I'm very excited to be giving a presentation at PyCon '07. A 30-minute slot is tough because the Star Schema can be confusing. The coding is pretty transparent (IMO), but the background for why I had to do this and places where it can be used are more interesting than …

Here's the full, minimally-edited question:

"We are having a debate about the basic way the UI, Business Logic, and Data Access layers communicate.

My experience has been that the UI talks to the BizLogic, and the BizLogic maps between itself and the Data Access layer.. like this:

::

UI -> BizLogic -> Data …

First, see "OSCON - Open Data " by Tim Bray, then see "Set My Data Free " in Kontrawize.

Here are some quotes "At the end of the day, information outlives software and transcends software and is more valuable than software." "Data matters. It shouldn't be an afterthought. It will outlive your applications …

See The hubris of calendrical calculations. And Calendrical Calculations, Part 2.

"Here are the exact words from the client when I suggested using the "official calendar": I’m aware of other systems having tables for Holidays but I don’t know that we can piggy back off any of them …

While "Browser as OS" is what appears to be happening. The browser is the front-end for many applications. Even in the Ajax case, however, the browser is only one piece of the application, and the browser isn't relevant on the server side.

The important point that is missed in the …

Here's another symptom of a Request for Faerie Dust™:

A proposal that includes (1) analysis, (2) proof-of-concept, and (3) a plan for a solution.

Sounds sensible, doesn't it? Study it, prove that you can solve it, and write the complete plan to solve it.

Sounded sensible to me, until I …

Without mentioning Armour's The Laws of Software Process: A New Model for the Production and Management of Software (which includes the Five Orders of Ignorance, quoted by Paul Freedman in "Uncovering Ignorance in Software Development "), Purdy has hit the nail on the head regarding gestation of architectures.

Is Gestation overhead …

The customer -- usually someone from IT -- has met with the users, and determined what their problem is and what is required to solve it. This is the standard procedure, but it rarely works out well. Here are some scenarios and some coping strategies. After some hand-wringing about scope and budget …

First, let's pick the conclusion out of the middle: "However, the computation for the first and last business day of the month is trivial. So, just codify this."

Since we still lack any usable context, we're struggling with the definition of basic terms. Is this the calendar month, or the …

Here's the example:

"I need to calculate first 'business day' of the month. Last 'business day', too."

Note that the problem which this solves is unstated. Why does anyone need to "calculate" this?

Here's a single tidbit of technical context, not useful really, but all I know: it's a polyglot …