Future IT Practitioner : Ethics

Ethics in a profession will describe professional behavior among professionals. Further it will describes an individual’s behavior towards to his or her profession. Because misbehaving of few professional will disrupt the profession as whole. Hence professional bodies like BCS, IEEE defines “Code of Ethics” for their members.

In both “Code of Ethics” we can see common areas they tried to address.

1. Public Safety
   We have responsibilities to protect the public in many ways. Special due care should be paid for designing, developing and maintaining critical systems.
   Therac -25  and London ambulance service failure  are two incidents that come into play.
2. Avoid Discriminations
   This is a wide area to talk about but, basically we should not less favorable because of race, skin colour, religion etc.
3. Professional Obligations
   Here it addresses, our competency level, integrity with other professionals ,avoiding conflict of interest etc.
4. Legal Obligations
   This has wide scope that will differ from country to country. But we should know legal legislations for the country that we are going work with. Examples for common legislations of misusing computers, regarding confidential information, discriminations , consumer protection etc.

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Code of ethics of
+ BCS http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.6030
+ IEEE http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/iportals/aboutus/ethics/code.html

Copyrights © Kelum Ganegoda 2009

Related Posts: Future IT Practitioner

Future IT Practitioner

It is crystal clear that our current society became information society. Throughout the world organizations and individuals are now starving for information. This happens purely because of following factors,

• Expansion of IT
  IT is no longer an isolated unit in an organization. It is link into other units with helping out for their work.
• Evaluation of technologies
  Inevitably Internet, ERPs, SOA, SAAS (Software as a service) etc.

By considering all the facts, IT became truly global profession. All IT practitioners across the world have contributed and contributing to this global profession.

Even though, IT is global profession it has no limitations as a profession like other prominent professions, Medical practicing, Lawyers, Accountants etc. What I’m trying to say is, for an example, no control of entry for IT, like, doctors or engineers. Although this type of control of entry is necessary but it’s too late to implement at the moment. We know, UK and USA had put enormous efforts for this, unfortunately those were not work out.

On the other side, if we put such control of entry, sometime it wouldn’t get as much expansion as the present.

Since you and me contributing to this global profession, as professionals, we have sort of responsibilities. May be, those responsibilities will become practices throughout the professionalism. Mainly we can categorize them into 2.

1. Ethical practices
2. Competency

Generally ethical practices are enforced by a professional body, like BCS, IEEE etc, to its members. For this global profession, I think, all practitioners should adhere to general ethical practices. Professional ethics, sometimes, will help to sharpen up our competency level.

Copyrights © Kelum Ganeogda 2009

Related Posts: Future IT Practitioner : Ethics

Update Progress with AJAX UpdatePanel

In this post I will demonstrate how to create update progress with UpdatePanel, a similar one that we can see in our gmail, like following,

Following key things to be addressed.

1. It should be on top-center of the page
2. It should be on top all other HTML controls
3. When scrolling it should be placed on relative position of the current scroll position.

To achieve this we can use many alternatives but I would use a simple approach.
In addition to the UpdatePanel, I will use </div>, CSS style and javaScript.

Here we go.

1. Add a div tag within body element.
   

   <div class="divProg" id="divProg"></div>

   Note that id and class attributes are necessary.
   
   
2. Add following css class to the web page or style sheet file. Keep in mind, without position: absolute; z-index: 10; css properties this won’t work as we expected.
   

   .divProg
   {
    position: absolute;
    left: 0px;
    top: 0px;
    width: 100px;
    height: 0px;
    z-index: 10;
    border: 1px none #000000;
    visibility: hidden;
    background-color: #FFF1A8;
    font-weight: bold;
    padding: 5px 10px 5px 10px;
   }

   
   
3. Now we want to display div on top-center of the screen as well as move its top position relative to the current scroll position. To address this we will creates following 3 javascript functions.
   To get current Y position of scroll,
   

   function getScroll_Y() 
   {
           return document.documentElement.scrollTop;  
   }

   To set current top position of div,
   

   function setDivTop() 
   {
   
           if (document.getElementById("divProg") != null) {
               theDiv= document.getElementById("divProg");
           }
           else {
               return;
           }
           theDiv.style.top = getScroll_Y() + "px";
   }

   Write a function to toggle display for the div.
   

   function displayDiv(display) 
   {
       if (document.getElementById("divProg") != null) {
           theDiv = document.getElementById("divProg");
       }
       else {
           return;
       }
   
       if (display) {
           var width = document.body.offsetWidth;
           var height = document.body.offsetHeight;
           if (!width) {
               width = window.innerWidth;
               height = window.innerHeight;
   
               if (!width) {
                   width = screen.width;
                   height = screen.height;
               }
           }
           // To center the div, we need to deduct its half of
           // width from half of screen width. So we set div width =100
           // in css, so that deduct by 50
           theDiv.style.left = width / 2 - 50;
           theDiv.style.top = getScroll_Y();
           theDiv.style.height = 25;
           theDiv.innerText = 'Working...';
           theDiv.style.visibility = 'visible';
   
       }
       else {
           theDiv.style.visibility = 'hidden';
       }
   }

   
   
   
4. Now we want to handle request start and request end events. we will be able to use following code with assist of ajax extension library.
   
   

   // Requests Events
   // ============================================
   var prm = Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance();
   
   prm.add_initializeRequest(InitializeRequest);
   prm.add_endRequest(EndRequest);
   
   function InitializeRequest(sender, args) {
       if (prm.get_isInAsyncPostBack()) {
           args.set_cancel(true);
       }
       displayDiv(true);
     
   
   }
   function EndRequest(sender, args) {
       if (args.get_error()) {
           alert(args.get_error().message);
           args.set_errorHandled(true);
   
       }
       displayDiv(false);
   }
   
   //===============================================

   
   
5. Set page's scroll event,
   

   <body onscroll="setDivTop()">

   
   

	Download Sample
	File Size: 18K

Be Aware Gmail SMS

You may received an email saying Send & Receive SMS From Your Email !!!

Don't trust that, it's completely fake, but 100% same as GMail logging screen. This will stole your password.

C# New features

I have move to .net 3.5 and found really cool enhancements in C# language(in VB.Net too).

• We can create properties like this
  

  class ProcessData
  {
  public int ID { get; set; }
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public long Memory { get; set; }
  }
  

  
  Compiler will emits the private variables for properties and nothing diffrent in IL code.
  
  
• Object Initializer
  Lets say we want to populate list of ProcessData class, before C# 3.0 came we have to code like this
  

  List processList = new List();
  foreach (Process p in Process.GetProcesses())
  {
  ProcessData pd = new ProcessData();
  pd.ID = p.Id;
  pd.Name = p.ProcessName;
  pd.Memory = p.WorkingSet64;
  processList.Add(pd);
  }

  
  Note its IL code,
  

  IL_001f: ldloc.2
  IL_0020: ldloc.1
  IL_0021: callvirt instance int32 [System]System.Diagnostics.Process::get_Id()
  IL_0026: callvirt instance void NewFeatures.ProcessData::set_ID(int32)
  IL_002b: nop
  IL_002c: ldloc.2
  IL_002d: ldloc.1
  IL_002e: callvirt instance string [System]System.Diagnostics.Process::get_ProcessName()
  IL_0033: callvirt instance void NewFeatures.ProcessData::set_Name(string)
  IL_0038: nop
  IL_0039: ldloc.2
  IL_003a: ldloc.1
  IL_003b: callvirt instance int64 [System]System.Diagnostics.Process::get_WorkingSet64()
  IL_0040: callvirt instance void NewFeatures.ProcessData::set_Memory(int64)
  IL_0045: nop
  IL_0046: ldloc.0
  IL_0047: ldloc.2
  IL_0048: callvirt instance void class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.List`1::Add(!0)
  IL_004d: nop

  
  Do you belive if I write same code in 3 lines?
  

  var processList = new List();
  foreach (var p in Process.GetProcesses())
  processList.Add(new ProcessData { ID = p.Id, Name = p.ProcessName, Memory = p.WorkingSet64 });

  
  Note new ProcessData { ID = p.Id, Name = p.ProcessName, Memory = p.WorkingSet64 } is called object initializer notation.
  But it does same thing and no any drawbacks, like performance degrading etc. Check this IL code, it is same as above IL code.
  

    IL_001f:  ldloc.2
  IL_0020:  ldloc.1
  IL_0021:  callvirt   instance int32 [System]System.Diagnostics.Process::get_Id()
  IL_0026:  callvirt   instance void NewFeatures.ProcessData::set_ID(int32)
  IL_002b:  nop
  IL_002c:  ldloc.2
  IL_002d:  ldloc.1
  IL_002e:  callvirt   instance string [System]System.Diagnostics.Process::get_ProcessName()
  IL_0033:  callvirt   instance void NewFeatures.ProcessData::set_Name(string)
  IL_0038:  nop
  IL_0039:  ldloc.2
  IL_003a:  ldloc.1
  IL_003b:  callvirt   instance int64 [System]System.Diagnostics.Process::get_WorkingSet64()
  IL_0040:  callvirt   instance void NewFeatures.ProcessData::set_Memory(int64)
  IL_0045:  nop
  IL_0046:  ldloc.2
  IL_0047:  callvirt   instance void class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.List`1::Add(!0)
  IL_004c:  nop

  
  We can see several advantages in the latter.
  + We can initialize an object within just one instruction.
  + We don’t need to provide a constructor to be able to initialize simple objects.
  + We don’t need several constructors to initialize different properties of objects.
  

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Reference: LINQ in Action, Manning Publications 2008

Application File Not Valid in XBAP

When you see this error in XBAP application, which means you changed application manifest file from outside. To resolve this

we can use .net tool, which comes with .net SDK, called mage.exe or mageui.exe. More about mage.exe

Frequently used commands to resolve this is mage.exe -u and mage.exe -cc.

Actually this really happened to me, for one user, problem was remain even use mage.exe until he re-install .net runtime.

How to create Biztalk schema from FOR XML EXPLICIT

It's very straightforward to create Biztalk schema for SQL adapter if we use FOR XML AUTO. But we'll come across that FOR XML AUTO is not enough to get data from SQL, so that we use FOR XML EXPLICIT. In this case we have to follow some additional things to get biztalk schema generated properly. I''l go step-by-step with an example. This situation really came to me that's why I motivated to do this post.

1. Assume my SP,BIZTK_GetPPS300Attributes @pono, will generates required XML data set with FOR XML EXPLICIT.


2. Open Visual Studio and switch to Biztalk Explorer.
   Create a Receive Port.
   Create a Receive Location for that port and set following properties
   
   Set Address(URI) property as following
   
   Value of Document Root Element Name will be Root Element of schema.
   Document Target Namespace will be schema's target namespace
   For this example SQL Command will be exe BIZTK_GetPPS300Attributes 12345
   


3. Create a send port and set following properties
   


4. Enable Receive Location and start Send port by right clicking on them.


5. Now receive location will execute SQL command that you set and save the XML file in the location where you set in step 3. At this stage we dont want to validate against schema so that we set send/receive pipe line to PassThru.


6. Go to your biztalk project, select Generated Schemas option from Add Generated Items dialog box, give the XML file just you created.


7. Cool. Biztalk schema is properly generated.