Issue: 2013 - September/October

Rod Paddock argues that the growing adoption of codes of conduct at software conferences reveals a deeper problem: a pervasive “brogrammer” culture that tolerates harassment and boorish behavior. While he agrees that harassment must be addressed, heeshifts focus from the codes themselves to the underlying environment that necessitates them, urging a return to merit, professionalism, and an inclusive, respectful culture. He advocates creating safe spaces for all attendees... and reframing behavior without losing sight of constructive interaction, summarizing his stance with Wil Wheaton’s “Don’t be a dick.”See More

Sahil Malik explains how SharePoint 2013 leverages Distributed Cache (AppFabric) to dramatically improve performance—caching social feeds, security trimming, OneNote access and FedAuth cookies—while describing out-of-the-box defaults, options for collocated or dedicated cache hosts, PowerShell management, and key caveats (memory limits, homogenous clusters, firewall rules, and service account configuration). He emphasizes planning, monitoring, and proper sizing to avoid ...common pitfalls and get the full performance benefit of Distributed Cache in on-premises deployments.See More

Paul Sheriff shows how to enumerate processes on local or remote Windows machines using .NET's Process class, and how to wrap that data in a custom PDSAProcess/PDSAProcessManager model for WPF binding. He explains adding useful properties (real machine name, IsRemote, memory in KB/MB via PerformanceCounter), sorting into an ObservableCollection, and exposing LoadAllProcesses for UI refresh, making process monitoring, display, and remote access more robust and user-friendly.

Markus Egger surveys CODE Framework’s WPF standard themes, arguing that developers can rapidly build visually consistent, flexible applications by using ready-made themes rather than crafting UI from scratch. He inventories themes (Battleship, Metro, Workplace, Vapor, Geek) and highlights their layout automation, dynamic theme switching, and shared features like automatic view layouts, data templates, notifications, and printing. Through a sample magazine manager, he dem...onstrates how themes drive structure (menus, toolbars, windows, lists) with minimal code, enabling deep customization and future-proof, on-the-fly UI transformations.See More

Ben Coe argues that the NoSQL versus SQL debate is not absolute and shares his pragmatic experience using MongoDB for Attachments.me. He traces underlying trade-offs—schemaless, denormalized modeling, and developer-oriented design versus traditional SQL robustness and mature tooling—and demonstrates how MongoDB can fit real-world applications, including modeling a music store, executing complex queries, and scaling concerns. Coe cautions against overreliance on sharding,... emphasizes indexing and workload characterization, and concludes that MongoDB is powerful for certain big-data and rapid-prototyping needs, but not a universal solution.See More

In this article, Kevin Goff provides a comprehensive guide to using XMLA commands for updating Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) analytic databases, emphasizing that unlike relational databases, OLAP updates require batch-oriented XMLA processing rather than T-SQL DML. He presents 13 practical scenarios—including full and incremental processing of dimensions and fact tables, managing rigid attribute relationships, maintaining indexes, and leveraging SSIS and ....NET for automation—highlighting best practices and common pitfalls. Kevin’s detailed walkthrough equips developers with essential XMLA knowledge to efficiently populate, update, and maintain SSAS cubes in production environments.See More

John Petersen argues that the Module Pattern is the simplest, most effective way to write better JavaScript. He emphasizes that it makes code more manageable, testable, and maintainable by encapsulating private state and exposing a clean public interface, thereby avoiding global variable pitfalls and library conflicts. Through basic and RESTful API module examples, Petersen shows how closures enable encapsulation, how modules promote reusability and readability, and why ...adopting the pattern can dramatically improve code quality and maintainability.See More

In this article Oren Eini highlights what he views as the standout additions in RavenDB 2.5—result transformers, scripted patching, SQL replication, unbounded streams, dynamic reporting, concurrent writes, and indexing optimizations—explaining how they enable richer server-side projections, safe large exports, easy migrations and RDBMS integration, faster writes and smarter indexing; overall he argues these features make RavenDB a more powerful, production-ready, “zero f...riction” document database worth adopting.See More

Jim Wooley champions the Reactive Extensions (Rx) as a way to build highly responsive, asynchronous applications by declaratively composing operations over observable sequences. He contrasts IObservable with IEnumerable, showing how Rx turns collections and events (e.g., UI clicks, accelerometer readings) into push-based pipelines, enabling non-blocking, order-agnostic processing. Through a Windows Phone 7 dice game, Wooley demonstrates creating observables from lists, e...vents, and web-service calls, merging sources, scheduling on dispatchers, and disposing subscriptions, while also covering throttling and error handling. The article advocates Rx as a powerful toolkit for composing complex asynchronous workflows across UI, sensors, and services.See More

Michiel van Otegem argues that .NET 4.5 marks a paradigm shift in identity and access control by integrating claims-based authentication into the core framework. He traces the evolution from the old IIdentity/IPrincipal model to the ClaimsIdentity/ClaimsPrincipal approach, enabled by Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) concepts embedded in mscorlib. Claims—key-value assertions about users—allow fine-grained, policy-driven authorization via ClaimsAuthorizationManager and cu...stom authentication/authorization components, decoupling security rules from business logic and supporting flexible identities across networks and cloud environments.See More

Ted Neward argues that conferences are a valuable but underutilized opportunity for software professionals, and their value comes from deliberate preparation and behavior. In ten practical tips, he urges attendees to set upfront goals, do homework on sessions and speakers, come prepared with business cards, balance work and social time, engage respectfully with speakers and peers, and focus on meaningful networking and follow-up. He emphasizes realistic expectations abou...t quick knowledge transfer, and frames success as demonstrable value to one's employer through new contacts, resources, and ideas that can be applied after the event.See More