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I'm trying to do some analysis and when writing down a list of functionalities I realized I'm a bit fuzzy on the notion.
What can you consider as functionalities like, say, on this Stackoverflow page? Also, to distinguish between the two, how would you define an operation?
My understanding is that the former is something vague, synonymous with a feature or use-case, defining a distinct need/requirement without going into details. Whereas, the latter is something basic, perhaps a subset of the former, but I wouldn't say it's atomic since an operation could be composed of other operations.
Edit: Here's a link on the subject: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=17873
P.S: Functionality might not be the correct expression in English. If so, please confirm this. "Fonctionalité" is often used with respect to software in the French language.
I'm looking forward to other answers, though I suspect this is more of a language issue than that there are universally defined meanings to these two terms, functionality and operation. Therefore, the following is to be taken as just my personal opinion.
To me, functionality (in the sense that you seem to be talking of, as opposed to the meaning of the word in the linked-to forum discussion) refers to use cases, that is, to something that your product/system offers for achieving some goal. It's not a specific action you can perform, but rather an abstract statement of what a system allows you to do. Related terms are feature, or facility. (Btw. I think for this meaning of the word "functionality", feature would be more appropriate.) For example, you could say:
"This site offers search functionality / has a search feature for finding previously published articles."
An operation (or action?) on the other hand is far more specific. It's not something your system/product offers, but something that is actually done with it. You would probably be talking about operations when you can say exactly how it is to be performed, e.g.:
"A search operation is performed by first entering keywords in this-and-that input field, followed by a click on the 'Go' button."
If you take these two together, you could probably say that "functionality" is an abstract category for a number of concrete "operations" that go towards achieving the same general goal.
But I admit I cannot define the two terms more precisely, either; esp. with regards to choosing the right "granularity" for defining specific functionalties or features.
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I've recently attempted to start learning the C programming language, this question isn't specific to that one language though, or any language for that matter. I've found that I regret asking for information/best practices as early in the learning process as I have, simply because I'm receiving too much information.
As an example, I asked a question related to arrays in C:
Is defining the length of an array with a macro "excellent practice"?
What I found was, I received the answer I was looking for; but, I also received a slew of other information, that, as a beginner was absolutely over my head. I then regretted asking in the first place because I found myself worrying about things that I probably shouldn't know/care about at this stage in the learning process.
I guess what I'm asking is: do you think worrying about best practices and language caveats when I'm a beginner will be harmful to me, or is it encouraged? I find myself getting lost reading questions under the 'c' tag, of which I was trying to use to improve my knowledge, but now I'm bogged down and not making any real progress because of all the little details in comments/answers etc.
It's certainly not a bad thing, per se, as learning of advanced matters ahead of time can really help you along the road. This isn't even confined to computer science; I, for example, find myself in this position all the time when cooking a new dish or studying relatively advanced mathematics. Of course, if all the little details and super-technical stuff are stressing you out, by all means, take a step back and breathe, try and focus on the task at hand. You can always return to the more advanced topics later!
On the specific question of learning the standard practices and caveats of a given language, I personally recommend it. First of all, doing so can keep you from developing bad habits. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of a given language are rather important, and can influence you later on. If you have one or two things you really hate about C, you can try another language in the future that addresses those issues. The sooner you acquaint yourself with such matters the sooner you can make a decision.
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I have a project which is using NodeJS and I have different entities for example, people and places.
I need the ability to find both types of entities by location together so what I was thinking of doing is having an index on a field called, type, for example, which would be either person or place and make use geospatial indexes, does this sound a good way to do this or is there a better way?
I will probably need a lot of joins too, so should I use MySQL alongside MongoDB and use MongoDB just for delivering the location based queries?
Thanks
This question is a poor fit for stackoverflow, but here's some radom bullet points:
PostgreSQL supports both joins and geospatial. I'd pick that first personally lacking other details warranting a different data store.
A totally valid option would be to keep people and places separate and query multiple collections as necessary. However, if you need to sort the results, then yes best to throw them in the same collection.
You could also keep people and places in separate mongodb collections but have a mapreduce job translate them into a locations collection for search purposes.
Generally, there are lots of ways to do this and the best one depends very much on the specific aspects of you application. Reads vs writes, data stability, data size, query load, etc, etc.
My broad word of advice is start with the most logical, easiest-to-follow, straightforward data organization (separate collections), and deviate from that when you understand the specific pain you have and how doing something more complicated or unusual will be an overall win.
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I have more than one (non-technical) client who has been put off by the term "don't care" in a Decision Table context, even after I explain this is a technical term, and what it means. It just strikes them as a bit rude. When I search for synonyms I get results that have more to do with "apathy" than with this use of the term. (That is why I am not asking on English Language & Usage. This is also the source of the clients' reaction, I believe; it sounds too much like apathy, which is not what they expect from me as a consultant.)
Rather than fighting a silly battle I want to focus on the project. So I'd like to come up with a term that is clear to both technical & non-technical people, and is also inoffensive. Any suggestions?
So your users are going to see values and may want to select one that conveys that they don't care which value is ultimately selected?
I would suggest "No Preference".
EDIT: I might also suggest that you translate your request into layman's terms and try out the English stack exchange as suggested in the comments. Those folks might be better equipped to provide you with a plethora of answers assuming they understand your question.
Would any of these work for you?
Extraneous
Unconnected
Unrelated
Not relevant
Immaterial
Inconsequential
I have always used NA for not applicable. It seems to already be in the non-technical vocabulary.
Neutral -
Indifferent -
No Opinion -
Unaffected -
Unconcerned -
Does Not Matter
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I see this term on the internet a lot (in fact, typing it on google returns a lot of results).
What is the exact definition of an "implementation detail"?
It's a behavior produced by code which may be relied on by consuming code, though that behavior is not specified by the spec the code is written to. Hence, other implementations of the same spec may not exhibit the same behavior, and will break that consuming code. That's why it's bad to rely on them.
For instance, if you were to write some code against a list interface which specified an array sort but not the algorithm it used, and you needed the sort method to be stable, and a version of your code was used with a non-stable sort algorithm, then your code would break.
I'm not aware of the exact formal definition of the term "implementation detail", it generally refers to the concrete implementation of a certain specification.
Take a List for example.
A specification of a List may say that "it is able to hold multiple values with duplicates while preserving order."
From the above, it doesn't mention what kind of backing data structure is used for the List -- for all we know, it may be an array, or a linked list. That is really an implementation detail that is really left up to the implementor of the List.
An "implementation detail" is a decision that is left to be made by the developers, and is not specified at an earlier level (such as a requirement document or, depending on context, an architectural document.)
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Like, testing for :
invalid inputs (strings containing "'"s)
giving random id's in url parameters to access "unauthorized" pages
prevent sql injection
...
I would recommend reading this brilliant book to learn more about the test plans.
In particular a test plan is much more than a list of techniques like you mentioned (these should most likely go into the details for the security testing)
It should at least contain:
The answers to the main questions:
why bother (what is gained by testing)
who cares (who are we working for)
how much (..testing will be done)
You would not go wrong providing also:
Platforms
Methods (positive testing, load testing etc)
Functionality you're planning to test
Acceptance criteria
And there is plenty more things to talk about in the plan.
Test responses for:
For integers - strings, null, values more than those allowed, negative, zero..
For strings - strings of lengths longer than that allowed
For invalid values, you can check if the response being returned is informative enough.
Test to see that your application logs these errors. If it doesn't you won't be able to identify and debug problems easily when they occur in production.
Also fuzz testing is a must for web applications.
If you want to make a list, you can add "Trying simple javascripts within a textarea field to see if the site saves and executes them"
this is what i use
Quality Test Plan
its very simple, straight-forward. covers many common web flaws (e.g. broken links, etc)
you might think its too basic, but im always surprised how many bugs it reveals
--LM