Web applications are using more JavaScript than ever before. The following image (thanks to Gineer) shows the shift in the architecture types of web applications from simple thin clients to thicker clients driven by rich presentations and client logic. Since most of the newer web applications include business logic embedded into the client using JavaScript, we must put assurances [...]
At my lab recently we have all been benchmarking our applications. Most of our work has to deal with throughput in distributed applications. A lot of the time I see people making common mistakes when performing tests so I decided to blog about it. Never test from the same machine, your testing program is taking [...]
Why use Code Contracts? By providing pre-compiled code contract interfaces other developers can adhere to signatures and also expected behavior. This is specially important due to the Liskov substitution principle. Dino Esposito wrote a great article on the topic called Code Contracts Preview: Interfaces. Testing To test that all the right contracts are in place [...]
During the last few months my graduate supervisor and I have been doing a lot of demos to the major canadian telecommunications companies. In the demos we show different devices interacting with each other (which is something people love at demos). One of the things we get asked fairly often is: “How long did it take to build each one [...]
I see a common copy-and-paste trend specially with junior developers. Many of them just copy-and-paste random internet code into their projects. After a while I ask them about their implementation… very few understand what they copy-and-paste and the implications of that implementation! I inquired further and it was clear that many used debug driven development [...]
Linq to SQL is great. I love it because it adds a simple abstraction layer that can greatly speed up building a data access layer. If not used properly, LINQ to SQL can also create performance issues. Here are my general LINQ to SQL guidelines when I work in projects: Use the “using” statement when [...]
Recently I was setting up Teamcity and the build agent kept going down. It was starting and stopping. Sometimes it was “starting…” for a long time. After doing a bit of research I came across this. The agents would appear only for seconds under team city and then go down as inactive with the message “Agent has [...]
If you use Sophos Antivirus you might be getting Tortoise SVN related erros. It took me a while to figure it out. The best way to fix it is to exclude your projects directory from Sophos active scan.
I am very happy Microsoft updated the Azure Tools to have full integration with Visual Studio. It is extremely easy to set up, just a few clicks to create a certificate and upload it. The process is all guided and it took me around 30 seconds. After the certificate has been uploaded you can deploy [...]
Sometimes it is needed to have complete control over how WCF manipulates the data being returned. By default, WCF serializes objects and returns them as XML. Sadly, there is not much control on how to create templates over how objects will be serialized (flat structure, hierarchical, etc). In many cases this does not matter. A few weeks [...]
My name is Dan Merino. I specialize in research and development in web, mobile and IPTV. You can learn more about me at danmerino.com