vlad navazhylau's blog - tools

Quick way to create UML Sequence diagrams

vlad — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:22:00 +0200

I stumble upon this post the other day.
This led me to wonderful online tool http://www.websequencediagrams.com/ .
The SD/MSC Generator is an easy alternative to using mouse-centric tools like Microsoft Visio.
It has nice Domain Specific Language and API for creating quick sequence diagrams.

I would prefer this approach for creating any UML diagram anytime over any mouse-centric diagramming tool. Any UML diagram drawn will be rarely revisited later and adjusted/updated to the reality of the live code base. Usually when some process is better can be presented visually you want to have it done as quickly as possible while the idea is still fresh in you head. With traditional tools you would probably spend 70-85% of your time resizing horizontal and vertical lines, boxes, searching for the right shape and stencils, trying to remember to save the document in the correct format and with all this “noise” you loose concentration and spend 3-4 hours on simple diagram that would take 30 minutes to one hours with the tool like SD/MSC Generator. It is so much easier to learn Domain Specific Language for this tool than count pixels on the Visio grid.

And here is the best part of tool like this: you can store text/instruction for your diagram as regular text file in your favorite version control system rather then binary file.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with this product.

I just found another tool or technique that makes more sense, to me, and makes software project more Agile and less bureaucratic.

Distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

vlad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:21:38 +0200

http://www.danga.com/memcached/

Have not use it yet but heard a lot of good things about it.

Browser extention to aid Web Developer

vlad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:14:32 +0200

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

Top 10 Must Have SEO Firefox Extensions!
http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/top-10-must-have-seo-firefox-extensions/2662/

Up and Running with SQLite on .NET in 3 Minutes

vlad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:09:55 +0200

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/sqlite-in-three-minutes

WatiN - Web Application Testing In .Net

vlad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:04:28 +0200

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/WatiN.aspx
http://watin.sourceforge.net/
http://watintestrecord.sourceforge.net/

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

vlad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:02:10 +0200

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site -> http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
Firebug -> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
YSlow -> http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

HttpWebRequest and GZip Http Responses -> http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/102969.aspx

Dingo schema compiler for .NET

vlad — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:54:37 +0200

Dingo is a pluggable Schema Compiler for .NET and will generate C# code. The goal is to provide a simple way to generate Domain Objects. .NET XSD currently only generates Data Objects. Dingo can delegate code generation with high granularity.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dingo/

Essential knowledge and tools for web site performance optimization

vlad — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:34:26 +0200

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
Firebug
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
YSlow
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

WatiN - Web Application Testing In .Net

vlad — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:32:04 +0200

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/WatiN.aspx
http://watin.sourceforge.net/
http://watintestrecord.sourceforge.net/

Snippet Compiler

vlad — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:42:29 +0200

http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/SnippetCompiler/