Eclipse CTRL+SHIFT+t

On a class name will show you which "file" that class is coming from. Thanks to Virender!

Common management diseases

Noticed these three recently:

• Incapacitated by worrying about long distant problems - this sort of manager when asked a question will fail to solve the simple problem we have now because of pondering how it would be solved if we were 100 times bigger than we are now. So when asked who should have the final word on certain issues the manager responds with a lecture on the problems of organisations like IBM and Google managing architectural decisions... There are only ten of us!?
• Bored by their real job - this manager will neglect the work they are meant to be getting on with and put huge amounts of energy into a daily series of fads.
• Blinded by glitter - a manager that doesn't real know what is going on is totally blinded by the buzzword compliant and the "bored by their real job" people. The plain speaking guy that is not constantly coming up with wiz bang projects is of no interest and the manager can't spot who is actually doing useful work.

Yep. I'm bitter.

Advantage to meta data not hanging off RDBMS meta data

Is still denormalisation but one big advantage of not just augmenting the database meta data is that you can describe types without needing actual database tables. It is still re-inventing the wheel but it is hard to sell having lots of tables in the database even though the database is very able to cope. Tooling may struggle opening 1000s of tables in the UI.

e.g. You want to describe a model and user interface but never want to collect the data in a table. So you want the model definition but no need for the actual table (if not using the meta data).

I think I'd still vote for using real tables but would need to test that all parts of the database and tooling can cope.

Project management notes to self

1. Panic early. Reduce features and complexity early, you can always add them later. Better than having to drop them at the last minute.
2. Clear roles and responsibilities - obvious but doesn't always happen. Who do I have to ask to get X approved...
3. Before you say no to an idea make sure you have an alternative to propose -
4. Don't fiddle with time estimates just because they are inconvenient.
5. Don't isolate yourself from critical voices.

Google Web Toolkit Blog: Look ma, no plugin!

Still not sure if a hoax.

Many months on I'm still not sure if GWT Quake is real. Looks like too much of a pig to get running to find out for real.Already my pointy haired boss has got the wrong end of the stick and thinks GWT is all about making a website look pretty.

Composition for happy ORM?

None of the polymorphic mapping strategies for ORM seem to work very well.

• Table per class hierarchy - Is too evil to mention.
• Table per class - Very similar to composition?
• Table per concrete class - Makes queries and FKs painful.

Composition seems to map nicely to relational databases. Also in the real world composition can model the world nicely.

A database is for life not just christmas

If your wiz bang framework requires the database to be in a particular style (random fields, denormalisation) then dump your framework before you contaminate your database. If your design has any merit the database should be around much longer and have different clients that don't want your rubbish in their face.