One of the coolest things I have seen this last year has been the release of Azure Machine Learning from Microsoft. http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/machine-learning/ Demos of the new service have been making the rounds in PASS and Dot Net users groups. If you haven’t seen it, the best way I can describe it is predictive modeling using a GUI similar to SSIS […]

My recent review of passing data to a database through an xml document has prompted me to take a step back and consider what are the good practices. To be clear, passing parameters to a database as an XML fragment is not a manageable practice. I have learned, through working with people much smarter than me, that when you start […]

I come across the pattern of using an XML document as the input parameters for stored procedures quite every once in a while. Each time I do I ask myself if the benefit is worth the cost. When you pass xml as parameters to a stored procedure you must extract the data into SQL table variables or scalar variables in […]

Today I am returning to the topic of having your Axe sharpened before cutting down the tree. We talked about preparing for work by having version control already in place, automating the build process, and shared Dilip’s comments regarding clear goals for any project to be undertaken. Here are some other areas of sharpening your software axe that come to […]

I started this topic yesterday on keeping your tools sharp. Today I start with a comment from Dilip with some thoughts on this topic. Dilip writes: Here, are my thoughts for your upcoming series for Being Efficient: 1. You wrote about sharpening the axe first, i.e. the best tools to be used but what if we don’t know as to […]

I read a quote today attributed to the United States President Abraham Lincoln. It reads, “If I had 6 hours to cut down a tree, I would spend 4 hours sharpening the axe.” If you have never cut down a tree before using an axe, this is great advice. I was a lumberjack decades ago. I used the money to […]

Let me start out today with an apology to Martin Fowler, having incorrectly identifying him yesterday in my editorial as Robert Fowler, and send a thank you to Jason for bringing this to my attention. As I continue to research this concept of workflow patterns I am beginning to ask myself, “what is the definition of a software pattern”? I […]

I have been working designing rules engines for years. In many ways a rules engine may be similar, or even overlap with a workflow engine. Often you can use a workflow engine to write rules because they follow similar patterns of processing. I am also an advocate of using software development patterns where they are the best fit. Today I […]

Every time I am involved in a project where database changes are packaged and scripted as some event such as Systems Integration Testing or User Acceptance Testing begins, I am reminded of pitfalls inherent in this strategy. Changes that have been made in an individual sandbox (if there are any) or in a development environment, are often missed or forgotten, […]

Fail Fast is a term often heard in the agile community. They are completely serious when making this statement. Failure is not only acknowledged, it is embraced. The old story about Thomas Edison is that he not only figured out how to create a light bulb, he also found out many different ways that fail to make a working light […]