We will sell no wine before its time…. An Agile Development Allegory

This morning I was working on a project plan for a small to medium sized project.  12 or so man-months.  The PM was kind enough to send me the plan to hack up before applied precedents and resources.  As I continually moved tasks out of the first sprint, I heard Orson Welles in my head (with Beethoven in the background) saying the famous phrase “We will sell no wine”.  I think that applies to Agile Development as well.  Often I see plans that seem to want to get the big items (rocks Thanks a lot Stephen Covey!!) out of the way first.  That robs a project of what I see as a very important attribute:  Momentum. When we evolve the application slowly everybody wins.  From my point of view, small successes lead to big successes which make for a happy team.  I wish I could think of a catchy programming phrase like. “We will write no code before the mode”  or “We build no stuff till the other stuff is good enough”  .  I think I will start quoting Orson Welles the next time an Industrious PM wants to “Waterfall me”.

Classic ASP ( You mean ancient right? )

I find myself writing VBScript in a broken ASP Application that I did not originally develop.  It does not seem too long ago that I was excited about <%%> tags.  Now its a drag.  On Error Resume Next.  Wow! So the problem turns out to be

AspMaxRequestEntityAllowed

JT

PS When are they gonna sunset this thing?

Duh! It was commented out

Today,

I bumped into my old nemesis commented code.  I spent several hours tweaking and tweaking an IIS 7.5 site’s custom errors only to discover my custom error section looked similar to this

<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="MyErrorPage.htm">

            <error statusCode="404" redirect="My404.htm" />
        </customErrors>

–>

I fixed the system.web portion in IIS 7. Checked everything.  My eyes just glossed over the fact that the darn thing was commented out of the web.config.

What an idiot. I will not forget this now.  (Until the next time I forget)

JT

SQL Search for Text

I use the following stored procedure to search for Text in a database.  This works for medium sized databases in SQL Server.  Sometimes in analyzing an existing database you need to find where a value resides. I wrote this to assist with that.  Use at your own risk.

Create Procedure FindTextWithTempTable
@searchterm varchar(50),
@ignoreTable varchar(100) = '',
@exactMatch bit = 0
as
Begin 

IF @exactMatch  = 0
BEGIN
	set @searchterm = ' like ''%' + @searchTerm + '%'''
END
ELSE
BEGIN
	set @searchterm = ' = ''' + @searchTerm + ''''
END

Declare @sql varchar(max)
Declare @QueryText varchar(max)
Declare @tempsql varchar(max)
Declare @RowCounter int
declare @tmp table
	(

		[ID] [bigint] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
		[FIELD_DATA] varchar(max) NOT NULL,
		[FIELD_NAME] varchar(100) NOT NULL,
		[TABLE_NAME] varchar(100) NOT NULL
	)

Declare QueryCursor CURSOR FAST_FORWARD FOR
Select CASE
WHEN DATA_TYPE = 'TEXT' Then
'SELECT CONVERT(varchar,[' + COLUMN_NAME + ']) as FIELD_DATA ' + ' , ''' + COLUMN_NAME + ''' as [FIELD], '''
+t.TABLE_NAME + ''' as [TABLE] FROM [' + t.TABLE_NAME
+ '] where CONVERT(varchar,[' + column_name + ']) ' + @searchTerm
WHEN DATA_TYPE = 'float' Then
'SELECT CONVERT(varchar,[' + COLUMN_NAME + ']) as FIELD_DATA ' + ' , ''' + COLUMN_NAME + ''' as [FIELD], '''
+ t.TABLE_NAME + ''' as [TABLE] FROM [' + t.TABLE_NAME
+ '] where CONVERT(varchar,[' + column_name + ']) ' + @searchTerm
WHEN DATA_TYPE = 'numberic' Then
'SELECT CONVERT(varchar,[' + COLUMN_NAME + ']) as FIELD_DATA ' + ' , ''' + COLUMN_NAME + ''' as [FIELD], '''
+ t.TABLE_NAME + ''' as [TABLE] FROM [' + t.TABLE_NAME
+ '] where CONVERT(varchar,[' + column_name + ']) ' + @searchTerm

ELSE
'SELECT [' + COLUMN_NAME + '] as FIELD_DATA ' + ' , ''' + COLUMN_NAME + ''' as [FIELD], '''
+ t.TABLE_NAME + ''' as [TABLE] FROM [' + t.TABLE_NAME
+ '] where [' + column_name + '] ' + @searchTerm
END as QueryText  from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES t on INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS.TABLE_NAME = t.TABLE_NAME
Where DATA_TYPE in ('varchar','nvarchar','text')
and Lower(t.TABLE_NAME) != Lower(@ignoreTable)

OPEN QueryCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM QueryCursor
INTO @QueryText

Set @RowCounter = 1
set @sql = '';
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
      -- do row specific stuff here
     Insert into @tmp (FIELD_DATA,FIELD_NAME,TABLE_NAME)
		exec(@QueryText)

     FETCH NEXT FROM QueryCursor
     INTO @QueryText
END

CLOSE QueryCursor
DEALLOCATE QueryCursor

Select * from @tmp
order by FIELD_DATA

Select COUNT(*) as ValueInstanceCount, TABLE_NAME,FIELD_NAME
from @tmp
Group By TABLE_NAME,FIELD_NAME
Order By TABLE_NAME

END

examples of how I used it

Examples

execute jtFindTextWithTempTable ‘F3′

this looks for all but ignores the table AccountTransactions

execute jtFindTextWithTempTable ‘F3′, ‘AccountTransactions’

this looks for all but ignores the table AccountTransactions and only looks for exact matches of the text

execute jtFindTextWithTempTable ‘F3′, ‘AccountTransactions’,1

Query All SQL 2008 Database File locations

I am using the following code to list all the DBs file location.
select CHAR(13) + 'use [' + name + ']' + CHAR(13) + CHAR(13) + 
' select physical_name from sys.database_files' + CHAR(13) 
+ 'GO' from sys.databases

Running Vista Now

Well there is a lot to like about Vista  Unfortunately this new bad ass Vista box cannot be my everyday machine because of Cisco. Cisco does not support Vista 64bit with their current client software.   So anytime I have to connect. I am going to need to get off of this machine and go to the “old” one. Bummer

Daylight Savings Time

This one snuck up on me as a coder. This year on March 11 We “spring forward” a full month early of normal. I have to scramble on some applications that have scheduling components.

Bio stuff

I saw this on a Buddy’s site so I decided to steal the idea.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

• Chicken Catcher
• Tobacco Cropper
• Hotel Security Guard
• Vegatable Truck Loader

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Lean on Me
• Grumpy Old Men
• Dirt Harry
• The Longest Yard (70s version)

Four places I have lived

• Tifton, Ga
• Baton Rouge, La
• Tallahassee, Fl
• San Pedro, Ca

Four TV shows I love to watch

• 2 and Half Men
• The Wire
• The Sopranos
• Entourage

Four places I have been on vacation

• Seattle, Wa
• Atlantic Beach, NC
• Gatlinburg, TN
• Cleveland, OH

Four of my favourite dishes

• Fettucine Alfredo
• Grilled Steak
• Fried Chicken
• Chili

Four websites I visit daily

• Yahoo
• Sharebuilder
• Atlanta Falcons
• Home Recording

Four places I would rather be right now

I wish I could think of someplace. But I kinda dig what happens day to day

Four Unspeakable Abominations

• Test Based Education (Teaching to the Test) in public schools
• Racism (All directions. Think about it!)
• Death Metal
• Hate (See #2)

Four albums I can’t live without

• Dream Theater – Images and Words
• Megadeth — Rust in Peace
• Buddy Rich — Stick It
• Ted Nugent — Double Live Gonzo

Six cars I’ve owned

• ’78 Fiat X-19
• ‘83 Cutlass
• ‘78 Volkswagen Scirocco
• ‘99 Chevy Malibu
• 75 VW Dasher (With conferderate Flag courtesy ET)
• 72 Mercury Montego Station Wagon (The “Battle Cruiser”)

Coding Habits

For those of you who are programmers. How do you get motivated to write code. Is it money? Maybe a few years ago it was. There was huge money in it for marginal programmers. My motivations are probably ego driven. I can’t code for just myself. I have to code for someone who is going to use the software. It is a giant ego boost when someone can use what you have created. I know coders who are into themselves so much that they don’t care who uses their stuff. Only if it is elegant and proper code. Curious about your opinions.

Later

J