Learned Lessons – Developing a MVC 9V2.0 Full Stack ASP.NET Application called MulderbertPX

A full stack experience from being on the team at College for V1.0 and then doing V2.0 as a solo developer! 

So, yesterday I was a very satisfied Software Developer for finishing the development and launching MulderbertPX, the V2.0 release of the full stack ASP.NET application. This release brings it to the next stage of its development as a project. You may have seen this trailer for yesterday’s application launch on Github and Azure, which was going around Social Media sites.

The application’s stack is a nice full stack iteration I would recommend to anybody developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and is as follows:

Application Layer:

ASP.NET in C# using cool features like @Razor

Database Layer:

Native XML DB for Contacts & SQL Server for Customer Details/Transactions

Network Layer:

Azure Cloud Deployment with configuration at Storage and Network layer making the application more efficient and secure

So, yesterday’s launch was totally awesome but what’s new in general terms for V2.0?

Application Reengineered from a Database First design – I re-engineered the application with data modelling (database) tables moved up-to the application layer as modelling Enums. The V2.0 code first approach and MVC design pattern made sense as a redesign decision given the decreased pressure on database calls for information in processing transactions in particular.

More Structured Data – Data generation for transactions has been mainly transferred from database tables to app layer Enums, which also provides flexibility for future development direction keeping data accuracy high and customer effort low.

Database Redesigned - As I’m still a poor student in spirit (and pocket), I could not afford to have a larger SQL Server instance on Azure so a thrifty architecture for the application made sense making the SQL Server instance as small as possible. By Microsoft Azure’s pricing tiers go, I cannot make the database resource any smaller, which is good news for my empty pockets and also good direction for anybody looking to develop an Minimum Viable Product (MVP)!

The new features for this re-engineering orientated release is as follows:

Responsive Design – Two stages (768px/500px) of responsiveness are styled so this MVC application can render just enough resources to be presentable at screen sizes less then a general desktop. This includes a hamburger menu in the restricted states, which is run on JavaScript functions.

Login Box – Whilst technically a developed feature, the use of customer details (e.g. Customer ID) in a box like presentation along with options applicable to the logged in and logged out state are a basic but useful feature to have.

As the project is Open Source, you can check out my code on Github at at Project MulderbertPX. Below is a 7 minute 50 second feature movie demonstrating the application’s features with wonderful ambience music from Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky… hope you like it!!

The main lessons learned from this experience has been that:

ASP.NET still has great abstracted functionality to do cool things concisely such as @Razor Enums helper methods, which streamlines “View” code immensely.

Good Software Architecture is incredibly important, as you don’t want to struggle with technology access like I have done. I completed my SQL Server instance on Azure using a Mac and had no view of my DB internals. I started developing this project on Windows machines at Dublin Business School (DBS) working on SQL Server Management Studio  (SSMS) with full view of my DB internals. When my access to DBS resources finished 29^th of September, the last part of the project was done on Azure’s brand new SQL Server Query window. I enjoyed the SQL coding BUT missed looking at how many tables, attributes, views, stored procedures and indexes I had. So please consider this my “Dear Santa” letter as Christmas is coming…   “Dear Microsoft, I would like SQL Server Management Studio for Mac please? Will you be my Secret Santa this year???”

Good Programming Practices like abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism are kernels that support clean, neat and reusable code! Considering these concepts was how I developed the application so its understandable that mirroring the service and product’s coding paths may look like an inefficient implementation. However, future development may see the customer journey diverge on goods versus service products or maybe a phased introduction of an online payments service is required. Both scenarios are likely making separate implementation paths in this release a good idea. It’s a judgement call based on the V1.0 frontend design, which hopefully will prove useful in future developments.

Version Control is your friend. The extensibility of the application was apparent to me and working as part of a multi skilled team would be the only way to develop larger and scaled future versions of the application. Also, if everything goes up in smoke on my Mac (I call her “Debs!”), using version control like Github is the only option!

SEO Counts. It’s a good idea to ensure your metadata is working and you register the application with Google and Bing especially if it’s a real e-Commerce site. There is an impressive array of API options available for Facebook and Twitter so taking time to understand what they are is a good idea! 

I guess as I start my next application (ASP.NET Core app) to showcase my projects to date, I will remember this application as a fun development experience that was loaded with learning for the future!

Data Driven Decisions in the Boardroom and Good Business. Is it a winning combination?

My Latest Publication on Irish Tech News:

DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS IN THE BOARDROOM AND GOOD BUSINESS! IS IT A WINNING COMBINATION?

Life-skills, what my Mamma told me!!

A Journey in leadership and life with one of the Greats...

Despite how we start off in life, we are truly the product of our own decisions and what we do as a result of them! Where our decisions come from is as important as where we are going in life. The joys, the sorrows and everything in between enrich our “inner selves” on a daily basis. It projects forward into the person we are becoming, which often varies from the person we aspire to be. Yet should we discard our dreams, hopes and ambitions, we could say we have survived life but feel cheated by not living it; looking from afar at what could have been whilst cast out to sea.

Bearing this in mind, we often talk to the ones we love about such inner thoughts growing up and as adults. One of my kernel inspirations has being my dear mother whose humility, strength, wisdom and fortitude has inspired me as a small boy to adulthood and onwards for long as I live. In light of her passing in the early hours of Wednesday 26^th 2016, I can categorically say that her love, guidance and counsel have earned a place in my heart, which I will always be grateful for. To understand why I am sharing this story about one of the strongest influences on my own views of life, leadership and love; allow me to share my mother’s story from humble beginnings as a small farmer’s daughter to the night superintendent of one of the most respected private hospitals in Ireland.

Born in September 1929, she was one of five children and was raised in a loving home that worked hard and lived frugally as a way of life. My mother’s first incarnation with the wider world came during World War 2 working in the county home as a Nurses Aid (caregiver). She found it hard to talk of her time there but from what I can make out from talking to her on the topic, she was deeply appalled at what she saw. She was resolutely determined to input humanity back into the caring of others. She went to Bradford in the United Kingdom and trained as a nurse just after world war two. Once again, she dealt a caring hand to the horrendous injuries the war had inflicted on civilians along with the fighting men of the British and Allied Armies. Her life eventually returned to Ireland taking all the lessons she had learnt in the 1940’s and applied them all the way through to her retirement in the 1980’s as the operational head of Nursing for the Mater Private Hospital at night. She effectively practiced servant leadership running a private hospital’s nursing staff by night and was a busy mother by day!! Doesn’t she sound like a superhero?  In my eyes she was a true superhero and always will be!!

So, you can see why I would feel a tad selfish withholding some of the leadership and life lessons my mother thought me so in her honour, it is my pleasure share with you what she shared with me!

Equally ranked, allow me to explore some of the kernel lessons I learnt from my mother through the years, which I still hold dear today:

True character - “When all is said and done, it is not he who inflicts the most that wins, it is he who endures the most who is truly victorious” Susan Mulhall, August 1979 peeling carrots over the kitchen sink.

Never give up - Life can be cruel and unfair. We can lose more then we gain in money and wealth yet we manage to live to tell the tale. Never let life’s little defeats seem big and never give up! A better day will eventually come!

Leadership – Never let title or position in life stop others from talking to you about what is on their mind. Your sole purpose is to them in that moment; making them believe they can be better then they feel they can be. If they believe in themselves, they will rarely let you down.

Prudence – Understand whom you are dealing with and never let a good story blind you to the truth of whom they are or what they want you to believe.

Honesty – Don’t let temptation be a reason to betray yourself. If you are honest with others, you are been true to yourself.

Integrity – Conduct yourself honestly even if it gets you into trouble. Feeling pain over doing the right thing is better then feeling guilt over doing the wrong thing. Life tests us in many ways and even if you are bruised by circumstance, integrity will shine like a light in you for others to see.

Prejudice – Don’t judge a man by the colour of his skin; judge him if you have to by his actions and the colour of his heart.

Judgement – Never rush to judgement on what you don’t understand; seek to understand first and judge only if something good can come from it.

Love – Fancy things are no substitute for real love, love unconditionally and you will be loved in the same fashion.

Life – Live as you see fit, be prepared to stand up for what you truly believe in and never give up. If you can look back on an honest life, it will have being worth it.

This article is dedication to my dear mother, Susan Mulhall RIP, 1929 – 2016! May all that is good in this world and beyond celebrate her life! For those she leaves behind, she has earned a special place in the hearts of everyone who knew her and will never be forgotten!

Susan Mulhall RIP 1929 - 2016

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

momsgoneglobal

THE FUTURE OF BIG DATA WITH HADOOP USER GROUP (HUG) IRELAND AND ORACLE

See my coverage on Irish Tech News of Hadoop User Group (HUG) Ireland's September 12th Big Data Event in association with Oracle. Outstanding speakers and an outstanding turnout made for a successful event! More can be found at:

THE FUTURE OF BIG DATA WITH HADOOP USER GROUP (HUG) IRELAND AND ORACLE

PROCESS DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT, WHY CUSTOMER INPUT MATTERS

Check out my second article for Irish Tech News on process design and management. Its a focus on sustainable process management as a business approach and why it matters for company sustainability in the modern world.

Check it out at:

PROCESS DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT, WHY CUSTOMER INPUT MATTERS

Sources:

Photo by Stock.io at https://stocksnap.io/photo/EW161F7YQX

Lord of the Rings, how ‘Gandalf the Grey’ teaches us that learned helplessness is a threat in the real world

The fantasy epic Lord of the Rings takes a close look at how evil and despair seed the doom of all unless courage is found to check it! Does the “real world” need to take note?

I’m sure everybody knows the epic middle earth adventures of Frodo, Gandalf and the fellowship of epic heroes fighting the forces of the evil Lord Sauron and his cohort; the deceptively evil sorcerer Saruman!

The character Gandalf the Grey as played by Ian McKellen was a wise and powerful wizard on the side of good against such evil that corrupted the hearts of men to dominate middle earth and herald in a dark age that would have no end. In the first movie “The Fellowship of the Ring”, Gandalf was under the control of his mentor and friend “Saruman the White” who deceived and misdirected him in his quest to destroy “the Ring” of darkness that dominates all other rings given to Men, Wizards, Elves and the Dwarfs of middle earth.  

The storyline continues to a point where our hero Gandalf becomes suspicious of Saruman’s deception; confronting him in an epic battle of good versus evil. Saruman challenged by Gandalf tries to appeal to him to join him! Saruman does this by using the overarching power of Lord Sauron and how pointless it is to oppose him due to a “misguided sense of duty” to his friends and the people of middle earth. He plays on the odds of losing to try and create a sense of learned helplessness in Gandalf and weaken his resolve to oppose him. Gandalf, who appears less powerful but committed to his sense of morality cries foul of this betrayal and makes a stand regardless of the odds against him. He loses the battle but allies with other good men, elves and dwarfs to battle the dark forces opposing them, which leads our heroes to ultimate victory.

So, even in a fantasy based story like this, can we draw parallels to the real world of business? Does the use of over arching power to override core values with learned helplessness and take away hope by dominating those in important positions under such influence actually happen?

A worthy question, which is hard to answer in my view. It is definitely possible but it depends on the person, their sense of self/character, their core values and their situation in life. So here are some indicators to look out for the signs of learned helplessness and what to do in your company to be the unsung hero of the day saving it (or you!) ultimately from itself!

Be practical! Know what your company is in practice as well as on paper. Has it a hierarchical, clan, adhocracy or market culture? Where does the customer, employee, manager and leader sit in the hierarchy? Are employees engaged and listened to? Are good decisions for the greater good cheered or punished based on ethics/longer term benefit v short term cash return? If those answers are inherently negative and paint a picture where employees are treated as mindless tools in a corporate toolbox only capable of only doing their strictly enforced job descriptions, then it’s likely that learned helplessness is the only coping mechanism employees have to survive an oppressive management regime. If one reaches such an opinion from their research, it’s better to walk away from such a company, which by design eats itself from the inside out and is content with a shortened company lifecycle!

Know yourself! Be true to yourself in matters of the heart, which includes the wish to be happy! If your vocation in life lies elsewhere, giving up on where you belong because you don’t know yourself or trust your abilities is just wrong! We are all part of something bigger and will only feed the darkness by being unhappy and feeling trapped in a life we made and only we can really change! Know yourself, take responsibility for yourself and then you can change anything about your world you need to for a better future in life!

Moral Courage. A shiver goes down my spine when I think of how many times I have heard of outrageous and grievous actions taken by bad people against good people whom had leaders that lacked the moral courage to defend their people and/or position against the ill intent of the wicked! Moral courage builds your character and your reputation. It shapes your future and tests you to the ends of your beliefs and your wits! Win that inner battle and your path ahead will only get better, lose that battle and you allow the forces of darkness to roam unchallenged in a more subtle yet similar fashion to its advance in the Lord of the Rings

Priorities… where you belong. Just like the heroes of the Lord of the Rings, we should consider others before ourselves yet never stop our quest to find that place where we belong! Despite what some ‘gig economy’ proponents say, we all must find our place in this world. If working on a company’s payroll doing what you love for that company to the best of your ability, then so be it! Such a contribution is not a “cost” to any company; your above average performance is a contribution to that company as much as it is to yourself because you have found your place in life to excel at being you!

Associate with link minded peers! Edmund Burke once said; “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” This is as true today as it ever was, which is why doing nothing carries such a tragic cost for those too weak to dig deep and associate with linked minded peers for a greater good outcome! If you think dark self serving interests will not find you, then you are already found and under its influence. Context of situation and associated remedy is only possible through networking and peerage. Even the great “Gandalf the Grey” established a like minded peerage to succeed in life. I argue we are no different especially in today’s world.

With wealth distribution narrowing along with the tolerance for constructive dissent and sustainable business practices, thinking of the longer term consequences of our actions is as critical as it ever was! We need to carry our self past the pettiness and politics of the day to associate with like minded peers and bring back the balanced approach to love, life and the pursuit of happiness. It will carve out a sustainable future in business leaving only good intent to dwell as our proud legacy!

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/edmund-burkeon-in-action.html

www.pixelstalk.net

www.walldevil.com        

Credits;

Official twitter account of Sir Ian McKellen:  https://twitter.com/ianmckellen

Character Bio ‘Gandalf the Grey”: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000143/bio

Learned Helplessness definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Edmund Burke quote “http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/edmund-burkeon-in-action.html”

Hadoop User Group (HUG) Ireland and the Return of the Big Data Jedi

The 12th’s return by HUG Ireland in association with Oracle... A September Special for all Big Data lovers…

Whilst the team at HUG Ireland took an event moratorium in August, we have not wasted a minute in setting up a cracking Autumn 2016 schedule for our members, which forms Dublin’s premiere technical Big Data community. November and October already have confirmed speakers covering areas of Data Science and Data Pipelines that should not be missed by one and all!

We have also been busy with the team at Oracle to bring you a great lineout for September 12th at the Morrison Hotel on Ormond Quay from 6pm. Two quality speakers are speaking on the evening on The Future of Analytics, Oracle Big Data SQL and The Three I"s of Big Data with a bar on premises, so we can all catch up with each other on site on what’s new; before and after the quality presentations by Mark Rittman, CTO of Rittman Mead and Ian Sharp, Director of Data Science with Oracle UK.

So, some background on our speakers:

Mark is CTO and co-founder at Rittman Mead, an Oracle (and more recently, Cloudera) Partner specialising in BI, big data and data warehousing implementations, training and support. Mark is an Oracle ACE Director, author of two Oracle Press books and leads Rittman Mead's customer projects around Hadoop, cloud and machine learning.

Ian is a Data Scientist at Oracle with over 15 experience helping customers deliver insight and innovation around business intelligence, Data Warehousing and Big Data. He has worked across industries with organisations such as Worldpay, Sky, NHS, BT, HSBC, AVIVA, the NHS, Bord Gais and the Discovery Channel.

The agenda for the evening from 6pm looks like this:

The Future of Analytics, Data Integration and Data Driven Applications on Big Data Platforms by Mark Rittman, CTO of Rittman Mead

Up until now thought of as a cheap storage offloading layer for more capable relational data warehouses and BI tools, Hadoop is fast maturing into the default platform for all analytic and data integration workloads. In this session we'll look at how technologies such as Apache Arrow, Apache Kudu and Apache Drill will bring in-memory, column-store BI functionality to Hadoop but extend that to cover flexible-schema data held in data lakes and NoSQL databases; we'll see how Apache Spark, Apache Kafka and real-time streaming functionality coming to vendor ETL tools such as Oracle Data Integrator will enable real-time loading and integration with traditional relational databases; and finally we'll see how a new generation of e-commerce, logistics and customer applications will take advantage of the machine learning and predictive analytics capabilities provided by Hadoop to add smarts and intelligence to day-to-day operational applications.

Using Oracle Big Data SQL to add Hadoop + NoSQL to your Oracle Data warehouse by Mark Rittman, CTO of Rittman Mead

Oracle Big Data SQL 3.0 extends the Oracle SQL dialect, security framework and advanced analytics capabilities of the Oracle database to big data platforms, initially just for Oracle Big Data Appliance but now made available for commodity Cloudera and Hortonworks clusters. Complementing basic Apache Hive but competing with other next-generation SQL-on-Hadoop solutions such as Impala, Presto and Drill, Oracle Big Data SQL lets you work with big data sources as if they were another set of external tables – and can bring Exadata style query offloading to this significantly lower-cost platform. In this session we’ll explore at a technical level how Big Data SQL works (including the key limitations and “gotchas”), see how features such as storage indexes and storage handlers introduced with the 2.0 release significantly improve what the product can do, how statistical and advanced analytics features in Oracle Database Enterprise Edition can also be used on Hadoop sources, understand at a high-level what bringing Oracle security Hadoop means – and see if it’s really now possible to use Big Data SQL without the previous Exadata and BDA prerequisites.  

The Three I"s of Big Data, Insight, Innovation and Identify by Ian Sharp,  Lead Data Scientist with Oracle UK

Insight and innovation aside, Big Data Social Media is increasingly about Identity; who we are, who we aspire to be, and in the case of Fraud and Theft, who we pretend to be. Data Science, Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning have emerged as the prime technologies and disciplines to distill nuances and value around these identities. This presentation discusses the challenges and opportunities of big data analytics against polyglot sources, the evolution of new languages and frameworks such as R, Python, SciKit Learn and Zeppelin and the operational settings  around wider BI consumption, Streams and Apps APIs.  Using leading edge reference cases, we will explore  the stories and focus on the challenges for integration, governance and stability faced  in their  transition from Hadoop driven Innovation  to Mainstream business success. Finally we will highlight  some up and coming trends for the industry to watch

So, RSVP today and check out our twitter hashtag at #HUGIreland for the latest from our community.  Looking forward to seeing you all on the 12th!

Sources/Credits:

Pics:

Hadoop User Group (HUG) Ireland

Credits:

Morrison Location:

https://www.google.ie/maps/place/The+Morrison,+a+DoubleTree+by+Hilton+Hotel/@53.3466752,-6.2681787,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x48670e83401492d5:0xdc556b1fc3ff0b3b!8m2!3d53.346672!4d-6.26599

Event Page:

http://www.meetup.com/hadoop-user-group-ireland/

Speaker Profiles:

Ian:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-sharp-03a3835?authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=-usr&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A15847534%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-3-3%2CtarId%3A1471963329454%2Ctas%3Aian%20sharp

https://www.oracle.com/uk/index.html

Mark:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrittman?authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=3wfo&locale=en_US&srchid=2114422741471963406937&srchindex=1&srchtotal=3&trk=vsrp_people_res_name&trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A2114422741471963406937%2CVSRPtargetId%3A2087871%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary%2CVSRPnm%3Atrue%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH

http://www.rittmanmead.com/