I guess I'm gonna take a lot of heat about this question, and even some down votes but I am really lost here.
I know what SCORM stands for and what is it good for. I saw the paid "engines" like scorm.com but it starts from $20K...
I work for an LMS site software, we have videos, courses and whatever... my manager said "we have a provider that has a lot of courses in SCORM format, build a tool that import them into our database."
Oh god, help me, is there an easy way to do that or am I facing a year of hard, not satisfying work now? (don't know if I can use the non-free ones, depends on prices).
ASP.NET, C# platform.
Short answer: buy the Rustici guys' engine. If "a lot of courses" is let's say 500, you're looking at $40 per course. You'll probably sell them for more. Or think of it as 3 months work paid instead of 12-20 months of your own work and suffering. Like taking a train instead of walking.
Long answer. I think a lot of people here assumed you want to import SCORM courses and have them work flawlessly. I'm not sure that's what your boss wants you to do. Maybe if you simply import the courses (upload and extract zip files), determine the launcher file (described in easily parseable imsmanifest.xml) and launch it in a popup/iframe, the course will.. just work.
Sure, you will not be able to receive scores and completions. Sure, if the course relies on some data from LMS like student name, you won't be able to supply it.Sure, if the course cannot detect SCORM API, it'll throw an error at you. But you might be able to code a very basic fake API that does nothing or some basic communication functions with your own platform, and you'll be able to launch all those courses. Maybe you don't need 90% of what SCORM offers/requires.
Someone mentioned climbing Mt.Everest. Well, think of it as photoshopping your happy sun burnt face onto a picture of the summit. Not quite the same result but the effort invested is a million times smaller as well.
I wrote an LMS using ASP.net. It took three of us over a year to write the scorm engine and player. It is basic and it was not easy. Tell your boss he just asked you to climb Everest without cold weather gear :)
$20K vs 1 or 2 guys salary for 2 years - if they can read fast or have prior experience with SCORM 1.2 and or 2004. Then all the pain and suffering in between. Rustici has all this figured out and it also works pretty quick compared to other canned systems.
Beyond the API, and XML Parsing, validation, access, sequencing rules, arbitrary limits, error codes and messages, your also deciding on a API implementation. There are LMS systems out there that literally talk to the backend on every GetValue/SetValue call, which seriously lags out the user experience. If I spent that much time building this, only to find out I did it the slowest possible way I think I'd be curled up in the corner somewhere rocking back and forth.
I would say though this space is filled with a ton of legacy code stretching back to the early 2000's that's drastically due for a overhaul. Any code you manage to beg borrow or steal is going to be some old school stuff. None of it tied into a 'managed code' format or anything you could unit test without building that all from scratch too.
Nope, no easy solution here, especially for C#. The commercial solutions cost that much because their developers went through the pain of "a year of hard, not satisfying work". The open-source solutions are typically PHP-based. A few use Java.
Related
I am in a bit of a crisis here. I would really appreciate your help on the matter.
My Final Year Project is a "Location Based Product Recommendation Service". Now, due to some communication gap, we got stuck with an extremely difficult algorithm. Here is how it went:
We had done some research about recommendation systems prior to the project defense. We knew there were two approaches, "Collaborative Filtering" and "Content Based Recommendation". We had planned on using whichever technique gave us the best results. So, in essence, we were more focused on the end product than the actual process. The HOD asked us what algorithms OUR product would use? But, my group members thought that he meant what are the algorithms that are used for "Content Based Recommendations". They answered with "Rule Mining, Classification and Clustering". He was astonished that we planned on using all these algorithms for our project. He told us that he would accept our project proposal if we use his algorithm in our project. He gave us his research paper, without any other resources such as data, simulations, samples, etc. The algorithm is named "Context Based Positive and Negative Spatio-Temporal Association Rule Mining" In the paper, this algorithm was used to recommend sites for hydrocarbon taps and mining with extremely accurate results. Now here are a few issues I face:
I am not sure how or IF this algorithm fits in our project scenario
I cannot find spatio-temporal data, MarketBaskets, documentation or indeed any helpful resource
I tried asking the HOD for the data he used for the paper, as a reference. He was unable to provide the data to me
I tried coding the algorithm myself, in an incremental fashion, but found I was completely out of my depth. I divided the algo in 3 phases. Positive Spatio-Temporal Association Rule Mining, Negative Spatio-Temporal Association Rule Mining and Context Based Adjustments. Alas! The code I write is not mature enough. I couldn't even generate frequent itemsets properly. I understand the theory quite well, but I am not able to translate it into efficient code.
When the algorithm has been coded, I need to develop a web service. We also need a client website to access the web service. But with the code not even 10% done, I really am panicking. The project submission is in a fortnight.
Our supervisor is an expert in Artificial Intelligence, but he cannot guide us in the algorithm development. He dictates the importance of reuse and utilizing open-source resources. But, I am unable to find anything of actual use.
My group members are waiting on me to deliver the algorithm, so they can deploy it as a web service. There are other adjustments than need to be done, but with the algorithm not available, there is nothing we can do.
I have found a data set of Market Baskets. It's a simple excel file, with about 9000 transactions. There is not spatial or temporal data in it and I fear adding artificial data would compromise the integrity of the data.
I would appreciate if somebody could guide me. I guess the best approach would be to use an open-source API to partially implement the algorithm and then build the service and client application. We need to demonstrate something on 17th of June. I am really looking forward to your help, guidance and constructive criticism. Some solutions that I have considered are:
Use "User Clustering" as a "Collaborate Filtering" technique. Then
recommend the products from similar users via an alternative "Rule
Mining" algorithm. I need all these algorithms to be openly available
either as source code or an API, if I have any chance of making this
project on time.
Drop the algorithm altogether and make a project that actually works
as we intended, using available resources. I am 60% certain that we
would fail or marked extremely low.
Pay a software house to develop the algorithm for us and then
over-fit it into our project. I am not inclined to do this because it
would be unethical to do this.
As you can clearly see, my situation is quite dire. I really do need extensive help and guidance if I am to complete this project properly, in time. The project needs to be completely deployed and operational. I really am in a loop here
"Collaborative Filtering", "Content Based Recommendation", "Rule Mining, Classification and Clustering"
None of these are algorithms. They are tasks or subtasks, for each of which several algorithms exist.
I think you had a bad start already by not really knowing well enough what you proposed... but granted, the advice from your advisor was also not at all helpful.
Hello people from StackOverflow!
I come to you with yet another question. :)
As stated in some of my previous questions, I'm interested in creating a website that handles jobs and company openings for people to browse. I intend to have a way for people to upload CV's, apply to a position, and have companies post jobs as well.
Since I've never done a project of this scope before, I fear that I may be neglecting certain things that are a must for a web-targeted application.
I realize that is a very broad question, perhaps too broad to even answer. However, I'd really like someone to provide just a little input on this. :)
What things do I need to have in mind when I create a website of this type?
I'm going to be using ASP.Net and C#.
Edit: Just to clarify, the website is going to be local to a country in eastern europe.
Taking on careers.stackoverflow then? :)
One of the biggest things, is not even a technical thing to be thinking about - how are you going to pull in enough users to make the site take off?
It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - if you don't have recruiters on the site, noone's CV will get viewed. If you don't have CVs listed, recruiters won't use the site. So first and foremost, you need to be thinking about how you will build up a community.
the site must have a good, easy to use, user experience. Make it easy for everyone to achieve what they want.
what makes your site stand out from others? why should people use yours instead of another one?
You could start with the free "Job Site Starter Kit":
http://www.asp.net/downloads/starter-kits/job/
* Enables job seekers to post resumes
* Enables job seekers to search for job postings
* Enables employers to enter profile of their company
* Enables employers to post one or more job postings
First you need a community. It doesn't really matter which one, but it would help if you were also a member of this community. Let's take Underwater Basket Weavers. Then find a problem that this community has or something this community needs to share. Almost invariably it involves information exchange but in some cases it may actually be service based. Then focus your efforts on solving or supplementing that issue. For our Underwater Basket Weavers, we may have a need to share techniques on how to weave specific materials, where to get materials. How could they share this information and how could you make it interesting to them?
Know your audience. Learn their issues. Apply yourself to filling that void.
i feel like i'm going back to the stone age.
how do i relearn to develop without intellisense (pydev intellisense doesn't count).. in general, how does one successfully leave the comfort of visual studio ?
I recently learned python with a strong C# background.
My advise: Just do it. Sorry, couldn't resist but I'm also serious. Install python and read: Python.org documentation (v2.6). A book might help too -- I like the Python PhraseBook. From there, I started using python to implement solutions for various things. Most notably, ProjectEuler.net questions.
It forced me to consider the languages and built in data structures.
Python is truly easy to use and intuitive. To learn the basics, took me about an hour. To get pretty good with it, took around 5 hours. Of course, there is always more to learn.
Also, I want to note that I would discourage using IronPython or Jython because I feel learning core, regular python is the first step.
Python has rich "introspection" features. In particular, you can find out a lot about built-in features using a command called help() from the Python command line.
Suppose you want to use regular expressions, and want to find out how to use them.
>>> import re
>>> help(re)
You get a nice display of information, automatically shown to you a page at a time (hit the space bar to see the next page).
If you already know you want to use the sub() function from the re module, you can get help on just that:
>>> help(re.sub)
And this help() feature will even work on your own code, as long as you define Python docstrings for your modules, classes, and functions.
You can enable features in the vim editor (or gvim, or vim for Windows) that enable an "IntelliSense"-like autocompletion feature, and you can use Exuberant Ctags to generate hyperlink "tags" to let you navigate quickly through your code. These turn vim into something that is roughly as powerful as an IDE, with the full power of vim for editing. (There isn't an explicit refactoring tool built in to vim, but there are options available.
And as others have noted, you can get IDEs for Python too. I've used the Wingware IDE, and I recommend it. I try to do most of my work with free, open-source software, but that is one piece of proprietary software I would be willing to buy. I have also used Eclipse with the Pydev plugin (I used its refactoring tool and it worked fine).
P.S. Python has a richer feature set than C#, albeit at the cost that your code won't run as fast. Once you get used to Python, you won't feel like you are in the stone age anymore.
One step at a time?
Start off with simple programs (things you can write with your eyes closed in C#), and keep going... You will end up knowing the API by heart.
<rant>
This is sort of the reason that I think being a good visual studio user makes you a bad developer. Instead of learning an API, you look in the object browser until you find something that sounds more or less like what you are looking for, instantiate it, then hit . and start looking for what sounds like the right thing to use. While this is very quick, it also means it takes forever to learn an API in any depth, which often means you end up either re-inventing the wheel (because the wheel is buried under a mountain worth of household appliances and you had no idea it was there), or just doing things in a sub-optimal way. Just because you can find A solution quickly, doesn't mean it is THE BEST solution.
</rant>
In the case of .NET, which ships with about a billion APIs for everything under the sun, this is actually preferred. You need to sift through a lot of noise to find what you are aiming for.
Pythonic code favors one, obvious way to do any given thing. This tends to make the APIs very straight forward and readable. The trick is to learn the language and learn the APIs. It is not terribly hard to do, especially in the case of python, and while not being able to rely on intellisense may be jarring at first, it shouldn't take more then a week or two before you get used to it not being there.
Learn the language and the basic standard libraries with a good book. When it comes to a new library API, I find the REPL and some exploratory coding can get me to a pretty good understanding of what is going on fairly quickly.
You could always start with IronPython and continue to develop in Visual Studio.
The python ide from wingware is pretty nice. Thats what I ended up using going from visual studio C++/.net to doing python.
Don't worry about intellisense. Python is really simple and there really isn't that much to know, so after a few projects you'll be conceiving of python code while driving, eating, etc., without really even trying. Plus, python's built in text editor (IDLE) has a wimpy version of intellisense that has always been more than sufficient for my purposes. If you ever go blank and want to know what methods/properties and object has, just type this in an interactive session:
dir(myobject)
Same way you do anything else that doesn't have IntelliStuff.
I'm betting you wrote that question without the aid of an IntelliEnglish computer program that showed you a list of verbs you could use and automatically added punctuation at the end of your sentences, for example. :-)
I use Eclipse and PyDev, most of the time, and the limited auto-completion help that it provides is pretty useful.
It's not ever going to come up to the level of VS's IntelliSense, and it can't, because of the dynamic nature of Python. But there are compensations, big ones.
The biggest is the breaking of the code-compile-test cycle. It's so easy to write and test prototype code in IDLE that very often it's where I go first: I'll sketch out and test a couple of methods that have to interoperate, figure out that there's something I don't know, learn it, fix my test, and then port the whole thing over to PyDev and watch it work the first time.
Another is that it's a lot simpler. It's really important to know what the standard modules are, and what they do, but for the most part that can be picked up with a little reading. I only use a small handful of modules in my everyday programming - itertools, os, csv (yeah, well), datetime, StringIO - and everything else is there if I need it, but usually I don't.
The stuff that it's really important to know is stuff that IntelliSense couldn't help you with anyway. Auto-completion isn't going to make
self.__dict__.update(kwargs)
make a damn bit of sense; you have to learn what an amazing line of code that is, and why you'd write it, by yourself.
Then you'll think, "how would I even begin to implement something like that in C#?" and realize that the tools these stone-age people are using are a little more sophisticated than you think.
A mistake people coming from C# or Java make a lot is recreate a large class hierarchy like is common in those languages. With Python this is almost never useful. Instead, learn about duck typing. And don't worry too much about the lack of static typing: in practice, it's almost never an issue.
I'm not too familiar with Python so I'll give some general advice. Make sure to print out some reference pages of common functions. Keep them by you(or pinned to a wall or desk) at all times when your programming.. I'm traditionally a "stone age" developer and after developing in VS for a few months I'm finding my hobby programming is difficult without intellisense.. but keep at it to memorize the most common functions and eventually it'll just be natural
You'll also have to get use to a bit more "difficult" of debugging(not sure how that works with python)
While your learning though, you should enjoy the goodness(at least compared to C#) of Python even if you don't have intellisense.. hopefully this will motivate you!
I've only ever used IDLE for python development and it is not fun in the least. I would recommend getting your favorite text editor, mine is notepad++, and praying for a decent plugin for it. I only ever had to go from Eclipse to Visual Studio so my opinions are generally invalid in these contexts.
Pyscripter does a reasonable job at auto-completion/intellisense. I've been using it recently as I started to learn Python/Django, where I've been mainly a C# developer for the last few years.
I suggest going cold turkey - languages like Python shine with great text editors. Choose one you want to become amazing at (vim, emacs, etc.) and never look back.
I use Komodo Edit and it does reasonably good guessing at the autocompletion.
Others have suggested several editors that have intellisense-like capabilities. Try them out.
Also install ipython and use that to learn the language interactively. It is like a souped up version of the regular python interactive shell with lots and lots of added capabilities, and one of the most useful it its extensive context sensitive tab-completion and help.
For example if you type
import r<tab>
it will show all the modules you can import starting with r
import re
re.<tab>
will show all the objects in the re module
re.compile?
will show the docstring and other information about the re.compile function, automatically piping it through a pager if it is longer than a screenful.
re.compile??
will show the source code as well, if available.
Using this I find it is much faster to switch to ipython and query objects directly than it is to look up anything in the docs. You have access to the usual python help() system as well.
ipython has lots and lots of other features - far too many to cover in a short post.
I am having a problem with one of my team members output. He seems to be always 'busy' yet I am unable to see exactly what code he has done and he seems be delivering very little and it seems to take a long time to do so. I'd like to investigate further using TFS and was wondering if there is any functionality in TFS that shows what has been written by an individual or similar?
Just to clarify I am NOT spying I am trying to resolve situation. This is only a starting point. I un derstand that quantity of code does not equate to best programmer
thanks for any answers
Your best programmer may in fact write less code than your worst programmer, in fact really good programmers often write less code. Be careful about using this information to evaluate performance. Since you are using TFS, I assume you are also using the work item tracking. That is really a better way to evaluate performance than using lines of code. See which checkins cause the most problems, which fix the most defects, and how many rounds it takes for something to be truly fixed.
For me the simplest thing is to set up email alerts for checkins. You get the checkin comment, some work item info assuming they are associating/resolving on checkin, and list of changed files, as they happen. Lets you see what part of the code that dev is in and after a while you get a sense when "it's quiet. Too quiet" because someone isn't checking in. It doesn't take the place of forensics of what he did all month, but it keeps me feeling connected. It also gives me intuitive feelings like "he's in the reports, so I'll be able to show those to the user earlier in the cycle" or "jeez, he's doing all the stupid typos in error messages and other no-thinking things, and not tackling his real hard stuff" or even "he's doing his pri 2 stuff while he has a large pile of pri 1". All of these enable a 30 second hallway conversation to deliver a course correction as close in time to the problem as possible.
See the following blog post I put together a while ago:
Getting Started with the TFS Data Warehouse
This one talks you through getting code churn for each area of your codebase, but it would be easy to add team members into that as well to get a breakdown by team member who did the check-in.
But I agree with your question - this is not a good way to check on the productivity of your colleague. Instead I would talk with them to raise your concerns.
While I am away from TFS right now, you can view a list of checkins by user in Team Explorer, and in each of these you can see the files which have been changed and look at the diffs for each.
You can get this from the TFS Cube, if you have it set up. There are a large number of dimensions within Code Churn. Some of this is also available in the TfsWarehouse database as well.
If you do have the cube set up, just point Excel at it and have some fun playing around. Keep in mind, though, that the numbers can point you in the wrong direction. Use discretion.
This question already has answers here:
How can I make my product as a trial version for 30 days?
(11 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have a C# program that I would like to sell and I want to offer a 14 day trial, I understand that all piracy prevention schemes are overcome so I don't want to waste much time doing this. Could anyone offer any suggestion and even some sample code?
Thanks
My choice would be to store the date of the install (encrypted with a key) in the registry or config file. Look at this each time the application starts.
You can protect your app.config file using something like the RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider .
Obviously if they decompile the source they'll find the key in it, obfuscating might help this a bit, or using public/private key but that is probably an overkill for what you need.
A thief can always turn back the clock to within 14 days of the install, as well as virtualization to achieve the same end. Can you count on net access and have the program phone home for a key?
HASP is one company that does this full time.
Also, depending on factors such as the size of your target market, your purchase price, your competition, and the ecosystem you're selling to, you might consider that some amount of priracy might be your best marketing tool. Which is the greater risk: that your software is widely pirated, or that your software is lost in the noise and few ever even try it? Some software allegedly owes it success to wide spread piracy (WordStar, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3, iirc). A quick google shows that Chapter 13 of "in search of stupidity" touches on this.
It's a tough question, good luck.
Store the date of the install encryped as mentioned.
Also store todays date every time the app starts. If the day suddenly has gone back in time, you know they've cheaten and you close the program.
I would use .NET Reactor over at www.eziriz.com
Just do a nag screen if it's not registered. People are going to steal your software, whether you like it or not. Wasting time on a copy protection system is just going to make it more frustrating when people steal your software.
A gentle reminder that it's still in the trial stage will probably suit you better, ala WinRar.
Only save way of doing this would insult an online registration of the software, to one of you servers.
The software should generate an id on install with fixed system ids used, so the server may identify the software on that system.
Well, I would recommend not to build a trial version, but a free version with limited functionality.
Honestly since you are using C# i'd say don't waste time on licensing.
If someone wants your program without paying, they will simply open it up with any IL reader and remove your licensing system or just nop it.
As another user said make a free version with limited functinality. Sell the full version hope it's not spreaded too fast on torrent sites.
Or simply remake your application in another language e.g. c++ and use a licensing system that has to connect to a server. Making it slightly harder to reverse engineer.
Just take notice that whenever your program becomes somewhat popular it will be hacked/cracked.
Simply rely on the honest people or people who use it commercialy and cannot afford to "get caught" using illegal software.
EDIT*
Someone said to use .NET Reactor over at www.eziriz.com
If it works as advertised this will only stop people to easily read your code. It won't stop people to reverse engineer it and hack it anyway.
The question is how much do you want to pay for protection?
(This is basically rewriting it in another programming language only you pay for it. (less time consuming though), again does it work as advertised?)
If you do not want to waste time in designing a licensing scheme, consider a ready-to-use system like CryptoLicensing - it supports X day trials among other things.
DISCLAIMER: I work for LogicNP Software, the developers of CryptoLicensing.
To get the present 'Time' in C you have to use the header file stdlib.h and the
function:
system("echo %time%");
Program:
main(){
system("echo %time%");
getch();
}