Project Management

Project management (PM) involves a skill set useful in solving many problems, not only in the professional sphere. The skills used in project management can often be applied to a range of other areas.

One of the first phases of project management is Project Definition. More details available here - link.

Design Patterns

Design patterns – article at Wikipedia – contains the list of categories in design patterns, as used in Computer Science.

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2

Office 2007 SP2 is out. Direct download is here – link. This update improves the Outlook performance and adds support for Open Document Format (ODF) in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Save As PDF option is also added to all the programs in the suite. The full list of changes is available on Microsoft web site (link). The download is 290MB file.

XUpdate

XUpdate was supposed to be an XML language for updating arbitrary XML documents. It used XPath for selecting a set of nodes to modify or remove.

Unfortunately, there is not much development on either the specs or the implementations.

Articles:

Merging XML with XUpdate (link), XUpdate update (link), Editing XML Data Using XUpdate and HTML Forms (link)

XML Diff and Patch GUI Tool

Here is the GUI for the previously mentioned XML Diff and Patch library. There’s not  much to it, comparing to the console version, but the link is there, just in case someone needs it.

The XML Diff and Patch GUI Tool

Using the XML Diff and Patch Tool in Your Applications

I found an excellent piece of code that compares two XML documents. The difference to the in-built comparer in Linq to XML is that XMLDiff uses comparison options. Hence it is possible to say that the comparison of the XML is to be done ignoring whitespaces, or ignoring the child sort order. This last option is what I was looking for.

At the same time, I prefer to use a common solution or a library than to write the same thing myself, assuming there is one out there.

The project files were created in .Net 1.1 but are easily upgradeable to .Net 3.5.

Usage is extremely easy and straightforward:

[TestMethod]
public void xmldiff_test()
{
    XDocument doc1 = this.getDoc1();
    XDocument doc2 = this.getDoc1Inverse();

    // XMLDiff is using XMLDocument
    XmlDocument docx1 = new XmlDocument();
    docx1.LoadXml(doc1.ToString());
    XmlDocument docx2 = new XmlDocument();
    docx2.LoadXml(doc2.ToString());

    XmlDiff diff = new XmlDiff();
    diff.IgnoreChildOrder = true;
    diff.IgnoreXmlDecl = true;
    diff.IgnoreWhitespace = true;
    bool result = diff.Compare(docx1.DocumentElement, docx2.DocumentElement);
           
    Assert.IsTrue(result);
}

And the two functions create two XML XDocuments with children in different order:

private XDocument getDoc1()
{
    XDocument doc = new XDocument(
        new XElement("root",
            new XElement("child1"),
            new XElement("child2")
        )
    );

    return doc;
}

private XDocument getDoc1Inverse()
{
    XDocument doc = new XDocument(
        new XElement("root",
            new XElement("child2"),
            new XElement("child1")
        )
    );

    return doc;
}

The link to the text and the download are below:

Using the XML Diff and Patch Tool in Your Applications

Add a Blogger Label to a Post in Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer now supports Blogger labels. I am using them to group related article because it gets difficult to find certain post over time.

To insert a Blogger (blogspot.com) label to a post use the field “Set categories”, which is located just below the text editor area. This will insert the categories/labels with the post. Use comma (,) to separate the labels.

Samsung OMNIA Review (Phone Arena Reviews)

Here is an excellent review of Samsung Omnia mobile phone. If other reviews are as good and thorough as this one, this web site is an excellent reference as a source of information for other mobile phones, too.

Updated on September 02, 2008 due to changes caused by a newer ROM version.

Samsung OMNIA Review (Phone Arena Reviews)

Samsung OMNIA Size Compare (Phone Arena)

I just found out about Samsung’s Omnia. Finally a phone I really like. Has just about all the features I may want and at a decent price.

Anyway, back to the topic. Here is a nice phone visual comparison tool. If you are concerned about the design or the dimension of a certain model of a mobile phone, you can compare it to its peers at the address below:

Samsung OMNIA Size Compare (Phone Arena)

Google Chrome Search

Now, this is a cool new feature for a web browser:

I have just visited staticice.com.au and ebay.com.au searching for the Samsung Omnia mobile phone/PDA. Chrome remembered both sites and added them to the search providers list. Now, whether I type in the address bar, or open a new tab, I have the ability to search these, previously visited, web sites.

This is excellent. Keep bringing on the new features! I'm already wondering how could I have lived without it...