Choose the Work Flow for Entity Framework

Choose the Work Flow for Entity Framework

framework

Two things are therein mind while choosing the workflow.

Things that are outside our control:

New database/Existing Database:

Thing that are inside our control:

Creating model using design or writing code.

Model First—

  1. Create model in designer.
  2. Generate DB from the model.
  3. Classes that are going to interact auto generated from model.

Database First—

  1. Reverse engineer model in designer.
  2. Classes are auto-generated from Model.

Code First (New Database) —

  1. Find my model in code. Model is made up of main classes that are going to interact with the application. Optionally can provide the code for mapping and configuration.
  2. Database is created from the model.
  3. If I can my model, then can use the Code First Model to evolve database.

Code First (Existing Database) —

  1. Define classes and mapping in code.
  2. Reverse engineering tools are available.

Technology in Education – Is It A Double Edged Sword?

In the last decade, technology’s reach across disciplines has been growing manifold that is beginning to be omnipresent. Every domain that one can think of has technology’s touch in some shape or form. The extent of technology dominance obviously varies from one domain to another, and over time even within the same domain. Frank Catalano, a veteran analyst in the digital education space, talks about how technology in education was more of stepchild compared to the consumer and business technology zones, sometime back.  Digital learning has come a long way in the last decade and several organizations and individuals have positively empowered this riding wave. E-readers rising in popularity including the more popular ones like Kindle and iPad, digital content from educational organizations, newer learning techniques (including the ones like The Khan Academy) and cooler new approaches by the day (for e.g. most recently MOOC – Massive Open Online Courses is rising in popularity) have all been instrumental in building a beautiful marriage between technology and education. Visionaries such as Bill Gates have been funding a lot of technology projects in education, supporting a lot of research and development including patents that they are directly working on in this space and speaking in support of this move in various interviews and conferences. There is more awareness in digital learning with several conferences and websites dedicated to educational technology.

At an implementation level, schools and colleges are also being very receptive and are better embracing solutions in the marketplace, regardless of their size and scale of operations. Besides formal learning institutes, corporate learning programs and individual offline learners are also actively using digital solutions in quest of their ongoing learning needs. Learning management systems, both commercial and open source are playing a major role in supporting this learning process and are easily customizable to meet the learner’s needs. Learning is truly becoming an anywhere, anytime activity and with the tracking and measuring that learning tools provide the overall process is becoming more effective by the day. Students are able to synchronize their learning content across devices, take notes digitally, complete assignments offline, interact with their instructors remotely and partake in group studies all of which have enhanced collaboration and minimized overhead, helping them focus on the true goals of learning.

While all of these are very heartening to see and especially because we are creating a robust platform around learning for generations to come, we also need to be wary about how this wave is shaping up. Frank in his article talks elaborately about why he fears technology in education could be another bubble that is waiting to burst. Investments are pouring in, in this domain, with several investors holding educational applications and software high in their areas of focus. So, a lot of new market entrants are trying to take advantage in hope of reaping quick returns. Frank also talks about how educational technology is in buzz amongst conferences, websites, start-up events and political agendas that it is becoming a cause of concern with such kind of attention the domain has been receiving. There could be potential players who want to take advantage of all this visibility and attempt to build quick and dirty applications trying to “Make Hay While the Sun Shines”. Political agendas may shake the foundation of imparting true education to the learners and the ample supply of educational software (combined with exorbitant marketing of the wrong products) may suppress products that may truly be useful for the learners. While this is one angle of it, the other is that learners, especially some years down the line, begin to heavily rely on digital learning and fail to see the core benefits that in-class learning provides. Keep in mind though that technology in education is not averse to in-class learning. While it supports remote digital learning, it also has numerous tools to offer and encourage in-class learning with the goal of making the process effective for the instructor and the learner, be it AV tools, tracking tools, access to content etc.

Technology in education is thus a welcoming trend. It is here to stay and continue to make people more learned and informed. It is in all of our best interests that we build a careful balance in ensuring the right mix of instructor led and remote learning, be selective about the kind of educational software and devices we use to suit our needs and voluntarily spread the word about organizations that are building educational software of exceptional value so they reach the right hands and are not diluted amidst other players that flood the field.

 

Empower Yourself to Handle Responsive Web Design Needs

Many call 2013 as the year of “Responsive Web Design”, while some say the reference should be made to the current decade as opposed to the current year. Very interesting facts and mind boggling numbers are in circulation by various studies on the usage patterns of devices amongst end users and how they consume web content. While there is a clear surge in the usage of applications built for smart devices, there is still a steady demand for websites run on mobile devices too. Gone are the days when compatibility driven development or testing was limited to a few operating systems and browsers with a clear phase set aside for verifying that the website was rendered per specifications on a supported matrix. The focus is now rightly set on building web applications that are consistent in their delivery and end user experience across the devices they are accessed on. While tests can be run across a prioritized set of devices, it is almost becoming impossible to verify compatibility across all supported devices due to the following reasons:

  1. It is very difficult to identify the complete set of devices on which the end user would be accessing the web application
  2. Justifying the ROI in housing all the devices internally is not possible
  3. Time and cost constraints are very strong deterring a comprehensive compatibility verification cycle and the ROI in terms of coverage obtained vs. defects found through such expansive test coverage will not make business sense

The test team is adopting newer testing techniques including ones such as profiling web applications as part of their performance test efforts in enhancing end user experience. They are taking back the results from such tests to work them in as actionable inputs to help the developers build a strong code base that provides a consistent end user experience from usability, functionality and performance standpoints. While the test team is grappling with the above challenges and working its way in with newer approaches to compatibility testing, one blessing indeed that is easing the process is the “embracing of a responsive web design” – a design that accommodates flexible images and fluid grids to render a consistent view of the application on all devices (be it smart phones, tablets, desktops or laptops) and align with the device’s form factor and screen size dynamically – if we look at it simplistically. There is more to responsive web design in terms of internal customizations that are needed than what we see at face value in terms of images and grids.  This is a web design strategy that does not call for any end user screen tweaks to enable them view the content in a seamless flow. While this sounds great in concept, and web developers have been exposed to ensuring compatibility for several years now, responsive web design implementation does call for a comprehensive and refreshed understanding of the current web design standards brushing off some old concepts of the 1990s.  The distinction between the server side code and the client side code and that most of the rendering decisions are made via in-browser coding on the client side needs to be acknowledged.

One needs to ask the right set of questions on the ROI of using responsive web design (RWD) for the product under development. While the larger assumption is that sooner or later a larger portion of the web presence will need to adapt to RWD, the question to answer is whether now is the right time. If RWD is indeed going to be beneficial for your organization/group/application, identify the set of development best practices to make your effort successful. Customize this list to meet your application’s needs and ensure your test team is also aware of them so they can plan their test effort accordingly. A lot of best practices sets are available online for you to start working with, but this one is particularly straight forward to follow and comprehensive in nature.

Open source development frameworks such as Bootstrap are also empowering developers adopt responsive web design better. Also, developers are able to customize such frameworks to align with their needs given that they are open source in nature. A recent update from Bootstrap on their version 3 release to better support RWD is a welcome news for the developer community.

While RWD is definitely one of the current trends in web application development, it is still to be seen whether it will be a trend into the future or not. A post by Josh Chan talks of interesting examples from players like JP Morgan, Google where mobile specific features are being leveraged and mobile specific technology is being built. At the end of the day, it is a very organization specific decision on whether RWD makes sense or not, but it is definitely a trend that cannot be ignored.