Programming and databases.

• Need a way to really set off the image assets of your web-site?

  We all work hard to get the web-sites we develop to look just right. Often this requires the development of many images. Using a designer can mean there is a lot of investment in these images. Then they sit where they were originally placed, and are may be seen by visitors if they visit that far.

  For web-sites where there has been a large investment in image capital or we are trying to boost our portfolios this is really not a good-enough solution. This is why two great tools like ShrinktheWeb and CoolIris really help to create and set off galleries on a web-site making them search engine friendly and providing convenient tools to help entrance casual visitors to the web-site.

  

• Open source, mysql, and scalability

  Open source is a great idea. Find a widget that does what you want, make a contribution to the authors, drop it into your web-site and go forth. There are some great widgets and systems out there. Without Apache, mySQL, and hundreds of other packages the internet and systems development would be a more sterile environment.

  But there are also all the other open source developments. Great ideas with some great programming, but could have done with a once over with someone who is experienced in the areas that the initiator is not expert in. On the one hand at least I have a starting point, on the other hand it puts some butter on earning my daily bread.

  I was trying to think of how to compose an organised thread on this topic when I saw this excellent representation .

  The number one reason people ask me to look at their open source web-site is that they are starting to generate traffic and the site just gets slower and slower. The reason? SELECT alist FROM tablea, tableb WHERE tablea.id = tableb.id;. Learn how to use joins properly and we can all get to do more interesting and productive work.

  Thanks.

• Solving coding problems in minutes.

  There is a certain satisfaction in solving a client’s major coding problem in a matter of minutes using the Liveperson experts’ chat suite.

  Most programmers are used to the black hole syndrome. No matter what you try or how many times you look through the code, you just cannot see the bug. More and more time gets sucked up by what often seems to be a trivial issue.

  With more people working alone in home offices the old standby of having another pair of eyes looking at the code no longer works as well as it did. Taking a break only works if you manage to get your mind off the issue and the pile up of working accumulating while your energy gets drained away.

  Liveperson has a large range of experts with most programming languages covered. A five minute call can cost as little as $5.00 or even nothing if the expert can just type the answer straight back to you.

• SQL Server 2008

  Setting up a series of reports for a client this week on SQL 2008 report server was an interesting experience in how far databases have come since the 1980s. They are now so far from the dba controlled, three week development cycle days of yore, that we are in danger of forgetting why that perceived bottleneck was there.

  The interface definitely allows the easy building of front end web based filtered reports. Thoughtful well-designed reports can fulfill many user expectations and requirements on demand. The options available for the parameters of stored procedures are cool, especially when they haven’t taken hours of programming and testing.

  But spare a thought for the database department. Their mandate of providing secure 24×7 database access has not decreased but their ability to control how that availability is demanded has increasing the reactivity quotient of their work.