Software Development

Last month, I worked on a requirement of inserting bulk data into SQL Server database. I evaluated different solutions available in .NET for this purpose, and finally came up with the following comparison chart, which will be useful when someone takes up this common task in their project - Passing Table Value Types SQL Server’s Xml OPENROWSET SQL Data Adapter SQL Bulk Copy Make Database Calls in a Loop Feature Set Can perform CRUD operations on any related database objects in a single client transaction. Same as Table Value Types. Same as Table Value Types. Supports only Insert operations on one table. Same as Table Value Types. Ease of Implementation Tedious and laborious, but quite repetitive. So much easier when compared to Table Value Types. Simpler than the first 2. Simpler than the first 2. Simplest of all of them. Type Safety Yes No Yes (wi

When one gets a birth as a QA, by choice or by chance, he/she is instructed the art of testing in various forms. I have coined my own theory for it, named as “The Black Hole Theory of Testing”. There is a developer who builds a black box dispenser, which is claimed to dispense different gem stones (mind you, they could just be worthless crap stones), and there is a customer who is enthusiastic about buying it. The job of a tester is, to dispense and test gems by using different logical combinations of input, and also by identifying and seeing through any holes in the box. The goal is not to dispense every gem or find every hole (Nothing is perfect in our universe, including the universe, as people say that it is formed as a result of defects in manufacturing and has lot of holes in it too.), but the goal is to dispense as many different gems as time permits, and identify holes, till no other person in your vicinity can find more. In a nutshell, focus on the box to improve quality,

During one of my friendly conversations with my father, who is a layman in terms of software development, he asked me, why I had been working almost for a year to develop a simple application called Payroll, which he had always paid from his pocket directly. He felt that, I must work on improving my efficiency as a programmer, as my manager tells me all the time. My blood was boiled, and I felt like opening the 100s of pages specs documents that undergo 10s of revisions, or the long spread sheets containing 100s of earnings and deductions to explain the complexity. But the fact of the matter is, he doesn’t understand most of them, and I also don’t know everything in them. So I thought, why wouldn’t I explain him through a simple story, why it takes so much time to develop a simple software, in general, and why there is a need to change it quite often? Once upon a time there was a product manager, who found an intriguing opportunity and a huge market potential, to develop an ap

How many times we as developers curse about the fact that, the defect raised by a tester doesn’t have enough information to reproduce it in the local environment?! I guess, the answer is quite often. If we are dealing with a responsible tester, he/she will provide us with detailed steps, if they are also kind enough, we will in addition get some logs and screen shots, and there ends the matter. Then, we struggle to reproduce it most of the time and would sometimes retort with the most common statement, “Hey! It works in my environment.”, and reject the defect. Sometimes the ball endlessly moves to and fro between the 2 courts. Why are we still living in the era of our great grandfathers, when it comes to debugging defects? I know, most of us are aware of the tools like IntelliTrace that are available to deal with this exact problem. But, I rarely see even developers making use of this tool, to reduce their debugging effort locally, leave aside testers to provide it as par

Last month, one of my colleagues posed me an intriguing question on passing reference types by “ref”. I am writing this blog post, to share my explanation to a larger set of audience. I have coined the following analogy, to explain the concept of passing reference types. Think that, you are playing with a kite (object) attached to a thread (pointer), and one of your friends also wants to play with the same. Pass By Value You attach an additional thread to the same kite (object), hand it over to your friend and both of you are now playing with the same kite. After a while your friend got bored, detached his thread, and attached it to a new kite (a new object). But, you won’t get affected as your thread is still tied to the old kite. Pass By Reference You hand over one end of the same thread to your friend and both of you are now again playing with the same kite. Again, after a while your friend, got bored of the old kite, detached the thread, and attached it to a ne