July 1, 2009

How User-Centered Design Can Put User Stories in Proper Context

ser stories are probably the most popular tool for gathering user requirements on an Agile project. A user story represents some goal that a user would like to achieve, and collectively, user stories are a lightweight mechanism for gathering and verifying user requirements. Introduced to software development projects through Extreme

Solving Eclipse (Ganymede) and PermGem Out-of-Memory Errors

First, launch Eclipse with increased memory options, which you can do as follows (increase these values as needed, but don’t exceed your available memory): eclipse.exe -vmargs -Xmx512M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M Sometimes, the preceding solution has a limited effect, and the errors don’t go away. In that case, try starting Eclipse from ECLIPSE_HOME

Determine Which Session Is Blocking All Users in Oracle

You can find out which session is causing blocking problems using this SQL command: SELECT blocking_session, sid, serial#, wait_class, seconds_in_wait FROM v$session WHERE blocking_session IS NOT NULLORDER BY blocking_session;

Open Any File from Code

Using the following code snippet you can run any application (such as Word, Excel, etc.) or open any file whose extension is associated with an application, such as .doc, .txt, or other data files. First, declare this Windows API function at module level: Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib _ “shell32.dll”

Convert Hashtable Keys or Values into an ArrayList

The simple way to convert Hashtable keys or values into an ArrayList is to use a constructor that takes a list of values. The Hashtable.Keys and Hashtable.Values properties both return a System.Collections.ICollection—and one ArrayList constructor accepts a System.Collections.ICollection. Here’s the code to make the conversion in C#: // Convert Hashtable

How to Build a .NET Solution or Project from a Command Prompt

It can be annoying to open the IDE every time you need to build a .NET solution or project. Fortunately, .NET ships with a command-line utility called devenv.exe that you can use to build a solution or a project from a command line. To use it, open a command window

Add “Copy To Folder” and “Move To Folder” to Windows Explorer’s Context Menus

Follow these steps: Open the Registry editor. Find the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTAllFilesystemObjectsshellexContextMenuHandlers. Right-click on that item and select New ? Key from the context menu to create a new key. Name the new key “Copy To Folder.” Assign the value {C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13} to the new key. Now, when you right-click a file