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I've been developing a small database for my summer internship and I need to write a manual/documentation for it aimed at both users and developers for future use. Thing is...I have no idea where to start or what information to include. Many people I work with have no idea what databases can do so I need to keep it as simple as possible. The database is implemented in Access and I experimented with the database documenter but I think that is overkill. Is there some kind of documentation standard that I can follow or anything of that nature?
As a starter for ten, I'd have thought that the user documentation should be task orientated.
(i.e: How to achieve 'X'.)
In terms of the developer documentation, defining the meaning of any non-obvious fields in your schemas, how they're used and the relationships between different tables, etc. would be a good start. (I'm presuming your VBA code is well commented, etc.) You may also want to examine the existing "Documenting Visual Basic with Doxygen" question/answer.
Just straightforward english if you are explaining a process.
If you have a series of Macros do a document highlighting to code used in each macro and the order it should be employed. This could aid someone down the line if they are trying to automate the process.
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If I wanted to create a small program, perhaps a calculator or something, what language would I use, and how would I implement it?
Very new to coding, especially with websites so sorry if it's a dumb question.
This is a very vague question with so few specifics that it could really be answered 1,000 different ways.
To get you started with your reading though, I would suggest you read up on the differences between server-side and client-side coding languages for the web. That will help you understand what languages you would want to use and for what reasons.
As a general rule though, most people would likely build a simple app like a calculator in javascript, as it doesn't require a lot of interaction with the server, doesn't utilize any data storage, and would run on the users machine rather than tie up resources on your server.
Happy learning, and if you want a lot of responses on this site, you should include more specifics in your questions. Such a broad question is very hard to answer with any sort of brevity.
You can start with HTML, CSS and Javascript. www.w3schools.com is a good source to learn HTML, CSS and Javascript.
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I am involved in a project which is meant to eventually become open-source and have a code contributor community. Is there any "right" way of doing this and what should/can I expect?
Thanks
There's a pretty good book on this topic, Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel, which is available for free online or in dead tree form if you prefer to read it that way. It would be hard to expand much on it in a single answer. Every project will, of course, be different, so I'd recommend reading that book, and then asking more specific questions about your particular project; answers will depend on the language and platform you use, how active an open source community there already is in your area, what your business model is, and many other factors.
I would recommand using Github or Google Project Hosting (subversion/mercurial), and of course use social media network to promote the project helps too.
You can start something like this - http://wxwidgets.org/develop/
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I am developing a database that organizes scientific data from my group and diverse experiments reported in the literature, (my background is in science rather than project management or programming).
I currently have three documentation documents for:
end users of data
data enter-ers
developers (e.g. myself and my successor)
Other than following the users guides and descriptions from other databases, are there any best-practices I should follow, perhaps a latex template, or a mysqldump option that will automatically do some of the documentation?
Doxygen supports SQL. I would export the DDL SQL statements, document them with Doxygen notation and export it to HTML / PDF / whatever.
I wish there were a standard solution, but industry practice is ad hoc at best.
In MySQL, be sure to fill in the comment fields when creating tables and fields. If you use MySQL administrator, it makes it easy to manage, but that's most useful for developers to directly use. It can be used as the basis for expansion for the other categories of readers.
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I always have found the open source space interesting but have never actually participated in any projects. I recently had what I thought was a great a idea that was different from other projects I had seen in the area (in case it matters it was a .NET DI framework).
My question is if I have a funky idea should I join an existing project and share my ideas or create a competing project with exactly what I want. There are a few projects in the space the are similar to what I was thinking but they don't quite capture the same ideals.
Is extra competition frown upon in the open source space?
Competition is as important as collaboration in open source. Assuming the licenses are compatible, features and ideas can be cross-pollenating. Everybody wins.
the short answer to this is another question: do you want to contribute to a discussion, or do things your way?
You may want to consider writing it your own way and turning that process into an article that you could submit to CodeProject. Then if there seems to be interest in the article, add it to SourceForge. I've seen a lot of tools and widgets get a quick audience and coding help that way. One that I use often is XPTable, which started as a CodeProject article and eventually became an open source project on SourceForge.
BTW, you'll know if its a hit, because you'll start to get lots of requests for improvement, or people even submitting their own fixes and enhancements to your article.
Thank you for your time. I have decided to contribute directly for the project in some areas they were hurting. By doing so I can help the project and learn from the masters.
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What open source projects would you recommend as a good place for a starting open source developer? Factors that I think would be important are some obvious ones like well written code and a community that is helpful to newbies. But it might be nice if the code base is such that I can start hacking some small problems without really understanding the details of how everything works.
I'd prefer something that can be developed on Linux using C/C++/Java/Python/Scala.
Trying to pick a project like that will never work because it's not something you're passionate about. What's an open source project that you use daily or enjoy using? Go work with that one.
It really depends on what your interests are as to what project to dive into.
Rationale for a larger project (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, etc) is that it has many developers, a well established code base, and many small tasks/bugs to be worked out.
Rationale for a smaller project is that you will become more intimate with the code and application. You will likely get to know other developers on the team and understand the overall concept better. Additionally, your additions to the project may be more noticeable.
sourceforge has a list of projects seeking a new developer. Therer are several for your requested programming languages:
http://sourceforge.net/people/?category_id=1
Apart from developers they have more help requests:
http://sourceforge.net/people/
Pick one you use and like already.