While taking this step I had many flashes ranging from “COOL, I CAN DO ALL THAT NOW!” to “OH MY GOD, WHAT AM I DOING!”; it’s hard, has lots of responsibility, and many sacrifices like simple life, and the Google ranking I will be losing since June last year.

Checking all the stats and visits brings my tears down (not really down though!). So what I am going to do is to keep my old blog (this one) so visitors can still see my old posts and I won’t loose the ranking, what do you think? should I do that? (comment if you please)

The good thing is, though, that if you are subscribed to this blog’s feed, you don’t have to change anything; It will happen automatically and you will still get the new posts (you might get the old posts again once more when I take that step).

So anyway, I hope this step to be a new era for better life, all hope.

Google “promised” to keep the old feeds working for a while, so anyone who has subscribed to this blog will not be affected “for a while”; so if you want to stay up to date with the proper feed URL of this blog (and I hope you do ), please change the feed url to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/eashi.

Thank you all  for your continuous attention

I have two simple classes as an Example:

As it may be obvious, Child inherits from Parent, Child has a static constructor that we need to be executed when ever a method is invoked by Child. Now lets check the main program executing these two lines:

The surprise (at least to me) when calling “Child.DoSomething()” the static constructor isn’t invoked! because it is in the parent!! aaaaaah! bad!! that was serious for our architecture  and we had to do lots of fixes to turns things around the right way (which I think it was for our own good for other reasons )

This brings up the Code Coverage topic as well; in our case that static constructor’s job was to create an instance of a member that is only needed once, and we check on it in other times by “if _instance != null”. It always ran ok because all the test code we created used to call an original Child before calling any other method that resided in the Parent.

bottom line: be ware of static constructors, and check your test code…it maybe hiding “surprises” for you

But the problem with this approach is that it will build it’s OWN database in the App_Data folder and create the required tables there. Wouldn’t most of us have their own databases to work with? ok then, if you want the defualt ASP.NET Membership Provide (AspNetSqlMembershipProvider) to work on YOUR database do the following:

1. Navigate to the folder: “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727” and run the “aspnet_regsql.exe” file, follow the wizard (it’s pretty easy, see the images below)
   
   
   
   This step will create the Membership and Profile Provider tables necessary; if you are lucky you will see many dbo.aspnet_something tables.
2. Now we need to tell the website which Provider it should use for this functionality, and to which database it should connect to; the default configuration information that drives the default behavior of the default Provider resides in the Machine.config (C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG), which explains why you can’t find the configuration information on YOUR web.config even after you finish using the ASP.NET Configuration mini-website.
   The best thing to do is to copy that configuration information from the machine.config to your website web.config in order to override its behavior to our desired one, for more information about configuration files and configuration hierarchy read this.

   <membership defaultProvider=“AspNetSqlMembershipProvider“ >

         <providers>

           <clear/>

           <add name=“AspNetSqlMembershipProvider“ type=“System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a“ connectionStringName=”BunianConnectionString” enablePasswordRetrieval=“false“ enablePasswordReset=“true“ requiresQuestionAndAnswer=“true“ applicationName=“/“ requiresUniqueEmail=“false“ passwordFormat=“Hashed“ maxInvalidPasswordAttempts=“5“ minRequiredPasswordLength=“7“ minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters=“1“ passwordAttemptWindow=“10“ passwordStrengthRegularExpression=“”/>

         </providers>

       </membership>

   Note that highlighted changes:

   1. clear any previous configuration of the AspNetSqlMebershipProvider (machine.config) which if not moved will give you an error of already being configured
   2. changing the connection string to mach a connectionstring name that you use to connect to your database in general

This way you will have the default Membership Provider running on your database for your website; if you use the mini-site for the ASP.NET Configuration now and create new users, you will find them created in your database.

Note that some resources say that you can change the database from the ASP.NET Configuration but I couldn’t find it there.

Disclaimer: use the above on your own responsibility

So Bunian needs to support all these Beneficiaries in smart way; we solved the problem by creating the IBeneficiary interface. But the problem is that in order to get out with the best solution ever (damn perfectionism!), we kept coming up with different solutions, and overriding them with other solutions every once in a while, and this kept going like forever!

Though we agreed from the beginning that we shall keep it as simple as possible and then add up to it as we get out with the first phase, yet it kept sliding “ok only we have to do this, oh and that too”. Until one day I thought I came up with the silver bullet everyone talks about , and sent an email to the group about the changes I wanted to make, when a colleague caught me online and showed her objection about the new solutions, and proposed another. Only then I woke up!! “OMG…WE ARE STILL HERE!!”
Instantly, I remembered my oldest brothers comment  (Mohammad, very wise brother) about Bunian “It’s great that you want to build the greatest architecture ever, but remember that Orphans are waiting!!“

So LET’S JUST GET ON WITH IT!! ship it!! do it!! let version one come out, let “customers” benefit from it, then you take your time doing your silver bullet. So this is one of the challenges facing the Project Managers, something we developers rarely think about ; today…I learned my lesson!

After a 20 months siege during which there was no water, food, medicine, gas, oil, and electricity…today Israel thinks that’s not enough…and starts a massacre; 160 dead, 200 wounded by 40 rockets hit Gaza and still going.

Photos From the Massacre Taking Place Today

English news: here
Arabic news: here

Photos From the Siege

English news: here
Arabic news: here, and here

smuggling food through the tunnels

Milk for the small children who lack the basic ingredients for healthy food, finds its only way trough tunnels under ground.

no electricity, you know what this affects; imagine yourself without electricity for 1 week, not saying 20 months!

Lately we have decided in Bunian to move on to NHibernate 2.0, and the contributor assigned to the move started out, only to send an email one day after: “THERE IS NO DOCUMENTATION!’.
We had errors as a result to the move which couldn’t be fixed without a documentation explaining why this happened.

After searching for a while, we found two resources of the new documentation:

• a wiki help that is hosted on Google Knol:
  http://knol.google.com/k/fabio-maulo/-/1nr4enxv3dpeq/21#
  Not really appealing to be used extensively; no smooth flow between chapters, frames dazzle the eyes, no table of contents, but surely a great step forward for a documentation that is maintained by the community
• and online ordinary documentation as HTML:
  http://www.nhforge.org/doc/nh/en/index.html
  which is my preferred way for documentation (or at least until the wiki proves its usability)

Neither links were included anywhere in the NHibernate zipped file.

I didn’t realize how important a documentation is until it stopped us from moving on in our project; Only after we made sure that the documentation is available we decided to move on to version 2.0. The lesson to be learned is that if you are an enthusiast developer and want to add another piece of code to the world, keep in mind that your project is not only code; it is people, resources, community, ease of use, documentation, and any other simple thing that people need while you think it’s not important.

Of course I couldn’t find developers or contributors to open source projects greater than the NHibernate team, having such a project in the first place is awesome, and I thank each and everyone of them. I hope one day I can really contribute back to NHibernate. Thanks again guys.

By doing this, at the end of each page request the NHibernateSessionManager.Instance.HttpRequestEnded() will be called and I can clean the session then. But to my surprise this method was called at least 10 times!! So I thought maybe the Global.Init() method is called many times for some reason and I ended up binding the same method to the EndRequest event many times, so I set a breakpoint at the Global.Init() method and…it’s called one time only.

That was strange, ok so it’s only the HttpRequestEnded() mehtod that is called many times, but I am requesting only one page!! how come there are 10 requests!

So I opened Firefox which is already “armed” with the magnificent add-on Firebug, and I requested the page again, Firebug showed the following:

And that was it!! the page contained 10 resources (1 CSS file and 9 images), OH! so it is one page, but for each resource referenced on the page you get a request, hence a raise of the EndRequest event.

I couldn’t love Firebug more; I am not only happy that I wasn’t doing something wrong, but yet I learned something new about the ASP.NET internals. awesome.

It’s amazing how a simple,  web-based, HTML-front game can be so rich and vast entertainment wise! It’s a real strategy game where you build villages, resources, armies, embassies, and conduct trading, diplomacy, wars, and alliances…all through simple images, numbers and text.

On the other hand, I can’t ignore the programming part of the game (being a developer that is), it must be big, fun and tiring; think of all these rules and the simulation algorithms the game is being built upon , the server handling thousands of players, …and scripts (yes! lots of hacks!  ). Even the hacking idea it self is so delicious (programming wise only   ), a true heaven for developers .
Also the makers of the game are on the right track of providing developers points through which they can access the game and display information on other sites or applications; ok for now it’s only exporting database tables of statistical information about the game status, but still I consider it a cool step toward supplying nice end-point for developers, maybe Web Services in the future  .

Every time a new idea hits the web I say “ok, that’s it…there are no more idea’s!”, and every time I say that I  am proved to be wrong; YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Delicous, Digg, SlideShare, Flickr…and the list goes on.
So this is a message for all of us, don’t limit your imagination, ideas never run out.

The only concern now is that I don’t want to be addicted, so let’s wish for the best…and be warned…because Rapacious is rising

Below is the slide show (it’s an enhanced version from my previous one):

Code is the same of the previous one which you can download from here

JorDev .net is a .net user group founded by enthusiastic Jordanian IT professionals. On Wednesday the 26th of November I will be doing my first session of a series about NHibernate.
Details of talk is here:

Overview	NHibernate is an Object-relational mapping (ORM) solution for the Microsoft .NET platform. it provides an easy to use framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a traditional relational database. Its purpose is to relieve the developer from a significant amount of relational data persistence-related programming tasks.NHibernate is free as open source software that is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License
Target Audience	.NET Developers, Software Designers, Software Engineers, Software Architects
Date	Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Location	MIC (Microsoft Innovation Center, Royal Scientific Society Building, 3rd Floor)
Time	6:30 pm – 8:30 pm (Amman-Jordan local time)
For More Info	Mohamed Saleh @0788716457 Ayman Farouk    @0795727344
Reminders	Live Calendar Facebook event Outlook Calendar Google Calendar

In traditional architectures there are 3 known layers: Data Access, Business, and Presentation. DTO’s (Data Transfer Objects) are used to carry the data back and forth between the layers. Look to the following diagram:

Bunian contributors seemed to have the same experience developing against such architecture, so we have decided to go with something different; smart Business Objects with more toward OOP.

The way I’d present the current architecture is like the following:

As you can see from the diagram, the architecture revolves around one core unit, the Business Objects; because it’s the essence of the application, it’s where all the real things happen. Being the core, the interaction will happen in different ways depending on the nature of the service the component provides (or requires). Those can be divided into three categories:

1. Interacting with components that provide services consumable by many other applications; like logging for example. Here our core can reference the component directly without any worries because the component is absolutely independent of the core (represented in the previous graph as solid arrow). Of course it would be better if there is simple abstraction layer so we can manage any change of components.
2. Interacting with components that consume services from our core directly; like the User Interface. The interface will merely represent the business behavior in a way the end user will understand, no dependency what so ever from the core on the UI, it should be even representable through console application if needed (also represented in a solid arrow)
3. Interacting with components that are providing a special need to the business, like the Data Access. This should be done via interfaces and Dependency Injection; that is because it is the business who determines the needs to be fulfilled, it is the one who states it needs to be able to Save, Delete, Update..etc.., and the component willing to fulfill this need should adhere to the contract the core dictates. (represented by the dotted line meaning indirect dependency)

We are concentrating on the 3rd interaction, specifically the data access component.

The main thing to note here is that by using Interfaces and Dependency Injection, we will be eliminating any circular dependencies; even if the candidate component will require parts of the core (like our example: the data access will want to return strong types that reside in the business objects, or take types as parameters), even if that so, we will make sure that the core is independent of the component (references wise).

The best way to understand is by an example, I will try to make it as simple as possible first, and in future post I might include more real scenarios (like the one we are using in Bunian) so lets get our sleeves folded:

we have a simple class MyBusinessObject with a simple property DisplayName:

This class needs to have a way to access the database and bring an instance, but on the other hand, it doesn’t want to do anything with the implementation. So it declares that it will need a component that should adhere to the IRepository interface which will have the Get method. It will have this component as a static member:

IRepository definition is:

So a component volunteers, MyConcreteRepository:

Ok great, now all what we need is to assign an instance of this concrete class to the _repository static member in MyBusinessObject static constructor. but if we do so the following it will be wrong:

simply because if MyConcreteRepository resides in different project/dll (and mostly it will), then you will have circular dependency between the Business Objects and the Data Access. So the answer is to use reflection and get an instance of class without referring to dll. Using Windsor we will do the following:

The lines above, in the simplest explanation, will check in a configuration file, and see which class we will use to create instance of to assign a property of type IRepository. supplying the key “anotherConcrete.repository” tells Windsor which class to use. The config file is like the following:

By that we will have achieved our data access within our business objects without circular dependencies and in a way that will make it easy to change data access component with another in the future.

Of course in real life you would use inheritance for example to manage similar code, this will be postponed in another post by god willing, hopefully soon.

Note that we didn’t use essence of “dependency injection”, since it means more than the Resolve<T>(key) part. 
For more information about dependency injection read this excellent series of articles here.

Source code of the example above is available here.

If you don’t know it:

Once upon a time there was a group of little frogs, who decided to go through a competition to climb a tower. The tower was high and difficult, and no one of the spectator frogs believed that any of the tiny frogs can make it to the top.

Little frogs started climbing, while spectators yelling:
- "oh my, it’s too high…I don’t think they can make it!"
- "they are too young, how possibly can they reach the top?! that’s insane"
.
.
Shouting and yelling continued, while the little frogs surrendering one by one, except for this one little frog who kept going and going, climbing up further and further more. Surprising everyone, that frog made it to the top and he won the race! well…the only reason for his success that…HE WAS DEAF, he simple couldn’t hear the negative shouting of the spectators!

1) The effort a man produces trying to succeed is proportional to the amount of expectation to succeed
2) and the more effort he produces, the more it is possible he will succeed.

So if one member of a team starts putting the team down, the teams effort is absolutely going down, even if they can make it, they won’t. no passion, no effort, no success.

The only thing you will get from being around negative people is being pulled down with them; they will keep discouraging you, to give up, to stop you from reaching your goal! with all sort of discouraging words:
- "the way we work is wrong, this is stupid! this is never gonna work"
-  "I knew it! I knew it!"
-  "the client is going to reject it, I am telling you! he is!" *with yellow smile*
Enlarging the disadvantages of the surroundings, and forgetting about the advantages, putting the passion off.

Yes, there are annoyances, but come on, NOTHING IS PERFECT! any sane human would obviously tell you that "not getting all" doesn’t mean "giving up on all"; if you do that, while there is nothing perfect, obviously, you will end up losing all!

Believe in yourself, try to improve, never surrender. And while doing all that…just enjoy what you have.

If you have been following this blog, then I think you are familiar with Bunian, the open source project for charity organizations. During the last Bunian team meeting at the beginning of this week, the basic design emerged (still being discussed and subject to changes till the minute of this post); we have decided to skip the dummy DTO objects, and to try Business Objects (BO), where most of the business logic lays, rather than in a separate Business Service.

The design will be like the following:

• Business Object classes: like Child, or Family. These classes will have the correspondent business logic within, including the data access (although some may object) but data access will be through repository interface data member.
• Repository interfaces: each BO will hold an interface data member specific to the data access needs of that BO. For example, the Family BO will have the interface data member IFamilyRepository. These repository interfaces will have a parent repository interface IRepository.
• Concrete repository classes: as it may be obvious, it implements the repository interfaces mentioned above. These classes will be in different project, in order to be able to change the behavior depending on the Database (Microsoft SQL server, MySql, etc…)
  Note here that there will be no direct dependency on these concrete classes; they will be injected through IoC container which we haven’t chosen yet (most likely would be Windsor,  available to discussion).
• MVP infrastructure: a project will host Views interfaces and their Presenters.

The following diagrams are examples of the discussed above:

- Business Objects using repository interfaces:

- Concrete classes implementing repository interfaces:

Of course all of this might be changed so let’s not hold our breath! so stay tuned if you want to know the end of the story

Any suggestions? comments?

These key points can be summarized into:

• Meeting is conducted to achieve certain target , a solution to a problem, Keep the focus on that goal
  Time is valuable, and the participants will be very annoyed when they see their effort and time is wasted on a subject different from the one they originally agreed to sacrifice their time for. if the meeting was anything except resolving the original subject, it is a failure.
• all participants should be sincere to achieve the target of the meeting
  Because we are humans:
  • we will still use meetings as war-ground to prove intelligence superiority over others, by interruptions, mockery and shouting (in extreme situations). This will not be disruptive to the meeting only, but also will be for the team as a whole! most likely you will loose quite people hate “arguing”, who might have a very smart opinion and potentials. And then you will have the side effects of bad relations within the team; nothing have worse influence than that.
    The coordinator role here is to prevent such situations by eliminating any reason the participants may use to act so selfish; not encouraging them, not letting them sneak with the interruption, etc. this goes beyond the meeting as well by raising the team spirit within the team members
  • Another less serious example of unfaithfulness is the will to support wrong opinion because it’s easier, or less tiring. Again, the coordinator should be careful, and try to make the individuals targets of the team members pour in the projects target (or at least the meeting target), this also needs a lot of effort and team building actions (and that’s another story).
• Interruptions are evil and should be eliminated
  To know how bad interruption is, imagine your self talking in a meeting, all passionate and ongoing…suddenly a guy thinks you are talking nonsense, or that he is smarter than  you are, and interrupts you…aaa’a!!…see how bad it is!! it wastes time, energy, and produces anger and disrespect. 
• so is prattling!
  The more the prattle, the less the focus… the less the focus, the more the meeting loses the target. prattling can be as distructive as the interruptions, make participants less interested and even angry, hence failing meeting.
• Don’t offend others by any means. 
   if you do so, a wall will be built instantly between the meeting and the guy offended; he will not be able to listen to any sound logic (by nature), and will prove anything to be wrong. as long as you are discussing ideas, people will feel safe, when you bring it to their essence, they will be too protective. be cautions choosing the right words.
• Silent people can be a hidden treasure 
   The meeting is not meant to choose country presidents, it’s meant to elicit sound logic and constructive opinions, even if it comes from that silent little participant at the corner. if you are in charge, give him a chance, let him speak his ideas out, it might surprise you how good it can be, And if it is, you have raised his self-esteem to be more participating in the future and more successful team.

 

You can see from the points listed that it’s not only the coordinators responsibility to make the meeting successful, but the participants as well, after all they are the meeting!

There are lot’s of such points, but those are the one’s that come to my mind. If you have more to add, your comments below are most welcomed.

And now it’s time to move on, as a Technical Team Leader in esense. The excitement increases as time goes by (since I haven’t started there yet), I have only one week of preparations to step back into this role (yes, I have been TTL before) in this new environment, can’t wait.

Looking behind, it’s not an easy feeling;  departing such people who are dear to me! but my condolences is that I am not leaving the country anytime soon (so we will meet guys ), and I’m full of hope that I’ll find such great environment in esense as well.

في السنوات الأخيرة، كثر الحديث عن رؤية الهلال، و تحديد بدايات الأشهر القمرية، و لا سيما شهر رمضان و شوال لأهمتيهما. و احتار الناس بين البيانات الرسمية الصادرة عن المؤسسات الحكومية من جهة (نتيجة إدلاء شهود برؤية الهلال)، و المؤسسات الفلكية المتخصصة من جهة أخرى.

الموضوع -على عقده- بسيط؛ فلتحديد بادية هذه الأشهر الحساسة تعتمد المؤسسات الحكومية على شهادة مواطنين شهدوا برؤية الهلال، و هذا أمر طيب. لكن المشكلة أن لخمسين عاما خلت من الآن، كانت معظم تلك الشهادات خاطئة و ليس لها أساس من الصحة (و ما زالت)!  لم يكن بالإمكان -من خلال الوسائل المتاحة للمؤسسات المسؤولة حينئذ- أن تتأكد من صحتها. كان يكفي أن يكون مسلما عاقلا بالغا راشدا، و لا يزال الأمر كذلك.

لكن في الآونة الأخيرة، اجتهدت المؤسسات الفلكية (و على رأسها المشروع الإسلامي لرصد الأهلة) أن تبين هذا الأمر، بما أن لديها العلم الكافي و الكوادر المؤهلة كي تبين لهذه المؤسسات أن الشهادات في معظمها خاطئة! فبادرت بنشر الأوراق العلمية، و الخطابات الرسمية، و الظهور على وسائل الإعلام لعظم الأمر، و من هنا بدأ وعي الناس للموضوع، لكن للأسف لم تستجب هذه المؤسسات، فكانت البلبلة.

لكي يتضح الأمر أكثر، الشكل(1) الذي يبين منظر الأفق في الحالة الطبيعية عند امكانية رؤية الهلال:

الشكل (1)

الشمس تحت الأفق (غابت تماما)، وهجها بدأ بالخفوت، و القمر بعيد نسبيا عنها و فوق الأقق بمسافة تسمح لتكون الهلال، و تسمح للعين البشرية إبصاره.

أما في الشكل (2)، فيكون في حالة لا يمكن فيها رؤية الهلال لقربه الشديد من الشمس، فوهج الشمس يمنع رؤيته:

الشكل (2)

و أما في الشكل (3)، فإن رؤية الهلال مستحيلة! لأن القمر يغيب أصلا قبل الشمس، فلا يوجد شيء بالأفق لرصده من الأساس!!:

الشكل (3)

و معظم الحالات التي يشهد فيها هؤلاء الشهود تكون في الحالة الأخيرة التي لا يوجد فيها هلال أصلا!!! و لا حول و لا قوة إلا بالله!

للمزيد من المعلومات، انظر المراجع التالية:

• الفرق بين الهلال  و تولد الهلال
• الهلال بين الحسابات الفلكية والرؤية
• نتائج رصد الهلال العالمية لشوال هذا العام 1429
• تقويم نسب الخطأ في تحديد أوائل الأشهر الهجرية  (في الأردن)

و إن كنت مهتما بعلوم الفلك التطبيقية المتعلقة بالشريعة، اتبع هذا الرابط لمزيد من البحوث.
]]> http://eashi.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a3%d9%8a-%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%9f/feed/ 5 eashi يمكن رؤية الهلال لا يمكن رؤية الهلال تست�يل رؤية الهلال http://eashi.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/free-collaboration-software/ http://eashi.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/free-collaboration-software/#comments Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:07:10 +0000 eashi http://eashi.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/free-collaboration-software/ ]]> My previous employer Rapsyx decided lately to publish the light version of it’s prime product RapidOne as free software.

RapidOne in short words:

RapidOne Team provides a single application to handle communication, workplanning and resource sharing across the organization with a highly innovative storage concept organizing your data naturally

With the ability to add a whole set of CRM components depending on the version you choose.

Interesting? have a look at the free version here

The value “” is not of type “System.Nullable`1[System.DateTime]” and cannot be used in this generic collection

The code I executed was:

When I debugged NHibernate code, I reached to the following AddAll() method in the ArrayHelper class:

You can find the explanation of the error here.
Which brings us to the interesting question: why the implementation of IList Add method doesn’t consider the “nullability” of the T object? and why the parameter is of type IList ?!

 Am I missing something? should I report it as a bug?

Then Blogs started to appear, and more interesting blogs had my attention like Scott’s and Omar’s, and with it I started to learn about new software gadgets. From that day, I am addicted!

First it was the Ultimate Tools List, I browsed it, and out of interest I downloaded Launchy, AMAZING (can’t live without it)!! then Notepad++ then SyncToy, then Process Explorer, Cropper, and I couldn’t stop!

Now there are wonderful sites like FileHippo that is a prime source for new software gadgets and their update news. but the surprise was Wakoopa; who thought there would be a whole social community website built around software enthusiasm!

But anyway, I still believe in clean and light machines, I don’t download toys that I don’t need, and regularly monitor their effect on my machine; the beauty of both worlds