Programming ideas I have had

Post #21,778 by nking 12/17/01 9:57:15 PM Reply	Programming ideas I have had I have had many ideas on writing programs since I got uninstalled. Problem is I haven't had much time to document them since I am watching my 3 year old son a lot due to not affording a babysitter anymore. I'll post a few of my ideas here and see if anyone thinks they are good? I had an idea for dynamic web forms that can handle different languages. Basically the whole form is stored in a database, and indexed by a language code. By default, English, can be used, but we can store other languages in the table for the header text, the tooltip/title text, and the description text. So if someone doesn't read English but reads French, German, Spanish, whatever it can pull up the language that they use if it is available. Someone can update the database as the web application is updated to accomindate different languages. I have an idea for Dynamic Data Caching for a POS system. Problem is that if "Dumb Terminals" are used and the connection to the mainframe, database server, etc gets cut off, the retailer cannot make any sales. If a copy of the sales items are stored in a local database each night at 2am or whatever it is schedualed to copy duing a non-busy time, the POS can pull the prices from the local database and have a manager override the prices if they are wrong. Then using a batch process, the POS systems can upload the transactions back to the Mainframe or Database Server, whatever. I also have ideas on a inventory management system for a web sales program I have been thinking of. More on that later. "Oy! Seats taken mate!" - "Brilliant!" on BBC America
Post #21,782 by admin 12/17/01 10:39:18 PM Reply	Re: Programming ideas I have had On the first one, that's usually accomplished with resource files for the different language strings used in the pages. Java has some decent capabilities in this regard. On the second, I did a system exactly like that in VB once. The AS/400 was centrally located, and the phone connections were too expensive to keep up all day long. Everything was batched and reconciled at the end of the day. Regards, -scott anderson
Post #21,783 by ChrisR 12/17/01 10:49:46 PM Reply	Odds and ends I had an idea for dynamic web forms that can handle different languages. Sounds like Todd's field of expertize. The curve for language translation is definitely not linear - the first 75% is relatively painless, but the remaining considerations get more and more difficult. Of course, squeezing out those last few percent is where the money is at. I have an idea for Dynamic Data Caching for a POS system. I interviewed for a job earlier this year for a company that does retail POS systems for gas and convenience stores - a bunch of ex-EDS engineers were involved. Generally speaking, there solution involved using some OO techniques where they developed their own scripting language that embedded the transaction processes within the data. The data was acting as a state machine carrying it's own instructions to complete the process. Hence, if the machine got detached from the central database, the data still carried enuf transaction info to complete the process. There were certain instances, though, where the transaction could not run without verification from the central repository. Specifically, some company credit cards have constraints about what can be purchased on the cards (only a certain amount of diesel fuel per day - and definitely no beer). So even though it was intelligent enuf to complete some transactions in isolation, it had to be aware of scenarios where it had to refuse to process transactions based on the system state. POS is kind of a nice mixture of embedded systems combined with standard business processing software (inventory, pricing, etc). The embedded processes include interfaces to a multitude of gas pumps, registers, credit card readers. The business processing includes interfaces to a bunch of different mainframes and servers with software ranging from Cobol, RPG, VB, Java, etc. The key to development, though, is like any other software - find a customer who is both willing to be a test bed and simultaneously willing to put money into the project development. Kind of hard to get the product out the door if you don't have experience with a paying customer - not to mention money comes in handy in getting over the rough spots.
Post #21,804 by tuberculosis 12/18/01 1:58:55 AM Reply	Re: Odds and ends RE: Multi-lingual web content Sounds like Todd's field of expertize Yep. Here's the thing. You don't want to store whole html web pages as translatable elements. The reason is that people who do language translations don't know jack about html - so they invariably delete a closing tag here or there. Instead, you need to classify tags into two types: structural (table, paragraph, list) and inline: (bold, link, italics...). Structural tags are what your templates contain. Its your page layout (although you need a way to have locale specific layouts for the people who read right to left and top to bottom). Then you put all the text in as large of blocks as possible into your database, inline markup and all. The reason you keep the inline markup is that it tends to move around. Example: English: The red [link\|http://www.apple.com\|apple]. Spanish: La [link\|http://www.apple.es\|manzana] roja. Notice that the link locations also change. So links want to get handled specially too - one more level of lookup needs to be kept to translate links (or not - depends). Writing an intelligent html editor that can handle all this freaky stuff is hard. One more thing to keep in mind is that translations can usually be done on a sentence by sentence basis. Some phrases recurr often. For instance, suppose you are translating the website for the Gap. The Gap has trademarked the phrase "stone washed jeans". One additional tool is translation memory - a phrase database that stores translated stuff within the context of the current content. A good translator's editor will tie into the translation memory database and actively try to assist the translator with known past translations. This helps provide decent consistency if you have a team of translators working on a big site. The translation memory database is shared and the editors are tied in "hot". Its more like groupware. There's a bunch more issues wrt font rendering and character encoding conversion that needs to happen in the web server but suffice it to say that almost any other idea is a better one than trying to get into multi-lingual web content management. FWIW, my former company, after hiring a total moron as VP Eng, and allowing him to eliminate my job after I already designed everything and built most of it, has finally fucked me by doing a 640 to one reverse stock split in their last round of funding. Basically diluting me from maybe getting my boat paid for to making it unlikely that I'll be able to buy a cheeseburger after any IPO. I'd prefer they'd folded the company so I could just write off my loss.
Post #21,853 by nking 12/18/01 11:47:53 AM Reply	Err not the whole HTML just the parts of it that the database will fill in, like the title part, the header information before the input box, etc. The ASP page or CGI program will parse out the HTML and fill in the blanks with the data from the database table. "Oy! Seats taken mate!" - "Brilliant!" on BBC America
Post #21,784 by a6l6e6x 12/17/01 11:06:25 PM Reply	Re: POS, Point Of Sale, that is. IBM POS systems (e.g. grocery store check out) have had local price data in a store "controller" for decades. The mainframe connection was seldom used. So you are a bit late with the idea. Alex Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Post #21,788 by ChrisR 12/17/01 11:17:33 PM Reply	Ah, your no fun... :-) It's hard to compete with the IBM's of the world on R&D or technical accomplishment. It's a bit easier to compete on the fronts of price and expertise for a particular customer. Means you need some serious exposure to retail systems, but there are a bunch of startups still reaching into this field - though it was a much more popular field when PC's first started appearing as I saw lots of garage operations trying to break into retail (a guy I worked with on a liquor store system POS comes to mind, as well as some video store stuff with my sister). Just because one of the big guys has done it, that may just indicate it is ripe for competition. Hell, that's how a lot of open source projects get started. :-)
Post #21,793 by tonytib 12/17/01 11:59:52 PM Reply	My feeling is that Norm should pick something that: -- uses technology of interest to potential employers -- he's (at least somewhat) interested in -- not be too ambitious (start by trying to solve a small problem, especially one you know something about, rather than trying to re-invent the world) -- that might have commercial possibilities, but don't worry too much about that -- that someone else might have done something similar --> but this doesn't matter because the primary reason is to develop some expertise yourself, and do it with your own twist Don't give up, but be realistic Tony

Welcome to IWETHEY!