Here's an interesting -- and common -- question.

"... any tools that I could use to create a web scraper that I could use to interact with a .aspx website?

I want to build a tool that will read an input file (e.g. an excel spreadsheet) containing a list of property parcel …

In Creating Complexity Where None Existed, I noted that it's possible to create complexity out of thin air.

Indeed, by wallowing in the supposed drama, one can turn the differences between sales and service delivery into a hopelessly complex situation. A focus on a manufactured "conflict" leads to the following …

Today, we're reviewing the final and only code in the application. It's just that simple. We'll start with the data model.

CREATE TABLE STUFF(
    COLUMN1 TEXT,
    COLUMN2 TEXT,
    COLUMN3 TEXT
    );

As you can see from the enclosed table design, we have generalized the general triple-store to make it more general …

From time-to-time I hear a few mentions of MapReduce; up until recently, I avoided looking into it.

This month's CACM, however, is chock-full of MapReduce goodness.

After reading some of the articles, I decided to look a little more closely at that approach to handling large datasets.

Here's a quote "standard issues associated w/ a disitributed db". And "There is the push versus pull of data. Say you use push and..." and more stuff after that.

First, by "Distributed Database", the question could mean almost anything. However, they provide the specific example of Oracle's Multi-Master Replication. That …

The users want to locate people by last name. They want flexible matching. That's not very hard.

The DBA wants to do some wild-card searches efficiently. The DBA may not be responding to the users actual request, making this more complex than it needs to be.

I'm not in contact …

Unit test coverage is a politically sensitive issue.

If you don't like (or want) unit testing, you set the threshold really high. 100% code coverage, or worse, 100% logic path coverage. Since these goals are difficult to achieve, the whole unit testing business can be made to go away.

If …

On Stack Overflow I was captivated by "What tools would you used to write a modular database in Python? " and "Implementing a 'rules engine' in Python ".

Both questions are quite amazing because they already have a modular, flexible rules engine (called "python") but it's not good enough: they want to …

Years ago, I was working with a client who was implementing their first web site.

Well, actually, it wasn't their first. It was their third. But their first two were haphazard "we hope this works" kind of web sites. They relied on third-party security and were pretty sure they were …

December 11th, the electric power went out here in the northeast, and stayed out until late on the 14th.

We have gas heat, gas cooking. But the furnace wouldn't run without AC power. So, I now have a favorite electrical appliance -- the blower on my furnace.:Apple-tab-span:``

Here's my strategy …