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When planning for a new application, all organizations are faced with deciding whether to develop the application in-house or purchasing an off-the-shelf software package. Developing the application in-house has the benefit of ensuring the application is custom-fit to the organization's needs. Unfortunately, this custom-fit may result in an application that …
Posted on in Programming
Like many other kinds of businesses, a landscaping business needs a billing system.
As is often the case, billing systems require an incredible level of customization
thanks to the various intricacies of most companies' pricing structures. Designing
a billing system to fit the specific needs of an individual organization is …
Posted on in Programming
A database is a collection of files used by an organization in support of its daily operations. The files in a database are commonly called tables because their data is organized into rows and columns. Databases allow for easy storage and retrieval of the data kept within the files that …
Posted on in Programming
Before a programmer can sit down and create a new application, she must understand the nature of the problem the application is designed to solve. Programming projects often begin with a relatively simple problem. These simply stated problems often mask a much more complicated issue. Rarely do programmers create applications …
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This is a six-part introduction to database systems with a collected list of references at the end. These posts were derived from a set of papers I had to write for a business class.
Posted on in Programming
As Company X begins to move toward a new information system, it must decide on how it will implement a new software strategy. They can choose to use pre-developed, off-the-shelf software or develop their own. Although off-the-shelf software has the benefit of being readily available, few systems are ready to …
Posted on in Programming
Chance asked me to post the Perl script I've been using to collect and graph protocol specific usage information in MRTG. Below, you will find a link to the zip file containing the Perl script.
You can put this script where you like, but you will need to reference it …
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Whenever I start a new software project, I spend way too much time trying to
figure out what I'm going to call it. I try to think of something clever, but I'm
never really satisfied with what I come up with. (I suppose this means I'm not
clever.) Starting with …
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I stumbled across this interesting image evolution project on AlteredQualia yesterday. This project takes Roger Alsing's example of image evolution using polygon rendering and re-implements it in JavaScript. I decided to run my own test against my avatar images. Both results use 50 polygons with 6 vertices.
Originally, I started …
Posted on in Programming
In previous coding examples, I've used Assembla to
demonstrate some Subversion interactions. At the
time, Assembla offered a free Subversion repository bundled with some really nice
development tools. In fairness to all Slaptijack readers, I need to point out
that Assembla's Andy Singleton announced the
end of free plans
(except …
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If you've been following along, you are probably already aware the Pinax team has decided to make some radical changes to their directory structure based on input from users. I took the time to update my own Pinax project — let me show you what's changed.
First, here's the new directory …
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I recently began working on a project based on Pinax. The Pinax project's goal is to develop a set of re-usable applications for the Django Web Framework that are common in website development. Generally, these applications provide the functions and features common in social media sites. For reference, Bob Haugen …
Posted on in Programming
Database transactions are really no mystery. For the uninitiated, the idea is that we want to make changes to the database inside of a transaction that can be committed or thrown away. Why is this a good thing? Without transactions, changes to the database have to be manually undone if …
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ProBlogger Darren Rowse recently posted a question about putting dates on blog posts. A lot of folks were interested in the idea of removing dates from older blog posts, but don't know where to start. This is a useful PHP excercise, so I decided to implement it on my personal …
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Choosing a language in which to develop your custom Nagios plugins is pretty easy. You have two roads you can go down: compiled or scripting.
If you decide to build plugins using a compiled language, just about any will do. Generally speaking, C is the usual choice for something like …
