Ravi Shankar's blog

Design patterns with Design principle for Agile world What are Design patterns? Design patterns are solutions to real world problems that pop up time and again, so instead of reinventing the wheel, we follow the design patterns that are well-proven, tested by others, follow as safe guidelines. What are Software Design principles? Software design principles represent a set of guidelines that helps us to avoid having a bad design. The design principles are associated to Robert Martin who gathered them in "Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices". According to Robert Martin there are 3 important characteristics of a bad design that should be avoided: Rigidity - It is hard to change because every change affects too many other parts of the system. Fragility - When you make a change, unexpected parts of the system break. Immobility - It is hard to reuse in another application because it cannot be disentangled from the current application. Desi

Most of us must have heard of Database replication/ mirroring but few of us would have tried to explore the details. This article explains about these concepts which would give you an overall understanding of Database server concepts which are used for large applications. What is Database Mirroring? Database mirroring is a primarily software solution for increasing database availability. It maintains two copies of a single database that must reside on different server instances of SQL Server Database Engine. What is Database Replication? It is a set of technology for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another and then synchronizing between databases to maintain consistency. Using replication, you can distribute data to different locations and to remote or mobile users over local and wide area networks, dial-up connections, wireless connections, and the Internet. Most of the development community think that above two mentioned questions

Repository   commonly refers to a storage location, often for safety or preservation. Objectives of using repository Use the Repository pattern to achieve one or more of the following objectives: You want to maximize the amount of code that can be tested with automation and to isolate the data layer to support unit testing. You access the data source from many locations and want to apply centrally managed, consistent access rules and logic. You want to implement and centralize a caching strategy for the data source. You want to improve the code's maintainability and readability by separating business logic from data or service access logic. You want to use business entities that are strongly typed so that you can identify problems at compile time instead of at run time. You want to associate a behavior with the related data. For example, you want to calculate fields or enforce complex relationships or business rules

Visual Studio has a setting that does this automatically. Tools – Options – Projects and Solutions – Track Active Item in Solution Explorer Just select it and you’re all set!

UML Intro UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. UML is a graphical language for visualizing, specifying, constructing & documenting the artifacts of a software system. It is a standard language for designing and documenting a system in an object oriented manner. UML provides blue print for Business process, System functioning, programming language statements, Database schema & reusable components. UML is used in all phases of software development from Requirement Specification to Acceptance Test and from Designing a solution to Deploying/ Packaging. Modeling has been around for years not only in software field but also in other fields like Civil, Mechanical, etc. we get a model ready & approved before starting the production. Modeling makes complex system to break up into simple and discrete pieces that be individually understood. If we ask ourselves have we been doing/ following modeling, most of us would say NO. But all of us do mode

Section 508 Guidelines (a) A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). If we properly separate our three layers, we remove most of the situations in which we would have to provide text equivalents. Markup should only include img tags when the image is actually part of the content of the page (i.e. Flickr or Boston.com's The Big Picture ). The lesson: Logos, navigation, buttons and other content elements are not proper uses of img tags. When non-text content is necessary, use title and alt attributes. (b) Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation. That fancy Java slideshow applet that adds ripple effects to the slides probably isn't necessary. Simplify your life and make basic HTML pages styled with CSS instead. The lesson: If you do need multimedia capabilities, use technologies that have acce

  Steps to make your website accessible   1. Make sure all images, graphs, and other non-text items have a text equivalent. 2.  Provide synchronized captions for all video, as well as captions or a transcript of audio content. 3.  Do not use color as the only way to convey information. 4.  You can use style sheets for layout, but the page must still make sense without them. 5.  When using images as links, for example a drop down menu, make sure each link (as well as the overall image) has alt text describing the destination.  Avoid using server-side image maps.  If you do use server-side image maps, be sure to provide separate identical text links to access the same content. 6.  Label column and row headers in a data table.  Try to avoid using tables for layout purposes, but if you do then do not label headers. 7.  Make sure all cells in the table are associated with the appropriate headers. When the table is set-up correctly, screen readers can navigate through data t