mixmaster can't be practical as well.

Update on the GreaseMonkey Custom homepage script

about 1 year ago | Amar Phadke: Amar Phadke's weblog

As mentioned at the end of my last post, i continued exploring the idea of having a custom homepage with content aggregated from different sites on the client side. I tried using the about:blank page of Firefox as the starting point on which to build content, but could not succeed. After googling on this issue [...]

Good bye 2008

about 1 year ago | Biju Bhaskar: Thoughts on enterprise application development...

Hope you are having great holidays, spending some good time with your family & friends, and be able to reflect on 2008 : )

I certainly had.... last few days have been really great. It has been a while since I have spend some quality time with my family & friends... especially my son( 5 year old).

It is going to be busy (in a good way) two weeks ahead for me. I am going on a cruise tomorrow, and next week I will be in San Francisco for a Wharton workshop on "Development of Web-Based Products and Services" conducted by Prof. Karl Ulrich. I am really exited about both.

Details on the workshop to follow....

Wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Good bye 2008

about 1 year ago | Biju Bhaskar: Thoughts on enterprise application development...

Champagne + biography = this reader's heaven!

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

I just saw this review by Roadfood's Jane and Michael Stern on NYTimes.com. Seems there is a new biography of the Widow (in French, Veuve) Clicquot that focuses "as much [on] Champagne itself as [on] the woman who helped elevate it to celebrity status."

Veuve is admittedly not my favorite Champagne, but Barbe-Nicole Clicquot was instrumental in turning Champagne into the international commercial enterprise it is today, and I can't help but be fascinated by that.

Sounds like my perfect book, and available at Barnes & Noble for less than 20 bucks (if you're a member, that is). Score!

I'm famous! (Well, sort of.)

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

How did I become famous, you might ask? Well! Schmap puts out these nifty online guides to different cities (which are absolutely perfect for use with your iPhone), and they've used two of my photos for their latest Paris edition!

A shot I snapped outside of Pierre Herme's (closed) Rue Cambon shop is included, as is the photo I took of the entryway at Angelina's. Schmap links directly back to my Flickr photostream, so here's hoping Schmap will earn Queenie some new Paris-loving readers - no doubt Schmap will earn some Queenie-loving users.

Thanks, Schmap!

P.S. - Check out the Schmap widget on the right-hand side of the page...

Satire: How to get bankrupt ?

about 1 year ago | Nikhil Rao: Nix Talk

I haven't written this article myself, but came across it on net. Its an amazing must read.........

Funny but true:
Once there was a little island country. The land of this country was thetiny island itself. The total money in circulation was 2 dollars as therewere only two pieces of 1 dollar coins circulating around.
1) There were 3 citizens living on this island country. A owned the land.B and C each owned 1 dollar.
2) B decided to purchase the land from A for 1 dollar. So, now A and C own1 dollar each while B owned a piece of land that is worth 1 dollar.
* The net asset of the country now = 3 dollars.
3) Now C thought that since there is only one piece of land in the country,and land is non producible asset, its value must definitely go up. So, heborrowed 1 dollar from A, and together with his own 1 dollar, he bought theland from B for 2 dollars.
*A has a loan to C of 1 dollar, so his net asset is 1 dollar.* B sold his land and got 2 dollars, so his net asset is 2 dollars.* C owned the piece of land worth 2 dollars but with his 1 dollar debt toA, his net residual asset is 1 dollar.* Thus, the net asset of the country = 4 dollars.
4) A saw that the land he once owned has risen in value. He regrettedhaving sold it. Luckily, he has a 1 dollar loan to C. He then borrowed 2dollars from B and acquired the land back from C for 3 dollars. The paymentis by 2 dollars cash (which he borrowed) and cancellation of the 1 dollarloan to C. As a result, A now owned a piece of land that is worth 3dollars. But since he owed B 2 dollars, his net asset is 1 dollar.
* B loaned 2 dollars to A. So his net asset is 2 dollars.* C now has the 2 coins. His net asset is also 2 dollars.* The net asset of the country = 5 dollars. A bubble is building up.
(5) B saw that the value of land kept rising. He also wanted to own theland. So he bought the land from A for 4 dollars. The payment is byborrowing 2 dollars from C, and cancellation of his 2 dollars loan to A.
* As a result, A has got his debt cleared and he got the 2 coins. His netasset is 2 dollars.* B owned a piece of land that is worth 4 dollars, but since he has a debtof 2 dollars with C, his net Asset is 2 dollars.* C loaned 2 dollars to B, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
* The net asset of the country = 6 dollars; even though, the country hasonly one piece of land and 2 Dollars in circulation.
(6) Everybody has made money and everybody felt happy and prosperous.
(7) One day an evil wind blew, and an evil thought came to C's mind. "Hey,what if the land price stop going up, how could B repay my loan. There isonly 2 dollars in circulation, and, I think after all the land that B ownsis worth at most only 1 dollar, and no more."
(8) A also thought the same way.
(9) Nobody wanted to buy land anymore.
* So, in the end, A owns the 2 dollar coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.* B owed C 2 dollars and the land he owned which he thought worth 4 dollarsis now 1 dollar. So his net asset is only 1 dollar.* C has a loan of 2 dollars to B. But it is a bad debt. Although his netasset is still 2 dollars, his Heart is palpitating.* The net asset of the country = 3 dollars again.
(10) So, who has stolen the 3 dollars from the country ? Of course, beforethe bubble burst B thought his land was worth 4 dollars. Actually, rightbefore the collapse, the net asset of the country was 6 dollars on paper.B's net asset is still 2 dollars, his heart is palpitating.
(11) B had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. C as to relinquish his 2dollars bad debt to B, but in return he acquired the land which is worth 1dollar now.
* A owns the 2 coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.* B is bankrupt, his net asset is 0 dollar. ( he lost everything )* C got no choice but end up with a land worth only 1 dollar
* The net asset of the country = 3 dollars !!!?

Playing around with Greasemonkey

about 1 year ago | Amar Phadke: Amar Phadke's weblog

Greasemonkey is an extension for firefox which allows users to write custom scripts that can change the UI and behavior of web-pages. I tried writing a small script that would change the layout of an RSS-feed aggregator site->www.waywework.it. Here is a screen shot of how it looks after applying the custom Greasemonkey script. And here is the [...]

Merb-ied Rails

about 1 year ago | Gourav Tiwari: easy_software = Agile.find(ruby_on_rails)

December, 23rd, 2008 will be remembered as the most important day in Ruby on Rails history. Merb is, a framework, dedicated for developers. It gives power to build and choose your own tools. On the other hand Rails community is rich with great features in the kitty and well prepared for Rails-2.3 launch in January, 2009 with new features(Rails Metal, application generators, etc).

But, both the sides of fence share a common goal: help developers to write better performing application, easily. That's where Rails 3 + Merb 2 comes in :)

It doesn't mean re-writing of Rails core
Modularity: more loose coupling to provide easy replacement of painful parts.
Performance improvemnets: with architectural changes

Feasting with friends.

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

You know those nights when you just have an awesome time? Where the wine is unbelievably good and flows freely, where the food is simple but tasty and leaves you free to talk instead of just ooh and aah over it, where the company is comfortable and warm?

Saturday night was one of those nights for me.

My friends Caroline, Brian and Ellie came over for dinner, and we spent a most excellent evening together. Ellie's just started med school in Chicago, Caroline and Brian have just gotten engaged, and I'm starting a new role at work in January, so we had oodles to celebrate.

Accordingly, we drank a bottle of Schramsberg and a bottle of Ayala (an unbelievably good 1999 brut millésimé from my champagne soulmate, Louisa), some delicious homemade eggnog (courtesy of Brian, and accompanied by fried chickpeas with cilantro), and a gorgeous bottle of Hall Cabernet Sauvignon (which Caroline, far more discerning than I, pronounced too young, but I thoroughly enjoyed).

The food was all comfort, all the time: roasted tomato soup, gougères, macaroni and cheese with bacon and mushrooms, and sticky toffee puddings. The music was mainly Christmas songs, with a bit of Arcade Fire thrown in for spice. Ellie insisted on washing some dishes, and I actually let her, which means I must have been tipsier than I realized.

All in all, a fantastic evening.

Roasted Tomato Soup
Adapted from Ina Garten

3 lbs. plum tomatoes, sliced in half lengthwise
1/4 cup plus 2 tbs. olive oil, divided
1 tbs. kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
2 tbs. unsalted butter
2 small yellow onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
28 oz. canned plum tomatoes, with juice
4 cups fresh basil leaves
1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves, plus extra for garnish
1 quart chicken stock

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss the fresh tomatoes with 1/4 cup of the olive oil, the salt and the pepper, and spread evenly, in layer, on one large or two small rimmed baking sheets. Roast for 35-45 minutes, until well-browned.

In a large dutch oven or stockpot, heat the remaining 2 tbs. of olive oil and the butter over medium heat. Once the butter has melted, add the onions, garlic and red pepper flakes, and saute until the onions have begun to turn brown around the edges.

Add the canned tomatoes, basil, thyme and chicken stock. Add the roasted tomatoes, with their juices, and bring the mixture to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for forty minutes.

Using a stick blender (or a traditional blender, working in batches), blend to desired consistency (I like it thick but not chunky). Taste and adjust for seasoning and serve each bowl sprinkled with a few fresh thyme leaves.

Serves six, generously. Can be made up to a day ahead and reheated gently on the stovetop.

Peeler for cucumber on windows

about 1 year ago | Gourav Tiwari: easy_software = Agile.find(ruby_on_rails)

Cucumber is one of the cornerstone for BDD in Ruby on Rails. Non technical or business participants can write tests (called as features or stories) in plain English and cucumber allows the developers to execute these tests.

I was very excited when I started looking at it. In my test.feature file, I have a feature:

Feature: Grant and revoke access
To have proper security model
User should have proper access

Scenario: Revoke access of a user who do not deserves access
Given Gourav is a user who do not deserves access
When system run cron job to verify access
Then Gourav's access should be revoked


There are two ways to execute this file:

1. Cucumber as a plugin (by rake task):

It starts eating 'a' and 'A' characters on windows:

Feture: Grnt nd revoke ccess # fetures/grnt_nd_revoke_ccess.feture

To hve proper security model

User should hve proper ccess

Scenrio: Revoke ccess of user who do not deserves ccess # fetures/test.feture:5

Given Gourv is user who do not deserves ccess # fetures/test.feture:6

When system run cron job to verify ccess # fetures/test.feture:9

Then Gourv's ccess should be revoked # fetures/test.feture:10

I went to open source community and worked little bit on issue #81 (first encounter with Opensource community :) ) and found troubleshooting for this issue. Now "rake features" works well and give proper output.

2. Cucumber as a gem:


cucumber features\test.feature It gives:

Feature: Grant and revoke access # features/test.feature

To have proper security model

User should have proper access

Scenario: Revoke access of a user who do not deserves accessC:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/

gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/tree/scenario.rb:70:in length': undefined methodjlength' for Scenario ng (NoMethodError)


from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/tree/scenario.rb:74:in `max_line_length'


from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/tree/scenario.rb:78:in `padding_length'

from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/formatters/pretty_formatter.rb:197:in `padding_spaces'


from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/formatters/pretty_formatter.rb:58:in `scenario_executing'


from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/broadcaster.rb:15:in `__send__'

from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/broadcaster.rb:15:in `method_missing'

from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/broadcaster.rb:13:in `each'

from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/broadcaster.rb:13:in `method_missing'

... 12 levels...

from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/../lib/cucumber/cli.rb:11:in `execute'

from C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.1.12/bin/cucumber:6

from C:/ruby/bin/cucumber:19:in `load'

from C:/ruby/bin/cucumber:19



I found a workaround for this:

In file C:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\cucumber-0.1.12\lib\cucumber\tree\Scenario.rb on line number 69, I have changed jlength to length:

@length ||= Cucumber.language['scenario'].length + 2 + (@name.nil? ? 0 : @name.length)

Similarly, in file C:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\cucumber-0.1.12\lib\cucumber\tree\step.rb on line number 22 I have changed jlength to length:

keyword.length + 1 + name.length



But for a better solution I am still working on issue #81

Using TDD to write a Drupal module

about 1 year ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

Last time I wrote my first PHPUnit test for Drupal. Now I’d like to continue writing my new Drupal module using Test Driven Development (TDD). Here are links to the finished test code and production code files that I’ll write below: TddTests.php and tdd.module, in case you want to download and try these tests yourself.

With TDD the first step is always to write a failing unit test. But, which test to write first? What should I try to test? Since the demonstration module I’m writing will display a series of nodes on the screen containing a certain word in their title, let’s try to test that behavior directly, right away:

public function test_search_for_titles()
{
  $query = 'FindMe';
  $titles = tdd_search_for_titles($query);
}

This doesn’t actually test anything, but it calls a function that will return the titles. Now if we run this test, it will obviously fail since “tdd_search_for_titles” is not defined. Let’s write that. Another rule of TDD is to write just enough production code to get the failing unit test to pass. The simplest way to get this test to pass is to just return a hard coded title like this:

function tdd_search_for_titles($query) {
  return array('Hard coded title with the word FindMe');
}

Now the test above passes, along with the first test I wrote in my last post:

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
..
Time: 0 seconds
OK (2 tests)

This seems silly, but at least we’ve started writing and executing code in our new module. Since our test is not actually testing anything, let’s add some real test code to it by checking that the titles returned actually contain the query string:

public function test_search_for_titles()
{
  $query = 'FindMe';
  $titles = tdd_search_for_titles($query);
  foreach ($titles as $title) {
    $this->assertTrue(stripos($title, $query) > 0);
  }
}

Run the test again: it still passes. It’s important when using TDD to continuously run your tests as you write code, as often as every 30 seconds or 1-2 minutes. That way as soon as your tests fail, you know immediately what caused the problem: whatever code you changed during the past 1-2 minutes. One benefit of TDD is that you rarely need to use a debugger to figure out what is wrong since you execute and test your changes so frequently. Next, as a sanity check, let’s try breaking the code on purpose and checking if our test is really working or not:

function tdd_search_for_titles($query) {
  return array('Hard coded title with the word FindXYZMe');
}

Now the test fails (good!):

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
.F
Time: 0 seconds
There was 1 failure:
1) test_search_for_titles(TddTests)
Failed asserting that <boolean:false> is true.
/Users/pat/htdocs/drupal3/modules/tdd/TddTests.php:15
FAILURES!
Tests: 2, Failures: 1.

I frequently do something like this when some new tests pass for the first time, just to be sure they are really executing and calling the code I intended them to. Sometimes trusting your tests too much can be dangerous! If we remove the “XYZ” change the test will pass again. Once the test is passing again we can move on.

So far we haven’t done much. All we have done is to prove that we can write a function to return a hard-coded string. Let’s continue by testing that we can query actual data in the MySQL database. But first we need to create some data for our function to look for. The simplest way to do that would be to open Drupal in a web browser and to create some nodes (web pages) that have the query string in their title. This is a good way to get started, but can lead to trouble down the road since our test will now rely on someone having created these pages manually. If we run the tests using a different database or on someone else’s machine they will fail. A better approach would be to have the test itself create the data it expects. Here’s how to do that:

public function test_search_for_titles()
{
  $login_form = array('name' => 'admin', 'pass' => 'adminpassword');
  user_authenticate($login_form);
  
  $node = new stdClass();
  $node->title = 'This title contains the word FindSomethingElse';
  $node->body = 'This is the body of the node';
  node_save($node);

  $query = 'FindSomethingElse';
  $titles = tdd_search_for_titles($query);
  foreach ($titles as $title) {
    $this->assertTrue(stripos($title, $query) > 0);
  }
  
  node_delete($node->nid);    
}

There are a few different things going on here:

Most importantly we have created a node object in memory, loaded it with some test values, and then saved it into the database using node_save(). This means that every time the test is run, it will create the node that the test code expects to find.
The call to user_authenticate() at the top is required to setup Drupal properly, allowing the node_save() and node_delete() functions to work. Without it, we would probably get an access denied error since anonymous users typically aren’t allow to create and save pages, and certainly not to delete pages.
Finally, at the bottom of the test we are calling node_delete(), and passing the node id of the node we created earlier. This is how the test cleans up after itself. Without this our Drupal database would begin to fill up with test records, one new record each time we run the test.

If we run the test it will fail, of course, since our hard coded title does not contain “FindSomethingElse.” Instead of changing the hard coded string to make the test pass, let’s actually do some real coding and write a SQL statement to get the titles from MySQL:

function tdd_search_for_titles($query) {
  $titles = array();
  $result = db_query("SELECT title FROM {node}");
  while ($node = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    $titles[] = $node->title;
  }
  return $titles;
}

Finally we have started writing code that our module will actually use. Here we take the query string, construct a select statement and execute it using db_query(). Once we have the results, we return the titles as an array of strings. Let’s run our test and see what happens:

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
Failed asserting that <boolean:false> is true.

Oops — it failed! What went wrong? If we add another check to the test, we can get some more information:

$this->assertEquals(count($titles), 1);

And if we run again:

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
Failed asserting that <integer:1> matches expected value <integer:27>.

The problem is that there are 27 titles returned, instead of just the one we created. If we take a second look at the SQL statement we see right away that there is no WHERE clause, causing all of the titles in the database to be returned. Now, if we fix the SQL statement, the test should pass:

$result = db_query(
  "SELECT title FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE '%%%s%%'", $query);

Let’s see:

phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
Failed asserting that <integer:1> matches expected value <integer:3>

Now what’s the problem?? It turns out that both the test and production functions are working properly, and there really are 3 nodes in the database with “FindSomethingElse” in the title. The reason why is that our call to node_delete() was not executed when we ran our test above and it failed (twice). We’ll fix that below. For now, let’s just clean up the database and remove the extra test records. The best thing to do is just to delete them from the Drupal admin console (Administer->Content management->Content). Now when you are sure no other nodes exist with “FindSomethingElse” in the title run the test again and it will pass.

Now… why were extra test node records created when the test failed? What happened is that the call to node_delete() is never executed if any of the asserts fail. That is, the test execution stops as soon as there is a failing assert statement. I suppose this makes sense; we know the overall test will fail if there is even one failing assert statement, and so there’s no need to continue executing the test code.

The solution is to refactor the test code and use two new functions called setup() and teardown(), as follows:

public function setup()
  {
    $login_form = array('name' => 'admin', 'pass' => 'adminpassword');
    user_authenticate($login_form);

    $this->node = new stdClass();
    $this->node->title = 'This title contains the word FindSomethingElse';
    $this->node->body = 'This is the body of the node';
    node_save($this->node);    
  }
public function teardown()
  {
    node_delete($this->node->nid);  
  }

The way this works is that setup() is called once for each test in the test class, just before the test function is called. In our case it will be called twice: once for test_tdd_help() and once for test_search_for_titles(). This gives us a chance to create test data and perform other setup tasks before each test is executed. As you might guess, teardown() is called once for each test also, right after the test function finishes. This gives us a chances to remove our test data, even if the test fails. One thing to note about this: you have to save the $node object inside the test class so that it can be accessed from teardown() and from the tests themselves if necessary; so “$node” becomes “$this->node”.

Here are the links again to the final test and code files: TddTests.php and tdd.module. In my next post I’ll finish up the code for tdd.module and TddTests.php without providing as much detail, and then move quickly to a discussion of how this code can be integrated with Drupal and included in a working web site.

Using TDD to write a Drupal module

about 1 year ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

public function test_search_for_titles()
{
  $query = 'FindMe';
  $titles = tdd_search_for_titles($query);
}

function tdd_search_for_titles($query) {
  return array('Hard coded title with the word FindMe');
}

Now the test above passes, along with the first test I wrote in my last post:

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
..
Time: 0 seconds
OK (2 tests)

public function test_search_for_titles()
{
  $query = 'FindMe';
  $titles = tdd_search_for_titles($query);
  foreach ($titles as $title) {
    $this->assertTrue(stripos($title, $query) > 0);
  }
}

function tdd_search_for_titles($query) {
  return array('Hard coded title with the word FindXYZMe');
}

Now the test fails (good!):

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
.F
Time: 0 seconds
There was 1 failure:
1) test_search_for_titles(TddTests)
Failed asserting that <boolean:false> is true.
/Users/pat/htdocs/drupal3/modules/tdd/TddTests.php:15
FAILURES!
Tests: 2, Failures: 1.

public function test_search_for_titles()
{
  $login_form = array('name' => 'admin', 'pass' => 'adminpassword');
  user_authenticate($login_form);
  
  $node = new stdClass();
  $node->title = 'This title contains the word FindSomethingElse';
  $node->body = 'This is the body of the node';
  node_save($node);

  $query = 'FindSomethingElse';
  $titles = tdd_search_for_titles($query);
  foreach ($titles as $title) {
    $this->assertTrue(stripos($title, $query) > 0);
  }
  
  node_delete($node->nid);    
}

There are a few different things going on here:

Most importantly we have created a node object in memory, loaded it with some test values, and then saved it into the database using node_save(). This means that every time the test is run, it will create the node that the test code expects to find.
The call to user_authenticate() at the top is required to setup Drupal properly, allowing the node_save() and node_delete() functions to work. Without it, we would probably get an access denied error since anonymous users typically aren’t allow to create and save pages, and certainly not to delete pages.
Finally, at the bottom of the test we are calling node_delete(), and passing the node id of the node we created earlier. This is how the test cleans up after itself. Without this our Drupal database would begin to fill up with test records, one new record each time we run the test.

function tdd_search_for_titles($query) {
  $titles = array();
  $result = db_query("SELECT title FROM {node}");
  while ($node = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    $titles[] = $node->title;
  }
  return $titles;
}

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
Failed asserting that <boolean:false> is true.

Oops — it failed! What went wrong? If we add another check to the test, we can get some more information:

$this->assertEquals(count($titles), 1);

And if we run again:

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
Failed asserting that <integer:1> matches expected value <integer:27>.

$result = db_query(
  "SELECT title FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE '%%%s%%'", $query);

Let’s see:

phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php
Failed asserting that <integer:1> matches expected value <integer:3>

The solution is to refactor the test code and use two new functions called setup() and teardown(), as follows:

public function setup()
  {
    $login_form = array('name' => 'admin', 'pass' => 'adminpassword');
    user_authenticate($login_form);

    $this->node = new stdClass();
    $this->node->title = 'This title contains the word FindSomethingElse';
    $this->node->body = 'This is the body of the node';
    node_save($this->node);    
  }
public function teardown()
  {
    node_delete($this->node->nid);  
  }

Mootools - a compact javascript framework (OpenSource)

about 1 year ago | Rohan Daxini: Rohan Daxini

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API. http://mootools.net/

Check out the site who has used mootools --> http://mochaui.com/demo/

When life hands you Pinot Noir, make...apple pie?

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

I spent Thanksgiving at my mom's new home in St. Augustine, Florida this year. She just moved in two months ago, and so she's in the box phase - you open one, you see what you see, and what you see is probably not what you need.

Case in point? The rolling pin was nowhere to be found, so I rolled out the pastry dough for my apple pie with a bottle of Pinot Noir, something I do not recommend to anyone but which certainly made for an interesting image (and a slightly lumpy crust). Of course, we didn't really care so much, since the pie in question turned out to be so darned ambrosial.

Typically, our family goes in for a very traditional apple pie: not too deep of dish, apples sliced fairly thin, filling flavored with cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, and perhaps a bit of lemon juice. This time around, I decided to splash out and make Ina Garten's deep dish apple pie. She keeps her apple slices thick and hearty - they're more chunks, really - and uses a whopping four pounds of them. She adds orange and lemon juice and zest, and rounds out the spices with a bit of allspice.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this is the best apple pie I've ever tasted. It is complex, but not overwhelming, and not even a little boring. Plus, that final egg wash makes things awful pretty, no?

Rise and shine!

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

Room service for breakfast is one of life's great pleasures. There's something unmistakably luxurious about taking breakfast in your room - you're cocooned a bit longer in your sanctuary, able to read your paper without looking rude, able to ease into your morning peacefully rather than surrounding by the jangle and clatter of cutlery.

When I travel for business, those extra twenty minutes of peace are precious to me, and I eat breakfast in my room whenever I can get away with it. My trip to Mumbai was no exception, and the ITC Maratha performed admirably. Their basket of toast and pastry arrived warm and crusty each morning, and though Indian jams tend to run too sweet for my taste, the butter was fantastic.

And, most important - the coffee was strong, rich and hot, fortifying me for long days of meetings and hand-shaking.

SOA, WOA, ROA

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Software development and integration methods continue to evolve...

Last week Matt discussed how he's thinking about Digital Strategy integration and we discussed ROA (Resource Oriented Architecture) and WOA (Web Oriented Architecture). They are specialized types of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). Neal called them " SOA that actually works".

If you haven't heard about it or used it yet, go understand it, learn it, use it. Gerardo, Matt and other engineers can help...

New iPhone

about 1 year ago | Suman Thareja: suman thareja

Enjoying my new white iphone; looking for some good games, any ideas?

Been playing Brain Tuner..

can you beat my best time?

Writing your first PHPUnit test in Drupal

about 1 year ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

In my previous post I wrote some typical Drupal code that lists nodes containing a given word in their title. In some upcoming posts I’ll rewrite that module using Test Driven Development and see whether the module turns out differently. But to get started with TDD in Drupal we need to be able to write our first test. Before we can even do that we need to install PHPUnit. Once you have PHPUnit installed, test that it is working properly by writing a trivial test file called FirstTest.php somewhere on your hard drive:

<?php
class FirstTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  public function test_two_plus_two_is_four()
  {
    $this->assertEquals(2+2, 4);
  }
}
?>

To run this you should use PHPUnit as follows from the same folder containing the test file:

$ phpunit FirstTest
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
.
Time: 0 seconds
OK (1 test)

If you get errors running this command then review the install instructions for PHPUnit and install it again if necessary.

Next: how do we apply PHPUnit to Drupal? Let’s create a new module folder, and an “info” file in it so Drupal knows what our new module is called: “tdd” for example. So we create a folder drupal/modules/tdd and a tdd.info file in this folder that contains:

name = tdd
description = Module written with TDD
package = TDD Demo Modules
version = VERSION
core = 6.x

Now let’s write our first test. PHPUnit convention is that if you have a PHP class called XYZ, you would write a test class for it called XYZTests, and by default place the test class in XYZTests.php in the same folder. Since we’re using Drupal and don’t have any object oriented code, let’s just call our test class TddTests, named after our new module, and put it into a new file in the same folder called TddTests.php. It needs to be a subclass of PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase like this:

<?php
class TddTests extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  public function test_tdd_help()
  {
    $this->assertEquals(
      tdd_help('admin/content/tdd'), "<p>Help for TDD module.</p>");
  }
}
?>

This test will call our new module’s “help” function with the path to the module’s new page and make sure we get the proper help. This seems like a good first test to write, since it’s very simple but still proves that we can call Drupal code from PHPUnit. Let’s run it and see what happens… But first you have to cd to the folder containing the TddTests.php file. PHPUnit also assumes that by default you’re executing the tests from the folder containing the test file. Let's try running our test:

$ cd modules/tdd
$ phpunit TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function tdd_help() in
/Users/pat/htdocs/drupal/modules/tdd/TddTests.php on line 6

Obviously the test fails because we haven’t written our new module yet. This seems like a waste of time, but we've taken the first step in the TDD cycle: write a failing unit test. Now let's start writing tdd.module:

<?php
function tdd_help($path, $arg) {
  switch ($path) {
    case 'admin/content/tdd':  
      return '<p>Help for TDD module.</p>';
  }
}
?>

If you run this test again you’ll get the same error message. So now what’s wrong? We forgot to enable our new module in the Drupal admin console, so the “tdd_help” function is still undefined. To enable it, open the Drupal admin console, go to the Administer->Site Building->Modules page and look at the bottom for a section called “TDD Demo Modules.”

But now if you run PHPUnit you’ll still get the same error. The mostly empty “TDD” module is now setup and working inside of Drupal, but PHPUnit has no idea what Drupal is or how to load it. What we need to do is declare somehow in TddTests.php to include and initialize the Drupal framework. To get this to work, we can use the index.php file in the root folder of Drupal app as an example. This is the PHP file that handles all incoming requests to Drupal by initializing the framework, executing the proper menu callback and displaying the result. If you look at the top of the index.php file, you’ll see these two lines:

require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

If we copy these 2 lines into TddTests.php like this:

<?php
require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);
class TddTests extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  public function test_tdd_help()
  {
    $this->assertEquals(
      tdd_help('admin/content/tdd'), "<p>Help for TDD module.</p>");
  }
}
?>

… and try to run our test again we get:

$ phpunit TddTests
Warning: require_once(./includes/bootstrap.inc): failed to open stream:
No such file or directory in /Users/pat/htdocs/drupal/modules/tdd/TddTests.php on line 2
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required
'./includes/bootstrap.inc'
(include_path='.:/usr/local/php5x/lib/php') in
/Users/pat/htdocs/drupal/modules/tdd/TddTests.php on line 2

The problem now is that the include line has the wrong relative path. If you corrected it you would still get more errors trying to include other Drupal files. It turns out that the drupal_bootstrap function assumes that the current directory is set to the root folder of your app: the location of index.php. To get it all to work, we just need to execute the tests from the root folder:

$ cd ~/htdocs/drupal
$ phpunit modules/tdd/TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
Class modules/tdd/TddTests could not be found in modules/tdd/TddTests.php.

This last error appears because we aren’t using the PHPUnit command line properly. The first parameter is the test class name; the second optional parameter that we need to use now is the test file path. Here’s the proper command line to use:

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
.
Time: 0 seconds
OK (1 test)

Finally we’ve successfully written and executed our first test! More than that, this is our first step toward writing a Drupal module using TDD. Next time I’ll get to work writing the rest of the module using TDD with these files as a starting point.

Writing your first PHPUnit test in Drupal

about 1 year ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

<?php
class FirstTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  public function test_two_plus_two_is_four()
  {
    $this->assertEquals(2+2, 4);
  }
}
?>

To run this you should use PHPUnit as follows from the same folder containing the test file:

$ phpunit FirstTest
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
.
Time: 0 seconds
OK (1 test)

If you get errors running this command then review the install instructions for PHPUnit and install it again if necessary.

name = tdd
description = Module written with TDD
package = TDD Demo Modules
version = VERSION
core = 6.x

<?php
class TddTests extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  public function test_tdd_help()
  {
    $this->assertEquals(
      tdd_help('admin/content/tdd'), "<p>Help for TDD module.</p>");
  }
}
?>

$ cd modules/tdd
$ phpunit TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function tdd_help() in
/Users/pat/htdocs/drupal/modules/tdd/TddTests.php on line 6

<?php
function tdd_help($path, $arg) {
  switch ($path) {
    case 'admin/content/tdd':  
      return '<p>Help for TDD module.</p>';
  }
}
?>

require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

If we copy these 2 lines into TddTests.php like this:

<?php
require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);
class TddTests extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  public function test_tdd_help()
  {
    $this->assertEquals(
      tdd_help('admin/content/tdd'), "<p>Help for TDD module.</p>");
  }
}
?>

… and try to run our test again we get:

$ phpunit TddTests
Warning: require_once(./includes/bootstrap.inc): failed to open stream:
No such file or directory in /Users/pat/htdocs/drupal/modules/tdd/TddTests.php on line 2
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required
'./includes/bootstrap.inc'
(include_path='.:/usr/local/php5x/lib/php') in
/Users/pat/htdocs/drupal/modules/tdd/TddTests.php on line 2

$ cd ~/htdocs/drupal
$ phpunit modules/tdd/TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
Class modules/tdd/TddTests could not be found in modules/tdd/TddTests.php.

$ phpunit TddTests modules/tdd/TddTests.php 
PHPUnit 3.2.21 by Sebastian Bergmann.
.
Time: 0 seconds
OK (1 test)

Architecture CoE evaluation - Part 2

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Things that went well

- We grew to become a high performing team. Everyone has improved and, in their own ways, led the CoE... from Jaspreet creating design patterns to Ketan introducing peer architect concept.

- We developed hands-on skills. No more chickens... we're proud to be pigs on projects.

- We leveraged each other. Never hesitated in asking for help, always ready to help and have unquestionable trust in each other.

- We learned new skills and domains. Ruby, PHP, Finance, Learn.

- We improved sponsor confidence. Senior IT leadership and Firm functions recognize and seek CoE member's advice.

- We increased developer reach. ODC isn't 7000 miles aways anymore. Our engineers are talking to us now.

- We enabled Scrum at our organization. We really did. How else can design decisions be finalized in short sprints of 40 concurrent projects?

- We had fun doing it. Meeting daily never became a drag. Central park outing, Amazing race skits, birthday celebrations are all part of it.

about 1 year ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software

I read an interesting post today by David Chelimsky who wrote RSpec A case against a case against mocking and stubbing. Its about mocking in testing and isolated vs integrated tests. I liked it all but what I particularly liked is how it describes the process of outside-in development.

To quote:

Write scenarios in plain text with cucumber (driven by user stories, organized in features).

Write the code for a step (or part of a step), run the feature, and observe the failure.

Optionally (yes, it depends – and why is the topic for another blog) drive out a view with a view spec. When I say “drive out,” I mean a very granular Red/Green/Refactor cycle that only involves this view, and only enough of this view to support satisfaction of the failing step in the cucumber feature.

Drive out a controller action using the same, granular Red/Green/Refactor cycle. And it may not be the entire controller action I think I want, covering all the cases I think I want. Just enough to support satisfaction of the failing step.

Drive out the parts of the model that I need to satisfy the failing step, using the same granular R/G/R process.

Run the cucumber feature and assess where I am.

In my projects I think I'm pretty good at following 3,4 &5 but I've struggled with steps 1 & 6. With the advent of cucumber I think now is the time to work on those other steps. I'll let you know how it goes in the New Year.

about 1 year ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software

Write scenarios in plain text with cucumber (driven by user stories, organized in features).

Write the code for a step (or part of a step), run the feature, and observe the failure.

Optionally (yes, it depends – and why is the topic for another blog) drive out a view with a view spec. When I say “drive out,” I mean a very granular Red/Green/Refactor cycle that only involves this view, and only enough of this view to support satisfaction of the failing step in the cucumber feature.

Drive out a controller action using the same, granular Red/Green/Refactor cycle. And it may not be the entire controller action I think I want, covering all the cases I think I want. Just enough to support satisfaction of the failing step.

Drive out the parts of the model that I need to satisfy the failing step, using the same granular R/G/R process.

Run the cucumber feature and assess where I am.

Crazy for Cricket

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

I'm crazy for cricket. When Indian cricket is on, I cannot do anything else. I have to watch the game. And tonight is one of those nights. India and England will play a test match in Chennai (if the rain gods don't go there). Up late tonight to watch it. I predict that India will win by more than 4 wickets or more than 150 runs. Go Sachin! Go Zaheer!

Yes, cricket is my religion. I grew up playing the game and can play/watch all forms of cricket - test, one-day, 20-20 and even street cricket! Some of you have seen a cricket bat in my office. Always up for a quick knock in the lobby...

I'm a decent medium pace bowler and a dependable middle order batsman. My love for pace shaped how I bowl and bat... I don't get to play much cricket in the US but I'll get to play again daily when I go back to India (yes, some day).

Paris, the prologue: me, circa 1986.

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

The place: Old Greenwich Elementary School. The year: 1986. The occasion: the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.

Yes, that's right - my love affair with France began way back when, back when my mother and her siblings spoke in a mysterious language when they didn't want us to hear, back when I took after-school French classes where I learned stories to help me count to ten (Under Trois, Cat sank; Sis said we'd had enough of this.), back when I wore an oh-so-American kerchief along with my red beret.

That's right, folks. True love starts early - in my case, at the age of six.

Simplicity is harder than Complexity

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

...this is what Neal Ford said in a discussion yesterday and it stuck with me. It sounds paradoxical but is totally true for software. We do not observe this anywhere else in the physical world.

That's why we need good engineers to design and write simple software.

Neal Ford puts it much more eloquently and I've requested him to blog about it... I'll post a link when it comes out...

Sony Erricson, Toshiba, Vodafone & 11 others join Open Handset Alliance

about 1 year ago | Amar Phadke: Amar Phadke's weblog

The Open Handset Alliance announced the joining of 14 additional companies yesterday. This includes the likes of Sony Erricson, Toshiba and Vodafone amongst others. New members will either deploy compatible Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of Android-based [...]

Architecture CoE evaluation - Part 1

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Here are some of my thoughts on Architecture CoE's performance this year. I'll discuss what went well and what didn't go so well in separate posts.

Things that didn't go well

- We were not fearless. E.g. we failed to take bold steps to achieve great things e.g. we tolerated the pain from our heavyweight survey platform and failed to reject it

- We were not thorough. We released 3-5 applications that needed hotfixes because we broke existing functionality. Yes, its a small % (total 120+ releases) but nothing short of perfection is expected from us in such maintenance releases. We cannot shortchange regression testing (case for automated testing but manual if/while tests aren't fully automated)

- We were not focused. We ended up spreading our attention on many things (Presentation Service, Common Service, Reporting Service, Real-life testing, Improve our design, Automated build/test/deploy/CI of Java apps, Ruby/LAMP). We could not make much progress in half of these areas

I've requested external perspective on the CoE from our external coach - Neal Ford. He will share his SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis with us in January 2009.

Your thoughts/comments?

Debugging Vs Unit Testing

about 1 year ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

We developers need to win this battle. Ofcource I am on the Unit Testing side and thatz the reason for this battle. We want to improve. We want to stop debugging, or we may call it post coding or post delivery nightmare.

How may of us are fond of SOPs? [System.out.println]
How many of us are good a putting / reading log files?
How many of us are good at using the debugger? Looking up the values inside objects at runtime?

We all are. Because thatz what we do most often. The percentage of time we
spend on debugging is far more than coding.

Every programmer knows they should write tests for their code. Few do. The universal response to "Why not?" is "I'm in too much of a hurry." This quickly becomes a vicious cycle- the more pressure you feel, the fewer tests you write. The fewer tests you write, the less productive you are and the less stable you code becomes. The less productive and accurate you are, the more pressure you feel.

Programmers burn out from just such cycles. Breaking out requires an outside influence.
The best way to convince you of the value of writing your own tests would be to sit down with you and do a bit of development.
Along the way, we would encounter new bugs, catch them with tests, fix them, have them come back, fix them again, and so on.

Paris, part five: the search for the perfect chocolat chaud.

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

Once upon a time, two very lucky young ladies took a trip to Prague. Along the way, they sampled many, many cups of hot chocolate. In the many days since, they've never found anything even close to the perfection that is Czech hot chocolate, particularly not in the surprisingly quality-hot-chocolate-free land of France.

Until now.

On the suggestion of a colleague, I decided to give French hot chocolate another go on this trip, and I was not disappointed. On Sunday afternoon, I paid a visit to Angelina, the legendary teahouse on rue de Rivoli, across from the Jardins des Tuileries. I waited in a long line of tourists and well-heeled locals for a table, and was seated on the second floor, overlooking the entrance.

I hunkered down with my book, ordered a chocolat chaud and a carafe d'eau, and awaited the arrival of the chocolate. It arrived in a little pitcher, whipped cream on the side, with a spoon for dolloping at will - or, in my case, for occasionally eating the thick concoction like a stew.

Like the mythical hot chocolates of Prague, this version was rich and deeply flavorful, not at all like the sugary water served in college cafeterias or at skating rinks here in the States. It's basically melted dark chocolate, lightly sweetened and lightened ever so slightly with a touch of milk. In short, it's pure indulgence. And I really liked being to add my cream a bit at a time, so that it didn't melt too much before I got to enjoy it.

So, does Angelina's version live up to that of Prague's Café Louvre or Café Carolina? Not quite. But after years of wandering in the chocolat chaud wilderness, I feel secure in the knowledge that the French have not lost their touch.

Example Drupal module to use for TDD demonstration

about 1 year ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

To illustrate how to use Test Driven Development while developing a Drupal module, we first need an example module to write: Let's assume we want a page in our Drupal admin console that lists all of nodes in the database, similar to the Administer->Content Management->Content page. It will also filter and sort the list, but instead of filtering on the status and type of nodes, it will filter on words contained in the node title.

The first thing I did was to write the module as quickly as possible as I normally would have without using TDD. Here’s the completed module: demo.module, and demo.info. If you want to follow along this demonstration just install a fresh copy of the latest version of Drupal 6.x (Drupal 6.6 when I wrote this); be sure to create and use a new MySQL database to use in these examples so your existing work won’t get in the way. Then download the demo.module and demo.info files into a new "demo" module folder and enable the demo module in your admin console (Administer->Site building->Modules). It will be called "Demo" and will appear at the bottom of the list of modules in a section called "TDD Demo Modules."

Once the Demo module is enabled, look for a new page in your admin console at Administer->Content management->Demo Page. It will initially display a list of all the nodes in your database, and also allow you to enter a keyword to show only the nodes whose title contains the given word.

If you are using a new empty database, create a couple of pages (Create Content->Page) to have some data to display here. I created two pages with these titles (body text doesn't matter):

This is my first page
My second page!

A quick review of the module code will reveal nothing special. Demo.module is very simple… it has some boilerplate code (demo_help and demo_menu), and then displays the new “Demo Page” with the demo_page_view function:

function demo_page_view($keys = NULL)
{
  $header = array(
    array('data' => t('Page Title'), 'field' => 'title', 'sort' => 'asc')
  );
  $sql = "SELECT * FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE '%%%s%%'";
  $sql .= tablesort_sql($header);
  $result = pager_query($sql, 50, 0 , NULL, $keys);
  $rows = array();
  while ($data = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    $rows[] = array(check_plain($data->title));
  }
  if (empty($rows)) {
    $rows[] = array(array('data' => 'No pages match the given pattern.'));
  }
  $output = drupal_get_form('demo_pattern_form', $keys);
  $output .= "Pages matching this pattern:";
  $output .= theme('table', $header, $rows);
  $output .= theme('pager', NULL, 50, 0);
  return $output;
}

This is really all there is to demo.module – this function generates a SQL statement using tablesort_sql, then selects all the matching nodes from the database using pager_query and builds an array containing the matches. Then it returns the HTML for a table containing the matching records using the currently selected theme. Later in the module file there are more functions that handle navigation and processing for the “demo_pattern_form.”

This code is so simple it’s hard to imagine that anything could be wrong with it: in just a few lines it gets the data we need and also displays it. It’s also very typical Drupal module code. If you look around the Drupal code base or at code from 3rd party modules you will see a lot of code that looks just like this. It uses common Drupal functions like “theme,” “pager_query” and “db_fetch_object.”

But in my opinion there are a two things wrong with this example module:

There are no tests – if I needed to change something about the behavior of demo.module I would have no way to know whether or not I broke something after making a code change, other than by opening a browser and testing manually.
It’s very hard to separate the actual business logic or custom behavior that demo.module provides from the boilerplate code required to run inside of Drupal.

A veteran Drupal developer would disagree with the second point, of course: obviously the SQL statement used in demo_page_view really is the only custom behavior here, and all of the other calls to Drupal functions like drupal_get_form, table_sort_sql, etc., are used to help display our data in a Drupal page. But imagine a PHP developer who wasn’t yet very familiar with Drupal looking at this module file for the first time: how would she or he have any idea what this module did? Or where to begin to change it’s behavior if necessary? This is another important use of tests: as living documentation for what code does and how it should work.

This is a silly example, but imagine if this module did something sophisticated and important to your business. Then imagine if your business decided to upgrade from one version of Drupal to another – or imagine that your business decided to use DJango, Joomla or some other CMS system… or to implement it using custom Java or Ruby code. Then the question would become: what part of the module’s code is ours that we want to keep? And what part of the module is simply needed to coexist with Drupal? Right now it’s not so easy to tell.

I believe that using TDD while writing a Drupal module will not only provide the normal benefits of testing: emergent design, living documentation and simply more robust code, but will also lead to isolating your business’s code from the framework in a natural way. By writing unit tests first, you will have to think about what you are trying to test: your business logic only and not the Drupal framework itself.

In my next post we’ll get started by installing PHPUnit and writing our first PHPUnit unit test with Drupal.

Example Drupal module to use for TDD demonstration

about 1 year ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

If you are using a new empty database, create a couple of pages (Create Content->Page) to have some data to display here. I created two pages with these titles (body text doesn't matter):

This is my first page
My second page!

function demo_page_view($keys = NULL)
{
  $header = array(
    array('data' => t('Page Title'), 'field' => 'title', 'sort' => 'asc')
  );
  $sql = "SELECT * FROM {node} WHERE title LIKE '%%%s%%'";
  $sql .= tablesort_sql($header);
  $result = pager_query($sql, 50, 0 , NULL, $keys);
  $rows = array();
  while ($data = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    $rows[] = array(check_plain($data->title));
  }
  if (empty($rows)) {
    $rows[] = array(array('data' => 'No pages match the given pattern.'));
  }
  $output = drupal_get_form('demo_pattern_form', $keys);
  $output .= "Pages matching this pattern:";
  $output .= theme('table', $header, $rows);
  $output .= theme('pager', NULL, 50, 0);
  return $output;
}

But in my opinion there are a two things wrong with this example module:

There are no tests – if I needed to change something about the behavior of demo.module I would have no way to know whether or not I broke something after making a code change, other than by opening a browser and testing manually.
It’s very hard to separate the actual business logic or custom behavior that demo.module provides from the boilerplate code required to run inside of Drupal.

In my next post we’ll get started by installing PHPUnit and writing our first PHPUnit unit test with Drupal.

Paris, part four: Camille, la deuxième fois.

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

My second visit to Camille was a slightly more sedate affair - aside from a boisterous group of American women, the restaurant was relatively quiet when I tumbled in, fresh from Bar Hemingway, at about 10 o'clock. I was seated at a small table toward the back, and settled in with my book and a pichet (25, not 50 centilitres this time) of my beloved Bordeaux.

I'd filled up a bit on Bar Hemingway's most excellent potato chips, so I decided to forgo a starter and dive right into Camille's legendary (well, to me and Louisa, at the very least) steak tartare. I had to reassure the waiter that I knew the dish n'est pas cuit ("is not cooked"), and said yes to his offer of salad and frites on the side. This was gonna be good.

And it was. It was so good that I almost forgot to pause long enough to take a picture - but that would have been a crime, since you all deserve to bear witness to this most gorgeous dish. The steak tartare at Camille remains the best I have ever eaten - and I've eaten my fair share. The silky egg, the cornichons, capers and onions laced throughout the meat, the earthy mustard: all of these are to be expected, and are fantastically in play here.

But there's something else going on in Camille's tartare that I haven't quite been able to pin down - some elusive sweetness that balances out the tang of the traditional ingredients. This balance of sweet and savory is the same thing that makes their duck so delectable, and is, I think, is the thing that makes Camille so exceptional. You don't expect a neighborhood joint to produce something this subtly and intriguingly seasoned - it's a pretty impressive feat.

Oh, and the fries? Cooked in duck fat, and completely sublime. Ditto the simple salad, bibb lettuce tossed with a house-made vinaigrette.

Finally, to finish things off nice and proper, I ordered chocolate mousse for dessert. Camille's mousse is dense and rich, made with bittersweet chocolate and not a whole lot of sugar. Which is, for me, pretty close to perfection. I tried to solider through, but only managed to finish about half. My adorable waiter was a bit disappointed, I think. I promise to try harder next time!

Bug/patch with rspec-rails and helper instance variables

about 1 year ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software

I finally got around to upgrading my version of rspec-rails from one that's almost a year old and came across an issue with the way implicit module inclusion is handled.

If you have a handler that uses memoization to cache some information in instance variables such as this (I'm not sure if this is a smell but my project has some examples of it)


module UsersHelper
 def all_users
   @users ||= User.find(:all)
 end
end

You would expect this spec to work


describe UsersHelper do
 it "should find all users" do
   User.expects(:find).with(:all).returns(result=mock)
   helper.all_users.should == result
 end
end

Sometimes it does but if any other spec has called helper.all_users previously it will fail as the memoized @users variable is not nil so the collection is reused.

I have submitted a lighthouse patch to rspec-rails that fixes the problem so hopefully they will agree to fix it soon. Until then patch is available on github in my fork or rspec-rails if you want to use it.

Bug/patch with rspec-rails and helper instance variables

about 1 year ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software


module UsersHelper
 def all_users
   @users ||= User.find(:all)
 end
end

You would expect this spec to work


describe UsersHelper do
 it "should find all users" do
   User.expects(:find).with(:all).returns(result=mock)
   helper.all_users.should == result
 end
end

How do you spot a simple design?

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

What are your sniff tests to identify a simple a design?.

Here are some thought starters...

- Can the design be explained in a simple sentence?

- Does it use any heavyweight software? ;-) We're living in the era of lightweight technologies

- Can a version of it (scoped down) be released in less than 100 days?

- Any two-way data synchronization?

- Large number of sub-systems?

- ?

Knows which specs are slowing down my spec suite

about 1 year ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software

I often watch my specs run with the ........'s marching across my terminal and sometimes it seems to pause as it hits a particularly slow one. I figure there's some poorly written spec that's slowing my entire suite down and I should figure out what it is and fix it. But I rarely (if ever) take the time to track down the offender so never fix it. I just discovered that the clever folks writing rspec have taken away my excuse for laziness. I can tell it to report on the slowest specs by putting a line in my spec.opts file telling it to use the ProfileFormatter (see the first line below)


--format profile
--colour
--loadby mtime
--reverse

For example running the specs on my current project I get this output.


Profiling enabled.
........(a bunch more dots)

Top 10 slowest examples:
2.4908950 WikiContent should find all activity for a user
0.8061750 WikiContent should find recent activity for a user in last 15 days
0.2438460 WikiContent::Version should allow limit on results from finding recent activity
0.1821710 User should have a list of owned content
0.1700670 WikiContent should find results if access type is not same as role of the user but role of user is 'Leader'
0.1593900 ContentsController allows PUT request to 'update' action for 'member' role
0.1514150 Search::SearchResponse gets the wiki content id of an asset from the xml response
0.1470310 Content should always allow leaders to see all pages
0.1394920 Page should delete all comments when destroyed
0.1370330 ContentsController should save content and create the uploaded asset on successful POST to the 'create' action

Over the next few days I will find time to take a look at 'WikiContent find all activity' and 'WikiContent find recent activity' specs as they are the two clear outliers.

I now have no excuse to not optimize my slowest specs because I didn't know which they were!

Knows which specs are slowing down my spec suite

about 1 year ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software


--format profile
--colour
--loadby mtime
--reverse

For example running the specs on my current project I get this output.


Profiling enabled.
........(a bunch more dots)

Top 10 slowest examples:
2.4908950 WikiContent should find all activity for a user
0.8061750 WikiContent should find recent activity for a user in last 15 days
0.2438460 WikiContent::Version should allow limit on results from finding recent activity
0.1821710 User should have a list of owned content
0.1700670 WikiContent should find results if access type is not same as role of the user but role of user is 'Leader'
0.1593900 ContentsController allows PUT request to 'update' action for 'member' role
0.1514150 Search::SearchResponse gets the wiki content id of an asset from the xml response
0.1470310 Content should always allow leaders to see all pages
0.1394920 Page should delete all comments when destroyed
0.1370330 ContentsController should save content and create the uploaded asset on successful POST to the 'create' action

Expectations from external development teams

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

When you cannot influence technology decisions that an external team makes, what expectations can you set to still get a quality product?

- Code checked into a version management system (SVN, Git)
- Automated build/test/deployment mechanisms
- 100% test coverage (automated test cases)

These things will ensure the following for application -
- low cost of change
- easy transition to other teams
- easy support

Internally we track such attributes in a product scorecard that we review periodically. You've got one too, don't you?

Don't forget support costs in your technology decisions

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Often we're asked to consult/advise on technology solutions built within the Firm but not at IT. This isn't rare because the Firm encourages thousand flowers to bloom and also IT cannot meet all software demands in the Firm.

These situations are challenging as the overall cost of building and supporting a solution isn't considered in the effort to build a cheap and effective solution. The existing IT ecosystem does matter. If IT doesn't support a certain product/platform, then using that product/platform has downstream support implications (cost $$$) that are often ignored when pitching a product/platform for a cheap and effective solution.

We need to consider total costs while making these technology decisions, for IT needs to create transparency on support/maintenance costs.

Existing IT ecosystem does matter!

Books + food = fun!

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

I'm not the only person out there obsessed with both literature and food, and here's the proof. There's a new blog called Lashings and Lashings of Ginger Beer that features a food-focused literary passage each day. So far, they've posted on The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Goblin Market, Swann's Way (The madeleine, of course!) and many, many others.

So, if you're jonesin' for a fix of food porn and can't wait for Louisa's first novel (Can't Stand the Heat, due out in the fall of 2009 from St. Martin's Press), head on over to Lashings and get your fill!

Paris, part three: Camille - la première fois.

about 1 year ago | Megan Blocker: Queenie Takes Manhattan

I don't really visit Paris often enough to have a legitimate favorite restaurant, but, if I did, I feel fairly certain that Bistro Camille would still make the cut. Nestled on a corner of the rue des Francs Bourgeois, impossibly difficult to find on my first two visits and remarkably easy to locate on this one, it's that perfect neighborhood spot: kindly lit, well-provisioned with wine, and full of delicious, simply and beautifully prepared food.

All of this is probably why I found myself there twice in two days on my trip to Paris. Louisa and I discovered Camille on this eGullet thread, and I think it's safe to say that (aside from a chance visit to the devestatingly wonderful Chez Yvonne in Strasbourg) neither of us has ever been happier with a find.

My hotel was just a few blocks south of Camille, and the walk through the Marais was lovely both nights. I took slightly different routes to be sure to catch all the shop windows and street life I could. I ate late (by American standards), not until 10:00, since I was jet-lagged and in need of naps. On Saturday, there was still a twenty minute wait for a table, so I sat outside.

I started with the escargots de Bourgogne, a traditional preparation. The snails are cleaned, the shells are stuffed with a mixture of butter, parsley and garlic, and the whole thing is run under the broiler for a few minutes. Good escargots are tender and light, not tough and spongy, and eating them is like eating delicate balls of buttery, garlicky goodness. Their shells seem so fine that you expect them to shatter when you pick them up with the special tongs (don't worry; they won't). You spend more time than you care to admit sopping up the butter with your bread.

These were good escargots.

The waitress talked me into a full demi (half-bottle, 50 centilitres) of Bordeaux, so I was in it for the long haul. I took my time enjoying the brisk fall weather, eavesdropping on the folks to my right (a British woman and two French men, speaking their own private Franglais), and savoring my escargots. Once I'd been able to stop myself from wiping up every last bit of butter from the plate, out came my main.

I'd ordered the duck breast, which was seared and served with the most delicious sauce made with pan drippings, honey and black pepper, all piled atop some seriously buttery pureed potatoes. This duck dish is a great example of how true French cooking defies its old American stereotypes - the flavors are extremely well-balanced, with the piquant pepper playing against the round, sweet honey, and the buttery potatoes contrasting with the seared crust on the duck. This is not over-sauced, over-treated food; this is gorgeous ingredients being coaxed into an even more perfect state.

Dessert was similarly delicious. Two years ago, Camille's creme brulée restored our faith in the French, after it had been destroyed by lackluster specimens in Strasbourg and Champagne. Camille still has the touch - the custard is particularly thick and creamy, heavy with vanilla and a touch of citrus. Most importantly, they've mastered the sugar-to-custard ratio: their shallow, wide dish provides lots of surface area for the crackly, caramelized sugar. Smokey, creamy goodness.

Finally, coffee. Camille makes an exceptionally delicious cup. Strong, rich, piping hot and just the right size - helps you settle down post-meal, but doesn't fill you up.

Ah, Camille, je t'aime.

Do we have enough time for testing?

about 1 year ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

Thatz the first question I hear while talking to a developer who is not writing tests for his/her code.
"Delivering Code Without Tests Is A Sin"
This is a punch line by Bob-Martin, I heard in one of his sessions I attended. We already are wasting/investing huge amount of time in injecting bad design and bugs into our applications. So I want to ask this question again -
Do we have enough time for testing?
My question to this question is - Do we have anything to lose?

Lets start writing tests...

Software on Steroids

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

I'm inspired by Hashrocket's (a Obie Fernandez company) 3-2-1 launch idea - "Your idea, implemented in 3 days. No joke."

In our organization, we've decreased software launch duration from 9+ months to 100-days and have now done it consistently for several months now. Its done. We're now programmed to do this now!

Isn't it time to push it down further? Come on! Lets break the 100-day barrier. I'm thinking of 30-days launch and want to try it out if the following are true:

- Its a new web app (existing apps to be considered later)
- Visual design of app (wireframes, etc.) is ready
- App has well defined and limited integration points
- Product Owner is available throughout development
- Well defined testing approach for end users
- Anything else to consider?

I'm willing to give it a shot. Anyone interested?

What the $%@# have you done lately?

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

If you haven't seen Wanted you should (if you like action flicks). It's awesome. Sujit, Praful and I watched it this weekend and loved it. Its pace didn't give you a second to think or relax...

My favorite parts are the scenes where they're curving the bullets and where Wesley says "What the f*** have you done lately?" Inspiring ha?

Complex apps == many Simple apps

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Is there such a thing as complex application?

I like to believe that the answer is NO.

Let me draw a parallel from project timelines to explain.

Till 2007 we used to have many projects that took 9 - 12 months to release working software. Not anymore. Now, we release working software in production/staging every 100-days. No, we haven't magically shrunk a Document Management or ERP system implementation to 100-days from several months. All it means is that we've broken down the 9 or 12 month project into 3 or 4 100-day releases now. This has simplified a lot of things and resulted in successful delivery of large projects.

Can't we apply the same concept to a "complex application" we need to build and break it up into multiple simple applications/components. Many engineers in our team practice it really well and I'm learning this skill from them. Let me know if you want to join the class!

More on High Performing Teams

about 1 year ago | Rajesh Rathod: Uncommon "Common Sense"!

Last month Prasoon posted thoughts on high performing teams - what is a high performing team, what are their foundational qualities and behaviors.

Here are few more thoughts on what can we do to create high performing teams:

Focus on Team Composition:
- Ability: Generally, IT project team staffer / manager focus on this well
- Personality: Mostly ignored, but very critical to reach to high performing state. Right mix of Personality Types (Introvert vs. Extrovert, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, Judging vs. Perceiving) is required to complement each other.
- Size: With Scrum, we have increased focus on not exceeding the optimal size. What about the minimum team size? Can I say a 2 members team (even if both are generalists) is optimally sized?
- Diversity: Put all Java "gurus" on one project for 6 months and ask them to do pair programming. They may not literally fight, but will definitely get fed up and prefer to work individually!!! Diversity is key to gel the team and to establish trust and respect within the team
- Roles: Leaderless team is hot these days... But, lets not mistaken it with team without any roles and responsibilities. A high performing team should have at least one or more people playing each of the following roles:

Focus on sustaining and improving motivation level of teams. It's a well established fact that motivated team perform better.

Motivational Potential Score = [(SV+TI+TS)/3]*A*F
where,
SV= Skill Variety
TI= Task identity (is it ideal for me?)
TS= Task significance (does it make difference in organizational affairs)
A= Autonomy
F= Feedback

So, what should we be doing to increase motivation level of our teams? Thoughts?

Learnings from the Past: Rules Engine

about 1 year ago | Amar Phadke: Amar Phadke's weblog

I was working with a bank in the mid-west US a few years back. They were building an on-line mortgage application that would allow brokers to submit loan applications and get real time product and pricing information. After some initial discussions it was decided to build a product and pricing engine in-house using an of-the-shelf [...]

Post Horrible Mumbai terror attack 26/11..

about 1 year ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

Lots of aggression all around.. questions.. blames.. resignations..
Some groups, citizen showing a high sense of responsibility.. of worrying about the state of country and people..
Some very irresponsible.. thick skinned..
Everyone around me.. at my work, my friends, my family.. express frustration in various ways about such barbaric terror acts..
I've been thinking around all these thoughts, information revealed.. discussions..
I am a lazy person.. And I know this very well, I publicly accept this. This actually is very helpful in always being aware of this negative quality of mine. As it helps me remain alert at many times. But generally I am lazy about many things..
- my health,
- my plans towards my career,
- maintaining documents,
- filing my tax returns,
- playing with my kid,
- calling my friends,
- wishing my friends happy birthday,
The list goes on..
But still I am leading a very responsible and efficient daily life. I continue taking care of my health, my family, my social responsibilities, my career, my documents... list goes on.
How?
I am part of Cycle Of Life. The way I understand it is, there is a threshold, for every negligence, every ignorance, every selfish act, every uncaring attitude. As soon as the threshold is reached, the alarm goes ringing. I dont really care at the first alarm. But there are series of alarms well set, which keep going on with increasing threshold values. And a time comes when a blast is triggered. The blast is very harmful all the time. I have to pay heavy penalty to my bank for not taking care of my documents, I catch cold/fewer for neglecting my health, my kid starts becomming cranky and unstoppable because I am not paying attention to him...
After the first instance of each blast I start taking care to avoid it to repeat.

Our society behaves in exactly the same way. People all around the world become selfish, irresponsible, careless. If they do not listen to warning alarms they suffer thru the blasts. In the news / papers, I can read a lot about various agencies across different countries showing irresponsible behaviour in executing there duties. Of-course they are all headed by human beings who commit mistakes.

If we see the current scenario around the world, the number of alarm blasts is very high.
- multiple economies going down
- financial crisis
- terrorist activities
- etc...
This will cause damage at various levels. And bring the world below the threshold level of alarms.

I believe, the divine power can help us at the micro-est level to take care of preventing us from doing any negative act.
I wish we sahajayogis are able to convey the vision of Sahajayoga to the world.
Sahajayoga principles are the only way we can always remain below the threshold and keep growing continuously in positive direction.

By Sahayoga principles I mean -
- How can I avoid lying?
- How can I get more strength to forgive?
- How can I only love and never hate?

A beautiful world visioned by Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi. You'll see this coming true if you meet with a group of Sahajayogis.
http://www.sahajayoga.org/

Death of web developer

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Traditionally web application development has required web developer(s) and database developer(s).

Those web developers are dying or already dead now.

They're being replaced by a new breed of "web application developers" who can do much more than their predecessors. This new specie can develop a web application from A to Z... from top to bottom. They possess not only the typical web development skills but also enough database skills to crank out a web application of simple to medium complexity all by themselves.

This trend is here to stay... When I look back, till about 2 - 3 years ago all development teams needed a database developer; now some teams build an application without a database specialist.

There are many reasons for this shift including maturity in technologists (polyskilled) and technology (abstraction of database in frameworks like Ruby on Rails) etc.

URLEncrypt rolled out as plugin on Github

about 1 year ago | Amit Kumar: RubyizednRailified

In my last post I talked about encrypting RESTful urls when we have to expose primary key in the URL. The plugin is generic and exposes handy methods.

Repository:
http://github.com/toamitkumar/url_encrypt/tree/master

Installation:
.scirpt/plugin install git://github.com/toamitkumar/url_encrypt.git

Usage:

Add the following line to your environment.rb file

UrlEncrypt.encryptors("abcdefghijklmnop", "mnbkjhkhkhkhkhkjhkjh") 
#so that KEY and IV for Cipher encryption are different

OR

UrlEncrypt.encryptors("abcdefghijklmnop") 
# so that KEY and IV for Cipher encryption are same

OR

NOTHING

Inside your model add the line:

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  column :id, :integer
  column :title, :string
  
  encrypted :with => :title
end

You have handy methods:
Book.find_by_encrypted_title('encrypted string')

Book.find_by_encrypted_title('encrypted string',
  :conditions => ["any other condition can go here"])

Next step: To roll out the plugin as JRuby.

Brokerage and Closure

about 1 year ago | Michael Idinopulos: Transparent Office

Some time ago, I blogged about the difference between in-the-flow and above-the-flow uses of wikis and social software more broadly. At the time, I argued that "above-the-flow" use cases fail to generate adoption for the same reason that knowledge management...

Six Steps to Company-Wide Adoption

about 1 year ago | Michael Idinopulos: Transparent Office

Social software is changing in ways that profoundly impact the way companies should approach adoption. A year ago, the focus was on individual technologies (wikis, blogs, RSS, etc.). We are rapidly evolving to more comprehensive solutions that integrate multiple technologies...

Learn -> Practice -> Teach

about 1 year ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Mark wrote about variety in work and I subscribe to that philosophy as well. I believe we all undergo a constant cycle of Learn -> Practice -> Teach in our lives and keep creating new cycles periodically...

In fact, I'm encouraging people I work with to be explicit about their Learn -> Practice -> Teach cycles and share it (their 2009 "development plan") broadly. Yes, why not get everyone's help in having a successful year, why not declare - what we're working on, what we're getting better at and what we've experienced already.

Open Source Content Management systems

about 1 year ago | Lalatendu Das: Interpretations of Technorealism

Off-late, I have been scouting in Open source community to find tools which can be useful in my organization. Yesterday, my colleague mentioned that his team is looking for an alternative to our enterprise CMS. That encouraged me to focus on CMS this time, just so as to make my efforts worthwhile.

Here are my findings..

Open Source based CMS are achieving popularity because of the increased maturity of these products. This is evident from the fact that the commercial CMS solutions are feature rich but a typical small or medium size enterprise needs barely 20-30% of these features.

The market trend suggest high adoption rate in Europe & USA. APAC adoption trend shows improvement. Specific to the Industry domains, Media & Entertainment, Retail & Govt domains have very high rate of adoption. Manufacturing & BFS have moderate rate of adoption.

Here are some notable Open source CMS
- Alfresco
- OpenCMS
- Apache Lenya
- Hippo CMS

Here is a comparative study of these tools. Source CMS Matrix

System Requirements	Alfresco	Apache Lenya	Hippo CMS	OpenCms
Application Server	Most J2EE Application Servers. See: http://alfresco.com/services/support/stacks/	4 or more	built-in (none required)	Tomcat, JBoss, Resin 3, Websphere 6
Approximate Cost	$15,000 or $20,000/CPU/year (depending on SLA). Also per user pricing through Red Hat Exchange			Free
Database	Most Hibernate supported DB's. See: http://alfresco.com/services/support/stacks/	Any	MySQL, PostGreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL	Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, DB2, AS400 and HSQL
License	GPL + FLOSS Exception	Apache-style	Apache-style	GNU LGPL
Operating System	Most common OS's. See:http://alfresco.com/services/support/stacks/	Any	Any	Any
Programming Language	Java with support for JavaScript and Freemarker	Java/XML/XSLT/Javascript/JSP	Java	Java 1.4. +
Root Access	No	Yes	Yes	No
Shell Access	No	Yes	Yes	No
Web Server	Any (Can depend on applicatoin server)	Any	Any	IIS, Apache
Security	Alfresco	Apache Lenya	Hippo CMS	OpenCms
Audit Trail	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Captcha	No	No	No	Yes
Content Approval	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Email Verification	No	No	No	No
Granular Privileges	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kerberos Authentication	Yes	No	No	No
LDAP Authentication	Yes	Yes	Yes	Costs Extra
Login History	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
NIS Authentication	No	No	No	No
NTLM Authentication	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Pluggable Authentication	Yes	Yes	Limited	Costs Extra
Problem Notification	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Sandbox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Session Management	Limited	Yes	No	No
SMB Authentication	Yes	Yes	No	No
SSL Compatible	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SSL Logins	Limited	Yes	No	Yes
SSL Pages	No	Yes	No	Yes
Versioning	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Support	Alfresco	Apache Lenya	Hippo CMS	OpenCms
Certification Program	Yes	No	Yes	No
Code Skeletons	Yes		Yes	No
Commercial Manuals	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Commercial Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Commercial Training	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Developer Community	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Online Help	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pluggable API	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Professional Hosting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Limited
Professional Services	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Public Forum	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Public Mailing List	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Test Framework	Yes		No	Yes
Third-Party Developers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Users Conference	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Is 80-20 rule justified for investment in IT? about 1 year ago \| Rajesh Rathod: Uncommon "Common Sense"! The heat is on! With every day passing by, the financial tsunami is rapidly spreading across the globe. The key issues are: Liquidity High cost of capital Unavailability of credit Volatile forex markets Very low levels of confidence in economy While the Indian regulatory system seems to have minimized the impact on banking system, the impact on IT industry deserves detailed look. Mr. Sudhakar Ram, CMD, Mastek Ltd and India Business Leader of the Year 2007 has written an insightful article in The Economic Times yesterday. "Impact of the crisis on the Indian IT" - Mr. Sudhakar Ram He highlights a very interesting point that "when we dig into the reasons for the crisis, while we can blame blind optimism and greed, at a more fundamental level it is a failure of systems... ...Better controls and risk management systems governing individual firms as well as the entire financial system would have helped to track the quantum of leverage and the risks associated with it — both from the perspective of board governance and regulatory oversight." While every CIO is contemplating on what is the right amount to invest in IT during 2009, Mr. Ram has a perspective that I can't agree more. "For too long, large institutions have been trying to get away with spending 80% of IT dollars just on maintenance — keeping the lights on — and only 20% on new initiatives. In fact, in a recent Information Week article, Rob Preston says that IT’s Number One priority is to release money for new projects. He says: "If you think you can lay low under the corporate radar or continue to argue that the 80-20 rule is an immutable law of IT physics, then you're due for a wake-up call." It really boils down to what goals we set for ourselves - 'tide over the tsunami' or 'prepare to emerge as a leader'. What are your thoughts on "right" investment in IT? Its a Gloomy day about 1 year ago \| Surbhi Bhati: Clean Desk, Jammed drawers Well, there is so much happening to me at the moment, not that I am overwhelmed by it, in fact I am someone who likes to be immersed in her going arounds. You know, the busier it is, the happier I am, because then my stupid mind does not bring unnecessary thoughts to me. Anyway, currently I feel down, shattered, angry and frustrated like many of my Indian fellows not just because what happened in the last few days, but more because we still don’t see the much needed reform being brought in, we still don’t see the long-long slept conscience of our worthless politicians arising. Anyway, enough has already been and still being said. I only hope God gives them enough sense to implement theat. Please God, it will do even if it’s momentary, but LET THEE BE SENSIBLE. Now this was from the nations side, but there is also a change happening from the personal front. I feel little scared of myself sometimes, because never ever in my life have I thought of what will happen to me in future, but this time I am, and this is scaring me, because its stupid to be worried about the future. It scares you, because you cant think that everything will be wonderful, because everything cant be wonderful, as life would have been perfect, and its not. So you will think about the bad things happening and that is bound to make you feel bad. So basically you will be sad about something that hasn’t happened at all!! So its very bad thinking about the future, its better to let things happen naturally, keep your head down, do your work, and leave the rest to God. Yesss..this is what I have got to do. Good that I got to it finally by writing here. Humm..think that’s enough for today. Work Calling!! Plan Of Action - TDD about 1 year ago \| Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured... Install the measurement tools, like emma, clover, Cobertura, CodeCover Learn/understand the project code. Each project may have unique requirements in terms of writing unit tests, like struts, database, containers API, any other API. Use FindBug & CheckStyle reports to improve the quality of code. Build the initial required framework for writing unit tests, for the ease of rest of team. Move from [Code - Test - Debug] => [Test - Code - Refactor] Mode Achieve the state of -- Writing a new test should not introduce more overhead than the test itself. Writing a test makes you ask a lot of questions related to the requirements as well as implementation, which eventually is very helpful to filter out any bugs which may be introduced in the appications otherwise. What I want to do? about 1 year ago \| Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured... This is a letter I wrote to the management I work for - Fortunately I got opportunities to work with & learn from industry experts like Bob Martin, Michael Feathers and Brian Marrick during my tenure in US. All of them and all the software industry experts strongly recommend test driven development as a key approach to improve software deliverables and creating very efficient and highly maintainable software. We, in our projects, even today try to promote test driven development by writing test cases for the deliverables before we start any development. But unfortunately we write tests in XL sheets and Word documents or even worst we don’t write them at all. Having tests written in documents makes them dead and they eventually get buried in some central document repository. That’s where the dead things go. It is nothing better than not having it. Due to these reasons the industry experts strongly recommend executable unit tests which can be run in an automated fashion. It requires a great mindset change to start writing tests before the code. We may not see clear benefits until we have at least 30% of code coverage. But still I think we have nothing to lose, as we are already in such a bad shape with the kind of software we build. So my question to the group is -- should we allow someone to completely dedicatedly focus on this problem? Now Bob Martin, Michael Feathers and Brian Marrick are not going to come and write code for us. We ourselves have to do it. Fortunately I got opportunities to work with & learn from Bob Martin, Michael Feathers and Brian Marrick during my tenure in US. I can at least talk about, write and demonstrate the importance of Unit testing, what I have learnt from them and then also experienced it myself. I request the group to give me an opportunity to work for this initiative. Thank you for reading till this point, a few more points ahead… What I want to do? · Be a Unit & Automated Testing Champion · Spread best practices across projects in ODC · Work with different team on improving development practices · Take sessions on TDD, Automated Testing, Checklists, FindBugs, CheckStyle, CI, Emma, Design Patterns, Java, Struts, Hibernate, Spring · Increase test coverage of each project that I work on. · Keep continuous track of latest technologies · Publish ideas in forums like Arch CoE, Wiki · Contribute to various groups, open source. My Quantifiable Goals [in 3 months]: · Increase test coverage of 2 projects by/to 50% · Conduct at least 5 sessions on software development best practices · Initiate 5 techies to participate in knowledge sharing · Share the achievements/learning once a week in Architecture CoE What am I doing right now? · Deployments, PRD & QA. Thankfully we have automated deployments for INT. · Resolve technical queries of team. · Complete Stories & bug fixes. · Lots of Coordination activities, part of leading the team. · Perform all the thankless activities of a Tech-lead. · Use TDD for whatever I code and spread the word in team. · Talk about Testing practices informally whenever I get a chance. · Work with some proactive people to help them with any doubts related to testing practices. · A few PL related activities like appraisals. · I have also been told that I am a scrum master for CTB team. Thank you for reading this, please send your comments. Copyright 2010

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