Duplicate MEF Exports When Export Has Metadata

I just discovered that the Managed Extensibility Framework will produce duplicate exports for parts that are exported with custom metadata. My scenario is pretty simple. I have created an Entity Framework DbContext subclass that is marked up with both [Export] and [DbContextMetadata] attributes. DbContextMetadataAttribute is my own custom metadata attribute.

   1: [Export(typeof(IDbContext))]

   2: [DbContextMetadata(ContextType = "Person")]

   3: public class PersonContext : DbContext, IDbContext

   4: {

The result is shown here:

I have verified that this is true by simply commenting out the custom metadata attribute. Interestingly, this behavior is not present when using the MEF ExportMetadataAttribute. I’m planning to dig into this a little more to see why it’s happening, but it certainly was unexpected.

 

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How Much UML Modeling Is Right For Your Team Or Project?

This is a question I see asked a number of times in various forums. It is one of those “It Depends” sort of topics, but is one that I think is worth discussing here. In this post, I’ll give you my perspective on how I’ve used it in my projects.

Probably the most important thing you have to understand is, “Why are you using UML at all?” – assuming you are in the first place, or are considering using it in the near term. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. A UML diagram is simply a picture of part of a (potentially) complex system. And sometimes the best way to break down the complexity is through pictures.UML diagrams convey structure or behavior through pictures of classes and their interactions. It supports numerous diagram types to break down the system into various views, which can be combined in order to represent the system from different angles in order to help bring perspective and clarity.

  

Organized in a logical way, the UML diagrams you create help to tell the story of the system you are developing. The $64,000 question is, “Who is the story’s primary audience?”. Generally, the answer to that is the development team that is building the application. However, with the success of Agile, many teams feel that UML is unnecessary, or at best, it’s used in ad hoc ways with very lightweight and high level diagrams – maybe even temporarily on whiteboards during meetings. It’s simply viewed as a means to convey a concept or outline. I certainly agree with the spirit of that. UML can help to speed up the team because it helps to bring understanding and consensus through a shared view of what they’re building. How lightweight or detailed your diagrams are, or even if they are persisted, should be a decision you make based on the team’s appetite and ultimately the overall value add to the team and project. Flexibility is the key.

And no matter what the long term goals are, the short term benefit of an increase in velocity is probably the most valuable takeaway you will realize by using UML.

In order to gauge the right amount of diagraming to provide to the team, I have used the sprint retrospectives to reflect on this with the team and arrive at the right answer. The teams that I’ve worked on have all been comprised of a mixture of experience levels. Typically, the less experienced team members or newer team members gain the most benefit from the diagrams. The more experienced team members still benefit from them, though, as they almost always help to disambiguate the design details. The net effect is that it helps to level the playing field across the team and improves communication and ultimately productivity. I have almost always chosen to persist the diagrams in a modeling tool – even if for no one else but myself for future reference.

In a highly Agile team where practices like TDD are used, the use of UML may likely be perceived as an impediment. You can make a pretty well supported argument that this viewpoint is right. The design should emerge from the creation and iterative refactoring of code and unit tests to flesh out the details. Up front design using UML is the opposite of that approach. Unless you consider it from the perspective of general high-level architectural point of view that is. The UML diagrams you use can describe many higher level aspects of the system like: patterns; guidelines on organizing system components; describing the layers of abstraction;  deployment details; or other high-level details. Let TDD do what it’s best at – creating flexible and resilient designs at a low level of detail.

Most development teams have a certain amount of turnover throughout their lifetime. The reasons for this are myriad, but the bottom line is that you will need to bring new team members up to speed at various points in time throughout the life of your project. If the system that they are working on is reasonably complex, the UML diagrams that you created to convey your design concepts to the original team members can be an excellent way to help the new team members understand what they are working on. I am a firm believer that every team member should get the big picture. They shouldn’t be relegated to some dark corner of the application with little or no visibility into how it all fits together. Use of tools like UML helps to bring everyone up to speed, which is a good thing.

A common argument that I have heard against using UML is that like most documentation it will always be stale when compared to the code. I would say that this is generally true. There are many ways to deal with this, but probably the best way is to just accept that fact and understand that the main use of the tool is to help people understand the system. If the diagrams are too far out of alignment with reality, update them. Most tools support reverse engineering. Use it to refresh the details and update the diagrams. Your future team members will thank you. Just don’t get bogged down in the minutia of sync’ing code with models all the time. That’s one of the quickest killers of usefulness.

In the end, I will also yield with an “It Depends” answer for the original question. Since no two teams and no two projects are exactly alike, I’d say you will have to gauge the right answer based on your current circumstances. For me, I’ve always relied on UML as a means to reducing complexity and organize thought around the structure and design of complex systems. Let your team help you to decide the right answer.

Happy Modeling

Fowler Is Right On the Mark About Premature Ramp-Up

Martin Fowler’s most recent post on “PrematureRampUp” http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PrematureRampUp.html is right on the mark. Our team has recently concluded work on two legacy projects, which have been running in parallel for some time. A strategic greenfield project for a custom analytics platform has been slowly gaining momentum. Rather than slam the custom platform project with all the devs from the previous two projects, we have started to migrate them over in pairs. This has proven to be very beneficial in that it has allowed us to control the team member learning curves and ensure that they are properly acclimated to the new project environment. We eliminated a great deal of hectic stress by bringing them over in this way and it also allows the new team members to assist with the knowledge sharing as well. Overall, this is a great way to grow a team to its optimal size.

Productivity Tip–Add Your FxCop Project to the Solution

I’m very interested in streamlining the workflow that our team uses when developing. That means I need to make the process get out of our way as much as possible. Sometimes, small changes can make a big difference in your overall productivity.

To some, code analysis is a waste of time, but our team sees it as a vital step in ensuring high quality code in the application. Obviously, I don’t want to forego code analysis, but I would like it to be as unobtrusive as possible.

As Martin Fowler says, “if it hurts, do it more often”. Committing changes that break the continuous build for something simple like code analysis violations is a waste of valuable cycles. So we do it earlier and more often. We’ve simply added the .fxcop file to our solution and added all of the project outputs to the project. Now, before committing our changes, we simply run the analysis prior to our commit and eliminate the breaks before they break the build.

This keeps our CruiseControl projects green longer and reduces the churn of having to rebuild to fix something we shouldn’t have committed in the first place.

I suggest that in your team retrospectives you reflect on your daily practices and look for small, quick wins like this. You’d be amazed at how much time throughout your day you can reclaim by eliminating friction points like this.

What’s It Like Working For A Startup?

OK, well the company I’m at technically isn’t a startup. It’s been around for over 10 years. But its focus has changed from being primarily a research organization to a commercial one that is productizing its successful research initiatives. For all intents and purposes it might as well be considered a startup.

Pros

Probably the greatest benefit to working in a company like this is that almost everything we do is greenfield – and I don’t mean just software development, I mean business process development too. We get the unique opportunity to form the way the business operates from the ground up. Find something that doesn’t work the way you like? Change it. Find something that works really well? Use it. Nothing is off the table.

Even though we aren’t a software development company per se, it does form a significant portion of what we are. And to that end we have the responsibility to deliver high-quality systems. In order to deliver a robust solution to the client we have to employ sound architectural and software engineering practices. And the beauty of it is that we can look to the successes of other companies that have used Agile and Lean methodologies to their advantage and incorporate the same principles here. No having to strip away layers of process in order to make a streamlined software development lifecycle.

Naturally, we’re a small company. That means that in order to get things done people are empowered. Not just empowered to do their day-to-day things, but to actually think and reflect on the way we do things and come together as a team to make real change. It takes the concept of team ownership of code to a whole new level – to the company level – where you are truly an owner in the products and the way they are delivered.

Small companies such as this also bring one very important benefit to the table – that you’re not just a number in a faceless corporate machine. People know you and you know them. It takes the benefits of an Agile team to the next level and brings a sense of camaraderie to the game that makes everyone feel that they have others that they can depend on to get the job done.

Cons

Not surprisingly, as a small company in this phase of its life, budgets are tight. Everything from server hardware costs, to developer tool costs, to travel budgets for conferences is looked at from a necessity perspective. Unlike some companies with deep pockets and seemingly bottomless pits of funds for infrastructure, we have to be vigilant and ruthlessly efficient in our expenditures.

Probably not unique to startups, but common to small companies, is the need to wear many hats. As the software architect, I often field common support needs on the network or server platforms. I participate in presales calls and lend guidance to the business development team to help bridge the gap between techies and non-techies.

Pressure to build up a sustainable and recurring revenue stream is high. A small company operating in a niche market in a tumultuous economy has a lot to worry about. The focus of each and every team member has to be like a laser to deliver a high-quality solution that the client simply can’t afford to live without. Frankly, that should be the focus anyway, so making that a negative probably isn’t fair. The point is that letting your focus slip a little can have dire effects on a small company in a fledgling state.

In Summary

Although there are a number of pros and cons to working in this sort of company the pros far outweigh the cons. So many of the day-to-day impediments that hamstring teams and projects can be eliminated through tight teamwork and the empowerment that comes from knowing that you can make important decisions to improve things.

Funny thing is that you don’t necessarily have to work in a small start-up to have your cake and eat it too. Larger, well established companies can achieve the same results by empowering their employees and fostering a culture of entrepreneurial spirit. The main difference is the depth of the sludge you have to dig through and how far can you go to clean it up.

Good luck!

Visual Studio 2010 Error–The Project File Could Not Be Loaded. Root Element is Missing.

I happened upon this gem of an error today. It is totally a red herring. I was expecting to find some kind of corruption in the XML like a missing <Project> tag or something similar; however, when I compared the .csproj file between revisions in Subversion, I found no substantial differences, only some additional files added to the project. So what gives?

Turns out that this error is caused by a problem with the .user file associated with the project. Delete the .user file and voila! it works. I can’t take credit for figuring it out. Thanks goes to the BizTalk Tips and Tricks blog here.

Using Architecture to Improve Team Velocity

I’ve been following a number of discussions lately on more than one LinkedIn group that I’m a member of that have been focused on an important concern – namely the role of architecture and design in an Agile project. Many people that I’ve spoken with over the last few years are unclear how much or how little time should be spent on this activity, its relative importance to a team, and ultimately the benefit that it brings to a project. The participants in these recent discussions are asking the same questions. In  this post, I will share my perspective on architecture’s role in an Agile team and how it has benefitted us on our current project. First, I’ll focus on three important things that can impact the answer.

Team Composition Impact on Architecture

A recurring theme amongst many of the discussion participants was team composition. More than once it was mentioned that a team of seasoned software developers could forego up front architectural work and “just start coding”. The architecture would then evolve sprint by sprint. Interestingly, no one discussed the scenario of a team composed of a significant percentage of more junior members.

Project Requirements’ Impact on Architecture

What I found most interesting in these discussions was the absence of emphasis on project requirements and the bearing that they may have on the need for architecture. Perhaps it was an oversight or perhaps it’s because there is little or no difference in need based on project requirements. I’m surprised because in my opinion the more complex a system is, the higher the need for a guiding architecture.

Delivery Timeline’s Impact on Architecture

Without question, nearly every team feels an intense level of pressure to deliver more in a shorter period of time with fewer bugs. It’s the universal facet of what we do – bringing business value to a company in the shortest time and in the most cost effective way. A number of participants in these discussions felt that the demand to drive out a product as quickly as possible made the concept of architecture impossible to consider. This feeling was often supported by arguments that the time spent on architecture would negatively impact the ability of the team to focus on the creation of functioning production code.

What’s the Right Answer?

One thing that I’ve found to be universally true is that no two teams and no two projects are exactly alike. And probably the greatest truth I’ve found in software development is that there is no silver bullet that will solve all of your challenges. What works extremely well on one team or for one project may be completely useless in another setting.

With that in mind, however, in my experience there are some recurring themes and enough similarities that I can say with some confidence that architectural activities in a project have proven to be more beneficial than harmful. Perhaps not to the same degree, but certainly the exercise is not a fruitless endeavor. So what about from the perspectives of the three concerns above?

While team composition can certainly affect how a team perceives the degree of need for architecture, my experience has been that even the most seasoned team can benefit from defining architectural guidance for their project. I like to think of it in terms of an orchestra. The most talented musicians need the notes of the musical score to play to. It’s simply a way for them to all stay in tune with one another. While the action of defining architecture is done by the role of “architect”, the person fulfilling that role may alternate within a team of pros. The net result is a team that operates at a higher level of coordination yielding a higher overall velocity.

The need for architecture on a team with junior members is even more pronounced. Without a clear picture of what these team members need to do, the project can and will degrade into a mire of spaghetti and unmaintainable code. Architectural guidance gives these junior team members development goals and a clearer picture of what they are trying to achieve. It makes clearer the constraints that they need to operate within. This has been invaluable as a communication tool for our team, which has a number of junior team members. It helps to frame conversations and eliminates ambiguity. Rework is down substantially since going with a process that involves an architect role.

The solutions that my company develops are not your average run of the mill line of business applications. They are sophisticated custom solutions that bring predictive analytical models to different vertical markets. They challenge us from many angles including data acquisition, cleansing, modeling, and delivery. Scalability, security, and flexibility all contribute to additional complexity. As a result, delivery of these kinds of products requires management of the technical details and the best way to do that is through architecture and design. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that only sophisticated projects require this level of attention. Even basic LOB applications would benefit from architecture and design in order to reduce duplication, improve reuse, and generally improve maintainability.

Our company is no stranger to tight delivery timelines. Our clients need results quickly to improve their bottom line and our solutions are intended to help with that. In the end, this becomes a value proposition where architecture and design is pitted against time to market. A product that doesn’t meet its objectives because it can’t perform well, can’t interoperate well, or is overly expensive to maintain isn’t a solution – it’s an impediment. Many projects forego the effort of defining architecture and design and instead jump right to the implementation phase. While it can get you over the hump in a hurry to deliver a product, the long-term costs of this can be quite extreme. How many projects have had to be rewritten simply because of decisions like this?

Wrapping Up

This has been a long post and if you made it this far, thanks! In conclusion, I argue in favor of applying sound application architecture and design to the projects I work on because I see their benefit. That benefit comes to teams of all types, projects of varying degrees of complexity, and timelines that are either reasonable or tightly compressed. My advice to you? Take the time to define the architecture of your solution, apply sound design principles to the product, and reap the rewards. Those rewards will be overall improved team velocity and a lower defect and rework rate. These will also have the effect of improved morale on the team because they’ll come away with an improved sense of accomplishment and pride in their workmanship.

Entity Framework 4.1 Primary Key Convention

I’m very pleased with the move to EF 4.1. Using a code first approach to implement my Repository pattern has reduced complexity and given me additional control over my code base and that makes me very happy. I want to point out one area that is a potential sticking point when implementing your entities.

In our system we have a number of entities whose tables have primary keys that are not identities. These entities have their IDs set via initial load scripts at the time the database is deployed using initialization scripts. As a result, the ID fields are simply INTs. The repository for these entities supports adding new entities and require the caller to set the IDs on their entities prior to calling save.

The point of contention comes from the fact that Entity Framework, by default, considers properties marked as [Key] to be identities. You must supply an additional data annotation attribute to override this behavior. The attribute you must apply to your key field is:

[DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None)]

Forgetting to apply this attribute will cause Entity Framework to generate SQL statements on insert that attempt to rely on the key being auto-generated by the identity. The result is a error when you attempt to insert new data that your ID field cannot be NULL.

Using data annotations on your entities allows you to customize numerous behaviors that Entity Framework provides as well other consumers of your entities include data binding for your UI.

Troubleshooting NAntContrib FxCop Task Error

I’m working on setting up my continuous integration process for a new application. I’m nearing the end of that work, but one outstanding step needs to be done – getting FxCop working against the code base to ensure good code is being committed.

At first, I set up my NAnt script to simply ‘exec’ the fxcopcmd.exe application. While that worked and I did get my results output to the file system, the NAnt script continued on happily even when I had messages that needed to be addressed. I found a few blogs that suggested that I could parse the return code from fxcopcmd.exe, but it always seemed to return 0 – even when there were messages.

That’s when I decided to use the NAntContrib FxCop task in my script. It’s easy enough to integrate. Simply add a <loadtasks> element that points to the nant.contrib.tasks.dll and then add the <fxcop> task to your script. When I did this, I was stymied by a new error:

Error creating FileSet.
    Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.EnvironmentPermission, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.

Turns out that this issue is caused by a rather simple oversight. When you download the .Zip file that contains the NAntContrib DLLs, you have to be sure to unblock them, otherwise the O/S blocks loading them and hence you get the error above. To make matters worse, when I first extracted the files, I hadn’t unblocked the zip, so of course all of the contained files were blocked. When I unblocked the zip and re-extracted overtop of the existing files, it didn’t automatically unblock them – I had to go through them one-by-one and unblock. Once that nuisance was out of the way, the process began working.

Now on to other more pressing matters

 

[Edit]

After I posted this, I realized that while FxCopCmd was running, none of the results were being saved to the output file and consequently the build wasn’t failing. In order for FxCop to save the results, make sure your .fxcop project has these settings:

<SaveMessages>
   <Project Status="None" NewOnly="False" />
   <Report Status="Active" NewOnly="False" />
  </SaveMessages>

The important one is the <Report Status=”Active”… > element.

Reflecting on a Successful Software Release

What goes into a successful software release? I think to really answer that, it would boil down to a really abstract answer – “It depends.” In this blog post, I’ll give you a quick look at what went into making our most recent release a success.

First a little background …

The project that was just delivered was several years in the making. From concept to delivery took a LONG time. The reasons behind this were numerous; some were technical, but the majority were business-related.

The team members that worked on the project in the early days were not the same members that ended up delivering the solution. A couple of hangers-on were there for the whole duration, but largely it was a new team. Even the product owner from the client side was a new person. The team was also a geographically-dispersed multi-national team with language and time zone challenges.

The project’s development methodology changed over time. The process that persisted the longest and the one that was in place at the time of its delivery was a Scrum-hybrid that was chiefly centered on daily stand-ups. It lacked some of the important best practices that successful Scrum practitioners rely on. For example, it wasn’t until the last few weeks that the team had a well-defined and prioritized backlog.

Key Drivers for Success? I’ll give you the top 3 reasons – at least from my point of view, which was as a latecomer to the project.

The background of the project paints a pretty challenging picture for any team that finds itself facing the pressure to deliver a product. And this is certainly true for the team that delivered our product. So what made it possible to pull this off?

#1 Reason – Commitment

The team that delivered the project to the satisfaction of the client was determined to make it happen. Everyone involved knew the stakes and knew that success depended on each of their individual contributions to pull it off. I’ve been involved with projects in the past and almost without exception those that failed to deliver, or at least to deliver on time, were a direct result of a lack of personal commitment from the entire team.

#2 Reason – A Spirited Team Leader

I’m convinced that what brought the team’s commitment into focus and pulled things together at the end was the efforts of a new Scrum master. The team’s newest business analyst was a success catalyst. Her efforts to wrestle the last set of features and defects into a manageable backlog and focus the team’s efforts onto the right areas was a critical piece of the puzzle that helped the team cross the finish line.

#3 Reason – A Little Bit of Luck

Let’s face it, the project background that I gave at the beginning set the stage for another disastrous failure. However, as luck would have it, a number of events came about near the end that made success possible. For example, a new product owner became more engaged near the end and helped to focus the attention on must-haves. The team gained some new members that had experience with delivering results. They pulled together with the original team members and raised the bar for everyone. And lastly, the work of the team was largely usable and had relatively few “big ticket” issues. Had there been some time bombs that were unrealized by the new team, it could have been a very different result.

What was missing that would have made things better?

My top two things on this list are pretty solid in my mind: First – A well-groomed product backlog with priorities set by the product owner. Having that view gives the team a picture of what defines success. Anything short of that and it’s like shooting at a moving target. Second – Team continuity. Churn on a team can be a killer. When people leave they take with them something that can’t be underestimated – knowledge. If that person is a pivotal person on the team it can spell doom. Sometimes that knowledge can be rebuilt – other times not. Reduce your churn to improve your team’s velocity.

So what now? Well our team held a retrospective where a lot of great feedback was gathered and plans were made to put things into place to fix things. We’ll be relying on Scrum best practices to help guide our new process and hopefully will help reduce or eliminate some of the challenges earlier in the cycle.

Good luck on your next project!